After visiting the faceless website, we noticed the Lotus logo which directly links you to the cars website. All this for a car no one can afford?

[via dlisted]

Octagon says it'll be in San Diego on July 24th through the 27th, and all us indoor kids know those dates are obviously Comic-Con. What does Dharma have in store for the con, and more importantly why are some of these volunteer positions unpaid? I can see skimping on paying the mini-bus driver, but the scientists?

On the viral site, it explains that there's a new research project coming up and Dharma will need many people to do research and assist in unpaid positions. Methinks this may be how ABC will secure their summer interns this year. Or at least find a group of innocent victims to do their viral marketing bidding.

Jobs Listed:
Meteorologists
Parapsychologists
Zoologists
Physicists
Mathematicians
Botanical Researchers
Engineers
Builders
Drivers
Health Care Workers
Communication Specialists
Neuroscientists
Janitors
Engineers
Biologists
Astrophysicists
Ex-Military
Electricians
Vets
IVF Consultants
Teachers
Architects
Ichthyologists
Transport Mechanics
Immunologists
Nurses
Illustrators
Auditors
Minibus Drivers
Recycling Coordinators
Aeronautical Engineers
Horticulturists
Dentists
[Octagon Recruiting]

More underwater black and whites, possibly from Sub-4767? Could Sub. be short for submarine? Perhaps this is where the unidentified object landed that audiences' saw crash into the ocean in the corner of the final Coney Island scene. What if the new Cloverfield 2 took a page from The Abyss? That would leave little room for handycam work.

Most of the conversation is blacked out but a nicely placed, "ATSUMI: It went after them," followed by a few "(screaming)" moments still gives the impression of a monster attack.[Filmofilia]

Avery writes:

The videos I created, which eventually culminated into the music video for 'Drone' the musician are all inspired by the original photos. I myself am totally unsure as to the origin of the images beyond what I already known.. i.e. anonymous witnesses . . .

Since then, I have been accused of being the originator of the whole drone saga, and the photos were in fact just a viral campaign to promote the eventual video. This is definitely NOT the truth. In a way, I wish it had been, because that would make me some kind of viral genius, and I'd be in completely the wrong job lol.

I was involved in the discussions on OMF, Alien casebook, and other places for months, and the whole thing just reached a real frustrating deadlock between the believers and the non believers.. or real/hoax argument. I'd made my point until I was blue in the face, and was met by people telling me that the CG I had created was no where near as good as what was being shown in the photos. So I knuckled down and set out to create a video and images that would shut them up. So really, it is the very people who refused to believe CG was capable of creating the images that pushed me on . . .

It is bizarre really. I'm not sure what people think I am, but honestly, I am just a normal guy who does 3D graphics for a living. I pay my bills, have a girlfriend, a dog, and am currently looking at doing a bit of decorating around the house.

This leaves us with the still-burning question: Whose viral marketing campaign is this? And what are they trying to sell us?

Here's a closeup up the ship.

And here are a couple schematics from "anonymous."



Please do let this be from the upcoming X-Files movie. Or even better, some other movie that I haven't heard about yet.

UFO Reports Draw National Attention to Capitola [San Jose Mercury News]

A promoter named Warren Betts with Fox Pictures writes in his story pitch to Anonymous:

Generally, I cover the world of science and technology and publicize movies with those themes, but this is a very intriguing story and in the film the characters use very sophisticated technology and optics in trying to capture this apparition on film. Next year a Japanese company is introducing the first camera (very expensive) that will allow photographers to shoot in the invisible light spectrum. This might make a very powerful tool for understanding this phenomenon and the possible scientific causes. The public is very interested in this subject and I wanted to check with you and see if you might be interested in hearing more about this? Would this possibly be something you would be interested in covering on your pages?

Look, I have no problem with product tie-ins or goofy expensive shit that people buy when they like a movie. Hell, I have a ton of ridiculously expensive kaiju dolls — some of them are from the 1970s, and who knows what they'd be worth on Ebay. But nobody sold me those dolls pretending that they were somehow a "scientific" method of making Gamera come hang out with me, or helping me reach my dead mother. Pretending that something unscientific from a horror movie IS science in order to sell people movie tickets and expensive cameras is, as Penn and Teller would say, bullshit.

And it's the crappiest kind of viral marketing, too.

