My love affair of with Joseph Gordon-Levitt began a couple of months back. Sure, we’ve all seen him in Third Rock from the Sun, and he’s hosted Saturday Night Live and done lots of cool stuff. But then he released this adorable video of him and Zooey Deschanel singing “What Are You Doing New Year’s,” a video which looked like, for all extents and purposes, it was shot on on one of their iPhones. It’s charming and immediately went viral. Then I watched 50/50, which was a really great movie, in which he gives a very believable and credible performance as a young man battling cancer.

But then I found out about hitRECord, and my respect for the man now knows no bounds. It’s a project he has spearheaded which takes artistic collaboration to the next level. People create projects and upload them to the site, and then other people work on them, add their own spin, and send them back. Collaborations include music, film, writing, illustrating, animation and photography. How cool is this??

The best thing about it, is that collaborators get 50% of the profits if the project gets sold and makes money. And it has been incredibly successful, spawning a book, a CD, a short film festival, and a live concert, where folks bring their video cameras and help to create new collaborations on the spot.

Here’s what Dusty Hagerud has to say about hitRECord. He’s the one that told me about it.

I found this an absolutely fascinating new way to collaboratively create for the sake of creating. It’s important to play and as adults we forget that its important to make projects for fun. When you have fun with creating it shows in the work. Now as a member of a creative community we can collaborate globally with so many different types of creatives.

So far I have joined and immediately went through the recent uploads by other users and “Hearted”, which recommends projects, music mixes, monologues, writings, photography, illustrations and animations. Excited and inspired, I bought both books, “Book of Tiny Stories” and “RECollection” which has a DVD of the shorts and a music cd, which I have been listening to for days, as well as the book.

Watching an adaption of “a Modest Proposal” for Jelly Babies grow from a simple monologue to a full on short film project of illustrations, musical score and designs for animations has been so fascinating and I can’t wait to see it at Sundance where hitRECord has made quite a name for themselves over the past two years.

I am so excited to be part of this creative community and can’t wait to see what fruits of labour we can create together.

If any of you are already working on a collaboration with hitRECord, I’d love to hear about your experience.