If you’ve ever wanted to be a film producer, here’s your chance.

BLAST is the film, and it follows a team of cosmologists as they journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic to launch a unique telescope on a massive NASA high-altitude balloon.

In an interesting example of how technology is transforming the independent film world, BLAST is opening itself up, via ArtistShare (the first film to do so on ArtistShare), to interested participants on several levels.

If you want to be Executive Producer, $150k gets you there. Want to participate on other levels, from $50k down to $19.95? No problem: There are a total of nine levels of participation.

Hema, an “international retail organisation with stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany,” is getting a lot of attention for this product page on their site. (If you’re on AOL, the link might not work; try IE or Firefox.)

I’m generally not a fan of Flash, since it’s so often used poorly, but this is done with a nice bit of self-deprecating wit. And anything that shows up in my inbox as often as this has over the past week makes me wonder how many extra Web sales it’s generating.

Tying up another year-end loose end, here’s a PDF link posted to the Experiential Marketing Forum a few weeks ago. It’s from Contagious, which describes itself as “a quarterly intelligence briefing … [that] identifies the ideas, trends and innovations behind the world’s most revolutionary marketing strategies.”

The PDF presents their “Most Contagious of ’07” and is, as “L” (one of the Men In Black?) says on the EMF forum, “a great read if you want to know what was considered as the crème de la crème of 2007 in innovative marketing strategies from all channels.”

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
—Albert Einstein

Marketing Sherpa’s annual Marketing Wisdom guide is out. It’s a free PDF download, an annual must-read and you can get it here.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re looking for practical online marketing tips born of experience, here’s 101 of them … free.