Nokia has hired award-winning director Spike Lee to make a short movie based on amateur cell phone videos. The film, according to the director, will have three acts of 3-5 minutes apiece, "with the theme loosely based on the concept of humanity." Yeah, it sounds incredibly boring to us, too.
Why couldn't the project involve user-submitted cellphone clips from post-Katrina New Orleans? Shots of urban street life and racial conflict in the Bronx? Rival fraternities at a historically-black college in the South? Or cellphone videos of bank robberies? Because all of those projects, while far more interesting and much more up Lee's alley, would be way too real for Nokia's marketing department, which is clearly far more comfortable back in Finland, slapping themselves with birch branches in the sauna and jumping outside to roll around in the snow before coming inside with a brilliant idea for a new promotional campaign. [By Dylan Tweney, Wired.com]
UPDATE
The 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Conference takes place in Las Vegas between the 11th and the 17th April 2008. Here's some blurb from their website:
"This is where it originates...An extraordinary experience, over twice the size of any other tradeshow centered on content: creation, management, commerce, distribution and delivery. The NAB Show™ is the ultimate destination
for a global audience of media professionals who seek to deliver enriched content from concept to consumption...If You See Yourself Here...the NAB Show is Your Show." UPDATE
Charlie Brooker, of BBC’s Screenwipe, has a great piece illustrating some of the devious editing techniques used in the creation of reality TV shows. While this isn’t breaking news for editors, it’s still shocking to see how quickly and efficiently the editing room can change the context of a scene. (courtesy of Tropist)
UPDATE