Worlds Will Shatter - The Unfold trailer
from Nine Orders on Vimeo.
I’m proud to release the first open source film trailer created for A Swarm of Angels. World’s Will Shatter sets the scene for The Unfold, a contemporary sci-fi thriller being made in a revolutionary fashion; by a global community of members participating in its creation, and contributing their unique talents and skills.
Driven by a core collaboration between the animation skills of Mayec Rancel, and the soundtrack smarts of Santiago Abadia, the trailer is at the forefront of new creative processes empowered through the Internet of crowdsourcing, and peer production. Finished with title design by the internationally recognised graphic talents of Matt Pyke of Universal Everything collaborating with Maxim Zhestkov, it is a stunning glimpse into a world being created by a global membership fueling a pioneering people-powered film studio.
Rancel has evoked a powerful unfolding world created in 3D from 2D images created by Japanese photographer Palla. Through community feedback and discussion at the forums of aswarmofangels.com the initial ideas developed into a spiralling, shearing cityscape synchronised with an otherworldly soundtrack developed by Abadia. The online collaboration encompassed a team of participants from Spain, Belgium, the North and South of England, Japan, as well as Russia (not including members who participated in votes and posts via the forums).
The trailer and all accompanying source files are released under a Creative Commons CC-NC-SA-3.0 license, allowing full non-commercial remixing and sharing (embed codes for Youtube, blip.tv & hi-def Vimeo). Join the Swarm to help make the film and get further details for the open source package (register here, full member details here).
Tags: ASOA, asoa community, co creation, collaboration, creative commons, crowdsourcing, theunfold
You can pre-register before the Phase 3 launch now, and be one of the first to move over to the new site. If you’re already a member or know someone who might be interested then please tell a friend, so we can start Phase 3 with a bang.
Phase 3 is where A Swarm of Angels really takes flight. With over 1000 members from around the world, and after a longer than anticipated pause for breath (and script development) after Phase 2, we’re finally aiming for the official launch of the next phase in January 2008, week 3.
We’ll be making some changes to help scale up to the new level of activity in 2008 and the growth to 5000 members — including having an Archangel committee to help with intense feedback periods that happen around certain areas, with more regular reporting and project milestones (members interested in these positions see the forum). More about these changes in posts leading up to P3 launch.
Another major change is that we’ll be moving to free registration to the project (so registered users have more access to materials/ratings, etc), alongside full paid membership (only members will still have the right to vote on key decisions, etc, along with the other benefits).
Tags: ASOA, asoa community, phase 3
Very pleased to announce that A Swarm of Angels won the R&D category as part of Britain’s Digital Elite awards, organised by Real Business magazine. The awards recognised organisations that were getting ahead of the competition, through innovative use of technology. Not my favourite activity, photoshoots, but all in a good cause…
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ASOA, awards, crowdsourcing, digital distribution, event, movie production, publicity
Riffing off the design of the top-voted poster chosen by the Swarm in our previous voting day the site’s undergone a dramatic change from red to blue (with added gradient) in the new theme. Display graphics feature more of the ’swooning angels’ designed by poster illustrator Emily Forgot and the layout is generally clearer and more open to graphic flourishes.
The changes aren’t just cosmetic though. The site structure take into account the expansion of project activity, and revolves around the main navigation headings of Fund (joining and process), Film (production team and tasks), and Flow (feedback and distribution). Interact (network and participation) and Consume (downloads and merchandise) will be developed as these activities ramp up in Phase 3 (where we start producing ‘assets’).
The new theme offers more information from the member forum, The Nine Orders, with new topics now featuring in the sidebar, and also includes website commentary (tagged articles through a del.icio.us feed). We’ve got a link to our flickr group photos and a clearer project status box at the top of the sidebar (although this is not auto-updating yet).
The overhaul is a way to bed down our structure in anticipation of the next phase of the project (1000+ Angels), and a way to iron out any content kinks before implementing the integrated member site.
