hitRECord and Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Crowdsourcing Talent

He’s come a long way since the 3rd Rock From the Sun. You might notice he is everywhere: in every movie, TV appearances, the Internet. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the “it” man of the hour.

Gordon-Levitt came into my radar, no, not just because he’s Robin (see The Dark Knight Rises) but because of a Wrap post that reminded us he once had a lull in his career. Yea, I didn’t believe it at first, either. Especially when there is a dedicated fan page calling him the coolest actor of 2014.

When you read the Wrap article, it shows what he did to get out of his funk. There is a good lesson in this man’s career for all of us.

We don’t have to be an A-list actor or Internet star to do some of the things he’s done. All of the tools and creativity are at our own fingertips. Just click on a new link and put in the right search tools and — whola! Your future is now.

Pay close attention to Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord. It is a crowd-sourced production company he founded. Think of it as a free business plan to marketing and engagement and you don’t need a big budget, or any budget, to initiate it. He has produced an Internet TV show that utilizes on-stage material, pulls the audience into the production, culls his following for content creation, and every element distributes the end result at the same time it is live. That is interaction at its best. The Huffington Post calls it The Art of Collaboration.

It's genius. Get the audience invested in your project by pulling them in as storytellers. And yes, they do get paid.

You have to admit, that’s as cool as Batman.

Virtual Reality Theater

It may not look pretty from the outside, but on the inside, it freaking rocks.

Virtual reality isn't a trend. It's here to stay, so entertainment companies better get used to the idea of retooling some of their storytelling to fit the VR cinemas that are popping up all over the world.

Some of you may have thought 3-D was cool, however, 360-D is much cooler. It is like experiencing the story from the inside.

While VR may change the way cinemas are built, it likely won't replace the movie theater as we know it. Retrofitting a room for this type of viewing won't be too expensive, but it's still not that cheap to convert the movies. But what this technology has done is opened up the creative playing field to stretch the boundaries of storytelling, to make the audience a part of the story first-hand.

Vivid VR is scheduled to open on July 16. It is going to be the first virtual reality theater in North America.

The entertainment industry is slowly adapting and creating VR content, but it will be some time before a VR full-length feature film is considered mainstream.

I predict that we will see this platform evolve a lot more by then. Eventually, there won't be a need for those dumb-looking glasses.