Zen Films

Parasites Feature & Web Series: Director's Statement

Parasites is sci-fi thriller with psychological horror elements. It is shot in a tech-noir style with high contrast and lots of shadows; unsaturated colour and a green-blue haze. This is a dark and murky near-future dystopian Britain.

The parasitic imagery brings to mind Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo and David Cronenberg’s Crash.

The feature film focuses on the central character, Ellie, while additional material will be shot for the web series to explore other characters and reveal additional game clues, codes and information.

The premise of the movie is “modern life is rubbish” and explores the ideas expressed in the essays of John Gray. This creates a rich complexity for the storyworld that can be discussed more fully outside the feature film (e.g. online and in the game rules & lore).

Some scenes and props, where appropriate, will be shot greenscreen allowing us, fans and sponsors to create personalized locations and artifacts. This also allows items to change over time depending on gameplay and audience voting (this week’s Webisode 1 might not be the same webisode next week!).

The Parasites Manifesto

The following manifesto is intended to inform and inspire the Parasites collaborative community.

PROJECT GOALS

#1: To create an open-source, transmedia storyworld that belongs to everyone 

#2: To help those who contribute find what they need in life: recognition, reward (emotional, financial), friendship 

#3: To pay back the financial investors, plus an acceptable return, then use the money that's left to have the biggest wrap party(ies) in history with simultaneous drinking and live link-ups in five continents 

#4: To find a successful (i.e. profitable, repeatable) business model for filmmakers and those who contribute to their work

RULES and GUIDELINES

#1: There is no absolute truth, only the search for truth. Multiple explanations and stories can exist within the same world. You don't have to ask permission to create a new character, a new location or a new story and you can build on other people's ideas without permission. There's no right answers, only answers that might take us more quickly to a version of a truth  

#2: Lurking, reading, watching is active participation and we thank you. Linking, digging, forwarding and recommending is participating too and comes with increased good karma. Commenting, collaborating, creating is the highest endorsement you can give us and we hope you'll get a creative high... but we can't promise nirvana  

#3: If you create something for Parasites we hope you'll give it away for free. But if you want to sell it, it must only be sold on our marketplace where we'll take a commission to help repay the project  

#4: Less is more. Try to focus your thoughts, your words, your work and your creative energy - you will have a bigger impact and it's respectful of other people's time  

#5: Don't be a dickhead. While we'll try hard not to censor, if you post something to a website we control that's racist or nasty in other ways, it's gonna get pulled. Only give constructive, specific criticism if you have to - and after re-reading Rule #1 - but better is to show how you think it should be done. Be considerate of other people's feelings - you'll find the love will be returned to you (The Beatles: “the love you take is equal to the love you make”)

The Parasites Multiverse: A Groundbreaking Transmedia Project

This is a monster blog posting! Our full Power to the Pixel competition entry plus all the supplementary materials.

Our competition entry is called Parasites: it's an open-source transmedia project that spans a feature film, live interactive screenings, gaming, a web series, collaboration and an online marketplace. It's exciting, audacious, provocative and it's important to our industry because we want to prove new business models for indie filmmakers.

Parasite Project Links 

• project presentation: overview of the Parasites Multiverse, web series and game details, and the technology platform that's being developed for the project
• our original Power to the Pixel proposal submitted on Aug 14th 2009                                      
• the feature film synopsis & director's statement
• the Parasites Manifesto
• why and how you can get involved
• the importance of gaming to the Parasites project
• further details of the Parasites Online game . The basics are covered in the presentation but this further discusses the proposed gameplay.
• partners we're seeking
• diagrams used in the presentation and proposal are available at Flickr

Parasites Multiverse 1.0

View more documents from ZenFilms

Roll Call

In addition to the formal Parasites partners, Johannes Bhakdi at Klatcher, Christoper Allen at Skotos and Helen Grace at Left Films, I'd like to thank:

Rachel Mizsei-Ward for her valuable feedback and suggestions (which I adopted) in developing the Parasites Online Game. Her paper "Underworld vs the World of Darkness: Players and Filmgoers Respond to a Legal Battle" can be found here.

Tim Clague for sharing his experience with his movie Circumference. His popular comedy web series Mr Vista can be found here and his informative blog here.

