Sundance Film Festival 2011 - "Pandemic" and Pretty In Plastic

Pandemic 1.0 - Lance Weiler - at Sun Dance Film Festival 2011 - Park City - Utah

-bridging the world of technology, film, and custom toy culture.

The story is told through this creative TransMedia Installation (scroll down to read more), Including the Amber Bear below - created by Pretty In Plastic.


"To bring this theme into the real world, we worked with Pretty in Plastic, an L.A.-based design shop, to create custom totems that have cameras, GPS trackers, MP3 players and thumb drives inside them. The totem, which has a stuffed toy bear enclosed inside, is a striking piece of art designed to fit comfortably in the user’s hand. Within the bear’s head is a slide viewer that flips through images intended to evoke a memory. While the user holds the bear and views the slides, his or her reactions are documented via a camera placed in the bear’s belly. These images are then fed back into various data visualizations used within Mission Control...."







 A STORYWORLD EXPERIENCE 
Pandemic 1.0 is a transmedia experience that makes use of mobile, online, real-world, print, data visualization, social gaming, serialized and long form content - an innovative social entertainment experience that takes advantage of changes in media consumptions and advancements in technology.

  


 

The setting of Pandemic 1.0 centers an a global outbreak of a strange sleep virus  that leaves only the adults infected. Adults are transformed into "sleep stalkers"  who roam in packs, hunt for youth and exhibit hive mind like abilities. They only  come out at night. Meanwhile the youth have been left to their own devices and  each knows that with adulthood comes a certain fate. It is within this post- apocalyptic world of depleting resources and impending threat the Players / viewers of Pandemic find themselves.  


Mission Control (at Park City) is the only way to learn where you stand in the face of the spreading pandemic."

       

A STORY TOLD WITH

1 short film
1 magazine
5 secret locations
10 scares
12 totems 
60 story artifacts 
100 mobile phones
5,000 bottles of water
70,000 photographs
over a 1,000,000 data points 

image credits: 
infographic design: Joseph Williams
pandemic short photo: Jack Bromiley 





The Preview:





LINKS:


Pandemic 1.0 is a story R&D (research and development) project, the first step in a larger transmedia build that includes film, mobile, online and real-world events. This transmedia extension is set within the same story world as a feature film that I co-wrote and will be directing called HiM — a Lord of the Flies-style tale about a strange sleep virus that only affects adults and leaves the youth fighting for their lives.
Over a period of 120 hours, Pandemic 1.0 unfolds in a mixture of online and offline events. Festival attendees and those just viewing online are able to interact through a “social experiment,” one that harnesses various social and emerging technologies to impact the spread of a pandemic. 

For instance, Pandemic 1.0 which unfolds within New Frontier and the U.S. Narrative Shorts section of the festival, is told with…
1 short film telling the story of a sister and brother coming to terms with an infected parent.
1 magazine containing a “rabbit hole” leading to elements in the experience. Here’s a hint: You’re holding it.
5 secret locations scattered throughout Park City.
6 totems with cameras, GPS trackers, MP3 players and thumb drives embedded inside them.
10 scares that can be requested by those following the experience online. The scares are then carried out on unsuspecting festivalgoers.
20 actors carrying Flip cams who perform scenes as the “pandemic” unfolds.
50 story artifacts placed throughout Park City containing barcodes, #hashtags and RFID.
5,000 bottles of water that when found and brought to special locations have health properties that aid to slow the spread of the pandemic.
40,000+ festivalgoers whose social behaviors and interactions inform the spread or slowing of the pandemic.
50,000+ photographs harvested from the Internet and filtered in real time to be relevant to the story of a spreading pandemic.
1,000,000+ points of data visualized within a special Mission Control space showing how the story is unfolding on a global level.

Pretty In Plastic Inc. is located in Downtown Los Angeles. We are toy couture and do everything from design...sculpt...prototype...limited art runs...to manufacturing...from small scale to large! -Julie B.