I was lucky to get the chance last week to sit down with Connor Horgan, Writer and Director of the Workbook Project Discovery and Distribution Award winning film, One Hundred Mornings. He talked about making the film, the challenged he faced, some of his upcoming projects (shark hunting, anyone?), being “chuffed,” and some very useful advice for anyone aspiring to make films, which can be helpful for anyone trying to follow their artistic dreams, be they film, writing, shark-hunting, what have you.

How did you come up with the idea for this film?
Conor: I had been reading a lot about some of the challenges that are looming and in the middle of all that, I went to a talk given by Margaret Atwood and she recommended a book called A Short History of Progress by a Canadian author called Ronald Wright, and I read that and a couple of other things, and they really just opened my eyes and blew my mind a little about how reliant we are on all of this easily available power. And I saw how in New Orleans after Katrina, how quickly the whole fabric of society can just fall down, and I found this a really compelling subject, so when the chance came to make a low budget film, or as Americans like to say, and “indie film,” it seemed like an ideal topic to explore. And if I’m going to make a film about a world in which all the lights have gone out and where there’s no power and society is breaking down, I was really interested in making as realistic a version of that world as possible, and that was an achievable thing to do on a very low budget. In this world where if you want to know what’s happening over the next hill, you have to climb the hill and look over it. There are no phones, no other forms of communication, so the world that people would live in and the series of events would be very small, and that serves the scale of the film as well.

Along those lines, what was the motivation for the small cast, the very few locations, and the very little dialog in the film?
Conor: Taking those in order, with the small cast, I liked the idea of a small group of people who are forced by circumstances to live together when they weren’t getting along terribly well, and also who displayed the characteristics that many of us come up with when faced with a looming crisis. Like some people go straight into denial, some have an unrealistic amount of optimism, some sort of hope that someone else will sort it out. I thought that to have this small group of people who obviously have pre-existing relationships, that was something that appealed to me. It’s not just the four people in the house; there are other people around, people who pass through, who play very significant parts in the story. But I wanted really to concentrate on the human cost, the human reactions to how we deal with the circumstances of our actions, in good ways and not so good ways, in helpful ways and not so helpful ways. I felt that having a basic cast of four people would allow me to play with that in hopefully what would be a good way. The house, the one location, as I said before, it was very fitting for the world that I wanted to create, where a lot of the action would take place in or around one location. I knew that if most of us end up in this kind of societal breakdown, we probably would hold up in one single place and see what that would be like. If you look up post apocalyptic things, a lot of people think that if the world breaks down there will just be no rules and no societal constraints and I’ll be able to do whatever the hell I want and it’ll actually be fun, but if you do any kind of reading or thinking about what that world would actually be like, it would be incredibly dull at times and very tense, and not necessarily exciting in the way that people would expect, and I wanted to get that across in the film.

What about the dialog?
Conor: Partially, as a filmmaker, it always appeals to me to show more than to tell. But I also thought that as relationships between the four main characters of the house deteriorated, they’d be talking to each other at the bare minimum, the way that people become defensive or guarded as they become increasingly isolated. And as I look at the way our society is at the moment, we tend to become quite splintered, isolated, rather than all coming together and working together, everyone is becoming more separate, and that was replicated in the house. The more that was happening, the less they were saying. The more the story was progressing, they were saying as little as possible, almost to conserve energy. When I was writing the script, I was trying to tell the story as visually as I could, and I probably cut about half the dialog in the course of writing the script, and when it actually came to shooting it, I probably cut about a third of what was left, so I was really quite ruthless with paring it down to the absolute minimum that was needed. I was trying to make the physicality of the actors and their actions tell the story as much as possible.

