Blade Runner and Alien director Ridley Scott‘s RSA Films is launching a series of short films set in the near future, sponsored by big brands and inspired by online conversations. The project, labelled Purefold, is a joint venture with RSA’s new Free Scott division and ad agency digital design agency Ag8. WPP, Aegis and Publicis are already on board to help the scheme find brands to be involved. Release.

Purefold is described as an “open media franchise” and has the rather grand aim of answering “what does it mean to be human?” But the short, inter-linked, sci-fi styled films are real and will be created by RSA’s global pool of directors—and the film-makers will use the web as their inspiration, taking chatter from FriendFeed and turning it into plotlines and dialogue. The clips will be distributed via YouTube on a Creative Commons basis. The Leftbrainrightbrain blog reports that there will be seven interlinked storylines and the project wants 10 brands to come on board.