My brain melted a bit when I first read about Purefold - a new addition to the Blade Runner pantheon. Everyone already knows Blade Runner is the single greatest film to grace the cyberpunk genre. Killer source material, killer setting, killer characters, killer style - and killer replicants. It really can't be beat. Blade Runner: Final Cut is the only thing in recent history that can even be compared to the original. I don't think anyone was expecting BR to get turned into a franchise. Thank God for the internets! I guess franchise is not the most appropriate term for the beast that is Purefold, though. An appropriate term for it doesn't really exist yet. One will have to be invented.
Here's where the brain melting comes in: Purefold will be a series of webisodes set in the Blade Runner universe! Cool, right? Each short will be 5-10 minutes long and directed by the hottest up-and-coming directors out there. Want more? The content of the shorts will be open to influence from fan feedback generated through discussions over at friendfeed. That's been done, right? Here's the whammy: it will all be created under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 liscence! As soon as this sucker hits the web, it will be COMPLETELY FREE AND LEGAL to download it, remix it, and repost it. Fuckin' super rad!
Free access to the finished material isn't just a marketing gimmick, though. Piracy is part of the business model! It's being pushed as a new type of product placement (of sorts). Coke could run in and re-edit the thing so every background actor is sporting a can of Coke Zero. iPod could come in and turn every character into a silhouette cast against an array of fruity colors. Analog Medium could jump in and slap our url on every electronic marquis and hover car bumper. The possibilities are endless. The only requirement is that any product resulting from the original material must also be free to use. The whole mindboggling venture was conceived by Ag8 and is being launched by Free Scott - the joint entertainment venture between Ridley Scott and Tony Scott.
There's one little catch: due to licensing issues with Blade Runner's original source material (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick) - nothing can be pulled directly out of the original film. There won't be any mention of Dekker, Edward James Olmos won't be creeping people out, and I don't think replicants will even make it into the series. Purefold's timeline will run from 2011 to 2019 - the lead up to everything we see in the film. Still, the director of Blade Runner is taking us back to that unforgettable universe 25+ years after it was first translated to the screen, and he's piping it straight into the vast sea of shared information that has, in the meantime, become our lives. How cyberpunk is that?
- Read the press release on Ag8.com
- Help contribute to the shorts by discussing on FriendFeed
UPDATE: tomhimpe said... "Thanks for a great post! Regarding the product placement: we're staying far away from traditional product placement techniques, as it's not a very interesting way for brands to get involved, and it spoils the fun for the audience. Instead, we're looking at featuring prototype future products and services. Purefold is there to uncover what the audience wants from the future, and what brands are up to in the next few years."
Coming Attractions: Purefold
