After an enormous 9 month engagement, the curtain has finally risen on DreamWorks’ latest animated feature and our unusual project creating a live action story of comic conspiracies and extraterrestrial mayhem to tie-in directly to the animated film. Juggling live action, animation, and comedy all at once proved to be extremely challenging, but I think we acquitted ourselves nicely. Here’s a scene I directed towards the end of the campaign spoofing a certain recent monster flick with the help of the animated cast of “Monster vs. Aliens.”

In this project, we wanted to help encapsulate the offbeat comic sensibility of the characters in the movie and reach out to the 18-25 year old demographic in way few animated films can. Because this movie took a satirical swipe at B-movies and science fiction classics, we needed an ongoing tale that was just a tongue-in-cheek and funny. So we invented a paranoid blogger named “Jeffrey Freedman.” A kook who lives in his mom’s basement and rants about the government using science fiction movies and books to disguise the truth from the American public.  One of the videos even had him accusing real scifi enthusiasts at the World Science Fiction convention of being part of the conspiracy.

Freedman eventually became so enraged by the government cover-up that he “crashed the movie premiere” and confronted stars like Reese Witherspoon, Will Arnett, and Hugh Laurie about their role in the conspiracy:

The rest of the tale involving 80s workout tapes, flying dogs, and the New World Order can be found at Jeffrey Freedman’s blog: TopSecretConspiracy.com. The Top Secret Conspiracy project got rave reviews from scifi sites, movie fans, and forums as well as racked up hundreds of thousands of viewers. But the best part of this whole project? When it finally concluded I received a very gracious email praising our fine work from none other than the CEO of Weekly World News journalistic home of Bat boy and the alien who met with Ross Perot. Now that’s an endorsement.

Fun Trivia: If you watch the opening scene of “Monsters vs. Aliens,” you might spot an homage to Top Secret Conspiracy in the film’s sequence with the Artic Defense station.

“Terminator: Dark Discovery” behind the scenes video:

It all ended with a very cool honor for all of us involved in “Terminator” from this year’s Webby Awards!

It is my pleasure to inform you that Terminator: Dark Discovery has been selected as an Official Honoree for the Online Guerilla & Innovation category in The 13^th Annual Webby Awards.

As a result of the exceptional quality of submissions this year, the Academy has recognized outstanding entries as Official Honorees alongside our Nominees and Winners. The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment for you and your team.

Congratulations!

YOUR OFFICIAL HONOREE LISTING:

Your listing on the Webby site is located at http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current_honorees.php?season=13

Just created and launched this today new site today: http://DarkCampaign.com/

This is my new unofficial social media work promoting The Dark Knight for this year’s Academy Awards. Why? Because it’s an amazing film and it faces an extremely tough road ahead. It’s a masterpiece and yet it has to challenge 81 years of Academy history that has never once awarded the prize to a film like it.
Created a video to make my case. I’m leveraging my past experience supporting Children of Men but in some ways this campaign will be the complete opposite. There the studio was ignoring the film and audiences had never heard of it and we started the campaign late. Here, the studio thinks they have a shot, audiences know the film, and I’m starting the campaign early. Hopefully some of the online audience will push this thing hard enough to make the long odds of an oscar for the Dark Knight more possible.

Update: Though TDK didn’t earn a Best Picture nod, thankfully Heath won Best Supporting Actor posthumously, which is great.  The really cool part of this project was getting a really sincere thank you letter from the film’s screenwriter, Jonah Nolan.

DIY DAYS SF – The Art and Science of Crowdsourcing

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I’ll be part of a panel “The Art & Science of Crowdsourcing” at DIY Days this Sunday.

Lance Weiler, the film director behind The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma, has organized an interesting discussion series across the US that is called “DIY Days” (Do-it-Yourself Days). The series of live conferences / discussions known as DIY DAYS is happening in LA, SF, Boston, NYC and London. According to Lance, their goal is to explore filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems.
Presented by From Here to Awesome and Current TV – DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops: A look at how to fund, create, and distribute and sustain.

Here’s the panel I’ll be appearing on at 111 Minna in SF this Sunday:

2:15 to 3:15pm
PANEL: The art and science of crowdsourcing
There is power in the crowd. When they rise up they can fund, create, distribute and promote. But how do you turn an audience into an active community where members become collaborators? Panelists: Slava Rubin (indieGoGo), Skot Leach (Lost Zombie), Jason Harris (Mekanism), Bryan Kennedy (Mobmov.org), Blair Erickson (Millions of Us) Discussion Leader: Lance Weiler

More about DIY Days here:
http://diydays.com/

For several months, I’ve been working on writing and directing a top secret project to create a live-action thriller alternate reality game campaign. 2 weeks before the launch of the new Fox show “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” a website for an unusual company appeared. In their first video they claimed to have developed a tachyon camera that sensed faster-than-light particles and could therefore generate images of the future. Their first blog post generated significant online controversy, with 53 posts suggesting ways of testing the camera’s capabilities. In their second video, the researchers followed the audience’s suggestions, taking photos of mirrors, newspapers, and cityscapes. The images they revealed suggested a dark and apocalyptic future. Soon the audience became directly involved in the story, digging up similar camera devices around the United States. Finally, the researchers found themselves being hunted by a deadly entity seeking to stop their work permanently. The drama built to an explosive conclusion in the parking lot of Enitech’s offices.
Now that it’s concluded you can watch the full story from start to finish. If you want to know more, check out Enitechlabs.com.

