melt

29 November '07The 2007 Full Melt Awards

This years Melt Selection Panel saw long standing panel members; Paula Le Dieu (Magic Lantern), Jonathan Jowitt (Converged Media) and Adam Gee (Channel 4), welcoming two new members; Morgan Holt (Huge Media) & John Denton (BBC), for one of the toughest Melt Selection Panel’s to date.  A full day’s deliberation and much commendation about the standard of proposals and concepts eventually led to the following projects sharing £300,000 worth of R&D grant support; 

BlueFace - Bluetooth meets social networking by andymayer.net BlueFace links the distant online world of social networking with the excitement of realworld here-and-now. The concept will enable participants to take a mash up of their social networking data around on their mobile phones. Users are alerted when they are in the physical proximity of a matching profile, a friend of a friend or an opponent in a range of new social games.

Wizard Academy by Red Star Studio This project will enable Red Star Studio to explore the physical and audio interface and interaction opportunities within the 3D and 4D film domains.  Wizard Academy will utilize the same kind of immersive 4D effects as are used in regular visitor attraction theatre but rather than merely being passive spectators the audience will interact with the characters and direct the flow of the action.

The Real Casting Couch by VKH Films Ltd & positive-thought The Real Casting Couch is an online auditioning website.  The project will bring together the DIY, indie-film casting ethos with the democracy and tools of the web to enable a qualitative and interactive service which puts the director and actor relationship at the heart of the selection process. The research and development will enable the team to prototype a service which could revolutionise the current on-line casting offering. 

Linguagum - Chew it Over and Spit it Out by Linguagum.com This project taps into a huge global market for learning spoken English by exploiting the pervasiveness of mobile devices and the capacity to audio broadcast tiny fragments to users when and where they want to practice.  The research will explore particularly innovative ways of packaging and sending audio files to mobile.

Making Media on the Move (M3) by CM Solutions & Sheffield Live! Making Media on the Move (M3) will encourage the radio listener to become a creative media producer. Mixing broadcasting, mobile telephony and the Internet it will support and pioneer new forms of user generated content and take them to a mass media audience.

Writer’s Block by TechnoPhobia & 72 Dots Writer’s Block will develop collaborative project management tools together with a social network which will assist with the nurturing of writing and other creative projects. Writer’s Block learns, guides, predicts and connects writers with others taking the same path and helps users to develop habits and provide the tailored structure which will drive and support the creative process.

22 August '07Melt Photos

Check out your bad self at Melt Flickr. We have uploaded photos from the 05, 06 and 07 launch events and will add photos from up and coming Melt events as they happen. A big thanks to the photographers Tracey Welch and Pixelwitch Pictures.

22 August '07We have the Knowledge

The Melt 07 Inspiration Session included a special Melt Trends Briefing from The Future Laboratory. If you missed it then you might want to check out the Knowledge Section of the Melt website. There are two special PDF downloads especially for you from The Future Laboratory which look at global trends and immersive media trends.

You can also download full transcripts of the special Melt orientated discussions between top industry bods that featured in the Melt 07 brochure. These include games gurus Martyn Brown (Team 17) and Charles Cecil (Revolution) on the past, present and future of game development and Morgan Holt (Huge) talking to Michael Nutley (editor-in-chief, New Media Age) about new and not-so-new media fashions.