Earlier: A Few Great #SXSW Brand Impressions: Oreo, Kefir, Gannett, Beam, #VegasTech and YEAH!
Image: Library of YEAH! movies with added features and commentary
As the movie plays, you see synchronized added features underneath.
Let's take a look at Blade Runner: The Final Cut.
Image: Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - The Hades Landscape
The links on the added content are clickable, so clicking on "Forced Perspective" brings you to it's Wikipedia page, where you can learn more.
Here are more examples:
Image: Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - Eyes
Image: Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - PURGE
Here's an example of pop-up videos, where an actor talks about the making of, the scene you are watching.
Image: Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - Sean Young On Smoking
One more example re: Advertising in the movie:
Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - Coca-Cola
Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! - Atari
HISTORY
This all reminds me of Ted Nelson's vision of a hypertext system of hyperlinked information.
Image: Three Abreast Comedy Extender
My friend Ravi Jain also implemented something like this back in 2002 for his web series Three Abreast. He called it the comedy extender.
Three Abreast is a web-based sitcom about my life that utilizes technologies unique to the Internet. The conceptual and technological innovation of the work is a mechanism termed, “The Comedy Extender”.
This feature automatically triggers dynamic content that complements the video narrative, such as: background notes, links to related web sites, and downloadable material (MP3 files, text files, images). This unique feature is a direct extension of emerging narrative structures that are heavily threaded with references. “The Comedy Extender” acknowledges the multi-tasking aesthetic of narrative that the digital / on-line culture has fostered.
I also saw an example of this with the movie Romeo and Juliet when students from Brown University brought the movie on laser disk, to a Boston Computer Society Macintosh Users Group meeting, and hooked the laser disk player up to a Macintosh computer.
They then could bring up any part of the movie by selecting some text. This was groundbreaking back in around 2005.
A GREAT START
As someone who is really interested in movie making, I love this.
To start, the selection is limited, and half are horror movies, which I'm not in to, but based on this first look at science fiction, I can see how the implementation is going to work well on the existing library of films and those that they choose to add in the future.
Market demand will help them decide which way to go. I can see this technology used on any genre of movie, where viewers want to learn more about the making of the movie.
Seeing how they've implemented the player, there are lots if possibilities for TV Shows and Web Video too.
Seinfeld? LOST? THE Walking Dead?
UPDATE:
I've been watching more of and still find the experience enjoyable. Blad Runner was a dark movie. I need to also try a brighter movie to compare.
Jut saw some pixilation. I'm watching in HD.
Image: Blade Runner: The Final Cut on YEAH! Not Perfect
Will watch this to see if it's an anomaly.