Archive - September, 2008

UltraCreatives Interview #19: Kent Nichols of “Ask A Ninja”

September 20, 2008 in All Posts, Other with 0 Comments

UltraCreatives LogoWelcome the second half of J.C.’s UltraCreatives conversations with the creators of “Ask A Ninja.”

Today, J.C chats with writer/producer/director Kent Nichols, who in 2005 — along with co-creator Douglas Sarine — debuted a very strange, very funny and what would soon become a very influential video podcast called “Ask A Ninja.”

Since 2005, the show has been downloaded more than 100 million times, and has helped Kent and Douglas launch projects in mainstream publishing and filmmaking — including the recently-released The Ninja Handbook, and the upcoming remake of the awesome cult classic comedy, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Kent chats about both of those projects here today.

Also in this interview, Kent discusses the beginnings of “Ask A Ninja” — which was originally envisioned as an animated project — its success, finding one’s way in the filmmaking and new media spaces and a lot more. Whether you’re a fan of “Ask A Ninja” or an aspiring creator, Kent provides plenty of insight into the creative process, and the business of entertainment.

Find Kent Nichols on the World Wide Everywhere*:

PROMOS:

Coming next week: The return of J.C.’s 7th Son: OBSIDIAN short story antholgy!

*Yes, this line was shamelessly swiped from an AAN episode.

UltraCreatives Interview #19: Kent Nichols of "Ask A Ninja" [ 46:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

UltraCreatives Interview #18: Douglas Sarine and the “Ask A Ninja” Ninja

September 18, 2008 in All Posts, Other with 1 Comment

UltraCreatives LogoIn this incredible episode of UltraCreatives, J.C. chats with Douglas Sarine and the Ninja, both from the chart-topping “Ask A Ninja” video podcast.

While Douglas and Kent Nichols (whose own UltraCreatives interview will debut tomorrow) are credited as co-creators of the show, the Ninja reveals in this interview how he recruited the duo to bring Ninja Knowledge to the world, after receiving permission from ninja Grand Master Kudamono to do so.

Douglas and the Ninja also discuss the success and history of the “Ask A Ninja” podcast, the awesomeness of being a ninja, and the now-available The Ninja Handbook, the official guide to becoming a near-ninja (which was painfully transcribed by Douglas and Kent). The book is the embodiment of all that is Awesome.

During this interview, the Ninja also reveals the name of his ninja clan, the design of his clan’s flag, how his life has changed since the podcast debuted … and shares all of this wisdom while doing battle with fierce creatures.

Find Douglas and The Ninja on the World Wide Everywhere*:

In the episode intro, J.C. announces the imminent return of 7th Son: OBSIDIAN, and that it will conclude in three weeks.

PROMOS:

Coming tomorrow: The second “Ask A Ninja” UltraCreatives interview with Kent Nichols!

*This line was shamelessly swiped from an AAN episode.

UltraCreatives Interview #18: Douglas Sarine and the "Ask A Ninja" Ninja [ 43:16 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Information about “Personal Effects: Dark Art”

September 16, 2008 in All Posts, Announcements with 5 Comments

Summer 2009 will see the major release of J.C. Hutchins’ new supernatural thriller, Personal Effects: Dark Art.

Produced by entertainment company Smith & Tinker and published by St. Martin’s Press, Dark Art combines the narrative experience of a traditional prose novel with an Alternate Reality Game. Clues in the novel — and items that come with the novel, such as ID and business cards, faxes and photos — will propel readers into an online experience where they become a “protagonist by proxy” and learn more about the novel’s story/universe. Readers will also discover plot points online that the book’s protagonists may never see.

This new book series is the brain-child of Jordan Weisman, one of the fathers of the Alternate Reality Game storytelling genre. In 2001, Jordan worked with Steven Spielberg to promote his film A.I. using this viral storytelling technique, and has since created many ARGs such as “I Love Bees” for the release of Halo 2, and more recently contributed to 42 Entertainment’s (the company that he founded in 2003) ARGs for Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero and The Dark Knight film. Weisman is a living legend in the gaming community.

Some brilliant filmmakers and novelists have read the book, and have said some great things about it. Expect to hear more from them — and read more about Personal Effects — in the months ahead.

J.C. recently chatted with reporter Scott Roche about the novel. Here’s an excerpt from that interview.

SR: Your next book, Personal Effects: Dark Art, is another instance where you’re pushing boundaries and mixing things up. What can you tell me about that?

JCH: It’s a story that combines the hard-nosed, rationally-based sensibilities of a TV program like CSI with the supernatural and conspiratorial elements seen in such shows as The X-Files. Set in a mental institution for hopeless dead-enders, Dark Art chronicles the life of Zach Taylor, a young and optimistic art therapist. Gifted at his job, he uses his patients’ personal effects — the personal items that were cataloged during their admission to the hospital — to help decipher the secrets of their mental problems. But Zach gets far more than he bargained for when a new patient is admitted to the facility: a man who is a suspected serial killer.

