Seven Finalists to Compete for Babelgum Pixel Pitch Award of £6,000

Power to the Pixel has announced the seven finalist teams selected for the Pixel Pitch on 15 October 2009. One winning team will walk away with the Babelgum Pixel Pitch Award of £6,000. Projects were chosen from 120 submissions representing 14 countries. 

The Pixel Pitch is a ground-breaking new pitching forum for cross-media film projects, to be held at RSA House in London as part of Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Film Forum at this year’s London Film Festival. The seven teams will each have ten minutes to present their cross-media project to an esteemed international jury in front of a public audience. Jurors will offer 20 minutes of feedback and later meet one-to-one with the teams.  The projects are in various stages of development, but all of them extend their stories to engage audiences across multiple platforms.

Angels, from French production company Happy Fannie, will be presented by producers Matthieu Chéreau and Sandrine Girbal.  The story follows René and Jennifer, two angels who work in a small community in Zone 138, Paris, as they go about their daily lives.  The project will exist as both a film and television series but will also rely on an alternate reality game, websites and online game, which will enable audiences to interact with the angels on a personal level.

Brand New-U is a UK project that will be presented by the award-winning Hot Property team of Producer Janine Marmot and Writer/Director Simon Pummell.  A feature film, web series, live event and game, Brand New-U is a thriller about a man who must kill his old self to create himself anew.  The interactive elements will immerse audiences in a fictitious franchise that helps a person get a better life only by taking another’s.

Dark Forest Project is a bi-national story that will be produced by UK-based Mudlark Production Company in association with New TV, with Rachel Jacobs as Producer and Marcelo Godoy as Director.  Dark Forest engages an environmentally-conscious audience in a game of forest management for mobile and web, using live data from two very different iconic forests: the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Sherwood Forest in the UK.  The game ties into a larger multi-platform documentary, which players can watch online for clues that will help them find ways to save the forests.

Heart of the City is Writer/Director Raafi Rivero’s cross-media project, which will be produced by Karin Chien and Michael Hastings-Black through the US production company Desedo Films.  The story unfolds in NYC’s world of urban teens, a setting that transforms into a funhouse of mysteries and monsters when two teenage friends, Jai and Sash, discover a magic talisman.  Alternate reality components blur the lines between fact and fiction, pulling the audience beyond the story contained in the film, web series and comic book and leading them on an adventure of their own.

Slick is the new cross-media experience from the No Mimes Media US production team of Producer Behnam Karbassi, Writer Maureen McHugh and Design Director Steve Peters.  Slick combines film, live events and interactive technology to create an alternate reality. The audience’s disaffected guide is Ian, who leads them through portals into an alluring parallel world—but each trip increases the odds that this time they won’t be able to find their way home.  The story will manifest in a feature film, web series, live event, game and on mobile devices.

The Alexander Wilson Project is a cross-media film serial from UK production partners Bellyfeel and Visit Sheerport, from Webby award-winning Producer Krishna Stott, Director Philip Shotton and Writer Richard Davis.  The Alexander Wilson Project is an interactive thriller for young adults and culture vultures of all ages, which seamlessly mixes daily video clips, interactive gameplay and alternate reality game techniques to create moments of shocking revelation and suspense that spread across platforms and into audiences’ lives.

Third Rail is the new project from the award-winning US company Exit Strategy, set up by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman. A murder mystery set on a New York City subway, the project will premiere as a web series, take the shape of a feature film and engage audiences through an innovative alternate reality game.  Third Rail aims to be the first whodunit launched simultaneously on all platforms, spurring on a global audience to try to solve the mystery of the killer’s identity.

To learn more about these projects first hand, buy your ticket to The Pixel Pitch on 15 October 2009 from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm at RSA House.  Tickets are only £15.  See who the jury are and buy your tickets to this exciting event here.