Ridley Scott Working On Purefold – A Web Series Inspired By Blade Runner!
Jun 5th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: General, Internet TV, Video
Independent studio Ag8 has announced Purefold – a series of linked 5- to 10-minute web videos inspired by Blade Runner. Purefold won’t be a sequel or prequel to Blade Runner, but is a new set of stories set in the same world.
“It’s…..based on the same themes as Blade Runner,” says Ag8’s David Bausola. “It’s the search for what it means to be human and understanding the notion of empathy. We are inspired by Blade Runner.â€
Ag8 plans to incorporate Web-based fan feedback into the project and to release the short films with a Creative Common license.
Here’s what Ag8 says about the new web series:
Purefold is an open media franchise designed for brands, platforms, filmmakers, product developers and communities to collaboratively imagine our near future.
With a central theme ‘What does it mean to be human?’, the franchise explores the subject of empathy – a shared theme with Ridley Scott’s most compelling Science Fiction movie, Blade Runner.
The franchise contains infinite interlinked story lines, turned into short-format episodes by Ridley Scott Associate Films’ global talent pool of directors, and informed by real-time online conversations from the audience, which are harvested through FriendFeed, the world’s leading ‘life streaming’ technology.
Taking place in the near future, Purefold enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.
Purefold content will be distributed according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, giving both audiences, brands and platforms unprecedented equal use rights through their participation.
Purefold is supported by commercial and academic pillars, such FriendFeed, Creative Commons, WPP, Aegis, Publicis and Naked Communications.
As a complete Blade Runner freak, I find the promise of new stories from Ridley Scott set in his futuristic vision of LA to be exciting. Ag8’s description of the project as “an open media franchise designed for brands” throws up a major red flag, though.
Let’s hope that Ridley Scott’s participation keeps Purefold from being a marketing effort to capitalize on the Blade Runner brand.
Excited about Purefold? Leave a comment with your thoughts!
The product placement angle makes me think that this is going to be a world of suck.
“You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down……..and see a Nokia N97 smartphone!”
I’m excited in anything that involves Ridley Scott and Bladerunner! The integration with Friendfeed sound interesting – I am looking forward to seeing how that takes shape.
elwin –
I can see it now – “want more life….from your cellphone?”
Checked out their web site, not much there beyond this story, no mention of when or where you might see these episodes. I’d say vaporware for now. -s
sounds similar to the Gemini Division webisodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_Division)
Intresting concept but impossible to watch without first od’ing on ADD medication as the episodes were so short and you then had to put up with the opening/closing credits….
I’ll probably wait until someone cuts this together into a single viewable “movie length” special 🙂
“Let’s hope that Ridley Scott’s participation keeps Purefold from being a marketing effort to capitalize on the Blade Runner brand.”
Unlike the way Scott is capitalizing on Philip K. Dick’s work.
I’ve actually started a sci-fi web series that I’d like everyone to check out. It’s about a guy named Woods Ulmann who’s been abducted by aliens, written a best-selling book about it called Xenophobia, and is now supposed to be working on a follow-up book, but is having writer’s block. Instead of continuing to trudge through his second book, he’s instead decided to blog and videotape his everyday life in an attempt to silence the nay-sayers and skeptics when it comes to the ‘alien’ question. Woods intends to capture video proof of their existence, as well as to just record his thoughts, human interactions, and the strange occurrences that have been plaguing him lately. Clicking on my name will lead to the website, and if that doesn’t work, go to http://youtube.com/woodsulmann.
We’ve done it with no money, but I guarantee you the second episode, which premieres next week, will make you nearly crap your pants. I think most of these episodic web series lack anything viral to get that initial interest, and are done with little understanding of the difference between something on the web and something on t.v. The attitude so far seems to be, “We can do that too, and it’s the web, so it requires less effort and practically no story.” I don’t know where these companies like vuguru find these concepts and shows that they wind up putting out, but they’re obviously not looking hard enough. Anyway, check out our first episode on youtube and head on over to the blog… give it a chance, you won’t be disappointed!
-Long rich and decades stale -Scott remains committed to the routine.