HTML5 and the future of the web: Edgar Wright on BrandonGenerator.com The latest project is called Brandon Generator, and it's got the starriest cast yet. Written by Edgar Wright, the director behind the award-winning Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it's narrated by Julian Barratt, of The Mighty Boosh, animated by Marvel and Lucasfilm illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards and has music from David Holmes. Wright says that what excited him most was Microsoft's open brief simply to "do something that was highly interactive." "I liked the idea of working with an unknown co-writer - the web users - and I very quickly came up with Brandon Generator," he says. Brandon is a writer suffering from writer's block who passes out after drinking too much coffee: when he wakes up he finds himself surrounded by the fruits of creativity he doesn't remember. Viewers are invited to submit their thoughts on what those writings might look like, and using a mixture of comic-book style animation, video and sound, the site displays some of their suggestions. Wright says that Brandon's problems with inspiration are somewhat like his own. Brandon has this amnesia blackout - he wakes up and he's written something he doesn't remember, he's drawn something he doesn't remember, his phone's got voicemails on it when it hasn't rung for months previously, and we asked visitors to the site to submit what they thought he might have written or drawn or heard on his phone. Within 48 hours we had hundreds, and often from people who hadn't done "creative writing" since they were at school." Wright points out that while the story is enabled by technology, users shouldn't be thinking about how clever the gadgets are. Over the next three episodes, the site will directly use some of the entries submitted. In fact, the main technological input has been that which has allowed all the collaborators, who live in different cities around the world, to design the site in the first place. Key to the story, however, is Wright's idea that users watch a film on their computers, "but end up looking at someone else's desktop." It's a conceit that he describes as "slightly" self-referential. It should fit in perfectly online.