Jason is a talented usability specialist with over 12 years of interactive design experience in software, web, mobile, and device design. He has extensive experience in all phases of user-centered design– Exploratory, Generative, and Evaluative – leading, coordinating, and conducting usability activities; designing and evaluating user interfaces, and managing projects.
Jason was the lead designer for Nokia's MOSH, a mobile content sharing network, and the recent redesign of ABCNews.com. Jason has led projects for Vogue, ABC, Nokia, Monster, Orange, CNN, ESPN, NPR, MTV, and the BBC.
Jason has over a decade of film & TV experience. He is proud to have worked on some of the best straight to video horror films to come out of the 1990s– Necronomicon, Return of the Living Dead III, and Leprechaun 2– just to name a few.
Jason worked as a broadcast designer with Varitel on projects ranging from ILM Commercial productions Clio Award winning "First Union" commercials, to Eidos Interactive's "E3 Video Wall."
Jason is an award-winning screenwriter, and an actor. Jason has had 2 feature screenplays optioned, and numerous short films produced. He is the head writer of the interactive soap opera, podOpera Brooklyn.
Blog:
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Is it wrong of me to be happy that Quarter Life "bombed"
Especially since I write for an interactive online soap opera, and I'd love to get it picked up by a network (or I guess, more appropriately, cable network) and QL's performance will definitely affect how the industry views the potential of online series.
QUARTERLIFE debuted on NBC with a 1.6 rating and a 4 share in the 18-49 demographic, pulling in only 3.86 million viewers. It finished well behind ABC and CBS for the hour and viewers trailed off in the second half of the show. Creator Marshall Herskovitz said the show “bombed” and that it “shouldn’t have been on a network to begin with.” He thinks cable is a more appropriate outlet for the show.
I'll be speaking on 2 panels at South By South West:
PANEL NAME: Video Production for the Web & Mobile Devices - Saturday, March 8th - 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM
MODERATOR: Hank Blumenthal
DESCRIPTION: These days people are watching more and more films on the internet and their mobile devices. How can you keep up with the trends and what can you do to produce the best content for these growing new mediums? Come find out what new technology is out there and how filmmakers are using it to their advantage.
PANEL NAME: Communal Narrative: Exquisite Corpse Filmmaking Room 12AB - Tuesday, March 11th - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
MODERATOR: Meghan Scibona
DESCRIPTION: In 2008, a team of filmmakers will create an exquisite corpse (google 'surrealists') feature film to explore how narrative changes when it is collectively owned. Each team will create a 5 minute segment on film or video. When they are finished, they will pass the last minute of their film to the next team, along with headshots of the actors involved, and an object featured in their segment. No other information will change hands. The next team must incorporate one of these elements into their piece and will have 2 weeks to write, cast, shoot, and edit their segment. The final product will be a feature-length film, in which all of the elements that make up the narrative will be revealed for the first time. The panel, comprised of the major creative filmmaking roles (director, writer, DP, editor, actor) will discuss the changing rules of content creation, new ways to look at content mashups and their implications. The panel will explore issues of ownership in the world of YouTube, creative control, traditional story structure, and what happens to all of these when they are shattered by an arbitrary set of rules that mandate surrender of control.
The New York Times site has an intriguing interactive visualization of box office data for Hollywood films from 1986 to 2007. The height shows the weekly box office revenue and the area of the shape and color represents the film's total gross in the US. One thing it shows is that Oscar nominees built popularity over time while Blockbusters are quick hits.
Just created some banners for Bring Bri Back, a website dedicated to finding Brianna Zunino, a 19 year old Reno resident who was abducted January 20th.
We've recently kicked off Tag, You're It! Here's a description:
In 2008, a team of filmmakers will create an exquisite corpse (google “surrealists”) feature film to explore how narrative changes when it is collectively owned. Each team will create a 5 minute segment on film or video. When they are finished, they will pass the last minute of their film to the next team, along with headshots of the actors involved, and an object featured in their segment. No other information will change hands. The next team must incorporate one of these elements into their piece and will have 2 weeks to write, cast, shoot, and edit their segment. The final product will be a feature-length film, in which all of the elements that make up the narrative will be revealed for the first time.
The panel, comprised of the major creative filmmaking roles (director, writer, editor, actor, DP) will discuss the changing rules of content creation, new ways to look at content mashups and their implications. The panel will explore issues of ownership in the world of YouTube, creative control, traditional story structure, and what happens to all of these when they are shattered by an arbitrary set of rules that mandate surrender of control.
This is a poster for Return of the Living Dead III, one of the many straight to video horror films I worked on during my red period. It's from Ghana. From a fascinating article on Dazed:
In the small west African country of Ghana, a homegrown film industry has sprung up steeped in stories of witchcraft and voodoo. Since the 1980s, video-juju has grown into a home movie phenomenon, wildly popular with Ghanian audiences.
I would TOTALLY see this movie. I bet it's so much better than the one I worked on. ;-)
