Launching today is the Mindflesh 360 experience at Klater.com/mindflesh.
NB: Check out the official press release here and feel free to Digg it ;)
What does that mean? Well, working with the nice people at Klatcher.com we're experimenting with new ways to connect to audiences and find a sustainable business model.
This ought to beg two questions: what's Klatcher.com and what's the new business model?
Klatcher.com is a new media technology platform that integrates all the islands of content and social media that develop around a movie. It doesn't replace the need for a Facebook page and a YouTube channel but it can pull them together in a more cohesive way. And it also aims to simplify the management and tracking of content be it video, blog posts, photos etc.
As is typical these days with Internet services, the site is in continual beta but improvements are happening pretty much weekly so I'd encourage folks to give it a go a fire off suggestions to Johannes the Klatcher CEO.
So what's happening there with Mindflesh? Well the first thing you'll notice is that the feature-length movie have been chopped up into 22 webisodes. We've published six webisodes at launch and then we're publishing one every Tuesday and Friday for the next 8 weeks.
Below is webisode 3 which shows our hero first getting captured by the Guardians :)
So, the movie is completely free to watch as webisodes and although the movie wasn't designed to be webisized I think we've made a pretty good job of finding a good place to cut... if not always with a cliff hanger, at least an enticing hook.
We've also created a bunch of merchandising that includes these rather elegant, arty Keds!
When we were in post on Mindflesh, Matt the editor and I joked about all sorts of T-shirts we might do utilizing quotes from the movie. But I didn't implement any kind of merchandising because I have to be honest and say that I was rather uncomfortable whoring myself out like I was making Harry Potter or Star Wars. The bottom line unfortunately is... well, the botton line. Seems like people will buy unique and cool stuff more than they're inclined to pay for movies... but let me address this in another blog post.
Food. Clemenza schools Michael on the proper recipe for sauce should the need arise to feed a ton of wiseguys ramping up toward gangland war. Francis' commentary suggests that the recipe that made the final cut is incomplete, but it serves as the nucleus for a MindFlesh product placement (for example) that sidesteps the liabilities of partnership with a food franchise by simply citing ingredients and measurements that volunteers in your audience can pull together by and for themselves. Parasites Pizza's a catchy name, that might not generate the desired effect.
There's more discussion of transmedia cuisine at Henry Jenkins' blog this morning.
Posted by: scott-ellington.livejournal.com | October 27, 2009 at 03:28 PM
http://henryjenkins.org/2009/10/transmedia_tacos_you_bet.html
Posted by: scott-ellington.livejournal.com | October 27, 2009 at 03:35 PM
hey Scott, welcome back. And thanks for the heads-up on Henry's post!
Posted by: Robert | October 28, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Yo Rob, I never left. Perhaps you'd consider posting copies of contracts, summarized in human terms, in or near the STORE link.
I think there's a clear advantage to filmmakers in making unmistakably clear to potential customers exactly how to pay for and/or access your content in ways that are most beneficial to creators.
Moving toward real transparency means DON'T BE DADDY. I think those three words are applicable in several interesting contexts.
Posted by: Scott Ellington | October 28, 2009 at 02:57 PM