And last but not least, thanks to William Scheinman and Michael Davidson for their feedback on the Manifesto and proposal.

My Public Confession

In the past posts of this blog you'll find someone complaining that the future of independent films is not how he had envisaged it would be!

My fear and insecurity of a future in which filmmakers couldn't make a living from their work because of piracy and attention scarcity created a crippling attachment to the past.

In (belatedly) recognizing my attachment to the old ways and then choosing to now truly see the world as it is, I have discovered an amazing wealth of creative ideas and opportunities.

On Friday I'll present a transmedia project born from the creative energy unleashed when I accepted that the world has changed.

It's time to embrace the uncertainties of a future shaped by seismic technological, economic and social change.

Cyberspace arms race and importance of education

Interesting article in today's New York Times on efforts by Russia, China and USA to reach agreement on war in cyberspace. What occurs to me is that success in future (cyber)warfare might be more about intellectual superiority than physical strength. This would make improving the education system a national security issue as well as an economic and social issue. Perhaps now is a good time to divert money from building more prisons to house the poorly educated and illiterate and improve education to match the world's best?

Incredible Information Sources

I was searching around last night for some quality market data and opinion on social media/mobile content. I know it's not directly film related but there are a number of exciting developments in this area where I think creative people are going to be able to leverage their skills.

So, I found two amazing mines of information. The first is SlideShare. I've embedded their "tour" presentation so it'll explain itself. I've had to make it small to fit in the blog column but you'll get the idea :)

| View | Upload your own

The second is Scribd. I couldn't find a tour.. although I didn't look very hard as it's so obvious what's going on. Instead, here's an interesting document on Alternate Reality Gaming. It's from 2006 but still worth a read.

Read this document on Scribd:Alternate Reality Games Whitepaper (2006)

Surrogacy in Philly

I stumbled across this advert in the local newspaper in Philadelphia - the one for surrogate mothers that is, not the Italian restaurant! I didn't know that surrogacy was legal. Not that I'm saying it should not be, only confessing to my ignorance. I saw the ad and thought I'd stepped into the future :) I decided to check what the laws were and unsurprisingly it's different across the States. Here's a link: www.allaboutsurrogacy.com/surrogacylaws.htm

Thought Crime becomes reality in UK

This is a polite reminder to readers in the UK that they may have woken up this morning as criminals. Law-abiding yesterday, criminals today because of the passing into law of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill - part of which outlaws the viewing of titillating sexually-violent images. What's bizarre about the new law is that a consenting couple could quite legally make a home sex tape for their own use but then be thrown into prison for three years for watching it back again.

Rather than repeat all the discussion and arguments, here's an excellent article from the Scottish Sunday Herald. And another quicker read from the BBC.

The most alarming thing about the passing of this law is that it's another tightening of the belt strangling people's freedom. Quite why certain folk want to interfere in the lives of others I don't understand. I have a suspicion that it's all about envy - why should someone else be having all the fun if they're denied?

Original Goodness vs Original Sin

Last Friday my friend, the author William Scheinman, lead the meditation at the San Francisco Buddhist Center and after a period of quiet meditation he read from a book of Zen poetry by the renowned Ryokan. It was a wonderful session and since then I've been left with an intense feeling of wellbeing and connectedness with the universe.

After the session Bill and I followed our usual *cough* "ritual" for Friday nights and we talked a little about Christianity's original sin vs Buddhism's original goodness. It kick-started several days of reading for me as I sought to refresh and deepen my understanding of Karma, Rebirth, reincarnation and original goodness.

At the same time, as if synchronicity were at work, this week's Start the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4 carries an excellent discussion about the mind and its life in the body :) I've just ordered my copy of the book The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head which appears only to be on the Amazon UK website and not the US?

More soon....

New York

I'm at the gate waiting for my flight back to San Francisco from New York and I thought I'd try out the iPhone facility of Typepad, the blog host I use. Yeah, it's pretty cool :)

I always loved NYC but never thought it to be too different to London in terms of energy and general buzz. But boy, coming from San Francisco and not having been in London for many months, NYC is alive - what a kick it's been this weekend. I love SF but it feels positively sleepy compared to NYC.

There's a few things that need improving of course - like the lack of wireless outside of Starbucks. It feels weird not to have constant Internet access!