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WebMadeMovies: the evolution of video

WebMadeMovies is Mozilla's open video lab. We're bringing together the world's most innovative filmmakers and hackers to showcase the power of new open video technologies. Blowing up the traditional box and unlocking video's 21st century potential.

New tools like HTML5 allow us to produce video that behaves like the web: linkable, quotable, searchable, mixable, hackable. Liberating it from closed platforms and creating whole new ways to tell stories online. By mashing up video with the rest of the social web, we're reinventing the medium through open source collaboration, artistic innovation and global community.

The problem: black boxes and walled gardens

Video today is *on* the web, but not *of* the web. Despite the innovation that's swept other online media, most video -- from information and entertainment to educational videos and user generated content -- is still trapped inside closed platforms that are difficult or impossible to search, link, quote or contextualize. We can "embed" video in pages, but only through closed-off players that are sealed off from the content around them, and that still behave much like traditional TV.

This traps video inside a virtual "black box," robbing it of audience and potential. And locking an entire branch of knowledge and creativity in closed systems that don't behave or innovate like the rest of the web.

All that's set to change. Unlocking video's 21st century potential.

New open video tools and standards like HTML5 allow us to throw open this closed black box. And weave video right into the fabric of the social web. As big industry players move away from closed platforms like Flash, and as the devices people use to watch and produce video continue to rapidly evolve, the stars are aligning to build a more open video future. This represents a unique opportunity to take video in a whole new direction. What's needed right now are the skills and artistic vision to innovate and give the world a taste of what's possible.

Introducing Mozilla's open video lab. Where hackers meet film-makers. Fall in love. And make beautiful babies.

WebMadeMovies is bringing together the right mix of stakeholders to capture the open video opportunity. Using Mozilla's convening power to gather the world's most talented open video developers with independent filmmakers in an open source laboratory. Together they'll produce a series of episodes and experimental mash-ups that showcase what's possible, and create a lasting open source video toolset the world can use to innovate, adapt and build on in future.

Lead by open source cinema pioneer Brett Gaylor, WebMadeMovies will mash up storytelling about the open web with other social media and new open video players that marry the message to the medium. Open web tools like HTML5 video, svg, canvas, javascript and Firefox will make it possible. Cutting-edge designers, artists and filmmakers will make it mind-blowing.

***NOTE: CUT THE ENTIRE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH???

This cross-polination between developers and movie-makers will ensure the technology serves storytelling and elements filmmakers really need and can use. While exposing film-makers to a more "open source" and distributed way of working that will help them find new ways to imagine, produce and distribute their work. Students from Canada's leading technical college will dive in on hack-fests and development sprints. While independent video producers from around the world will supply the raw narrative material. Changing the culture of film by empowering producers beyond simply making and uploading video, to remix and innovate at the level of the interface and medium itself. Bringing the same "hackability" and open innovation to the culutre of film that has made open source software and web development such a success.

Imagine video that behaves like the web

Imagine...

• clicking on an documentary or news subject to instantly see their Wikipedia entry
  
• choosing which character the camera should follow next
  
• a teacher skipping to exactly the right moment in a two-hour educational film to answer their student's question
  
• searching the entire history of TV, news and film as easily as you search Google
  
• watching a video about the Gulf oil spill recorded weeks ago -- with a map of the spill's current size right now in real time
• educational films that dynamically update their curriculum with the rest of the web, and never go out of date
• entering a documentary film-maker's mind to instantly see their research and additional footage
• exploring a 360-degree view of a volcano or art gallery
  
• watching Johnathan Zittrain talk about "generativity," combined with a Twitter feed of people who used that term in the last five minutes.
  
• bespoke interfaces tailored to each film, marrying the medium to the message. Travel films that interact with your phone's GPS. A documentary about the ocean through a player that looks and feels like water.
• mashing up search and Twitter feeds with maps and news footage to create a visual monitor of what the planet is thinking about
  

Add:

• A use case around transcription / translation?
• What examples resonate with particular audiences?
  • Film-makers? Funders? Teachers / education? Developers? Everyday web users?

"Popcorn" and "butter": open video tools that taste great. And change the web.

WebMadeMovies will not only produce individual episodes and demonstrations, it will also produce a lasting set of tools the world can use to innovate and build on in future. These include "popcorn," a javascript library an open video development engine other developers can build services on top of. And "butter," a front-end widget that will make it easy for film-maker and non-technical audiences to build custom open video players and widgets. Popcorn will provide a robust foundation. While butter provides an intuitive front end any film-maker can use to publish open video without requiring a team of developers.

Together, these tools will form the "swiss army knife" of open video. And the project's lasting contribution to the web. In open-source Mozilla fashion, WebMadeMovies will build and giving away the tools film-makers and developers can use to take the medium in directions we can't even imagine yet. free to anyone, anywhere to use. And ultimately changing the future of film the way HTML and open standards changed the web.