Hewlett Packard used a service called PayPerPost to pay bloggers to create posts or viral videos to promote Hewlett Packard's new digital camera. One woman had her children smash a Fuji camera with a hammer, filmed it, and put it on YouTube. The video didn't actually catch on virally, but did represent a strange and disturbing new phase in the evolution of advertising. A woman who clearly just wanted to feed her kids actually used her kids in a specious ad campaign in order to earn cash. This isn't the only time companies have tried this kind of stunt — paying bloggers a pittance to develop advertising for rich advertising firms — and it's bound to become more popular as more people get their entertainment via places like YouTube. In fact, Hewlett Packard had a much more successful viral ad campaign two years ago, in which people playing "finger soccer" on their desks at work and uploading the vids to YouTube were eventually outed as part of an ad campaign to make HP seem as cool and fun as Apple. By the time the outing happened, however, hundreds of people had spontaneously joined the "finger soccer" campaign just for fun, not realizing that the videos they uploaded were part of a viral advertising effort.

Another recent ad campaign that tried to use Web communities to generate artificial buzz was internet hardware manufacturer Cisco's "human network" campaign. You may remember seeing the phrase "human network" in Cisco ads, but Cisco wanted to do more than create a slogan. They wanted people to start using the phrase "human network" as everyday slang for the internet — the idea, I think, would be to cement a connection in people's unconscious minds between Cisco, the internet, and a kind of Utopian "human network" (which Cisco hardly is, given that its technology is what makes the Great Firewall of China possible). According to digital marketing blog ChasNote:

Since the "human network" isn't yet a well-defined phrase, [Cisco] enlisted thought leaders to volunteer their own definitions, without guidance from Cisco or Ogilvy. Contributors included a handful of FM authors, such as Boing Boing's David Pescovitz, 43Folders's Merlin Mann, Metafilter's Matt Haughey, GigaOM's Om Malik, Wi-Fi Networking News's Glenn Fleishman, Newsvine's Mike Davidson, XYZ Computing's Sal Cangeloso, TechCrunch's Mike Arrington, Searchblog's John Battelle and Make's Phil Torrone. These authors penned their thoughts and plugged them into Cisco ads on their own sites. The ads then invite readers to visit a Cisco landing page that hosts definitions from other thought leaders and gives them an opportunity to vote for a favorite. If they don't see a definition that gets it right, they can also click to the "human network" page at Wikia (a collection of freely-hosted wiki communities built on the same software as Wikipedia) to edit the definition there.

Why are these campaigns a harbinger of things to come? First of all, they are directly engaged with a form of media — social networks — that are only likely to grow bigger as time goes on. Advertising can't only be those little tiny Google ads that go up the side of the page, and advertisers are going to do everything they can to become part of the content on a YouTube or Facebook so that they are more closely woven into the fabric of those networks. After all, you go to YouTube to see wacky videos, not to read the ads. So if advertisers can infiltrate the videos and make you watch their stuff, it's as if you've voluntarily tuned into a TV ad.

This is more disturbing than what I guess you could call traditional advertising mainly because a lot of it is extremely misleading. Ads that are "teasers" are one thing — you know, putting some cool phrase or image out there, only to reveal that it's an Altoids ad three weeks later. But ads that pretend to be real endorsements from regular people? That hide their corporate sponsorship, and use the ideas of underpaid people? It's like turning YouTube into a marketing sweatshop. Advertising dystopia, here we come.

Each of the 28 contestants in the contest - visualized by Mike Miller, a somewhat controversial former DC Comics artist - will be posting "confessionals" about the unfolding contest as it goes on, written by different writers from the Wild Cards books. Kevin Andrew Murphy, whose first character (Rosa Loteria) is already offering gossip about her fellow contestants, promises that if readers ask questions of certain characters, they may just answer:

Of course, the contestants are all busy with challenges on the show, but who knows, some of them might answer.

