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: video stuck in 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.

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

Mozilla and WebMadeMovies can bring together the right mix of stakeholders to push the envelope

We're gathering some of the world's most talented open video developers. And students from Canada's leading technical college to dive in on hack-fests and development sprints.

Plus film-makers and open source cinema pioneer Brett Gaylor to gather documentary film-makers, mash-up artists and video innovators.

This unique collaboration will ensure the technological innovation serves narrative, storytelling and elements filmmakers actually need. Will also exposing film-makers to an agile, open source and globally distributed way of working that can inform their own film-making projects as well. Breaking down the traditional "client-service" relationship and enabling real "Mozilla-ish" collaboration. This will help change the culture of film, making audience participants not just in producing and uploading video, but also remixing and innovating at the level of the interface and medium itself.

And produce a platform for video that leverages greater potential and return on investment that

Open web tools like HTML5 video, svg, canvas, javascript and Firefox make it possible.

Cutting-edge filmmakers, designers and artists will make it mind-blowing.

"view source"
remix it, build on it
make audience participants not just in producing and uploading content, but at level of interface itself,
greatest return on investment possible when we allow other to build on work

Film-makers who want to innovate today are forced to create walled gardens in technologies like Flash that ignore the rest of the web

Brett Gaylor
*It's not just demos and technology. It's also a powerful interactive series about the open web.<br>
*This bit is about content. And using this experimental MEDIUM to illustrate the open web MESSAGe<br>

Imagine video that plays like the web

Imagine...

clicking on someone in the documentary you're watching to instantly see their Wikipedia entry
choosing which character the camera should follow next
a teacher able to skip "on the fly" to exactly the right tw-minute clip in a two-hour educational film
you're watching Johnathan Zittrain talk about "generativity," and as he talks you see a Twitter feed of people who used that term in the last five minutes.
you're watching a video about people mapping the Gulf Oil Spill -- and seeing that map unfold next to them showing the spill RIGHT NOW, in the real-time present.
viewers can immediately entire documentary film-maker's mind and see their research while watching
use-case around transcription / translation?
creating bespoke interfaces that marry the medium to the message, instead of a one size fits all video player. e.g., a documentary player about the ocean that captures the fluidity and feel of water.

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

building the tools the world will use to take video in directions we can't even imagine
a toolkit that builds innovation
JS an engine for other people to build services on top of

building JS library, other interactive tools that we give away to film-makers to innovate with, widgets
front ends that allow any film-maker to publish open video without hiring a team of developers
robust foundation & front end
"popcorn and butter"