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 young boy andhis sister as they struggle to come to terms with the fact that their mother has fallen ill. The shortpremiered at the festival, on TV, via mobile and online outlets. It screened in the US Shorts section, oneof 44 ﬁlms out of over 6,000 entries. Later this year and into 2012 a series shorts will be shot in London,Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Rome which expand the story world of PANDEMIC. www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

Online players remixed digital assets in order to unlock the locations of objects hidden throughout Sundance.Fifty GOLDEN OBJECTS and ﬁfty BOTTLES OF WATER were unlocked by online play. Once an object wasunlocked online players worked with festival-goers on the ground at Sundance to ﬁnd and return the items toMISSION CONTROL. www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

x MISSION CONTROL was a physical space designed to give the sense of a Center for Disease Control(CDC). It provided an overview of all the game play. All of its data visualizations were powered byparticipants game play. Real world and online actions impacted the pacing of the story world and alsounlocked hidden elements within the game. www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

Fifty NFC (near ﬁeld communication) enabled Nexus S phones were circulated throughout the festival.Distributed in biohazard bags along with hand cranks to keep them charged - the phones were randomlypassed from one festival-goer to the next. When activated the phones presented a series of moralityquestions. Based on the userʼs response a simple task was presented – “shoot a photo with your eyesclosed.” 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 the MicrosoftSurface table located in the center of the room. As the phone rested on the Surface all the media thathad been shot with the phone would become accessible. www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

Hidden objects brought to MISSION CONTROL that touched the Mircosoft Surface table were ablemanipulate the walls of the room and impact the spread of the pandemic. For instance all the hiddenobjects had health properties that when found and touched to the Surface table would combat thepandemic 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 that eachperson is related to a GOLDEN OBJECT. The objects hold stories and memories that show how the peoplein 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 and ofﬂineplayers to a secret location at Sundance. In a seamless ﬂow the narrative thread of the previous playmelds 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 hour experiencecomes to a close. Within the narrative of the story online players and those playing at the festival lead 33of 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 expand alongwith its player base.  www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

THE TEAM Story Architect / Experience Designer  Integrated Marketing & PR HOPE IS MISSING bookLance Weiler Fleishman-Hillard Creative Director Data Visualizations  Digital Strategy and Research  Lance WeilerKinetic Fin  Freedomlab Future StudiesJeff Clark Designed by  Mobile app / surface design and UX  Laura Mazzeo & Janine SaundersCreative Technologist   VectorformMark Harris Produced and Casted by  NFC chips provided by  Janine SaundersProducer  NXPZeke Zelker Production Manager  Water bottles by  Tim FarrellCommunity Engagement ARTWATERJanine Saunders Grime (art)  Portrait Photographer  Bradley Farrell (design) Lorenzo de GuiaCreative ProducerNick Childs Nexus S phones provided by  Artifact Photographer  Google Eniko SzucsSocial Transmedia Platform Monteur & NetVentures Surface Unit provided by  Writers  Microsoft Nick Childs, Tim Farrell, Microsite  Jason Hood, Brent Cole, Bastiaan Grutters (development)  Unit Photography  Daniela Croci, Jenny NasalDim Rooker (design) Elaine Zelker & Mike Hedge Special Thanks Transmedia Unit  Additional Production Support  Faith Weiler The Sabi Company  Jennifer Nasal Josh Cramer Zak Forsman  House of TrimKevin Shah  Twitter Story Editor Gary King Chuck WendigComic Panels by Twitter / Short Fiction Dean Haspiel, Tim Hamilton Chuck Wendig, Andrea Phillips Project developed atGeorge OʼConner, Rick Parker Jesse Scoble, Will Hinmarch, The Sundance Institute Stephan Blackmore www.lanceweiler.com @lanceweiler

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Pandemic 1.0 at Sundance

by Lance Weiler on Jun 09, 2011

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Pandemic 1.0 at Sundance — Presentation Transcript