![\"jsalla.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/jsalla.jpg\")
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From DB, for once a brief blog:<\/p>\n
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Perhaps the most enduring legacy of The Blair Witch Project<\/em> was the idea of promoting the film through a faux website<\/a> that treated the lore around the Witch as genuine. Later, the promotion for Spielberg\u2019s A.I<\/em>. created an alternate reality game<\/a> (ARG) by scattering clues to a murder among many websites<\/a>. The murder wasn’t part of A.I.<\/em>‘s plot, but it did take place in the film’s fictional world, and online participants pursued an elaborate para-narrative that connected obliquely to the movie. A key character in the ARG, researcher Jeanine Salla<\/a>, was listed as an actor in the film’s final credits. Ms. Salla evidently died a grisly death herself, as the autopsy report above indicates. She led other lives in fanfiction and online comic strips<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, for The Great World of Sound<\/em>, director Craig Zobel has created a website<\/a>. Nothing new in that. But Zobel also provides a website for a fictional company <\/em>in the film. Here\u2019s Screen International<\/em>\u2019s take (19-25 January 2007, print ed., p. 36):<\/p>\n It\u2019s the 21st<\/sup> century equivalent of the film within the film\u2014the fictional website of the shark-like record company in the movie. It\u2019s everything you\u2019d expect from a shady music company\u2014flashing primary colors, bad clip art, typos and scrolling fonts, all to the sound of a soul-killing <\/strong>MIDI<\/strong> song file. <\/strong><\/p>\n It starts well (banner reading, \u201cYou\u2019re ad here\u201d) but I found it not as wild as the SI<\/em> description implies. Still, the idea is good, the execution diverting. Visit it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a parallel thrust from Bookland, Jacquelyn Mitchard\u2019s forthcoming young adult novel Now You See Her<\/em> is being promoted by a series of YouTube video diaries purportedly made by the heroine, Hope Shay. The first one<\/a> is up, and already at least one viewer thinks it’s the McCoy. (1)<\/p>\n We can probably expect to see more extensions of fictional worlds to the webworld. Are Hannibal Lecter podcasts next? Or an online university for which reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics<\/em> is a prerequisite? See Henry Jenkins<\/a>\u2019 fine Convergence Culture<\/em><\/a> for more on the A. I.<\/em> puzzle ARG (pp. 123-128) and reflections on cross-media storytelling in general.<\/p>\n (1) Full disclosure: Hope is played by Lauren Peterson, the daughter of old friends Sue Collins and Jim Peterson. They also live down the street from us. Jim, now an attorney, took a Ph. D. in film studies here at UW. He\u2019s the author of Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order<\/em><\/a>, an outstanding study of American avant-garde film.<\/p>\n PS Monday morning: I don’t watch much TV; The Simpsons<\/em>, Olbermann, Ebert & Roeper, and the movie channels are pretty much it. So I’m grateful to Olli Sulopuisto for telling me that Lost<\/em> has created its own ARG, The Lost Experience<\/a> and that there’s a website for the fictional Hanso corporation. Much, much more can be found on the fansite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From DB, for once a brief blog: Perhaps the most enduring legacy of The Blair Witch Project was the idea of promoting the film through a faux website that treated the lore around the Witch as genuine. Later, the promotion for Spielberg\u2019s A.I. created an alternate reality game (ARG) by scattering clues to a murder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6,54,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-and-other-media","category-film-comments","category-film-industry","category-narrative-strategies","category-new-media-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13074,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/13074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}