Oren Peli Israeli filmmaker made Paranormal Activity for $15,000 and shot this tale of a young couple who videotaped the strange noises they hear inside a room in a house. Dubbed the Blair Witch Project on steroids, what makes this story different is the fact it has over 1 million people will have seen it before national release in the US due to social media marketing grossed $7 million from 144 theatres over a weekend.

The film originally picked up by Speilberg’s DreamWorks, but marketing was by Paramount. Paramount tried carefully to develop and manage the phenomenon with free midnight screenings in college campus towns. Then encouraged fans to demand the movie in their town via an online petition campaign.

The “demand it” campaign was touted on the Eventful site as “The First Ever Major Film Release Decided By You”.
Founded in 2004, Eventful is the leading events website which enables its community of users to discover, promote, share and create events. see http://about.eventful.com/ for more info.

This reminds me of a film created a by team called Four Eyed Monsters that debuted on Youtube and it being the first ever feature length film to be posted, in addition to creating an online video blog, they produced accompanying webisodes and used social media to market, promote and sell the film.
They encouraged fans to buy tickets at cinemas they were touring, so they could advance book a cinema and showing the film had an audience wanting to see it. In addition they also made it available as a paid for download from iTunes and also as a mail order dvd.

Useful links worth checking up on.

Paranormal Main site
http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/trailer.html

Eventful
http://eventful.com

Can we do YES WE CAN 1 million tickets sold
http://eventful.com/performers/paranormal-activity-/P0-001-000212499-6/competitions

Oren Peli interview at Dread Central with mp3 download
http://www.dreadcentral.com/interviews/peli-oren-paranormal-activity

CNN Showbiz article

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/12/paranormal.activity.movie/index.html

Mashable article

Paranormal Activity Rides the Social Web to Millions
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/paranormal-activity-success/

Four Eyed Monsters

Main site
http://foureyedmonsters.com

Youtube site
http://www.youtube.com/user/foureyedmonsters

Open video conference

Submit and win a trip to SXSW 2010, courtesy of Mozilla, the Participatory Culture Foundation, and the rest of the Open Video Alliance, by entering our video contest. Details will be announced soon. Sign up for official announcements:
for entry information. 

The organisers for the Open Video conference include
Participatory Culture Foundation,
Yale Internet Society Project,
Kaltura,
iCommons,
Open Video Alliance.

The Open Video Conference brings together creators, entrepreneurs, technologists, policy-makers, hackers, academics, and others to share their insights on how open video enables creative expression and technical innovation.

Conference participants will also examine the challenges that keep online video from becoming a first-class citizen on the web. For one, online video playback is beset by a mess of proprietary formats, license fees, and plugins that segment viewership and complicate self-publishing efforts. Unlike blogs, email, and other staples of the open web—which rely on open standards—most online video content is delivered through proprietary codecs, like Adobe?s popular Flash player.

Source Open Video Alliance Press Release

Watch the online opensource revolution take place and shape listen to the discussions.

 http://www.openvideoalliance.org/

Check out http://www.kaltura.org/project leaders of the open source
video revolution and disruptive media technology.

Final cut server

Final Cut Server Apple’s server-based media asset management and workflow automation tool designed for film, video, network and group media projects. The software is?scalable from small/mini production companies, broadcast and film post production set up’s.

Learn to set up and install depending on your project or business production environment, share, manage and centralise assets amongst the creative team of editors, loggers, motion graphics, visual effects, compositors, production management and client.

Use is to speed up, automate, work more collaboratively, batch process for multiformat and multipurpose delivery of audio and video.

Apple Motion Video titling animation and motion graphics package

Get to grips with Motion, Apple Mac’s dedication motion graphic, titling and visual effects tools for editors, compositors and motion graphic artists alike.

This software also intergrates with Final Cut Pro (FCP) and Adobe After Effects giving the end user the flexibility to operate between and exchange project graphics, video, filters and effects.

Allowing you to have more creative combinations of visual expression and benefiting your projects with more inspiring ways to showcase your talent and skills in this area.

Let us show you have take advantage and use of some of its amazing power, ease of use and bundle features, images, present and royalty free content.

Learn the basics and become familar with 

Real-Time Design
3D Motion Graphics
Filters and Effects
Time-Saving Tools