Category: media-and-expression
Done the impossible – Firefly/Serenity Documentary
Adam Baldwin hosts the telling of this vivid Browncoat story that features interviews with Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly and Serenity, the cast, crew, and most importantly the fans themselves.
The story chronicles the rise, fall, and rebirth of the cult TV show “Firefly” as told from the perspective of the fans who helped save it. In this documentary, fans of the movie and TV series explain what inspired them to become passionate about Firefly, to help save Firefly, attend shindigs, participate in message boards, donate to charities, and become Serenity extras. They talk about the many ways that Firefly has affected their lives. Cast and crew also share humorous and insightful experiences with the fans.
Did I mention you can also download the documentary off torrent sites legally. Its been released under a creative commons licence so download and watch it to your hearts content. Cleverly there using it as a promotional tool for the actual DVD, and honestly I've bought the firefly DVD already and am planning to get Serentiy on DVD. I'll certainly get this on DVD too. If this goes towards a 2nd film or season then great. Oh I couldn't help post up this part which came in the info file.
[Why Release a “Free” version]
Great question, two answers.
1. We philosophically agree with the concepts of Creative Commons. In our opinion, the modern state of copyright is counter productive to creativity and free culture. It puts unnatural restraints on “fair use”, hinders the creative process and has fundamentally destroyed an entire industry before it was even born. Just think of the amazing products, enhancements, embellishments and re-mixes to creative works that could be built with today's technology and talents. But because modern copyrights are so restrictive, nobody dares do anything that *might* infringe on somebody's oh so holy copyright. Thus, we have chosen to not go down that road with our documentary. Enjoy it, share it, re-mix it all you like, just be sure to follow the license below. But remember, producing this documentary was not cheap, so please support the creators of the documentary and it's soundtrack by purchasing the full DVD and soundtrack at:
http://www.DoneTheImpossible.com
(or just send us some money via PayPal: jeremy@neish.com, we won't mind…)2. This release is a preemptive strike. Somebody would have released our documentary via P2P (bittorrent, etc) anyway. By releasing it ourselves, we at least have control over the quality and exact content. Basically the documentary becomes a marketing tool for the full DVD with all of it's extensive special feature described above.
If you purchased our DVD and are feeling a bit slighted by this “free” release, we understand. But remember, somebody else would have released it anyway, so why not us? And remember your DVD contains much more than this P2P release of the documentary.
The P2P release of Done the Impossible was originally released on LegalTorrents.com, please respect copyrights, even if you don't fully agree with the current implementation.
Geek and Geekhag podcast number 12 – Religion
Me and Sarah this time get to grips with the very difficult subject of religion in this 1 hour podcast. This might be a little shocking if your not aware of me and Sarah's position on the religion debate. And yes its not going to be as clean and as well thought out as Dave Slusher's podcast about the same subject but its just me and sarah talking like we usually do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Dabbler, at last someones adding distributed to the mix
At long last dabble has added distributed back into the mix. Dabble can be thought of yet another video hosting service but actually you would be overlooking its main feature. Its more like del.icio.us than anything else. Simply put its a bookmarking service for online video. So no matter where your video sits, google video, archive.org, youtube or even on your own site, you can bookmark it and share it with anyone via dabbler.
In the usual style you can also add tags and create playlists for other people and friends. Its such a simple idea and although dabble is very rough around the edges, I can see myself using this a lot. I actually rememeber this type of service being applied to Podcasts but it was so simple and clever, it actually is a shame it doesn't do audio too.
Geek and Geekhag podcast number eleven – The Experience
Me and Sarah discuss a few things in this 1 hour podcast. Some things I've talked about in previous blog entries and others are quite new.
- Xbox 360 hacked?
