South by Southwest Source > South by Southwest Source > Archives > 2007 > March > 13
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
SXSW film winners
Winning films and videos at SXSW Film 2007 were announced about an hour ago, and here they are:
Jury Awards:
REEL Shorts:
Special Jury Award: “Clear Cut, Simple” (directed by Vineet Dewan)
Winner: “Pop Foul” (Moon Molson)
Animated Shorts:
Special Jury Award: “One Rat Short” (Alex Weil)
Winner: “Tragic Story with a Happy Ending” (Regina Pessoa)
Experimental Shorts:
Special Jury Award: “The Lonely Lights. The Color of Lemons.” (Benjamin M. Piety)
Winner: “27,000 Days” (Naveen Singh)
Music Videos:
Special Jury Award: Constantines, “Working Full-TIme” (Drew Lightfoot)
Winner: Thom Yorke, “Harrowdown Hill” (Chel White)
Texas High School Competition:
Special Jury Award: “Daily Routine” (Adela Escobar)
Winner: “Murder for 9 Points” (Brandon Day)
Documentary Feature:
Special Jury Award: “Cat Dancers” (Harris Fishman)
Special Jury Award: “Audience of One” (Michael Jacobs)
Winner: “Billy the Kid” (Jennifer Venditti)
Narrative Feature:
Special Jury Award: “Frownland” (Ronald Bronstein)
Special Jury Award: “Orphans” (Ry Russo-Young)
Winner: “Itty Bitty Titty Committee” (Jamie Babbit)
Audience Awards:
Emerging Visions:
- Winner: “The Price of Sugar” (Bill Haney)
Documentary Feature:
- Winner: “Run Granny Run” (Marlo Poras)
Narrative Feature:
- Winner: “Skills Like This” (Monty Miranda)
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One-Word Review: Will Wright’s SXSW Interactive Keynote
Genius!
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Paging Perez
Jewish/British R&B/ jazz singer Amy Winehouse has eight shows at SXSW, and don’t be surprised if gossip-monger Perez Hilton is at every one. Mayor McSleeze, whose Perezhilton.com is to celebrity news what Naomi Campbell is to phone etiquette, has confirmed to a source that he’ll be at SXSW and he’s a nearly obsessed follower of notorious party girl Winehouse, who’s been in a bit of a feud with fellow SXSW act Lily Allen. Perez Hilton at SXSW: a new low point in the high life, or is it the other way around?
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Let’s time travel
Spotty wi-fi down at the Convention Center means we never got to talk about a couple of Monday mini-sessions we got to attend.
In “Journalism in the Blogosphere: A Legal Guide to the Internet ‘Press,’ ” presenter Dineen Pashoukos Wasylik could have benefited from a longer session.
She said that there’s still a line between blogging and more mainstream news media, with conventional reporters still afforded more protection, but that line is shifting.
If you want the protections of a reporter, Wasylik said, act like a reporter. Stick to matters of public concern. Stick to fact and informed opinion, not rumor-mongering or innuendo. Even go as far as to describe yourself as “an Internet magazine” instead of a blog.
Our own commentary now: This is admittedly an uniformed opinion, but it seems like the courts’ preference for naming things in terms of mainstream media is a sign of discomfort or at least unfamiliarity with new forms of sharing information — that “blog” automatically signals something unreliable, and that there’s no distinction between different kinds of blogs.
Wasylik gave a rundown of what libel is. More commentary from us: If you blog, you must take it upon yourself to learn about libel. Start by finding a copy of the Associated Press stylebook and reading the libel section.
We wish there had been more time in the session to talk about libel specifically as it applies to blogs. One intriguing area involved the notion of context. For example, she cited the case of a blogger who was sued over his remarks about a company. The court ruled that it was clear that his posts were his opinion and that it wasn’t like they carried the imprimatur of, say, the Wall Street Journal.
So should you present yourself with “I’m a serious magazine” or “Hey, these are just one little guy’s opinions” to give yourself the best legal protection? We don’t know, but would like to find out more about this area.
“The Invisible Blogosphere” took on a topic we wrote about recently in the Austin American-Statesman — the “peak” of blogging as seemingly shown by the recent report from Gartner that the number of blogs would start to level off and decline. (Here’s a link to the story as it ran in another paper. This was the slide shown at the presentation, which we point out because the headline is not very good and misses the larger point of the story — that blogging is not dead but evolving.)
Presenter Jay Allen of Six Apart said he doesn’t believe a single stat he sees about the number of blogs out there. So you can gather that he doesn’t believe this “blogging has peaked” business He says that there’s a vast part of the blogosphere that we aren’t aware of. It includes overlooked blogs (ones that are read by only a couple of people) and blogs that are hidden behind firewalls (like company blogs) or various privacy protections, like the various friends lists you can configure on Six Apart’s LiveJournal. He also cites what he called an explosion of blogs in languages other than English. Russians, we were fascinated to learn, love their LiveJournal. In fact, the Russian term for “blog” is “LJ.”
Allen showed a slide with a quote that essentially said that anyone who would want to blog had already started one. Which, as he points out, seems patently untrue. We think there are groups that aren’t expressing themselves online that could soon head there en masse with the right tools — say, seniors.
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Chamillionaire calls in sick
Houston rapper Chamillionaire has called in sick for his interview/ performance at the George Carver Museum in East Austin. Despite heavy rains, as of 5 p.m., the show was scheduled to go on, with Lil Keke subbing. Also on the bill, under the tent, will be Gutta Gang and Cyril Neville. The 6:30 p.m. show, organized by the National Recording Academy, is a rare Tuesday official showcase.
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Will Wright’s keynote address
After game developer Will Wright spoke to a large audience at the SXSW Interactive Festival on Tuesday, I overhead one audience member ask another what he thought.