While the novel’s plot is intriguing and scary, the presentation of this tale is positively game-changing. The universe of Personal Effects is the creation of Jordan Weisman, a brilliant game designer famous for creating the role-playing game company FASA in the 1980s, and the genius “HeroClix” collectible tabletop game in the ’90s. However, he’s best-known for being instrumental in the creation of “transmedia” storytelling experiences, commonly called Alternate Reality Games.

ARGs are immersive stories, told mostly online through various websites and services, that blur the lines between fiction and reality. People experiencing these stories become active participants, and in a way, protagonists: they solve riddles, they “hack” email accounts to obtain critical information to further propel the story, they IM chat with characters mentioned in the tale… they can even receive phone calls and faxes from these characters. The words “ambitious” and “jaw-droppingly cool” don’t even begin to describe this style of storytelling, which Jordan helped create.

When you purchase a copy of Dark Art next summer, you won’t just receive a book. You’ll receive an envelope of real, tangible “personal effects” — the same patient personal effects that are mentioned in the book. Think business cards, documents, etc. These items serve more than just interesting trinkets or props, however: based on clues found in the text of the novel — and in these items themselves — readers can unearth an entire storyline on the Web that enhances the novel in ways the reader — and even the characters in the book — may never suspect. We’ve taken great care to create an experience that stands on its own within the pages of the book, but have included some incredible plot twists that can only be experienced beyond the book.

Like the ARGs Jordan is known for creating, Personal Effects is intended to make the reader an active participant in the story. It’s pretty frickin’ cool.

My involvement in Dark Art and the Personal Effects series has not only been creatively rewarding, but it’s made me a true believer in the notion that a story need not be bound to one medium. Done right, a unified, satisfying narrative experience can transcend the pages of a book, or the screen of a television, or the audio of a podcast.

Like the innovative multi-media experience currently seen in OBSIDIAN, I think this kind of storytelling is the future, and I can’t wait to further experiment with it in the months and years ahead.

–J.C.

Scott Sigler goes to Sesame Street

September 14, 2008 in All Posts, Whimsy with 29 Comments

Inspired by a recent tweet by Evo Terra, I whipped up this little ditty. Sigler fans, enjoy. :)

(Original Sesame Street video is here; Scott Sigler’s Infected trailer is here.)

–J.C.

BONUS: “Star Trek: USS Proxima” — OUTTAKES

September 10, 2008 in All Posts, Whimsy with 4 Comments

Star Trek: Proxima logoFilmed in 1992 in a basement with no script, no budget and a borrowed videocamera, two teenagers made a Star Trek fan film. Nearly 10 years later, the footage was edited with music and sound effects, creating this result…

This week, I’ve been posting a hysterically bad (but, based on fan reaction, very charming) Star Trek fan film I helped create when I was a teenager. Part One showed us the setup; Part Two delivered the punchline. In 2001, using video editing software nearly 10 years after friend Adam Fisher and I shot this silly little flick, I created the version of USS Proxima that we’d always wanted to make.

However, the original version of the movie wasn’t as polished as what you’ve seen. (If what you’ve seen could be called “polished,” natch.) Now you can witness a far more accurate take on what Proxima originally looked like sans music, sound effects and “special effects” in this outtake reel.

There’s plenty of blank stares into the video camera, flubbed lines, windbag stream-of-consciousness “Captain’s Logs” … and perhaps best of all, what our original “special effects” shots looked like.

Set phasers to stunned.

–J.C.

BONUS: "Star Trek: USS Proxima" -- OUTTAKES [ 5:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s official: Scott Sigler is an “Internet Superstar”…

September 10, 2008 in All Posts, Announcements with 0 Comments

…and God help us all, as his recent appearance on the awesome Revision3 show will likely inflate his (already swelled) ego to Godzilla-sized proportions. :)

In all seriousness, Scott’s work is excellent, and he’s a trailblazer in the podcasting and publishing spaces. The Internet Superstar interview with Martin Sargent is an excellent one — Martin asks all the right questions about the podiobook phenomenon, building a community, and how those critical phenoms helped Scott him a major book deal with Crown Publishing.

It’s another shining example of an author (and interviewer) who “gets it,” and is using the Internet to rock the socks off the traditional publishing model. A must-watch.

–J.C.

