Thursday, January 15, 2009

Qik see Sundance at Home! (Updated)


Never one to miss a chance at some hip (and frankly at times gimmicky) reality show, a press release says that Ashton Kutcher's company, Katalyst -also producers of Spread- are doing a 24 hours live online show at Sundance, where they are giving four 'social mavens' or more correctly BLOGGERS!!! pffft, tasks to do at teh festival. good lord. From the release:

“24 Hours @ Sundance” is an online reality show competition, broadcast live from the Sundance Film Festival via Qik and shot using the Nokia N95 8GB and Nokia N85 handsets. The contest will pit four social media mavens – Meghan Asha, Matt Marshall, CJ Peters and Irina Slutsky – against one another in a time-based race to complete a number of challenging tasks...

Throughout a 24-hour period, co-hosts Actor/Producer Ashton Kutcher and Founder and Chief Architect of Digg (www.digg.com), Kevin Rose will assign contestants new challenges every three hours. The “24 Hours @ Sundance” final rankings and winner will be determined by the completion of tasks. Co-hosts Kutcher and Rose have final authority to determine the winner.

The trials and tribulations of each maven will be broadcast live via Qik and available at www.24hoursatsundance.com from 9:00 a.m. MST on Jan. 17 until 9:00 a.m. MST on Jan. 18. Qik and Katalyst Media have partnered with YouTube to make the footage available on YouTube indefinitely at www.youtube.com/24hoursatsundance. “When I was first exposed to Qik, I immediately recognized the entertainment potential of live mobile video on the Web,” said Kutcher, Katalyst Media co-founder. “At Katalyst Media, we began ‘Qikking’ in our development process, and soon became hooked on linking video-based interaction and community feedback with professionally produced, original content. Qik is a new genre of entertainment, and ‘24 Hours @ Sundance’ is our first experiment in live reality show programming on the Web, seen through the lens of a time-based event such as Sundance.”

UPDATE: The AFP has now posted an article on this, with new comments from Ashton. Quotage:

A tougher task will be for each blogger to get a Sundance attendee to say that Kutcher should have received an Oscar for his film "Dude, Where's My Car?" and mean it.

David Mackenzie's new film "Spread" starring Kutcher also premieres at Sundance.

"It really is the birth of a new kind of reality television," Kutcher said Wednesday.

Qik is pretty decent Ive heard, but I've never used it. Personally, I am part of a long running (3 years) podcast, and we've broadcast live via BlogTV to great success, so am interested in learning more about how this Qik works. All of these live mobile broadcast methods are always quirky and bugs abound, even in Qik Im certain, but I will be most interested and watching! to see if there is any mention or BROADCAST from any of the screenings for Spread! so fingers crossed for that! The Sundance channel is also broadcasting galore during the festival and I will be sure to post any links to videos shows photos etc I can find! (or someone sends me sweetonsigmafilms@gmail.com or tips in the comments are always welcomed too :D

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