So this is new. It’s the brainchild of Seesmic, Fox and Gia Milinovich, the latter being a blogger friend and collaborator on the Indy 4 video junket:

The embeddable version of Seesmic is a bit clunky generally, but what does that matter? What’s of interest is that this is a smart little mash-up of that stalwart unit of movie marketing currency, the trailer, and the current trend for (pseudo-)threaded video conversations.

From what I understand the plan is to release a series of X-Files video clips and to drive online conversation and community around these through the player. It will be interesting to see how many ‘X-philes’ feel compelled to join the discussion, but from what Gia says this has already been embedded over 2,000 times, and I know from our own experiences working with movie widgets that this is a very respectable number, especially after such a short space of time.

CORRECTION: This stat actually refers to the text chat widget shown below, and the total figure is 2,300 at present, apparently:

CORRECTION: This stat actually refers to the text chat widget shown below, and the total figure is 2,300 at present, apparently:

Gia’s been doing some very inventive things in the social media movie marketing space for some time, as you can see from her blog; she manages to keep a foot firmly in both camps, which is not always an easy thing to do. I’ve never been a major X-Files fan, but I still get a major kick out of seeing how the web can bring people together around a common interest, and create a new medium in which for them to share ideas and forge friendships.

That, for me, is what social media is all about.

Want to post some of my favourite bits of video from the event, at the very least:

Steven Spielberg rules out ever making an Indiana Jones movie without Harrison Ford:

George Lucas talks about the breadth of the franchise’s appeal:

Harrison Ford talks about his favourite stunts:

Karen Allen talks about her favourite movie soundtracks:

Shia LaBoeuf talks about his favourite Indiana Jones movie:

Cate Blanchett talks about being a baddie:

Everyone involved seems to agree that this last question represents the real high-point of the event, insofar as we succeeded in taking a question from a Seesmic user via Twitter during the course of the event and putting it to a film-maker – much harder than you’d think when you consider that we only had ten minutes with each of them.

This has already been picked up by a number of pretty high profile blogs, the pick of which I’ll post here (if you find anything that I’ve missed pls post it in a comment):

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/05/spielberg_pops_up_on_seesmic.html

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/17/celebrity-tipping-point-on-seesmic/

http://mashable.com/2008/05/17/indiana-jones-goes-seesmic/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/17/dont-screw-your-partners-over-a-marketing-promotion/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/seesmic_goes_hollywood.php

http://www.behindthebuzz.com/indiana-jones-on-seesmic/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/17/dont-screw-your-partners-over-a-marketing-promotion/

http://www.techmeme.com/080517/p14

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/05/spielberg_on_seesmic.html

http://bernardmoon.blogspot.com/2008/05/seesmic-spielberg-and-ford.html

http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/05/steven-spielber.html

http://www.thebillblog.com/billblog/index.php/2008/05/17/steven-spielberg-interviewed-on-seesmic/

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/indiana-jones-and-friends-take-to-the-web-on-seesmic.php

I’ll post more fully on this at some point, and hopefully address some of the considerable amount of misinformation kicking around about this event (not least the suggestion that it was initiated by Seesmic themselves, or that money changed hands between Seesmic and Paramount), and why it played out the way it did.

In the mean time I have to thank Dom, Gia, Saf and Mike for each having crucial input into the planning and execution of this; Vinvin at Seesmic for fighting our corner at his end on this and other projects; and Heath at Paramount Pictures International for giving it the green light in the first place.

(updated 19/06/08 – I realise this isn’t the bloody Oscars, but it would be remiss of me not to add in a little big up to John, who met us at the eleventh hour in the foyer of the Carleton, and was bloody marvellous, and found us a great little bar, and fed us beer, and told us exactly how we should do things, and was completely right.)

Finally, a little excerpt from the preparations on the morning of the event, courtesy of Mike:

This worked on the basis that we would show more of an extended torture sequence from the movie as the page attracted more fans.

We updated it late last night and sent a mailshot to the 300-odd existing fans to tell them that the clip had been extended.

When we got in this morning there was nothing left except a message explaining that ‘pages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed’.

As a response to this we today issued this press release. The torture sequence can now be viewed here, and will be extended as this site receives more hits. If and when we reach 10,000 we get to show the first 10 minutes of the film.