BONUS: “Star Trek: USS Proxima” — J.C.’s childhood fan film, PART 2

September 9, 2008 in All Posts, Whimsy with 6 Comments

Star Trek: Proxima logoFilmed in 1992 in a basement with no script, no budget and a borrowed videocamera, two teenagers made a Star Trek fan film. Nearly 10 years later, the footage was edited with music and sound effects, creating this result…

Yesterday, I posted Part One of a preposterously, wonderfully bad Star Trek fan film that me and childhood friend Adam Fisher created 16 years ago. Star Trek: USS Proxima was filmed in about five hours with a bulky VHS video camera in the basement of my childhood home. Adam and I made up the story as we went along, shamelessly (and wittingly) aping the plot of our favorite Trek movie for inspiration.

This footage remained untouched for nearly a decade, but using a video editing app in 2001, I cut out a great many flubbed “lines,” and spliced in sound effects, a soundtrack and “special effects” shots (read: footage from several Trek movies). The result is this video, a slightly less-bad version of the flick. This was the version Adam and I always wanted to make.

Here’s the second part of the movie; expect a blooper reel to drop tomorrow. Among other sundries, that episode features what our “special effects” shots initially looked like. (We pointed our vidcam at a TV screen that played Trek movies).

As with most science-fiction epics, the final act of USS Proxima relies heavily on space battle shots. There’s not as much “acting” in this episode as there is in Part One, but I’m fairly happy with how my 2001 editing turned out. More important, the ending — featuring close-ups of the crew — should make you chuckle.

More to come tomorrow, but for now, enjoy the conclusion of Star Trek: USS Proxima….

–J.C.

Link to Blip.tv version here.

BONUS: "Star Trek: USS Proxima" -- J.C.'s childhood fan film, PART 2 [ 10:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

BONUS: “Star Trek: USS Proxima” — J.C.’s childhood fan film, PART 1

September 8, 2008 in All Posts, Whimsy with 16 Comments

Star Trek: Proxima logoFilmed in 1992 in a basement with no script, no budget and a borrowed videocamera, two teenagers made a Star Trek fan film. Nearly 10 years later, the footage was edited with music and sound effects, creating this result…

Those two teenagers were Louisville, Ky., residents Adam Fisher and Chris Hutchins — that “Hutchins kid” now known on the World Wide Everywhere as me, J.C.  We recorded the footage for what became Star Trek: USS Proxima in about five hours, spread over two days. I was 16 or 17 at the time. Adam was a year younger.

The locale in which you’ll see this fine 16-year-old cinematic masterpiece (or farce, depending on your sense of humor) take place is the basement of my childhood home. For a handful of years, Adam, me and other neighborhood boys would “play Bridge” — meaning, play in this subterranean Star Trek bridge — for hours, day after day. We built the set out of scavenged wood, milk crates, old chairs, and broken computer and audio equipment. Our wall-mounted readout screens were chalkboards. We even rigged “red alert” lights and other fixtures to make our bridge as believable as possible.

I have a very clear memory of being electrocuted in the Proxima bridge, while connecting a strobe light to an overtaxed electrical outlet. That knocked me on my ass, and blew a fuse, to boot.

By 1992, Adam and I were the only kids on the block playing Bridge. The fun had died for the others — understandable, as we were growing up, after all. But Adam and I got a wild idea for one last hurrah: a movie. Neither of our families could afford video cameras, so I borrowed one from Blockbuster Video, where I worked. We shot the footage, and as wise filmmakers, even filmed “special effects” — i.e., we pointed the vidcam at Star Trek movies playing on a television. Spaceships!

Since there were only two of us, but numerous roles to fill, you might notice that many of the Proxima crew are very similar in appearance. Run with it.

We ad-libbed the story and dialogue as we went, shamelessly stealing the plot of our favorite Trek movie near the end. (We were tired.) It was all so wonderfully, desperately cheesy and bad, but we had a blast. Our plans to take our footage — and Trek movie videocassettes for our “special effects” — to a local video editing company died on the vine. As the years went on, I lost contact with Adam, as well.

I don’t recall ever playing Bridge with Adam after we made this movie.

When I moved to Florida for my first post-college pro gig, I bought an iMac and used iMovie to create the version of USS Proxima that Adam and I envisioned. I added music, sound effects and those all-important “special effects” shots we’d pined for back in the day. What you see here is the first half of the movie; I’ll soon post the second half — and a “deleted footage” reel in which you’ll bear witness to some classic flubs — in the days ahead.

Watching this movie takes me back, man. I’ll likely blog about how Star Trek, playing Bridge, and that tiny basement room made a big impact on my life. But that comes later. For now, just dim the lights, hit play … and watch the biggest little movie two teenagers could make, 16 years ago.

–J.C.

Link to Blip.TV version here.

BONUS: "Star Trek: USS Proxima" -- J.C.'s childhood fan film, PART 1 [ 9:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

PleaseDressMe: A cool search engine for T-shirt geeks

September 5, 2008 in All Posts, Announcements with 0 Comments

Reposted from MINE, my day gig blog, cuz I’m proud of it:

What happens you get one of the world’s savviest social media entrepreneurs behind an awesome online business idea? A hella cool — and useful — service.