How much of the setting, the feeling, the dissonance and the distance of the people and the community, or lack thereof, is true to the way that people of Irish culture would react, or the way that humans in general would react, or was this just a thematic choice on your part?
Conor: I never really saw this as being culturally specific. A few people have said to me, “This doesn’t feel like an Irish movie,” and to me, I don’t know entirely what an Irish movie would feel like, but it’s not what I set out to make. I wanted to make something that was absolutely human and just to try and bring it down to very basic human reactions. Some of those reactions were not the most noble reactions either, and that’s something I worked on with the cast. I remember saying to all of them in rehearsals that there are no heroes and no villains in the film. For each of these characters, there are good reasons for what they do, and they’re very understandable reasons given the circumstances. Now, how they play off and how they affect the other characters is the other characters’ problem. I didn’t want to have these clear heroes and villains. I wanted everyone to actually be human, and actually not to judge all of the characters and what they do, but just to understand it.

Why did you choose to have the circumstances in the film world, i.e. how they ended up that way, nonspecific?
Conor: Probably the most important reason is that the film is about how we as humans deal with the consequences of our actions, rather than the causes of that. We’re just saying that these are the ways we can deal with the consequences, rightly or wrongly, and that became interesting to me. Another reason is that any time I’ve seen a post-apocalyptic movie, they probably spend the first half of the movie explaining what happened, how it happened and why it happened, and then if you’re of a particular mindset, you then spend the rest of the film arguing in your head with the filmmaker about how that particular scenario might be, and that was not something that interested me. I’m not saying, “Oh, if you don’t look out, this might happen!” There is any number of things that might happen or might not, and if you want to know what they are, just look in the newspapers.

(Director of Photography Suzie Lavelle and Conor Horgan)

Can you talk about production a little bit? How long did it take to make, how much shooting time, were you living on set, etc.
Conor: We shot over 20 days, 4 or 5 day weeks, which is ridiculously small. We weren’t living on the set, but the set was hugely, hugely important. It was a pre-existing wooden cabin on the shores of Lough Dan, which is about a thousand feet up, just outside Dublin. A very particularly beautiful part of the country and also very isolated, which was very important in building this world, and I actually had to go back a little in writing the script, when we started to look at the location and at what that location needed to do, suddenly it became the hardest working location in Ireland. We had to get somewhere that had nice big windows, and most Irish cottages don’t have nice big windows because of the cold and wet and damp over here. We had to get somewhere that was big enough that we could get enough visual variety with a number of interior scenes without using the same shot over and over again. It had to be away from any street lights, any industrial noises, even any livestock. It had to have that kind of strong sense of isolation and that there’s nothing else happening out there. If there had been tractors on the road or something, it would have completely destroyed the illusion of the world that we were creating. It took about eight months of some fairly serious location hunting before we found it.

How did you find it?
Conor: I had a brilliant location manager who kept showing me place after place after place. He showed me one place at the top of a hill and I thought it wasn’t great and the estate agent told us that they had a holiday estate at the bottom of the hill, but were we sure we wanted to go down because it was a very steep hill, but we went down and I looked, and instantly, this was the place. It had so much atmosphere, so much potential. When I brought the actors there, one of the great pleasures was to bring the actors down and show them the locations, and just seeing their faces, it was as if the place had been built for the script. It was kind of perfect. I lived in a little bed and breakfast at the top of this hill, this hill that became rapidly christened “the hill of death,” because it was so steep and kind of burned out one of our trucks and we had to climb up with the truck. I was at the top of the hill, they were down the road, and everyone involved with the film was staying kind of thereabouts, and by halfway through the first week it kind of felt like we were living in the world of the movie. I really think that you can feel it when you see the movie, when you see the actors. It feels like they’re there.

It does. So what other films, and directors or writers, have influenced you in general? And for this film specifically?
Conor: In general, it’s quite hard to say because there have been so many films that I’ve loved. There’s one film I saw that I actually wrote a blog about for Lance for the Workbook Project. I saw a film called Zed when I was about 11 years old, and it was about the injustices of the military dictatorship in Greece in the 1970s, and it was the first time I saw a film that had me tossing and turning at night. Not because I was scared by it, but because I was just infuriated. It was the first time I ever realized that films could evoke such strong feelings in me, or in people, as well as just entertainment, that films could just be really thought-provoking. That was probably as big an influence on me as any film I’ve seen. The effect it’s had on me has stayed with me ever since. I was really interested in trying to make something that was really thought-provoking, that would be challenging in some way, that would challenge people. I’ve had people come up to me six weeks after seeing the movie, telling me that my film has been haunting them. A specific film I found inspiring for this is The Time of the Wolf by Michale Haneke, because it deals with a similar type of situation. It’s different in that it’s a road movie. It’s about a mother with two kids on the road in France, trying to find shelter during a societal breakdown. That was something that certainly was very inspiring for me. Because it’s my first film, you can almost say that every movie I’ve ever seen kind of inspired me, although that’s not entirely true. So many things that I’ve responded to over the years I’ve find inspiring towards making this particular film.

