Nokia, T-Mobile, Spike Lee: The World’s First Social Film Production
Last night, Nokia premiered the world’s first social film production. If you haven’t heard about the project by now, Nokia has put Spike Lee to the task of directing a user generated multimedia film. T-Mobile USA partnered with Nokia to develop this film built entirely by submissions from everyday people using mobile devices to create the content.
According to Nokia, over 4,000 pieces of original content were uploaded and over 350,000 visitors accessed the production site during the entry period from April to September of this year.
“Nokia is excited to present the premiere of the world’s first social film production,” said Craig Coffey, Vice President of Marketing, Nokia North America. “It’s another way that we continue to connect people through relevant and innovative experiences. Nokia technology enables anyone to create, collaborate and share in order to participate in something larger than themselves which helps to open a world of possibilities for groundbreaking collaboration in our communities. It helps people to truly be connected independent of time and place in a way that is very personal to them.”
“What drew me to this project was the unique opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done before utilizing technology, the internet, and having people collaborate on a film,” said Director Spike Lee. “The new technology, you might say, is bringing a democracy to film. Anyone can be a journalist, a filmmaker, a still photographer. Just pull out your mobile device, record it, press a button, and it’s instantly on the web. So I think it’s great that Nokia had the vision to see where all of this is headed.”
Director Spike Lee guided the submissions through video posts and blog entries at NokiaProductions.com for three acts; birth, life and death. As each submission period ended for the three acts, Nokia selected the “Top 25″ videos, and visitors voted for their favorite content narrowing it down to the top ten for each act. Spike Lee picked one of these finalists from each act and they were flown to Los Angeles to participate in the premiere.
Along with the three finalists, Spike Lee was in attendance for the premier at the Nokia Plaza – LA Live, and there was also be a live performance by Avril Lavigne. Working together on the event, Nokia and T-Mobile gave away free tickets to the event at select T-Mobile retail sites.
Nokia also held a festival of sorts on the plaza with a one-on-one Guitar Hero III Mobile competition on the main stage using a 5610 XpressMusic. There was a variety of other Nokia experiences, including an N95 ‘photo opportunity’ where event go-ers received their photos on the spot via bluetooth printers.
Along with the live premiere event in LA, Nokia again hosted the now rather familiar ‘Virtual event’ with a simultaneous online premiere of the film at http://www.nokiaproductions.com.
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Hi, I was at the premiere the other night. It was pretty interesting. I have to say that watching the film when it first ran and talking with a few behinds the scenes people I was a bit jaded and didn’t like it very much. But upon watching it for a second time I found that it worked pretty well overall.