Gary Vaynerchuk, the ultra-enthusiastic entrepreneur best known for his free Wine Library TV video blog, is currently talking up PleaseDressMe, a new business in which he’s a partner. Created by Gary’s brother AJ, PleaseDressMe is a killer idea for T-shirt geeks like us MINERS: The site is a search engine for shirt designs hailing from some of the best-known (and just plain best) online T-shirt retailers. Companies like Threadless and BustedTees are already on board.

Gary VMINE recently spoke with Gary about PleaseDressMe, how it works, and what the service may provide in the months to come.

The philosophy fueling the site is simple, Gary said: to create an insanely elegant way to search for T-shirts sporting specific designs, colors or other attributes (found via keywords). Instead of visiting several individual T-shirt sites to quest for a particular shirt — or particular topic, such as science-fiction or beer, etc. — users simply visit PleaseDressMe, conduct a Google-like search, and view the results. These results are piped from the catalogs of companies PleaseDressMe is currently working with; collaborations with even more companies are in the works, Gary said.

AJ VGary’s younger brother AJ, who is a collector of clever T-shirts, recently conceived the idea, Gary explained. AJ is a Boston University senior who, according to the PleaseDressMe site, is “desperately awaiting the real world.” If this is the first of many Big Ideas AJ’s got, we can’t blame him.

“My brother and I talk about business ideas 24/7,” Gary told MINE. “It’s fun, it’s what we do. When he came to me and said, ‘What about a T-shirt search engine?’ it was the first idea I’d seen in years where there wasn’t a hole to poke. It was airtight.” Since AJ is in school and Gary is already a Tazmanian Devil of business movin’ and shakin’, it was critical that that PleaseDressMe’s concept was solid, Gary said. “With (current circumstances), anything new we want to do needs to be sweet, effective and tight today. … This totally made sense.”

The service works in a few ways. Participating shirt retailers already have keyword “tags” assigned to their products (which are accessible via their respective sites’ search), but the folks at PleaseDressMe are creating additional tags for those products, for even more refined — or as Gary puts it, “crazy good” — results. There are no advertisements at PleaseDressMe; the service generates revenue via affiliate revenue-sharing referral programs. And since there’s no price markup for purchases hailing from PleaseDressMe search results, consumers won’t pay extra to use the service.

For smaller shirt retailers who do not yet have affiliate programs, PleaseDressMe “is working out” a way for those companies to be accessible via the service’s search, Gary said.

The Vaynerchuks are already hungry to improve and expand the service in the months ahead. According to Gary, there are plans to add promotions to the site — with a possibility of insanely low-priced shirts (“three dollars, maybe,” he said), promotions, prizes and even “parties.” The goal: to provide an “outrageous value” and a better user experience for shoppers.

And while PleaseDressMe’s concept started as a very “a scratch your own itch” operation — after all, it was AJ’s love for shirt shopping that helped spark the business — “we’re committed to the long term with this, and the long tail,” Gary said. “This is not a flash in the pan kind of service, where there’s a lot of publicity in the beginning and then it fades. We are very devoted to this.”

Since Gary’s Wine Library TV fans and allies in the blogosphere are devoted to him, the word’s spreading fast. The site has been up for only four days and is already receiving more than 100,000 page views a day, Gary said. PleaseDressMe is personally vetting participating clothiers, so search results are a little skimpy at present … but only the “really good” — aka reputable — T-shirt companies will be listed in search results. “There are a lot of dodgy T-shirt companies” out there, Gary said, but none of them will be accessible through the service.

And while Gary digs clever shirts — “It’s not the same love I have for the New York Jets,” the superfan admits — he’s mostly in this for the experience, the consumers, and his co-founders AJ and Joe Stump (a lead architect at Digg.com).

“This is fun, a lot of fun, for me,” he said.

Mined by: J.C. “Unapologetic T-Shirt Geek” Hutchins, facilitated by Adam Teece (Thanks, Adam!)

BONUS: J.C.’s family-filled Dragon*Con shout-out

September 4, 2008 in All Posts, Gratitude with 2 Comments

Howdy, faithful Beta Clones! Sorry for the delay in posting new OBSIDIAN content, but as many of you know, I spent the past weekend at Dragon*Con … and as you’ll soon see, I obviously needed a few days to recover from the sleep deprivation. :)

While I was in Atlanta, I did shoot a very brief video that delights me to no end. You get to meet a member of my family in this handheld minute-thirty masterpiece! You also get to see what I’m like in person, when in the company of my wonderful sister, Melissa. Enjoy … and expect OBSIDIAN to resume next week!

–J.C.

BONUS: J.C.'s family-filled Dragon*Con shout-out [ 1:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download