“Touching Stories” – Behind The Scenes from Tool of North America on Vimeo.

Tool of North America are doing some very cool things with interactive video, like their new Touching Stories iPad app.

By touching, shaking and turning your iPad, you can navigate, unlock and reveal unexpected variations in each of these four “Touching Stories.” Shot by five different directors—and contained in one single app—these interactive, live-action, short stories evolve storytelling in ways that have never been done before on the iPad.

The iPad’s big touch screen is a much more intuitive medium for a hypervideo interactive story than a mouse or trackpad.

Read more about the individual film stories on Tool’s blog, and download the app at the App Store.

Apple Of My Eye by Michael Koerbel – it’s racked up half a million views in the first 6 days.

When the iPhone 4 hit the shops last week, I was at the Cannes advertising festival, doing some mobile filmmaking to promote the Nokia N86. So it seemed like it’d be bad form to blog about the new iPhone’s HD video camera and built in iMovie editor – especially as I’ve been moaning for 2 years about Nokia’s decision to kill their excellent in-phone editor.

My mobile videoblog Twittervlog.tv started out in 2007 with videos that were shot, cut and posted straight from my N93. It frustrated me that over the years, Nokia had resigned their considerable lead in this area, and let Apple overtake them – despite Apple’s repeated reluctance to introduce video & in-phone editing.

But as I was talking about all this on Twitter, Dan Goodall from Nokia pointed me to some impressive test footage from the new Nokia N8’s HD camera (below), and an Engadget article about the N8’s built-in video editor (video from this article also embedded below).

It may seem like a geek sport at first glance, but mobile filmmaking excites me because it’s all about the ease & immediacy of having a complete filmmaking tool in your pocket – for personal & holiday videos, reporting live events and creative storytelling. Capturing, editing and posting without having to mess about with transferring to a computer, filing, converting, exporting, uploading, etc. I was excited about the quality & ease of the iPhone, and now even happier that Nokia are still pushing the boundaries too.

Nokia N8 Sample HD Video:

Nokia N8 in-phone editor:

(Video editor overview starts at 2min 47s)

I just read on Nokia’s N Series Blog about an organisation called the World Film Collective – which has given old Nokia N85 video phones to 48 South Africans, and trained them with mobile filmmaking & citizen journalism skills, so that they can give their perspectives on what the World Cup means to their local communities.

I’ve done some of this work with marginalized communities here in the UK – and next week I’ll be doing it with rich kids, reporting from Cannes, where young creative teams will be making adverts with N86s – but it’s always awesome to read about phones (particularly superseded models) are being used for creative and empowering video journalism in Africa.

Makes me think we should start collecting all our old N95s and N85s, which once cost us $500, and using them to do some good… If you have an old phone you’d like to creatively recycle, let me know.

I’ve transcribed the voiceover from this video, below. Apart from the hype, it gives a pretty good introduction to what internet/TV convergence will start to look like.

I’ve been banging on about this for so long that you’ll have to forgive my teenage excitement about it. I was expecting this kind of device to have arrived in a big way by 2007/8. Most of it is not much more advanced than your TiVo, Sky+ or Microsoft system – but instead of their horrible clunky interfaces, this looks well thought out, with full search and web access, and a properly integrated browser. If only Apple had made their AppleTV more like this three years ago. I’m still not sure why they didn’t.

It’s long been my opinion that the way people really want to experience entertainment is on their couch, rather than on their laptops and at their desk. But I’ve found, when enthusing about this stuff over the years, that some people have had trouble imagining using the web on their TV from their couch – particularly because they’re confused about how they’ll control it. With a keyboard and mouse? A really big remote control? A Wii wand?

No doubt we’ll have to wait another pointlessly long time before internet TV systems start using the new motion-sensing videogame control systems.

–
Text of Google TV video:

Google TV is a new product that seamlessly combines your TV, DVR recordings and the entire internet.
Some new TVs will come with it preinstalled – or you can get a separate box for the TV you already own.

So how does it work?
Well, start with the same TV you know and love.
Now add the ability to search for and tune to channels.
And search for and tune to individual shows.
You can also find shows to record.
And easily access any programmes you’ve already recorded and saved.

Google TV also has a built in web browser, which means that the entertainment options you can search for, record and save now include the entire incredible breadth of content that’s available today across the web – and of course your favourite online videos.

Now with Google TV, there’s always something good on – and there’s always interesting new content to find.

Combining the web and TV means doing things you could never do before, like check your fantasy team’s stats right on the same screen while you’re watching a game – or see what people are saying about today’s latest news even as you’re watching it happening.

Your television isn’t just about video any more. It’s a complete entertainment device, where you can access your photos, music, favourite games and many of the 50,000 apps available today from Android market.

Finally, Google TV let’s you personalize your television experience with the custom home screen, where you can easily edit and access your favourite channels, shows, and websites.

Learn more at google.com/tv

The iPad as an indie movie distribution tool, for instance. It’s all about the apps, right?

There’s an article today in The L Magazine, a NY events & culture mag, about how Behind The Scenes Of Total Hell will be the first indie movie released as an app for the iPad this summer, after selling literally dozens of copies on the iPhone.

Total Hell has used a Silicon Valley app developer called Stonehenge Productions, who specialise in getting indie films into the iTunes store and turning them into Apps.

The article weighs up the pros and cons of distributing via Apple apps and some other proprietary storefronts like Netflix and iTunes.

On the pro side:

No festivals, no distributors, no arcane gross percentage deals, no studio fees. Once a movie starts being treated like software, things get a whole lot simpler – not to mention more profitable for whoever made it. And since you’re shepherding software onto a gadget instead of bodies into a theater, you’re free to be much more selective in finding an audience.

But it warns about Apple’s control of apps for conservative and commercial reasons. Which should give most indie film producers more than a little concern, if they’re depending on distribution via the App Store.

It also mentions YouTube and Vimeo, saying,

nobody’s ever made their budget back that way. Like it or not, the current culture is amateur work on the internet for free and studio work in theaters for $12.50, and it’s not likely to change from the inside.

But, basically, the conclusion is that the app store is your best shot at selling movies via iPad. Suck up the approval/disapproval process. This is what the future of indie movie distribution looks like.

What it (and much of the other iPad hype I’m reading at the moment) doesn’t mention is that the iPad has an amazing secret feature that allows you to make money from selling movies in beautiful full-screen HD, without any content approval or DRM, and without giving away 30% of your revenues to the app store and a further X% to your app developer.

So here’s what Apple doesn’t want you to know. As well as selling apps, the iPad and iPhone have the incredible ability to connect you at the speed of light to a giant network of billions of computers all around the world at no extra cost, using a free pre-installed app – a graphical user interface, which turns specially formatted files stored on those computers into an incredible interactive multimedia experience.

But it’s not just about consuming. You can store your own files – including your independent movie – on any computer connected to this network, and use complex new computer languages to let iPad users find it, pay for it, download it, stream it, play it full screen, and even make it interactive with the iPad’s futuristic touch screen in much more interesting ways that are possible within an Apple app, Netflix or iTunes. And better yet, once your movie is on this network, anybody anywhere in the world (except for scary places) can access it instantly – and if they like what they see, they’ll use interconnected electronic messaging systems to tell their friends.

For more details on how you can take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity, call me now on +44(0)7906 576 071. Step Right Up!