Shooting Chapter 2

A small crew was on hand Sunday to shoot the boytellsall portions of Chapter 2.

Video Test

I’ve been looking for a better way to upload video to the internet. Youtube makes everything fuzzy. Today I experimented with uploading boy and the redhead to blip.tv and vimeo. Take a look and tell me what you think.

The Vimeo version doesn’t want to embed so you’ll have to click the link and look at it on their site.

The blip.tv version is below. It’s a Quicktime file, so it takes a little longer to load. But I think it’s worth wait.

Click To Play

New and Improved and Shinier

Yes, there will be more Story2Oh!  And it’s coming to you in the foreseeable future.

I can’t quite give you the date, but the ball is rolling.

I spent last week at the Canadian Film Centre working with the CBC Prime Time TV Programme residents on the next installment.  Those guys have been doing a tonne o’ writing in the last few months (they work them hard up there at the CFC) but they were good enough to throw a little attention and creativity this way.

We developed some new storylines and some new characters for your entertainment pleasure.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I can let you in on some of the changes you will see in the next demo.

Through her blog, Ali Purls, Ali Barrett will take on some of the functions of a narrator.  In her posts, she will comment on the lives of her friends and keep you linked to their action wherever it may be on the internet.  The Facebook updates will go the way of the dodo bird.  Although there may still be a daily digest in this space.  Thoughts?

There will be multiple story lines.  They’ll still be the simple, week long stories we saw last time, but maybe more of them and slightly better developed.

There will be a few new bloggers in the tale.

One (fingers crossed) will be a graphic blogger, which means he’ll include drawings on his blog.  This is sort of wishlist because I personally can’t draw and haven’t quite found someone who can and will.

Another of the new bloggers will be a linkmeister; someone who posts relevant and irrelevant links in between comments on her life.

And finally, oh innovation of innovations, I’m going to throw in a few podcasts for fun and variety.

Okay, I’ve got to get my nose back to the grind stone if I’m going to make this happen.  Stay tuned!

A New Partnership

It’s an exciting week. We’re working with the residents at the Canadian Film Centre’s CBC Prime Time Programme to develop some a new chapter in Story2Oh!

So far this week, we’ve developed some new characters and sketched out some possible stories. We’re going to spend the rest of the week developing the characters through their online existences. We’ll be blogging, scripting and so much more.

We’ll keep you posted.

Social Networks Have Personalities

This video from Cracked gives you a great feeling for the personalities of each of the popular social networks. And it’s funny.

Story2Oh! on Q

If you’d like to hear the Story2Oh! story on Q, you can listen to the podcast.  You’ll find it here.  Click on Q: The Podcast – Thursday January 24th, 2008 and the podcast will load.  You can zip about half through to get to Jian and the delightful Denis McGrath discussing the project.

Story2Oh! on Q

Story2Oh! will be part of a CBC radio piece on the WGA strike and the future of TV on the internet. Q starts at 2 pm, but the project is discussed in the third block along with far more established projects like quarterlife and Sanctuary for All.

If you miss it live, it will be available later in a podcast which I’ll link to over on the sidebar.

This seems to be a question that interests just about everyone; is the strike what motivated me to make Story2Oh!?

The answer is no. We’ve been working on this since well before the strike.

But the answer is also yes. The conditions that underlie the strike are the same conditions that make a screenwriter want to be more in control of her own destiny. The conditions in Canada are different, but they too make a girl dream of creative freedom.

But then the answer is no again. The web is a new frontier. You don’t have to be chased by wolves to want to explore something new and different. This is a huge creative experiment. Pure fun from a writing point of view; an opportunity to play in a world in which the rules haven’t been established yet, there are no benchmarks or expectations.

And still the answer is no. I’ve been fascinated with using computers for entertainment for a long time. I wrote and produced 11 pieces of software for the educational market in the 1980s. I’ve developed and designed software sporadically ever since. Story2Oh! was always on my path, I just arrived here at the same time the WGA writers picked up their signs.

And the answer is yes. To paraphase Robbie Robertson’s lyric from The Band’s great tune King Harvest: “I’m a union girl, now, all the way.”

Corn in the fields.
Listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘cross the water…
King Harvest has surely come.

I work for the union,
‘Cause she’s so good to me;
And I’m bound to come out on top,
That’s where she said I should be.
I will hear every word the boss may say,
For he’s the one who hands me down my pay.
Looks like this time I’m gonna get to stay,
I’m a union man, now, all the way.

The smell of the leaves,
From the magnolia trees in the meadow…
King Harvest has surely come.

Dry summer, then comes fall,
Which I depend on most of all.
Hey, rainmaker, can you hear the call?
Please let these crops grow tall.
Long enough I’ve been up on Skid Row;
And it’s plain to see, I’ve nothing to show.
I’m glad to pay those union dues,
Just don’t judge me by my shoes.

Scarecrow and a yellow moon,
Pretty soon a carnival on the edge of town…
King Harvest has surely come.

Last year this time, wasn’t no joke,
My whole barn went up in smoke.
Our horse Jethro, well he went mad,
And I can’t ever remember things being that bad.
Then here comes a man with a paper and a pen,
Telling us our hard times are about to end.
And then, if they don’t give us what we like,
He said, “Men, that’s when you gotta go on strike.”

Corn in the fields.
Listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘cross the water…
King Harvest has surely come.

Gone Fishing, Back Soon

Our first week long experiment in storytelling was very exciting.  We learned a tremendous amount.

We will be writing new material in the next couple of weeks with the residents in The Canadian Film Centre’s CBC Prime Time Television Programme.  We’ll shoot some new material.

We hope to be back to play with you again in February or early March.

And it will be glorious.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Our first week-long experiment ended Friday Jan 18th with the release of boy’s third video at boytellsall.com.

We want to thank all of you who participated. You made it a lot of fun and taught us a lot.

We will be writing and producing a new experiment over the next month. If you have thoughts or ideas about the experience, leave us a comment. We would love your input.

We should be back to play again in February or March. We’ll keep you posted.

Thursday on Story2Oh!

Devon continued to chill.

According to her status, Marni wasn’t sure if she should interfer. Nonetheless she posted a question on Devon’s wall, is Devon still friends with Simon?

Jory let it be known through a status change that he was sorry and ready to make it up to you. Nakita, in her status, hoped that making it up to her would involve jewelry.

Ali blogged about her hopelessness at relationships. She noted that she’d driven off both Devon and Simon and worried that one or both of them were good relationship material. She was sorry to find herself alone.

Following suggestions in a previous note about how to apologize to Simon, Ali posted a new note asking for recipe suggestions. Lots of friends jump on the bandwagon and made delicious suggestions. After collecting the recipes, Ali worried that trying to get Simon back might not be the greatest idea.

Devon got antsy and posted on Ali’s wall. When she responded that she was feeling better, he suggested coffee. She agreed to it and he said he’d come by to see her at work.

Marni finally decided on the right thing to do and asked Devon to give her a call.

Nakita saw the videos and wondered if Jory was crazy, predicting that someone was going to get hurt.

When we last heard from Simon, he was planning to go talk to Ali. Expect that conversation to take place Friday in the last installment of Story2Oh!’s Chapter 1.