Tommy Pallotta is a visionary storyteller who creatively blends technology with filmmaking, animation and interactivity. Pallotta directed the first machinima music video, In the Waiting Line, and the rotoscoped MTV Breakthrough video Destiny, both for the band Zero 7. He has produced several short animated films that garnered numerous awards, including Snack and Drink, which is now part of a permanent collection in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Tommy first connected Richard Linklater with animation when he produced the award-winning feature film Waking Life. He followed up with Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. He then turned to documentary films and directed American Prince. Now he is back with a transmedia thriller, Collapsus: Energy Risk Conspiracy.

Collapsus is unlike any thriller you’ve experienced, combining interactivity with animation, fiction and documentary. At OVC, Tommy will pull back the veil on the project, and share his philosophy that theatrical release isn’t everything.

OVC is a few short weeks away—register now!

At this year’s Open Video Conference, we’ll show some of the cool stuff brewing at WebMadeMovies—Mozilla’s open video lab.

WebMadeMovies is making free software you can use in your own pages, with your own content. It’s about making web video more interesting than a box with a play button.

For example, check out popcorn.js. With a simple link to some javascript code and some extra metadata, you can build experiences like this—showing information that dynamically updates with the rest of the web. And that’s just a taste. At OVC, WebMadeMovies impresario Brett Gaylor will showcase some of the cool stuff coming out of the lab—and the grand thinking behind the project.

If you want to learn more, or feel like experimenting with HTML5 and open video, stick around for the OVC hack day, October 3rd at NYU ITP. The hack day is an informal opportunity to meet people like Brett and the rest of the WebMadeMovies team, tinker and learn.

Are you a videomaker?

Meet and work with people who can help you explore the potential of HTML5 video—including an intro to the Popcorn.js video library, which can pull data from Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Google Maps into your video experiences.

Are you a software developer?

Meet with the folks who have created the Popcorn.js library and brainstorm how to improve and expand its scope. Chat with like-minded developers who need help or have some to offer. Learn and teach.

Just curious?

We’ll be featuring a series of short talks and presentations that will spark your imagination and have you leaving the OVC weekend with some concrete next steps to apply to your future work. And we will have lots of coffee during, beer afterwards, and some pioneers of internet video hanging around.

Open video presents new opportunities for storytellers to create unique experiences. Experiments like the Arcade Fire HTML5 music video show how creative hacking and transmedia can spark people’s imaginations. If you’re interested in working with Brett and the crew, RSVP for the hack day and let us know.

In part two of our video interview with Susan Crawford, we explore whether web users should be worried about privacy. Is it a problem that advertisers know our viewing habits? (more…)