American Hero [Wild Cards Books.com]

Our evil video tool cut off the credits from this video, alas. So here they are. Starring: Jeff Grace and Blaise Miller. Directed by: Todd Berger. Written by: Jeff Grace. Produced by: Kevin Brennan and Jeff Grace. Cinematography: Helena Wei. Edited by: Todd Berger. Music: Kevin MacLeod. Production Assistant: Derrick Guyton. [The Vacationeers]

Found via a flashing red dot next to the "Under Construction" on the official movie teaser site, the cams are frustratingly difficult to adjust. One out of four cameras is always "offline," but you can hit refresh to view it. And here are the secret settings:

• Camera #1: 564
• Camera #2: 125
• Camera #3: 955
• Camera #4: 289

Writes the reliable TrekRumors:

Despite the on-set media blackout, sources close to the Star Trek production have let slip an exciting tidbit: geek icon Kevin Smith and his frequent on-screen companion Jason Mewes will be appearing in a brief on-screen cameo as two ensigns operating under the command of Montgomery Scott. While Smith's character will maintain his trademark silence, Mewes will be heard asking Scotty "What the hell is a bairn? If it's a slutty chick, can I f**k her?"

Smith has frequently referred to the Star Wars films in his movies, so his Star Trek-related appearance is well worth noting.

Oh, alright, that may not be entirely true. And, for that matter, neither is the rumor about Klingons in the new movie being a spacefaring race of Mexicans to make their portrayal closer to that of the original TV show. Or the one about Scotty having an Irish accent this time around to shake up the franchise. In fact, none of the rumors on the site - currently posting an entirely new, entirely fictitious, item about the movie every day - have any basis in truth. But nonetheless, somewhere, JJ Abrams is thanking the internet for keeping people talking about his movie without having to do anything himself.

Trek Rumors

For one thing, the synopsis gets enough stuff right that it seems to come from someone who actually had seen the movie. Even the most obsessive fan wouldn't have known those details back when this review got posted. Then there's the fact that it spends so much time referencing viral marketing crap, like the Japanese Slusho! drink and the evil Tagruato Corporation. Again, an obsessive fan might have thrown that stuff in, but it looks more like someone trying to keep up the dizzy dance of viral marketing a little while longer. We love the part where the faker swears he/she doesn't work for Bad Robot, J.J.'s production company.

The question is, how much does it cost to pay someone to post fake spoilers on IMDB? We're curious! Does anybody know?

The rest of the viral footage is pretty boring, especially if you don't speak Spanish, Italian or German. The gist is that the drilling platform belongs to a shadowy Japanese corporation called Tagruato (which is by no means a real Japanese name.) There's also a new viral site from a fake environmentalist group called TIDO that opposes Tagruato's deep-sea drilling. TIDO is suspected of having destroyed the drilling station somehow, but denies responsibility. Here's more footage of the oil rig going under:

Also, J.J. Abrams' hard-working interns updated the MySpace page for Rob, the movie's main character. The new updates confirm that Rob is moving to Japan, to work for the company that makes Slusho!, the drink featured in the movie. (Any guesses what mysterious company that might be?) I have a feeling most of this backstory will only end up being referenced tangentially in the actual movie, and the little references will add an extra layer of meaning to the handful of people who followed all these clues down their various ratholes.

Update: Commenter CAPN_MARRRRK points out that you can see the video in English here. Some of the shaky cam footage turns out to be a camera phone.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the Joker (who also is the central baddie in the upcoming movie) goes nuts in this film and dehydrates the world leaders at the United Nations, turning them into piles of dust. Luckily, Batman and Robin save the day, but screw things up a bit when they rehydrate everyone: everyone now speaks the wrong language. Hilarity! The dynamic duo then head off, leaving the leaders to deal with the problem on their own.

I'm surprised it's taken someone this long to do a Batman mashup with the old series, but this one made me laugh pretty hard. Especially the "Like me!" shot. I don't know why I'm finding Cesar Romero speaking with Heath Ledger's voice so amusing, but chalk it up to fumes and crossed wires. If someone could make us a some high-quality Heroes, or better yet, Misfits of Science meets meets X-Men mashups, we might be okay with the current state of television.

Although the acting by "Sam," whose significant other was one of the flight attendants on the vanished flight, is more than a bit hammy, the site creators have built a lot of clues and games into his conspiracy website. You'll be visiting other sites, doing research, zooming in on photos for clues, calling phone numbers and generally driving yourself bonkers until Lost returns to the airwaves on January 31st.

Cheesy as it may be, this is as close to Lost as we've come in a long, long time, and it is successfully making us drool for new episodes. Chances are that the writer's strike might make alternate reality games and viral marketing like this the only teat we'll have to suck from until they start filming new episodes. Here's to hoping I'm not trying to track down Cylon DNA by visiting different websites in three months time if Battlestar Galactica doesn't come back soon.

[MovieMarketingMadness]