Pandemic 1.0 at Sundance

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING “The most experimental story told at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City wasn’t just on a movie screen… What it all amounts to is something distinctly new.” - GIZMODO “The experience was exhilarating, creating the feeling that we were in the middle of an action thriller where we were the protagonists.” - TURNSTYLE NEWS “Leveraging emerging platforms, the project takes the ideasof interactivity to the next level.” - HUFFINGTON POST www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

An ofﬁcial selection of the Sundance Film Festival, PANDEMIC 1.0 was an immersivestorytelling experience designed for 40,000 festival attendees as well as a global audience. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Crafted as a Story R&D experience, PANDEMIC 1.0 mixed social entertainment with research anddevelopment. The goal - to enhance the story world, test new business models and study socialinteractions. Medic Mobile and FreedomLab worked with us to model various game play interactions inhopes of gaining insights into how items spread in social environments. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Participants online and those at the Sundance Film Festival worked together to stop the spread ofa ﬁctional pandemic outbreak over the course of 120 hours. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

PANDEMIC 1.0 had numerous access points across ﬁlm, mobile, online and the real world. At itscore was the story of a strange sleep virus that infects adults and leaves the youth struggling tomake sense of the world around them.! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

At the center of the PANDEMIC experience was a short ﬁlm. The short tells the story of a youngboy and his sister as they struggle to come to terms with the fact that their mother has fallen ill.The short premiered at the festival, on TV, via mobile and online outlets. It screened in the USShorts section, one of 44 ﬁlms out of over 6,000 entries. Later this year and into 2012 a seriesshorts will be shot in London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Rome which expand the story world ofPANDEMIC. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Online players remixed digital assets in order to unlock the locations of objects hidden throughoutSundance. Fifty GOLDEN OBJECTS and ﬁfty BOTTLES OF WATER were unlocked by onlineplay. Once an object was unlocked online players worked with festival-goers on the ground atSundance to ﬁnd and return the items to MISSION CONTROL. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

x MISSION CONTROL was a physical space designed to give the sense of a Center for DiseaseControl (CDC). It provided an overview of all the game play. All of its data visualizations werepowered by participants game play. Real world and online actions impacted the pacing of the storyworld and also unlocked hidden elements within the game.! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Fifty NFC (near ﬁeld communication) enabled Nexus S phones were circulated throughout thefestival. Distributed in biohazard bags along with hand cranks to keep them charged - the phoneswere randomly passed from one festival-goer to the next. When activated the phones presented aseries of morality questions. Based on the user’s response a simple task was presented – “shoota photo with your eyes closed.” Thousands of photos were taken over the 120 hours. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

When the phones made their way back to MISSION CONTROL, users could set them on theMicrosoft Surface table located in the center of the room. As the phone rested on the Surface allthe media that had been shot with the phone would become accessible. !

Hidden objects brought to MISSION CONTROL that touched the Mircosoft Surface table wereable manipulate the walls of the room and impact the spread of the pandemic. For instance all thehidden objects had health properties that when found and touched to the Surface table wouldcombat the pandemic and reduce the number of people infected.! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

A special room was created as a memorial to those who contracted the virus. Players discovered thateach person is related to a GOLDEN OBJECT. The objects hold stories and memories that show howthe people in the room know each other and provided insight into how the virus has spread socially. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Over 600 NFC tags are utilized making it the largest deployment at a public event to date. When scannedwith an NFC compatible device story elements are unlocked. For instance, holding a phone up to a“closed eye” portrait results in the “person” opening their eyes on the phone. This action symbolizes aconnection and unlocks a story about the person. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

All ﬁfty GOLDEN OBJECTS hold a story that provides insight into the victims of the pandemic. The level ofengagement between those online and those at the festival was amazing. During the course of the 120hour experience each phone passes on average at least twenty times per day. At points throughout the dayphone numbers of the ﬁfty phones are released. This resulted in calls which connected those online withrandom strangers at the festival. Together they would work to get items to MISSION CONTROL.! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

Based on a theme within the story world related to memories and material possessions four specialBEARS were created. The BEARS moved throughout the festival. Each one is a connected toy with acamera in the stomach, an mp3 player in the arm and a slide viewer for an eye. The BEARS are alsodockable and can easily connect to a laptop or desktop. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

As the 120 hour experience moves into the last day, the narrative of the story leads online andofﬂine players to a secret location at Sundance. In a seamless ﬂow the narrative thread of theprevious play melds with a special secret show with world renowned DJ - Kid Koala. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

The show with Kid Koala is streamed live for all the players of the game and the 120 hourexperience comes to a close. Within the narrative of the story online players and those playing atthe festival lead 33 of the phones that had been in the wild for 5 days back to us. ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

PANDEMIC 2.0 will be heading to Europe later this year as the story world continues to expandalong with its player base. www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler !

www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler ! ! www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

http://lanceweiler.com	6344
http://www.lanceweiler.com	1615
http://www.stage.lanceweiler.com	67
http://www.scoop.it	63
http://www.socialtves.com	43
http://transmediatic.tumblr.com	37
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	23
http://storify.com	18
http://www.transmediatic.co	17
http://sprintinnovationtaskforce.tumblr.com	12
url_unknown	8
http://paper.li	7
http://www.ofelio.com	2
http://evanbrinson1.wordpress.com	2
https://twitter.com	2
http://www.slideshare.net	2
http://safe.txmblr.com	1
http://131.253.14.98	1
http://1001tales.posterous.com	1
http://www.milesmaker.com	1
http://safe.tumblr.com	1
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1

Pandemic 1.0 at Sundance

by Lance Weiler

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

22 Embeds 8,268

Statistics