Is this the first film that you’ve made?
Conor: It’s the first feature film, yeah.

How did you start making films, and what was your first gig or first short film that you made? How did you work your way up?
Conor: Well I started as a photographer quite a number of years ago, and moved into advertising, and some people in advertising thought that I might be able to direct TV commercials and it turned out that they were right, and I directed TV commercials for a couple of years, and I did a couple of promos and things like that. Around 2001/ 2002, I started losing interest in that rapidly. There’s only so much you can learn from TV commercials, and you’re not really the master of your own destiny in any sense. And ultimately it’s not storytelling for it’s own sake, it’s for the sake of selling more products. Once I did that and knew I could do that, I really wanted to do something that was a proper story, told for the sake of the story and for no other reason. The first film that I made was called The Last Time. It’s actually on my website, it’s 12 minutes. It’s basically the story of a middle-aged woman who’s going out, looking to get laid, in her mid-50’s. People found that to be an interesting topic and an interesting story and the script seemed to work well, and it just kind of worked. We won a couple of really good awards, and picked up a nationwide release in Ireland with the feature film The Banger Sisters. It probably did as well as a short film coming out of Ireland can do. Halfway through the first day of shooting that, I realized that this is what I want to be doing, I don’t want to be making ads anymore. This is absolutely where I want to be and the kind of thing I want to be doing. So that’s really what I’ve been doing. And since then I’ve written quite a lot. I’ve written a number of feature film scripts which are un-produced, but all of which hopefully have made me a better writer and helped me write the script for One Hundred Mornings better than I would have been able to otherwise. I’ve made a number of experimental films. I made a film about happiness where I went around the country and interviewed nearly 400 people and asked them what made them happy, and I turned that into a 25-minute film. I did a similar one about fear. I went to Paupa New Guinea with an Irish conceptual artist and went out hunting sharks with her in canoes. She was looking for sharks to make art with. And a couple of other documentaries and other things along those lines. I’m working on another feature script which will hopefully be my second film. I’m making a documentary about one of the greatest drag acts and political activists in Ireland, and I’m directing my first show in Dublin in about two weeks, so I’m keeping busy.

What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?
Conor: So many younger filmmakers come to me now, and they know that I’ve made ads, and they think, “Well if I just go into that world, and I learn to play with all the toys and make lots of money, then whenever it suits me, I’ll just go off and make feature films.” And while some people do do that, the vast majority of people who do that end up making ads, and not doing what they really want to do. So as far as my advice to aspiring filmmakers, if you want to make a particular kind of film, make that particular kind of film. Don’t be side tracked. Don’t go into something else just for the money. Because certainly in my experience, advertising is littered with the still breathing corpses of many writer/directors who would much rather be doing something other than what they’re currently doing, and they’ve just gone in there and they weren’t able to get back out again. They got stuck and they fell in love with the money.

So you’ve just won the WorkBook Project Discovery and Distribution Award. Congratulations.
Conor: Thanks. We’re incredibly chuffed. Do you need that word translated?

Yes.
Conor: “Chuffed” is the Anglo Saxon version of “delighted.”

Great! So how do you anticipate a Los Angeles audience receiving this film?
Conor: I have no idea actually. That’s a very good question. I imagine it’s going to be the same as it’s been received in other parts of the world. In some ways it’s kind of odd, because I thought when I was making the film that if I had a model in my head it would have been a French movie, but halfway through the film I was talking to two of the actors and I said, “you know, we’re making a Western here,” and we were kind of laughing. You know, there’s a sheriff and a frontier-type kind of community. So that might possibly explain why American film festivals have absolutely taken the film to heart. Every week we have another two or three American festivals that want to screen the film. As I said, it’s a challenging film. It’s not a sort of sit back and let it wash over you kind of film. One of my friends here, and Irish filmmaker, said something that I really appreciate, that it’s the type of film where you have to lean forward a bit. You have to lean into it. I was very touched by that, because that’s really the kind of film I wanted to make, where if people would lean into it, if they would engage with it, it would be worth that effort.

