Five things on Friday [on Saturday] #125

Things of note for the week ending Friday May 22nd, 2015.

Things of note for the week ending Friday May 22nd, 2015.

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This isn’t a thing to be a big enough thing on its own but I’m super interested in what Hillary Clinton is doing with her Twitter account in the run up to the Presidential election.

Worth keeping an eye on.

OK, shall we?

1. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

MAD MAX FURY ROAD WALLPAPER

So yeah, I saw MAD MAX: FURY ROAD this week (Thursday) at the IMAX (obvs) in 3d (natch) and it was pretty awe-inspiring. Admittedly it should be called MAD MAX: FURIOSA ROAD or even just ‘FURIOSA: THE ONE WHERE SHE MEETS MAD MAX’.

But whatever. The film is EXCELLENT. The cast is fantastic. And the visual spectacle of it all truly is something to behold.

See it big. See it loud.

A true wonder.

2. MOBILE TECH NEWS: IN YOUR EARS
After a short hiatus at the end of 2014 and a time-zone enforced attempt at publishing monthly, the five-star rated mobile tech news podcast, The Voicemail, returns to its usual ’30mins, weekly’ schedule this weekend.

If you like a) mobile tech, b) the sound of my voice, or c) listening to two mates chew the cud about one of their favourite topics; then The Voicemail is for you.

And if you’re not a mobile tech head but know someone that is, be a darl and pass it on x

3. THE CRYSTAL MAZE

START THE FANS PLEASE

Know who this man is? (sit down at the back, Rocky Horror fans) Or what the little thing in his hand stands for/means? No? Then where the hell were you during the 90s?!

If however, the the very sight of this man makes you think of the phrase ‘START THE FANS PLEASE!’ then you’ll understand just how important this awesome piece of reporting from Buzzfeed truly is.

Entitled ‘The Inside Story Of “The Crystal Maze”, The Most Epic Game Show Ever Made’ this piece is a great read for anyone who literally raced home from school to catch the utter randomness on their TVs that was The Crystal Maze.

crystal f

This quote, from Richard O’Brien himself, is wonderful:

“On the first series we had five cameras, two outside the cells and three looking at the game. And the producers weren’t watching the ones outside because they were too busy seeing how the game was playing out. One of the camera operators outside said, “What are we supposed to do, Richard, are we supposed to shoot the backs of their heads?” And I said, “No, no, come over here.”

I just started talking into the camera, about anything. I was just trying to make the cameraman laugh and as soon as I saw the camera shaking on his shoulders I’d look back at the clock and say, “OK, half a minute to go.”

They didn’t know they had any of these asides until they came to edit the series together, and once they did, they realised how that worked – a quick cutaway of me saying, “They’ll never manage this”, or I’d pull out the harmonica, and unknowingly it added a complicity between me and the audience at home because I was looking straight into the camera. I never did it when the contestants were there, only when their backs were turned.”

Go read the whole thing.

4. TESTING SOCIAL DATA ACCURACY
This post, by my friend and colleague, Daniela Badalan, is a write up on the accuracy of self-reported data vs third party.

So how do you test social data accuracy and how do you decide if third party data might be a better choice to reach your audience across a social platform?

To answer those questions, we’ve done a little test of our own at Social@Neo recently to analyse the accuracy of employment data specifically – as offered by LinkedIn vs. Facebook, against a known data set.

When Daniela told me she was working on this research I was really excited (as the process and the findings are really interesting) and I said ‘You have to blog this!’ and Daniela has. So hurrah and hurrah again.

To me this is the first scratch on a much broader itch of research that could be triggered across our entire group both at a regional and global level.

Check out the methodology and findings yourself, I’m sure Daniela would love to hear from you.

5. CULTURAL BLEEDING

story influence

The headline above is taken from a piece that appeared on Vox earlier this week. We’ll come onto the specifics of the article shortly but reading it prompted me to return to a broader theme that I’ve been noodling on for a little while now; that of the influence of real world events (and the subsequent hopes and fears they bring about) on both the story telling industry (read: ‘Hollywood’) and moreover, popular culture as a whole.

After watching TRANSCENDENCE, EX_MACHINA, and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON in the space of about a month, I read up on artificial intelligence (see more at item three back in FTOF #112) and, while ‘killer robots come to earth/get invented by man and then attempt to destroy the world’ isn’t exactly a new trope, the prevalence of the theme on today’s science [near]-fiction cannot be ignored.

So it was with great interest that I ‘discovered’ the article in the above image. Analysing everything from Sam Raimi’s 9/11 adjusted original SPIDER-MAN through to the destructo-porn of MAN OF STEEL, it is a well-constructed critique of our recent obsession with the superhero genre and overall probably the best thing I’ve read this week.

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Bonuses are all in the medium of Medium –

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Whatley out.

 

 

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Author: James Whatley

Chief Strategy Officer in adland. I got ❤️ for writing, gaming, and figuring stuff out. I'm @whatleydude pretty much everywhere that matters. Nice to meet you x