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WebMadeMovies: the evolution of video

WebMadeMovies is Mozilla's open video lab. We're gathering the world's most innovative filmmakers and hackers to explore and 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 make 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 open 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.

Creators that want to break with convention are forced to use multimedia systems like flash that cannot inter-operate with the rest of the web. To make matters worse, other filmmakers cannot learn from or build on these sites because the source code is hidden - the "view source" functionality of the web is broken.

All 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 influential 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 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 reference implementations 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.

Imagine video that behaves like the web

Imagine...

• clicking on a documentary or news subject to instantly see their Wikipedia entry
• searching the entire history of TV, news and film as easily as you search Google
• choosing which character the video camera should follow next
  
• a teacher skipping to exactly the right moment in a two-hour educational film to answer their student's question
• 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 content with the rest of the web, never going out of date
• entering a documentary film-maker's mind to instantly see their research and added footage
• exploring a 360-degree view of a volcano, cityscape or art gallery
• custom 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
• creators and audiences collaboratively producing footnotes that add a rich data layer to videos
• a global community of sub-titling volunteers to internationalize the world's video library

Open video can make all this -- and applications we can't yet imagine -- possible. Given the right tools, open standards and imagination.

"Popcorn" and "butter": open video tools that taste great. And build the future.

WebMadeMovies will produce a lasting set of open video tools anyone can freely use, build on and innovate. These include "popcorn," an open source javascript library for developers. And "butter," an intuitive front-end that will make it easy for film-makers and non-technical audiences to publish open video. Popcorn will provide a robust foundation open video developers can build services on top of. While butter delivers a simple interface for film-makers to build custom open video players without requiring a team of developers.

Together these tools will form the ultimate "swiss army knife" of open video applications, empowering developers and movie-makers to take video in directions we can't even imagine yet. And ultimately shaping the future of film the same way HTML and open standards shaped the web.

Notes & feedback

Community notes from email thread:

• Re-read Geoff's first draft -- include more "open web" prose
  • Geoff: "Dropping the open web prose makes the problem seem less severe and therefore the solution less amazing."
• Ben M: strong language to emphasize: "connecting video to the rest of the web"
• Geoff's key points:
  • Video is on the web, not of the web. It's a black box that can't be accessed.
  • It doesn't understand the semantic context in which it's situated. You have to build entire parallel structures to identify it to the rest of the web.
  • Imagine video that worked / behaved like the web.
• Mark: "dial down the hyperbole a bit"
• Mark: interesting language: "telling stories with time and hypertext together"

Ben M's notes: -we should clarify that popcorn.js and butter.js are among the first tools to emerge from the lab. They are examples of what will come out of WMM, not the entirety (right?)

-we should avoid the "swiss army knife" language. WMM isn't striving to build a platform, or complete set of tools. It's building things on top of the existing platform, which is the open web.

-while popcorn and butter are undeniably cool, there's a danger in overhyping them at this stage. We ran into that a bit when people's expectations of HTML5 video on Wikipedia began growing out of control! I think right now it's most important to have clear documentation of what popcorn/butter can do today, and what the roadmap is for tomorrow. That kind of clear documentation will serve the project best.

Ben's concise edit

(I wanted to offer a concise an edit as possible, that would strip some of the open web dogma that normal people tune out. I also wanted to focus on examples that were achievable and unique to HTML5/js [and harder to do in Flash])

WebMadeMovies: an open video lab

Today, video is on the web, but not of the web. We often talk about "embedding" videos—as if dropping a static video into a webpage is the best we can do. Mozilla wants to change that.

WebMadeMovies is Mozilla's open video lab. We're gathering the world's most innovative filmmakers and hackers to explore the power of open video. We'll use web standards like HTML5 to make web video more like the web: linkable, searchable, hackable, mixable.

As the industry embraces HTML5, creators have a unique opportunity to advance the craft of storytelling. What's needed are the skills and vision to breathe life into their ideas. WebMadeMovies is bringing together the right mix of stakeholders to create an innovative open source laboratory.

Imagine video that behaves like the web...

• imagine educational films that dynamically update their content with the rest of the web, never going out of date
• imagine watching documentary films with up-to-date tweets from the principal characters
• imagine students clipping web videos and pasting selections into their school projects
• imagine watching a video about the Gulf oil spill—with a realtime map and statistics about the spill's current size
• imagine a global community of volunteers, working together to subtitle the world's video library

Given the right tools, open standards and a little imagination, these use cases will become commonplace. And we will see video work in ways we couldn't never predict.

"Popcorn" and "butter": open video tools that taste great.

WebMadeMovies is producing open video tools anyone can freely use, build on and innovate. These include "popcorn," an open source javascript library for developers, and "butter," an intuitive front-end that will make it easy for film-makers to publish open video.

The WebMadeMovies lab is also producing a series of interactive webisodes, directed by Brett Gaylor (RiP: A Remix Manifesto), to showcase what's possible with open video.

Let's see what's possible

Video doesn't need to be a passive medium. With your help, we'll put open video tools in the hands of everyone. Open web standards like HTML5 video, svg, canvas, javascript and Firefox will make it possible. Cutting-edge designers, artists and filmmakers will make it mind-blowing. For more, visit http://drumbeat.org/web-made-movies