What’s the distinction between making a short film and a feature? Do you see that as a good model to start making films? Can you briefly describe what that process has been, from going from short film to feature?
Conor: I’m sort of unusual in the sense that I made one dramatic short, and then went to a feature. I’ve had a lot of experience, but I’ve only made two dramatic pieces in my life: one short and one feature film. I think making shorts is a fantastic way towards working towards features, as long as people making shorts want to making them. When I made my short, I made it with this voice in the back of my mind, saying, “I might never get the chance to make another film. This could be it. This has got to be the best short I could possibly make, given the circumstances, given the resources. I might never find the money to make another short.” It wasn’t about making something that was a calling card for something else. It had to be made absolutely the best it could possibly be, because if I never get another chance… That’s the way I looked at the feature as well, and hopefully I’ll be able to make another feature and another after that, but each one of them I want to make as though this is it. It better be good, because it might be the last one I ever make.

“What’s amazing about where we sit now in a society, we’re global we’re more connected than we’ve ever been before, and we have more devices than we’ve ever had before. This is an amazing time to be a storyteller. I think that inherently, what you’ll start to see is that the next generation of social networking will push more story and entertainment will become more social. Some of that will yield different types of experiences and formats, or a marrying of existing formats. That’s all very exciting but audiences need to know the work exists. ” – Lance Weiler, founder of the WorkBook Project

A few weeks ago, The WorkBook Project announced the winner of our first installment of the Discovery and Distribution Award. The award is intended to be multi-faceted, honoring those who have demonstrated achievement and creativity in fields such as film, gaming, music, design, and software, to name a few. This is the first time the award is being given, and this time, it’s for film. According to Lance Weiler, founder of the WorkBook Project, over 100 independent films were considered for this award, and a jury of three prominent figures in the film community (Ted Hope, producer of 21 Grams, In the Bedroom, Adventureland, and founder of TrulyFreeFilms.com; Scott Macaulay producer of Gummo, Raising Victor Vargas and editor of of Filmmaker Magazine. Anne Thompson former film columnist at Variety, the Hollywood Reporter – currently writing for Thompson on Hollywood a part of IndieWire network) settled on a winner: One Hundred Mornings, an Irish film directed by Conor Horgan and produced by Katie Holly. The award gives its winners opportunities for distribution. The winning film is given a theatrical run in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent Theater and provided with PR, social media and street team support. The top 20 finalist also receive a digital distribution package made possible by IndieFlix which will place them on Hulu, iTunes and other distribution outlets. All with no cost to the filmmaker whatsoever.

(Downtown Independent Theater – LA)

We caught up with Lance and Katie last week to discuss the film, the award, and the future of DIY filmmaking and independent distribution.

We’re all aware that technology is changing and becoming more accessible to everyday people. As a result, according to Lance, more films are being made with much lower budgets, which can be a good thing, but on the flip side, fewer are being seen by wide audiences. So what does this mean for the future of distribution and production, and is this necessarily all bad? According to both Lance and Katie, this is actually a very exciting thing, and something that they are embracing and anticipating with enthusiasm.

(Katie Holly, Kelly Campbell, Conor Horgan)

When Katie began her career as a producer she was working on three films that, by today’s standards, were very high-budget. Now, she says, there is no way that any first-time filmmaker anywhere in the world would be able to access those kinds of funds anymore. But she believes this to be an exciting challenge. For One Hundred Mornings, she fell in love with the story itself, and the strong visuals that jumped off the pages and into her imagination, that did not rely on a huge budget to achieve. Lance adds that, while the future of filmmaking as whole is up in the air, and likely without one definite direction, he anticipates a shift to emphasizing the importance of storytelling and the way that stories are told, and that, to him, and to Katie, is very exciting.