The movie’s out on friday. It’s going to be fascinating to see what (if anything) happens between now and then. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s probably worth explaining at this point that this activity had been undertaken to promote a movie called UNTRACEABLE on behalf of Universal Pictures, a movie in which a serial killer creates an “untraceable” website where he conducts violent and painful murders LIVE on the net.

It transpired that one of the Seesmic moderators had taken rather fervent exception to the nature of the content we were posting, and was threatening to delete both the videos and the account. Whether this was because she thought she was witnessing a genuine electrocution – or because she considered our script and special effects to be criminally awful – is not yet clear. Whatever the case, the situation had quickly escalated to the point whereby they felt compelled to act.

We’ve since had a good natter, and have some plans for next week, the nature of which will become clear as they unfold. At their heart: a shared interest in trying to understand what you have to depict in order to cross the line. Perhaps the Seesmic community holds the answer.

In the mean time, here is the last of the (not so) live webisodes, posted here for posterity, on the back of an agreement not to pollute Seesmic with any more of our horrorshow filth:

Loic’s just published a tidy summary of the story of Seesmic so far, including details of how they’ve managed to raise $6 million in initial funding. All this with a user-base of little more than a 1,000 viewers, and approximately 200 regular contributors, of which I am one. [UPDATE 15/03/08: Turns out these stats are way out of date - Vinvin has been kind enough to post the latest figures in a comment on this post. 8,000 viewers, 800 very active!]

I first spoke to Vinvin a couple of weeks back, after emailing Loic to find out about opportunities for PPC to promote films within Seesmic. I had one particular campaign in mind, and even went so far as to outline a couple of ideas we were playing around with. I wasn’t looking for any explicit endorsement; equally I didn’t want to act without giving them the heads-up. Vinvin promptly gave me his blessing, and he was kind enough to throw in a few invitation codes for good measure.

A few days later a new member joined the Seesmic community, going under the name of Sharpeshooter. This was one of his first posts:

In the days that followed Sharpeshooter posted a few dozen times, initiating some discussions and contributing to others, touching on everything from politics to prostitution.

Just before last weekend, Sharpeshooter went quiet.

On tuesday the following clip appeared, posted using his account:

This was just two days ago. The following morning, the hooded figure was back:

Then, last night, Sharpeshooter suddenly reappeared, albeit under duress:

All through last night and this morning clips like this appeared within the public timeline. Then, at around 6pm this evening, the situation started to change rapidly. The clips were posted, about 30 minutes apart:

It was at this point that I received a very polite email from Vinvin, asking if I could jump into Skype for five minutes…

TO BE CONTINUED

[ Time passes. Dan moves onto The Red. Pies cook. More time passes. ]

Given that the laptop is my recipe book, and sits on the ironing board in the kitchen when I cook, it was quite easy to create these. I’ve never video blogged before, but it makes it very easy, at a purely logistical level. You just hook up your webcam and microphone – turns out my laptop has both built in – and record.

It’s more challenging in terms of what it requires of you as a communicator. You have to organise your thoughts and have a clear sense of what you’re going to say in advance, in order to avoid ranting interminably and getting drawn off on innumerable tangents.

Where the real value lies is that it represents true communication, harnessing speech and body language. It’s amazing how much extra information your face and hands deliver when you speak, orchestrating the emphasis and emotional tenor of what you have to say.

I’ve since posted my thoughts along one or two of the discussion threads happening within the Seesmic community, particularly in relation to the fall-out from the now notorious Facebook article the Guardian ran last week (referenced in one of my recent posts). I managed to run over the ten-minute time limit, so it comes in two parts, which can be found here and here. Somehow I manage to acquire a newborn baby at some point in between.

As with the best of the sites and services emerging in the space, the character of Seesmic is being defined by that of the community it supports. By operating an invitation-only policy the Seesmic’s developers can have it alpha-tested by the early adoption crowd; extrovert geeks, sympathetic to the realities of software development, creating experimental content through Seesmic then driving conversation about it through other channels. This approach also has the happy benefit of making it far more intriguing and aspirational from the outside, as well as controlling bandwidth costs.

Overall I’m very excited by Seesmic. It’s a very well engineered interface orientated around allowing me to do one thing easily and enjoyably, rather than being a broad set of imperfect tools reaching an equally broad and disparate audience. And, rather than merely incubating my established relationships, it offers the potential for me to connect and develop relationships with new, like-minded individuals. That’s what I understand by ’social networking’.