“Wow,” was the one-word answer.
Wright is the developer behind “The Sims” and “Sim City.” He is considered a revolutionary game developer, launching the most successful PC franchise ever. So there is a lot of hype behind his latest game, “Spore,” which is expected to be released this year after six years of development.
Wright catered to the SXSW audience, talking about parallels between storytelling in games and movies. His left arm was bandaged from a skiing accident, but that didn’t stop him from talking nonstop for an hour, flipping through a lengthy “Power Point” presentation.
“I had way too much coffee today,” Wright said.
He discussed his favorite movies and why they are like games. “Groundhog Day” and “The Truman Show” are most like games, Wright said. “Groundhog Day” showed what happens when the main character was stuck repeating the same day over and over, with different things happening in each day. That’s very similar to games, Wright said, and, in fact, games should emphasize the repetition less, allowing players to skip ahead to different levels. “The Truman Show” is like a game because it sets up a fictional world for the main character, Truman, to live in.
“I wish games were more like ‘The Truman Show,’” Wright said.
“The Sims,” Wright said, helped generate stories more like traditional movies or books. Players would get so involved in their Sims worlds that they would create stories around them and post them online to share with other players. They wrote about everything from what happens at the local Starbucks to the tragic tale of a woman involved in an abusive relationship.
“Games are being though of as a tool for self-expression,” Wright said.
But by far the most engaging part of his speech was his demonstration of “Spore,” a game he has been working on for six years. His games are called “God games” and for good reason. They put total control in the hands of the players.
“Spore” allows a player to construct his or her own creature, using a “creature editor” to add mouths, feet, hands, legs and arms. If a player is successful, the creature will reproduce, building its own tribe, then a species, and eventually take over an entire planet and the universe, traveling via a spaceship that, of course, the player can build and decorate to his or her taste.
He quickly ran through the beginning single-celled organism phase, where he was eaten by a larger creature. Then he showed us what it looks like when that creature moves on to land, where he was again eaten by a competitor species.
“I wasn’t supposed to die,” Wright said.
Wright thinks of his games as a way to extend a player’s imagination. A big fan of Montessori schools, which he attended as a child, Wright creates games that help a player explore and understand how the world works.
“I want it to bring up interesting issues for the players,” Wright said. “When you look at the effect life can have on the universe, it is philosophically staggering.”
“The entire planet is a toy you can play with,” Wright said.
In one memorable example, Wright showed what happens with there are too many greenhouse gases introduced into an Earth-like planet on Spore. The oceans rise, drowning out the continents. Then several different species start dying off and eventually the heat rises so much that the planet turns into a ball of fire, scorched by those gases.
“Our biggest problem as humans, is we are so bad about long-term thinking,” Wright said. “It’s so hard for us to think about 100 years from now.” His game went from teaching evolution to, as he joked, a “sequel to Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”
“Games have this perception of being simple, meaningless tools we waste our time with,” Wright said. “But we’re already seeing games that change the way we see our behavior and the way we think about the world.”
He finished up with a quick “Thank you, that’s the end.”
He got a standing ovation and was quickly surrounded by dozens of admiring fans.
Wow.
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Dan Rather panel/HDNet addendum
For the commenter who asked: the “Dan Rather Reports” live special airs 7 tonight (Tuesday, March 13) on HDNet. It’s a one-hour show. The event at the LBJ Library is open to the public.
And not to add insult to injury, but here’s a photo of Monday’s panel. Bear in mind that Dan Rather is still speaking and the panel is still going at this point:
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The creature editor
This morning I got to try out the “creature editor” for Will Wright’s new game “Spore.”
Wright is the creator of “The Sims” and “Sim City” and is a celebrity in the game world. He is also speaking this afternoon in Austin at the SXSW Interactive Festival.
The creature editor is what it sounds like. It allows you to design your own creature for “Spore.” Like a potter molding clay, you decide the shape the creature will take. I was given a menu of different arms and legs, eyes, mouth, feet and hands. Weapons can be tacked on, as can design details. Then, you get to color the animal, adding different colors and textures.
My animal ended up looking like something out of “Shrek” with arms that looked like they were put on backwards. It’s arms dangled to the floor, like a gorilla, and its legs were short and squat. Its body looked like a misshapen cantaloupe and it was green and yellow, with scales on its belly.
It was a goofy-looking creature, I’ll admit, but I loved it just the same. I felt omnipotent, excited that I was able to design something from scratch.
I could see what babies of this creature would look like, and make it do different dances and poses. It was easy to see how addicting it could be, and this was just the creature editor! I didn’t even see the game.
“Spore” was originally called Sim Everything and it takes you from developing a single-celled organism to propagating an entire species and eventually conquering the entire universe.
Look for more updates as I blog about Wright’s keynote speech at 2 p.m.
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How can we help you?
We’re at the “Customer Service Is the New Marketing” panel, hearing from smart folks from places like Flickr and Zappos. All are singing the praises of the forum as a customer service tool, providing a place where customers actually help each other. It’s a shakeup of the usual relationship between business and customer. Also, we keep being struck by how much of this online stuff comes down to the personal level, when, back in the day, we were scared of isolation caused by the Internet (remember Sandra Bullock’s “The Net”?)
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Cuteness rules!
We are happier than a kitten with a new fishing-pole toy that Cute Overload claimed Best American Web Log on Monday at the Bloggies, although still a bit sad that the site’s Meg Frost, doyenenne of all that is cute, did not attend SXSW. Against all hope, we kept imagining that she’d flown in on the Cute Overload private jet (Sugarglider 1) and would alight on the Convention Center with her bodyguards (cats in dark glasses, wearing earpieces).