Also at the start of Katie’s career, generally once post-production on a film was complete, the producer would put the project in the hands of a distributor, and the producer’s job would be largely done. But now, since it’s much more difficult to find a distributor, the producer’s role is greatly expanded, and the entire process from start to finish is a lot more DIY. This is something that Katie never expected, but she’s stepping up to the challenge and eager to learn all the new things that the position as “producer” would not have previously allowed.

(making of One Hundred Mornings)

They both hope that this award will stem a pattern of cross-pollination around the globe. In other words, this film, for example, was made in Ireland, and it is being awarded a theatrical release in Los Angeles and a community of filmmakers, organizations and the indie film community are supporting it. So perhaps if things similar to this award catch on, Lance hopes, that lots of niche communities of likeminded people around the world will begin communicating and sharing with one another.

Both Katie and Lance discussed the importance of passion and love of filmmaking that contributes to the success of this award. According to Lance, those who contributed their time to make this award possible don’t have any investment in One Hundred Mornings itself, but were very inspired by the idea and philosophy behind the award, and were very eager to help out. According to Katie, especially now since filmmaking, namely independent filmmaking, doesn’t necessarily reel in the money the way it used to, those who dedicate their lives to it really do it because they’re passionate about it. It’s all about the love of it.

(scene from One Hundred Mornings)

From firsthand experience, Katie advises first time filmmakers in this world of evolving media and technology to just go out and make a film. “The most important thing is action,” she explains. “It’s actually doing it. It’s making a film, with whatever means you have available. The act of making a film, the process, going through all of production’s difficulties and challenges, is the best way to learn.” Her company has been struggling to figure out how to produce a film of theirs that calls for a budget much greater than what they have, and instead of giving up on the project, they decided to accommodate the film and the story to fit the means that they have. The result, Katie says, is very rewarding and challenging, and something that is invaluable. Especially now with communities working together to create and sustain new means of distribution, and since means of production are cheaper and more accessible than ever, there is no excuse not to go for it.

One Hundred Mornings Trailer

WBP Discovery & Distribution Award 2010 Feature Film Winner: One Hundred Mornings

The WorkBook Project (WBP) is excited to announce the screening dates and venue for its Discovery and Distribution Award Winner, the Irish post-apocalyptic drama One Hundred Mornings. One Hundred Mornings cast and crew Conor Horgan (writer/director), Katie Holly (producer) and Kelly Campbell (actor) will be in attendance for the opening night event. Every night of the run other than opening night will feature an independent local short film curated by Cinefist, Cinema Speakeasy and Slamdance. Check workbookproject.com/award for programming updates.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRDiqinG8Ow

Where: Downtown Independent Theatre, 251 South Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
http://www.downtownindependent.com/

Screenings: Opening night is Thursday September 16th at 8:00PM
Subsequent screenings:
Friday Sep 17th: 7:30, 9:30
Sat Sep 18th: 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Sun Sep 19th: 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Mon Sep 20th: 7:30, 9:30
Tues Sep 21st: : 7:30, 9:30
Wed Sep 22nd: 7:30, 9:30

Price: $10
Buy Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124646

About One Hundred Mornings
www.onehundredmornings.com
(85 mins, Ireland, written and directed by Conor Horgan)
photos for press

The opening night event is open to the public, and to the media.
Media: Please RSVP to work@workbookproject.com to specify attendance to opening night.

Nate Hill

Since 2002 Nate Hill has been an uncatagorizable force in the art world, covering everything from photography to performance art, all the way to helping you forget your last love. His first work, New Animals, seemed a fitting way to introduce himself into the artistic community of New York City. As a young man, Nate have lived in various places across America, beginning in California, then pushing east to Nebraska, then Tennessee, south to Florida, and then settling in New York City in 2001. New Animals is an amazing expression of both death and creation, from a young man brought into this world by two doctors, who has lived in so many different environments, it is only natural for him to be boiling over with a medical fascination. Add a note of a disjointed desire to create, with a splash of medicinal sterility and New Animals was born. A renound work, New Animal #31 was a combination of falcon talons, cardinal wings, opossum ears and snout, an armadillo ear and the heart of a squirrel From there, he explored a few different routes with taxidermy.

