"My Little Red/Green Coat" is an interactive musical short film.
It's a short film: it runs about 4-6 minutes.
It's a musical: it's entirely sung through.
It's interactive: at pivotal moments in the story, the viewer makes choices for the protagonist that impact how the story unfolds.
It was shot on a single Canon 5D with a couple of Canon prime lenses over three long, cold New York winter nights. Music was tracked, mixed and mastered in bedrooms and living rooms in Harlem, Queens and Brooklyn. Total cost of production was under $5,000.
"My Little Red/Green Coat" utilizes proprietary technology developed by Eko, an interactive storytelling platform that lets you control the story.
Why?
"My Little Red/Green Coat" is an experiment in cross-pollinating musical theater and the 21st century. It tells a story using both contemporary musical theater form and convention (characters sing to each other; music accompanies action and informs emotional content) and modern digital content innovation.
We (the creators and collaborators involved with this project) feel like we hear a lot about the Internet as a bad thing. It destroys attention spans, we are told, it encourages a culture of "remix" at the expense of original creative thought, and it stands at its heart in opposition to the continued flowering of human artistry.
We think the Internet is neither good nor bad, just a canvas, to be used as its artists see fit.
We hope “My Little Red/Green Coat” contributes a small piece to a much larger conversation about how 21st century technology affects our hearts and minds, and how our hearts and minds affect 21st century technology.