DFOF has heard something he probably shouldn’t have. He was recently in the UK at a dinner party, where he was lucky enough to sit next to Arabella de Havalah, a producer from the ITV. After too much Wolf Blass Shiraz, she let slip that they have a pilot episode makeover series in the works. It will be hosted by Trinny and Susanna, of what not to wear fame. DFOF was mildly interested. Swopping non trendy viscose for trendy viscose is not really his focus.
But there is more to this. Now this new show won’t be standard TV It will be an experimental hybrid show, with a simultaneous web presence. The ITV are doing the web channel together with Seesmic. Also there may be some sort of second life type simulation. Arrabella mailed me this an early mockup.
A major mobile phone firm will be providing prototypes of a new phone, and these will be used for the filming, apparently the phone is capable of filming and live streaming in HDTV quality.
ITV are also hoping that there will be a lot of blog back channel traffic, and have already set up several twitter users. They are hoping to get the Sartorialist to photo blog the series. Viewers will be encouraged to comment and Arabella mentioned that there would be a voting thing involved too.
The show will also experiment with a new form of advertising placement. ITV have been working with Seesmic to pilot video object tagging. (VOT) This allows objects, for instance, shoes or shirts, to carry virtual tags. when watching via the seesmic player you can actually click on the image real time and it will take you to an online Amazon shop. If this is successful, VOT is likely to find its way into movies and TV shows. The application was built in Israel, I emailed Ur havimeon, the guy who has written the VOT software, and he promised to send me a demo link.
The UK designer Paul Smith will be sponsoring the men’s suits and clothes, with Oliver Sweeney providing shoes. They have also lined up top hairdresser from Tony and Guy.
Because the ITV were working closely with Seesmic, the ITV producers asked if they could look through footage of prominent bloggers, so that they could pick one to use in the pilot show. They were keen to pick someone from Europe.The show will expand to the style desert of Silicon Valley in a second series. After looking through lots of clips, Dennis Howlett is one of the finalists for the pilot series. ITV secretly filmed Dennis and the other contestants on the conference circuit. You can view clips of the pre-takes, and you will be able vote between Dennis, Simon, and Paul. Only one will make it on the show. You can see the clips here. -
oh dear – I nearly wet myself with a visual of Dennis in a makeover reality show … oh the possibilities!
I am sure throwing out the Blue Monster shirt will cause a wonder stream of profanity. Luckily on Seesmic it won’t need to be bleeped out, looking forward to it.
I love that phrase, a “wonder stream of profanity” – very visual.
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