After that, there was the A.D.A.M. project, comprised of 13 diffferent animal species, put together to form a life size human replica. A.D.A.M. stands for A Dead Animal Man.

Since then, Nate’s focus moved to a more performance driven form, first with the Candy Crack Delivery Service, where he would sell bags of colored, crystallized sugar rocks, dressed in a dolphin mascot head and tuxedo, after receiving a phone call or text message from a potential “customer”. Then there was the Death Bear. A personal favorite to the RADAR team, the Death Bear consisted of Nate again arriving at a private residence after receiving a text or phone call, asking him to remove items belonging to a lost relationship, where they would be brought to his “cave” never to be seen again, aiding them in their detachment from those physical objects..

Lately, He has moved onto a few photographic exploits, most notably Untitled Nudes, where he asks female models he has found on craigslist to write his initials somewhere on their bodies, photograph them, only to mount those body parts on wireframes. This continues his theme of exploring body parts, in a selective, and disjointed fashion. Nate Hill’s work can be seen at NateHillisNuts.com.

Nate Hill

Since 2002 Nate Hill has been an uncatagorizable force in the art world, covering everything from photography to performance art, all the way to helping you forget your last love. His first work, New Animals, seemed a fitting way to introduce himself into the artistic community of New York City. As a young man, Nate have lived in various places across America, beginning in California, then pushing east to Nebraska, then Tennessee, south to Florida, and then settling in New York City in 2001. New Animals is an amazing expression of both death and creation, from a young man brought into this world by two doctors, who has lived in so many different environments, it is only natural for him to be boiling over with a medical fascination. Add a note of a disjointed desire to create, with a splash of medicinal sterility and New Animals was born. A renound work, New Animal #31 was a combination of falcon talons, cardinal wings, opossum ears and snout, an armadillo ear and the heart of a squirrel From there, he explored a few different routes with taxidermy.

After that, there was the A.D.A.M. project, comprised of 13 diffferent animal species, put together to form a life size human replica. A.D.A.M. stands for A Dead Animal Man.

Since then, Nate’s focus moved to a more performance driven form, first with the Candy Crack Delivery Service, where he would sell bags of colored, crystallized sugar rocks, dressed in a dolphin mascot head and tuxedo, after receiving a phone call or text message from a potential “customer”. Then there was the Death Bear. A personal favorite to the RADAR team, the Death Bear consisted of Nate again arriving at a private residence after receiving a text or phone call, asking him to remove items belonging to a lost relationship, where they would be brought to his “cave” never to be seen again, aiding them in their detachment from those physical objects..

Lately, He has moved onto a few photographic exploits, most notably Untitled Nudes, where he asks female models he has found on craigslist to write his initials somewhere on their bodies, photograph them, only to mount those body parts on wireframes. This continues his theme of exploring body parts, in a selective, and disjointed fashion. Nate Hill’s work can be seen at NateHillisNuts.com.

WBP Discovery & Distribution Award 2010 Feature Film Winner: One Hundred Mornings

The WorkBook Project (WBP) is excited to announce the screening dates and venue for its Discovery and Distribution Award Winner, the Irish post-apocalyptic drama One Hundred Mornings. One Hundred Mornings cast and crew Conor Horgan (writer/director), Katie Holly (producer) and Kelly Campbell (actor) will be in attendance for the opening night event. Every night of the run other than opening night will feature an independent local short film curated by Cinefist, Cinema Speakeasy and Slamdance. Check workbookproject.com/award for programming updates.
Trailer:

Where: Downtown Independent Theatre, 251 South Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
http://www.downtownindependent.com/

Screenings: Opening night is Thursday September 16th at 8:00PM
Subsequent screenings:
Friday Sep 17th: 7:30, 9:30
Sat Sep 18th: 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Sun Sep 19th: 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Mon Sep 20th: 7:30, 9:30
Tues Sep 21st: : 7:30, 9:30
Wed Sep 22nd: 7:30, 9:30

Price: $10
Buy Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124646

About One Hundred Mornings
www.onehundredmornings.com
(85 mins, Ireland, written and directed by Conor Horgan)
photos for press

The opening night event is open to the public, and to the media.
Media: Please RSVP to work@workbookproject.com to specify attendance to opening night.