Thanks for everyone’s patience with this Chorus 4 theme (due in part to being sidelined with the aborted Chorus 3). Particular thanks to those in the Swarm who contributed to this design, inputting through the forum and wiki, including cheeshpro, stepinrazor, Paul Freeman, Emily Forgot, leo. For Chorus 5 let’s do an open submission via the forum…
Special thanks to Mosso, who’ve stepped up as our hosting sponsor as our site demands have grown. Great also to have torrentfreak on board as a media partner, particularly as they are one of the lone beacons of enlightened commentary on the new frontiers of distribution and content.
Please help yourself to the new buttons (!), and tell us how you like the new design so we can tweak it and make it better.
Tags: ASOA, asoa community, crowdsourcing, design
In tune with developing the remix credentials of this project, I have the awesome news that The Kleptones are joining the Swarm, and lending their musical expertise in creating a soundtrack, and inputting on related media creation for ASOA, including podcast creation, etc.
As Webby artists of the year 2005, they’ve been recognised for pioneering the mash-up musical artform, and with over 1/2 million album downloads last year, their output has taken the Internet by storm. I would also highly recommend downloading the recent double-album, 24 Hours, if you haven’t already.
The Kleptones are also Brighton-based, so I’ve had quite a few discussions with them regarding the amazing possibilities of a Creative Commons-fuelled soundtrack. They will be inputting more of these ideas, and track suggestions at The Nine Orders in due course.
I’d like to think this latest addition moves us to ‘remix supergroup‘ status.
They have already done a Q&A for the site, which I’ll post in due course, in the meantime, they’ve provided a project endorsement:
“A Swarm Of Angels is a giant step towards a forward-thinking alternative system of movie production, and a mighty opportunity to show the combinable, combustible power of remix culture.
The Creative Commons has been established to allow this culture to develop and grow, and ASOA presents a new and, so far, unique opportunity to collectively contribute towards and remix a large project in all stages of development, from conception to realisation and beyond.
In our productions, we enjoy the thrill of taking disparate musical worlds and creatively colliding them, so the prospect of being part of such a large collision is electrifying. We’re honoured to be involved in ASOA as soundtrack producers and advisors, and look forward to kicking out the virtual and actual jams within The Swarm.”
- The Kleptones
Another reason to Join the Swarm, if you needed one.
Tags: ASOA, creative commons, mashups, movie production, music, remix, the kleptones
With The Nine Orders forum online, the first podcast available, and some exciting new team members coming on board (already announced to members), the project is ready to move up a gear. With over 100+ Angels signed up primarily from seeding the project via email, we’re now focussed on the crucial target of the reaching the First 1000. This will trigger off the production process proper and creation of the first original media (trailers and video teasers/shorts)
Please help our push to 1000 by joining the Swarm (if you haven’t already), and by tagging us at del.icio.us, or by making a post on your blog.
With the recent addition of pioneering film producer Tommy Pallotta coming on board (hot from production on Keanu Reeves-starrer, A Scanner Darkly), we’ve also got a new team page, for you to check out our project credentials, and the developing team.
ps. Thought I’d highlight that we’ll be freezing Swarm membership at the 1000 mark in the development phase, so a good time to join if you don’t want to miss this intake and go onto the waiting list instead.
UPDATE: Overnight we’ve had about 50 additional sign ups to the Swarm! Cascading from Boing Boing, we’ve also started to get quite a few blog comments. I’ll collect what we have at the end of the weekend.
UPDATE 2: Doubled our numbers to 200+ at the weekend . Many thanks to those sharing their enthusiasm/knowledge at The Nine Orders. I am humbled by the initial reaction on the blogosphere. I am trying to keep up with validating members who haven’t gone through automatically, please bear with me! At this rate we will have our First 1000
UPDATE 3: At the above rate we’d have a development hothouse within 10 days: members have asked to slow down promotion to more organic level so we can bed the community, have votes on direction and create initial media and scripts before scaling up numbers:
UPDATE 4: remixable trailer at blip.tv showpage, voting and script previews at The Nine Orders.
Tags: ASOA, digital film, feature film
Grant Gee is an amazing Brighton-based director and cameraman. I first got to know him while organizing the screening of his Grammy award-nominated feature-length music documentary on Radiohead, 
Grant did an amazing job on my 
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