Little Big Cinema

I really enjoy the idea that anyone of us can sit down and write a story and then make something out of it.  We could Blog about it, or make some drawings and turn it into a comic strip or comic book or even turn it into a movie.  We have the technology to run our own TV station out of our garage.  I wanted to work for Disney, or sculpt special effects, or be like Spielberg and be be a visionary storyteller.  Well, I have a stack of rejection letters and a very short list of film credits.

So I never made it to Hollywood.   Oh well.  I like to imagine the day that Hollywood makes it’s way out to me.  I’m not alone in this line of thinking.  There’s quite a few Web Shows out there that are making their own stories outside of Hollywood.  Some of these shows are even blurring the lines a bit.

In 1982 Ridley Scott made a movie called Blade Runner.  In the far distant future of 2019, Los Angeles has flying cars, skyscraper advertising, and genetically manufactured humans called replicants.  Some of these replicants escape their off world jobs that they’ve been created for and seek to be real people.  Here’s the trailer for the movie.

The movie has a cult following that has resulted in many releases of the movie with slight variations each time.  The 25th Anniversary edition sought to put an end to some of the debate around the story and titled, The Final Cut.  Now that everything is final, Ridley Scott is working on a new WEB PROJECT. He is working with an independent studio called Ag8 and a number of Ad Agencies to produce a new sci-fi webisode series titled Purefold.

Scheduled to start in about 3 months, Purefold will take place 2 years in the future and run for a series of of 5-10 minute shorts that will be set some time between now and the beginning of Blade Runner’s story in 2019.

Ag8’s founding partner David Bausola said, “We don’t take any of the canon or copyrighted assets from the movie. It’s actually based on the same themes as Blade Runner. It’s the search for what it means to be human and understanding the notion of empathy. We are inspired by Blade Runner.”

It would appear that they are also inspired by the skyscraper adverts in Blade Runner because they intend to bring in advertisers whose products and brands can be featured in the series – just like the advertising you see featured in Blade Runner, but that’s not all. They’re thinking quite creatively about brands and marketing and integrating these ideas into the stories. Here’s a quote from their site. “Taking place in the near future, Purefold enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.” They also have a 28 minute elevator pitch at their site.

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