[What to say at the end of an epic, three-part article? Well, not very much (fortunately). My aim here is only to make the connections explicit...and to pass on the same challenge to you that Elan passed to me: this stuff is easy, now you do it!]

“It’s almost comical how I live in constant fear…”

Let’s review: Elan Lee has been one of the very few storytellers of the 21st century to use media as a collaborative, non-linear, cross-platform distribution mechanism, and make money doing it.

His strategy is simple: Use what works, and then go farther (but just a little bit beyond the boundaries of expectation).

His goal, even more so: Make each player/viewer/leader/lurker feel–in the 10 seconds, 10 minutes, or 10 months they spend in the story world–like a superhero; their contribution, however big or small, makes a difference in that world. [And maybe if people spend more time feeling super, they'll start to see how much difference they make in this world.]

[Intermission]

Meet Ben Kling. He is the model prosumer [thank you, Mark] of the 18-24 US population. This is the person for whom we are now making media; more importantly, this is the person who is making media for us. We are in constant dialogue, referencing the shared culture of multiple generations–past and probably future–through our constant, loosely networked content. Ben makes websites, Motown mashups, and tons of friends. If we want to keep Ben’s attention, we’ll need to include him in the ebb and flow of experience moderation that is the defining factor of transmedia as we know it. His willing suspension of disbelief [thank you, Lee] is partly self-induced (and all the more exciting and immersive because of it).

“…that someone will someday figure out how much fun I’m having…”

Good news! According to Elan, the only thing we need to get Ben’s attention is a good story. “Storytelling is still one of the most fascinating things possible for people.  It’s essential that we adapt the way we tell stories to meet the expectations of society–figure out what it means to tell stories using the internet, your cell phone, email, etc–but the fundamental act of telling stories has, and will always work.”

The sky is wide open. From Jane McGonigal’s “absolutely mind-blowing” experiences to the not-really-transmedia, canon expanding story portals of JJ Abrams‘ and Dave Baronoff’s Bad Robot projects, there is room for experimentation and participation. For Elan, it’s fundamental: “I just think up the way I’d like the world to be, and then hire people to build it.”

Transmedia isn’t a revolution, it’s the slow and ongoing adaptation of storytelling to the possibilities created by contemporary forms of media, and, more critically, “community collaboration tools like the internet.” Now that the community can participate in the story world, and stories can be consumed in real time, creators can tweak the inputs (game mechanics, characters, pacing) as the universe unfolds. The personalized, participative, on-demand experience is empowering and emotionally rewarding in an all-encompassing way, because the boundaries of the story and real life are blurred to the point of irrelevance.

“…and that I’d gladly do my job for free.”

Citing The Beatles as “some of the most creative storytellers the world has ever seen,” Elan is creatively humble, and appropriately confident about his achievements: “I see myself in a very, very fortunate position. Because I’ve had successes in a lot of different forms of media, I get to walk into rooms and say, ‘Give me money and trust me, because I’ve got a track record to point at.’ Unfortunately, a lot of the big experiments that have to happen are expensive. And I look at myself as very fortunate because I’m able to get those dollars that need to be spent in order to run tests, which most of us know are not going to be successful. I mean, you just… that’s what experimentation is. But because I’ve got this–for better or worse–reputation in this industry, I can run tests on a very, very large scale, and I can make sure that even in a failure, the client or sponsor or VC or whomever, feels like they’re at least getting a return on their investment. And that’s taken a long time to build up. So I look at my role as… Now that I’m here, I almost feel obligated to try some pretty crazy stuff.”

I was going to say that Elan is a risk-taker, and that’s what makes him more successful than most. But when we carefully consider what he has done, it’s much less of a risk than it looks – he has taken what he knows about storytelling and applied it to the media we all use quite competently today. So then, what is it that sets him apart?

He’s tried it. Period.