Links to more press coverage of the Enitech saga here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Special thanks to Evan Jones over at Stitch Media for all his incredible help and expertise on this project. Some of my behind the scenes photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blairerickson/sets/72157604264425470/

130,000+ views and counting.  This was my satirical tribute to the glorious accomplishments of many decades of communist governments around the world. After so many attempts in history, it seems the ideology still has legions of fans and supporters. The notion behind this film was to quickly explain how and why communism works exactly as it does on the state and the people living there.

YouTube and GoogleVideo are littered with sincere tributes to communist regimes around the world and throughout the 20th Century (like this one, this video, this one, this, that, this thing, and this one).

Seems only fair to raise the honesty bar a bit on them. Learn more about the basic concepts of communism here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism.

UPDATE: Over 8,400+ comments on YouTube so far and some of them are pretty interesting while others are hilariously angry. Check them out here.

Read the crazy HATE MAIL I get after the jump!

So here it is 3 years later, I still get hate mail about this film. Makes me think I did something right?

What’s fun about this is that I get hate mail primarily from two groups… one is staunch right wingers who think that film is a serious tribute to communists, and instead of actually watching it immediately launch into a tirade and mail it off to me:

comunism

how can you be comunist i mean comunism would take away peoples freedom be capitalist if you believe in freedom but i honestly think comunist are stupid thart makes you stupid so go to hell you fucking comunist.

fuck you
communist fuck. what a fucking stupid ideology to support. one that avoids thinking of the natural tendencies of man, a complete abstract ideation spawn from a completely abstract people.

Then of course I get mail from the communists who are upset I mocked their ideology:

Dumbshit
Your the biggest dumb shit I have ever read from. If you had done any research whatsoever you would know that communism works in Cuba. You would have known that if you had the ability to pull your head of your ass you capitalist loving fuck head.

And finally there’s the fantastic emails I get from insane crazy conspiracy NWO bigots:

thirdeyewise
…

well
…
well
what are a you, a clown or a jew?

But the Communist soul is the soul of Judaism. Hence it follows that, just as in the Russian revolution the triumph of Communism was the triumph of Judaism, so also in the triumph of fascism will triumph Judaism.” (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Rabbi Harry Waton, pp. 143-144).

“His (God’s) intention will be realized through bloody struggles, wars and revolutions; the present social order will be destroyed together with all institutions that are bound up with the present social order. State capitalism and fascism will take the place of the present social order.” (A Program for the Jews and Humanity, Rabbi Harry Waton, p. 225).

“The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism, Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of a World Government.” –American Mercury Magazine, 1957

In this New World Order the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands.”
-Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, apparently printed by the ‘La Revue de Paris’, page 574, June 1, 1928

“The Bolshevist Revolution in Russia was the work of Jewish brains, of Jewish dissatisfaction, of Jewish planning, whose goal is to create a New Order in the world. [a New World Order - sound familiar??] What was performed in so excellent a way in Russia, thanks to Jewish brains, and because of Jewish dissatisfaction and by Jewish planning, shall also, through the same Jewish mental and physical forces, become a reality all over the world.” – THE AMERICAN HEBREW, September 10, 1920

This is a film I created after driving all over Los Angeles for many days taking photographs, and researching iconic cinema locations. What appears in this film is the end result. A whirlwind tour around the various locations around the city of Los Angeles and photographs of how they appear today compared with how they appeared on the cinema scenes.

Click here to see more photos of the cinema locations.

This is a video I created to help publicize a criminally underrated masterpiece. Alfonso Cuarón’s amazing dystopian vision “Children of Men” was completely ignored by Universal and dumped quietly at the box office despite glowing praise from critics. I made this short to help generate more buzz behind this overlooked masterpiece.

Click here to read more of the press reaction from our grassroots viral campaign.

Fans Build Oscar Buzz Online
By JAMIN WARREN, Wall Street Journal
January 13, 2007; Page P2

Despite critical praise, the futuristic infertility drama “Children of Men” has grossed only about $14 million. Some worry that Oscar voters will overlook the film as they submit their nominations, due Saturday.
[Clive Owen]

But a five-minute Internet film lobbying for the film’s nomination gained quick popularity this week. Made by 28-year-old Los Angeles student Blair Erickson last Saturday, the video has been praised on popular Web sites like Digg and Defamer. “I was blown away that I hadn’t heard anything” about the film, he says.

Bolstered by the spread of video-editing software and the emergence of video-sharing sites like YouTube, amateur video editors’ work is becoming commonplace. Last fall, fans created tribute videos for candidates for college football’s Heisman Trophy.

Universal Pictures, which released the film, heard about the video last week and wasn’t involved with making it, says Adam Fogelson, president of marketing.

Says Mr. Erickson: “Getting nominated was not the real goal. Really, I just wanted more people to see it.”

HOW TO FIND IT: Search for “children of men nominated” on YouTube.com.
Write to Jamin Warren at jamin.warren@wsj.com

YouTube comments here.