Wednesday 14 April 2010
Creativity and the crowd
Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.
The Johnny Cash project has been blogged about a lot recently, not least by Melex from BBHlabs yesterday. It is a staggering project and one of the most attractive crowdsourcing projects to date. Even more ambitious is Star Wars Uncut, which released a teaser trailer this week. That project has recreated the entire Star Wars New Hope movie in 15 second chunks.
In both cases the crowd has been used to collectively create something. However it teaches us some things about when crowdsourcing works best.
1. It is something people are passionate about.
Both Johnny Cash and Star Wars have legions of devoted fans who are happy to spend time and energy devoted to honouring their heroes.
2. It is Individual
Each individual in the crowd in these projects is given a very specific task, which is relatively easy to create and becomes part of the project as a whole. Crowdsourcing in which every person is meant to offer a solution to the whole problem, and the best aspects are then picked out (such as Crowdspring logo design), tend to be less successful.
3. The project is a recreation
This is controversial, but do these work mainly because the initial creativity didn't start in the "crowd"? It was composers or artists or directors. The crowdsourcing element is secondary and just allows more people to become a part of that original piece of work, rather than creating something entirely new. Thoughts?
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2 comments:
Interesting post.
I agree point 1 is an absolute must. Crowd sourcing needs to basically provide an outcome that's worth peoples efforts. And of course this works best when those people offered the chance to become truly part of something they already love. Makes it a bit tricky for brands to harness the same levels of input though.
Point 2 also makes sense - it seems that handing everyone their own piece of the jigsaw that isn't too complex means they'll dive straight into it without feeling overwhelmed.
Not sure I'm with you on 3 though, I think that, if driven well, there is definitely scope for projects to head in new directions creatively and become their own animal...
By the by I'm ashamed to admit my Cash frame is utter wank!
Thanks for the comment James, and well done for doing a frame- Despite it being incredibly simple to do I have failed to even attempt it. FAIL.
Anyway- I probably agree that my point 3 was a bit harsh. I suppose it just links back to point 1 that if people are passionate you will get great results, and it is arguably harder to get people passionate about a project from scratch than for recreating their favourite film/song.
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