Now, go do your part.

Boogie is a Serbian born photographer who emigrated to the United States in 1998. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. With an effortless but honest “shoot first, ask later” approach and nimble timing, he captures the moments that transform a split second opportunity into a decisive photograph.

Boogie has the grace of a documentarian and little heed for comfort zones. In characteristically gritty black and white film, he catalogues poverty, civil war, and urban decay. He arrests us with the bleaker aspects of the human condition and the social taboos we may often ignore.

Rather than gloss over his subject, he pulls the viewer in. Unflinching and fearless in style, his photographic presence poses a sharp contrast to the vulnerability and intimacy of the portraits he creates.

At its lighter moments, his work points to the wry visual coincidences of cities with millions of people, places, and things– taking cues from found text, discarded trash, or birds in flight.

Seeing his work is a glimpse into nearly a decade and a half on the fringes of life happening all around us. You can check out more of his work at www.artcoup.com, where you can also find information about his five published books.

First in the series, entitled “Surf, Live, Paint” profiles Andrea Shapiro and her architect Maziar Behrooz, who after designing the home, moved onto her private art studio, deciding upon surplus shipping containers mounted atop a cement foundation. In addition to a noticeably innovative choice to use the containers, the environmentally functional aspect of the project is that normally those very containers would remain at loading docks, to most likely never to move again. Some twenty-one thousand of these containers arrive in US docks each and every day. Granted some will be placed on chassis and travel to a second destination, however the containers that unload at the docks will remain. Considered a waste of time and money, they will not be shipped empty from whence they came, instead they will remain at the docks, hopefully awating a new purpose. MB Architecture is that purpose. Behrooz, based in East Hampton, has been at the forefront of sustainable design, most recently winning the 2009 AIA Peconic Design Award for the “Container Studio”. His firm, MB Architecture, recognized around the world, currently has 6 homes currently under construction in the New York area.

“A House for Blake” examines the concept of Mass Customization, changing the landscape of the modern pre-fab house forever, allowing the customer to fully pick and choose each and every detail in the design of a custom home. This new style of customization is similar to that of purchasing a car, in that the customer may simply log into the Res 4 website and add or drop hundreds of features to their design, making every inch of the home, their own. Joseph Tanney of Resolution 4 Architecture has been designing homes for 20 years, recently attracting the attention of Debbi Gibbs, after winning the Dwell Magazine pre-fab home competition for a design in Pittsboro, NC.
Since then Resolution 4 has designed over 50 different homes, offices, and public facilities across the country. Pre-fab homes have become one of the most sustainable forms of home building, by reducing the environmental impact of construction as well as reducing the actual build time. By taking advantage of this mass customization, Debbi was able to manipulate the design of the home so she could keep an eye on her young son, Blake, if he’s running around the lake in the backyard, or jumping on the trampoline out front, she can always keep an eye on him. The high performance windows used in the home not only fill the space with gorgeous natural light, but also play a significant role in temperature management. In designing the bathrooms and kitchen facilities Res 4 chose very specific fixtures that combine style with the new wave of eco-conscious water management. Currently, Joseph is watching a number of his designs come to life both in the country and in major cities across the nation. Currently based in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, Resolution 4 still maintains it’s stronghold on the Modern Pre-Fab design market.

The “New Gen, Next Gen” episode features what’s known as the “100K House” , a collaborative effort from Interface Studio Architects and Postgreen Homes, both based in Philadelphia, PA, have found the perfect niche market by combining technology, sustainability and cost-effectiveness. By almost exclusively building on infill sites, of which there are 25,000 available, they have access to land that normally remains empty, and are able to build homes of the highest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating. The homes can be built for as little as $100,000, or at approximately $100 a square foot, which lends appeal to a younger as well as more eco-conscious demographic. By using a combination of solar panels to heat water, a heat recovery unit to keep the house heated yet well ventilated, and SIPS (Structural Insulated Panel) , pre-made, heavily insulated panels that are simply assembled onsite dramatically reducing build time, the innovations in the 100K house are astounding. Brian Phillips, the brains behind ISA, has already built 2 of these units, with a third currently in construction.