Blog Media Shots

It is not always that the Media Shots blog includes an over 1-hour video… So if we are including this one, it is because we know it will change your way of looking in branding and storytelling. The basic assumption is that a brand is like a character. ‘What makes something ‘story-worthy’ when you can get me to care’: this is how John Jacobsen of The Artist’s Toolbox” in PBS kicks off the debate.

Advice: skip video to minute 1 min 10 secs to fast forward through the technical details of getting all 3 speakers technically ready to start the screencast.

The title of the screencast is ‘Storytelling, Marketing and Modern Media’ It is part of ‘the Mindfire Chats’.

Take a look at this ad by New York Life (NYL) insurance company. What a great idea: showing ‘parallel’ life moments to underline continuity, safety… well and yeah: to sell insurance policies.

Aesthetically, it reminds me of some independently produced movies – ‘Tren de sombras‘ by Catalan Jose Luis Guerin comes to mind. This mix of archive and current footage and the type of editing are also very reminiscent of some of the techniques and strategies that Media Shots passes on to others, in our digital storytelling workshops.

Lately, we the three women in Media Shots, have been bothered by the question – is it “ok” to speak of digital storytelling (DST)  in marketing campaigns such as this one by NYL? After all, DST coins a school of thought that stresses process (and not only product) and community empowerment through storytelling.  Ads like NYL ‘parallels’ have other objectives in mind. Is it still ok to say ‘heck, this is good!”?

These matters have led us to start an internal dis on ethics that will culminate in a new section in our mother site on Media Shots ethics. It will be the subject of internal discussions through Christmas. So find it new in 2013.

I was honored to be part of the organization of a machinima festival recently – the first organized by SLACTIONS. I want to publicly thank Andre Lopes here for the excellent work done!

And by now you may be asking “but what the heck is machinima?”

Well… let me step back by saying that there is one type of audience that we do not address often here in this blog the “filmmakers-to-be” (and say this is the most amicable of ways…) or in other words, those who have dreams of directing a movie with a script, a cast, a soundtrack – a true movie production.

Machinima allows just this – the term can be used to designate both the final product and the process by which a cinematic production is created via the use of a real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines. Examples of these go from Second Life and iClone to WoW, Halo or Quake.

Here you can see the 3rd award under the ‘General category’ – Mindmaster, an amazing production that used iClone as the 3D rendering engine. The writer, Ezequiel Guerisoli, was also the pruducer, financing everything  from the music to the actors behind the voices. It was worth it: Guerisol is now with RockStar Games, a major video game firm. And who knows what part of that hire was due to having this amazing reel as part of a personal portfolio?…

This post would not be compete without a  big thank you to, besides Andre Lopes, Fernando José Cassola Marques and Bevan Whitfield. And to Leonel Morgado who, as always, keeps the Slactions torch alive, thanks to personal time invested and the level of participation he manages to get from his studens at UTAD (University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal)! Leonel, Nelson Zagalo (who also participated in the festival) and myself co-edited the book “Virtual worlds and metaverse platforms: new communication and identity paradigms“.

O filme que partilhamos foi criado pela professora Nazaré Barros no Museu do Fado num workshop da Media Shots que agora terminou.
Durante algumas semanas 16 professores, da Escola Secundária Dª Luísa de Gusmão e do Colégio Militar, contaram as histórias e experiências do seu encontro com o fado. Foram dias cheios em que o fado se sentiu e fez sentido: partilha de histórias, escrita de guiões, trabalho de narração, pesquisa de imagens, edição de filmes.
Para alguns o contato com o fado tinha resultado da colaboração com o museu neste ano de Fado Património da Humanidade, para outros estava cheio de recordações de infância. Em muitos casos, nem parecia haver relação. Mas não é que a encontraram? O fado lá estava entranhado em memórias esquecidas, em momentos fortes, ritos de passagem.
No final do workshop tinham trabalhado 16 histórias, das quais resultaram 16 filmes. As histórias da vida cruzadas com o fado ficaram agora registadas.
No filme da Nazaré Barros conta-se um encontro com fado e o seu silêncio.
Helena Lopes

This weekend, images on both mainstream and social media were frightening… They give us a gloomy idea of what it might have been to digitally document the Titanic tragedy. In this case and at the time we write this post, only 5 bodies have been found in Giglia, against the 1,500 in the tragedy of 100 years ago. Still, the videos being shared in social media, collected by amateurs’ digital cameras are disturbingly reminiscent of 1912. Strange indeed. Would the digital capture of historical tragedies change the understanding we have of those events?

Quando os posts escritos são substituídos por pequenos filmes – histórias digitais, por exemplo – os blogues mudam de nome e começam com um “V” de vídeo.

Este formato tende a expandir-se, particularmente entre os mais novos e está a ser usado nas escolas de alguns países como uma poderosa ferramenta de literacia para os media.

A produção destes conteúdos, em que a nova escrita junta às antigas letras também som e imagens, traz associadas aprendizagens complementares como a pesquisa, criatividade, poder se síntese ou comunicação na Web.

No blogue kidslearntoblog.com há muitas ideias para todos os tipos de blogue, com ou sem imagens, que exploram o uso pedagógico destas ferramentas, onde o Digital storytelling é um novo desafio…!

This is not a post to get you to buy a smart phone, I swear. But to those of you who are in Lisbon and have one, why not do something meaningful with it?…

Amnesty International has an AiCandle APP that Media Shots encourages you to download beforehand, and use in the “Shine a Light” event on December 10, at Largo Camões in Lisbon for the defense of Human Rights.
Daniel Oliveira of AI Portugal told us about the APP. We’re including the official video announcing it here; at first it looks like a documentary illustrating the many infringements to human rights. Wait to the end though.

And light your AiCandle on Dec 10 at Largo Camões at 7PM. It is *free* and can be downloaded from the Apple Store. You can also light a real candle if you want.:) Just be there!

ONE is an advocacy movement strongly backed up by social media strategy. Their motto is ‘At ONE, we’re not asking for your money, we’re asking for your voice’. They have successfully persuaded governments to support programs and policies to fight extreme poverty and disease. More importantly, this impact has caused *measurable* differences: as a result of programs that supporters of ONE.org have VOICED as important:

malaria deaths have been cut in half in Africa in less than 2 years
46.5 million more children are now going to school.

Check out their last campaign: “The F Word – Famine is the real obscenity”
ONE.org strategy was, this time, to recur to faces from mainstream media who have, some of them embraced social media in the past to join advocacy campaigns – Bono, George Clooney, K’naan, Jessica Alba.
Great video – strong message. Sign the petition, join the cause!

With the widespread of 2D codes and specifically QR, some clever marketing campaigns based on this technology are emerging. The best show that thought needs to be put not only in the way the codes are delivered (the distribution channel) but also in the content to which they bridge.

Check out this video that clarifies how to use the QR code printed on a sticker on bottles of ‘Big Fire’ (a winery based in Oregon). When you scan it with your smart phone, you’re taken to the company’s web site. There, you are prompted via a ‘share your story’ area of the site to upload photos (or sounds, or videos) of the moments when you are enjoying a bottle with your friends. The video describing the campaign is in itself such a story and  is just fun to watch: very much like a silly homemade youtube video with some video editing sophistication…