- Sanyo HD Camcorder
- Movie Piracy
- Its the experience that counts
- Snakes on the plane
- Don't copy that floppy
- Geekdinner
- Rocketboom
- Police with guns
- Sarahs now British
Not! media 2006
Zach, just showed me the Notmedia site. Very interesting I just wish I had known about it ages ago. Saturday is still free, so I guess theres still a chance to get the at media social on everyones radars. Those going to at media and those not going.
Next geekdinner is the @media Social
Something I've been working on for the last few months now, has now finally become reality. The next geekdinner will be part of the post @media social event. And the whole event is FREE for anyone to enter enjoy. Unlike most geekdinners, we are going to be open for 10 hours. Right off the bat, between 1pm – 2pm will be the @media lunch. Which will be a chance to have lunch with some fine designers while discussing the previous nights at the conference or webdesign generally. Then we dive into some key webdesign issues like CSS, Accessibility, Javascript and Design generally. These get togther sessions will quite adhoc and may contain a small panel of people if we get enough people interested. This is also a good time to relax with some beers or wines with likeminded people in the different areas of the Livery. Just before 6pm its a good idea to put your order in for dinner, because from 6pm we will be having a tradional sit down geekdinner with maybe some entertainment or discussion before the party at the end of the night.
So the date for your diary is Saturday 17th June from 1pm onwards at the Livery. Which is 130 Wood Street, just off Cheapside or a short walk from St Pauls Station which is on the central line. I hope to see you all there.
Geek and Geekhag podcast number ten – America
Here's a rough podcast me and Sarah did while driving to Minneapolis on the highway. I've cleaned it up as much as I can using Audacity but theres little we can do about the car noise and the laptop internal microphone. For now, its best not to link directly to the mpeg3 file because I will move it to archive.org when I get back online.
The subject for the podcast is that old chestnut, America or the states. We talk about oil prices, cars and the people. Enjoy…
The scene finished for now
So the scene just ended on episode 20. Looking back its got slowly worst and worst. Don't get me wrong, its ok but the time between episodes and the general lack of speed though out the whole thing made it difficult to follow and enjoy. I stuck with it and felt very let down by the lack of direction once the main event (the group almost getting busted) happened. There were some slight cliff hangers afterwards but not enough to make you go back.
Anyhow there working on the scene 2.0 which should be out in 6 weeks now. Its the same format but different characters and plot. Hopefully they can think a little more about how the whole thing hangs together rather than throwing more complexty in. The scene should also really be shot in a higher resoultion video, so they can fit more on the screen. At the moment the chat windows use up a quarter of the screen and when talking to more than 2 people things get very clutered.
I'm being pretty harsh on this pretty niche tech soap, mainly because theres little to compare it to, except what you see on standard broadcast TV. I mean don't get me wrong, its actually not that bad otherwise I won't watch it at all. I quite like the real style of looking at mainly a computer screen, its a welcome change from the crazy graphics you get in movies and some dramas. End of the day, I'll check out the new series and if its not a big step forward from the old series, I'll spend my time doing something else. I've already dropped other internet soaps for there lack of direction and quality.
Geek and Geekhag podcast number 9 – Hate crimes and We Media
Me and Sarah discuss a few things in this 1 hour podcast. I'm hoping to expand on these subjects in further entries but for now here's the basic outline.
So first up me and Sarah recieved some Racist and Homophobic propaganda/mail yesterday (3rd May), you can catch the complete image here and close up's here. Sarahs done a really good job of covering this one in the podcast and her blog entry so I'll simply point there instead.
Then we talk about the We Media and We Media Fringe events. I spend quite a lot of time on the digital assassins section of the event and I'll write up a full account of my experience soon. Oh by the way don't miss Suw's Why We Media sucked talk recored by James Cox. James also filmed a whole load of other really interesting stuff before the Digital Assassins session and afterwards at the Wemedia fringe event.
Then finally we finish with Sarah talking about her painful experience with Plaxo and we touch on Calendaring. I expect Calendaring will pop up again in the next podcast because theres tons to be said about this.