Cast your vote for innovation
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008Root Clip, which has emerged from the innovation group at Scripps newspapers, has opened voting on its second film, Chance Encounters. The site has come a long way since I initially took note of it in this blog. Clearly, Erik Luchauer and Kevin Antoine are iterating as they go, refining the process and streamlining the user interface.
The premise of the site is that Erik and Kevin post a short video, a root clip, and other filmmakers are urged to submit the next video in the sequence. Users vote on the best submission with the winner becoming the second installment. Then on to the next round. In the end, if all goes well, you end up with a short video story that is created by myriad filmmakers in a collaborative process. Talk about social media.
The major obstacle I hit when voting on Chance Encounter was the need to register. While I understand why it’s necessary to avoid voting fraud, it was a pain to have to go and register just as I was about to vote. But go ahead and register. Then vote. It’s an interesting project that’s worth checking out.
And why would a newspaper company be messing around with this? I’m not sure, exactly. But there’s something cool here, something outside the bounds of what newspapers traditionally do that could help as they cast around for what role they’ll play in an interactive world. It doesn’t take much extrapolation to come up with ideas that could apply in local markets, advertising and news.
