Apply now for the very first Crossover Nordic that is about to take place in Sweden between 15-19 September.

It is a five-day residential content/cross media development lab aimed at experienced and established creators of Game, Film, TV, Animation, Mobile or New Media in the Nordic region.

The lab is free for all the 20 selected participants. They will be selected by an expert committee from different media sectors.

All experienced and talented professionals from the Nordic Countries are eligible to apply and one project are eligible to win a development prize of 100 000 SEK.

A final pitch of the results from the lab will be held at the Nordisk Panorama Five Cities Film Festival in Malmö the 28 of September.

Click here for more info

Never Watch TV-Alone by Martin Malii-Karlsson

My intention was to write this post after attending the ip TV world forum 2008 in March at Olympia in London.

To come home full of inspiration and write about the latest innovations etc…but NO!

It was just a big hype, not any groundbreaking news… more information about who were manufacturing the boxes that were going to be delivered to client x.

Nosey as usual I asked a lot of questions e.g. Whats the point of having a box instead of just log into good old www…and view the content on line on a big screen?

Anyway…one clever solution developed by NEC captured my attention for a while. It was a broadcasting solution where you basically could watch a programme on TV and then continue watch it over the mobile phone in real time.

Imagine if you watch eastenders and must leave for an important meeting. You could then keep watching the program on your phone while you rushing out of the house and jumping on the bus.

Photo by Anders Billing: Henrik Toremark (kulturdepartementet), Ingemar Persson (SVT) och Charlotta Denward (Filminstitutet).

Frank Boyd and I did a Crossover talk at Gothenburg Film Festival the 28 of January, a day focussed on the Nordic Documentary Industry. (With a bad cold), I explained the vision about setting up a Crossover Nordic, a development lab for content in September this year and introduced Frank Boyd who talked about his experience in running successful Crossover labs in Australia, U.S and the U.K.

I have so far confirmed partnership and funding from SVT and Film i Väst and am in speech with more Nordic Public Broadcasters, Mobile phone operators, Film funds and National Film Institutes to participate. We are aiming to link up with Nordisk Panorama who run their festival in Malmoe, Sweden this year.

Feedback, originally uploaded by FrankBoyd.

The Crossover Labs have been very successful and I asked Frank Boyd, Unexpected Media if I could use my contacts in Sweden to produce a Crossover Nordic.

The interest has been great and I have convinced broadcasters, film institutes and regional funders in the Nordic to be partners in a lab next year. I invited Desirée Engholm, Commissioner from SVTi (Swedish TV) to come over to the U.K for one day to study the lab. SVTi has now decided to be one of the partners in the Nordic version next year.

In the Crossover U.K everybody was really open to share ideas and to collaborate.

Frank Boyd describes the U.K version on his blog www.unexpectedmedia.com. “Crossover UK, which finished on Friday, was probably the best of the 35 creative labs we’ve done in the past 10 years. Good people, good projects, great pitches on the final day. Roy Ackerman, creative director of Diverse, described it as: ‘an inspiration, enjoyable, creatively empowering, almost life-changing’.

The Crossover labs differ from the BBC Innovation Labs in that people don’t come in teams and they don’t come with a project. The point is to get people from different backgrounds (film, tv, games, animation, web design) generating ideas and working together in interdisciplinary collaborations to develop them.

It’s a demanding creative process designed to be accessible and engaging at the beginning but which quite quickly encourages participants to move beyond their comfort-zones.

The ride can get quite bumpy, one of the documentary film producers said: “It was a remarkable week and I felt extremely privileged to have been part of it…I may have resisted at moments, but it’s given me a lot of food for thought, and since I like challenges, at least of the creative kind, then I am grateful for the push”.

Some of the projects developed at Crossover will take part in a pitching competition for a £10,000 development award at the Sheffield DocFest in November.”

This is an attempt to highlight success stories,
using new formats and Social Networks.

Lonely Girl15 was launched as an experiment by the creators, Greg Goodfried and
Miles Beckett. The format they are using is less than 4 min and they manage to capture millions of viewers.

I believe a key factor is the interaction between the viewers and the creators.
The creators read the feedback they get from their viewers and use it to produce upcoming stories.

Millions of viewers but how do they earn their money?

When the question comes up Miles Beckett roles his eyes.
They are moving over to a network called Revver, an online video
community that share its ad-revenue with it´s members,

but they are not interested in sharing the information with bloggers so
check it out on youtube - interview with the creators.

Is this the future of broadcasting?
I believe so…It´s just the beginning, just upload more crazy stories and themes, involve the viewers, or
why not ride on the wawes of the hype and launch your music video. This music video has so far 860 000 viewers!!!