remixable - posts tagged 'Person of Interest'

Transmedia Talk 36: Alison Norrington at DIY Days

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Transmedia Talk 35: Henry Jenkins at DIY Days LA

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:21:55 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with RSS |Subscribe with iTunes USC provost professor Henry Jenkins joins us at DIY Days LA to talk about introducing new creators to transmedia, and the connection between its study and practice. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media) About Our Guest: DIY Days speaker Henry Jenkins is a Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is also author of several books, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. His upcoming book, with Sam Ford and Joshua Green, is Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Society. He also writes the popular transmedia blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan.

Transmedia Talk 34: SCA Reality

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:32:49 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with RSS |Subscribe with iTunes Jeff Watson from the University of Southern California talks about Reality, a creative game he designed with Simon Wiscombe for students at the university’s School of Cinematic Arts. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) Special Guest: Jeff Watson, co-creator of SCA Reality at USC. From This Episode: USC’s Integrated Media Arts and Practice (IMAP) program. The collaborative production game SFZero Steve Jackson’s Illuminati The card game Fluxx Mary Flannagan’s Grow-A-Game A few of our favorite deals: Spacebound – Deal Page The Game – Deal Page Letters of My Lai – Deal Page

Transmedia Talk 29: Lost Zombies

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:51:32 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with RSS |Subscribe with iTunes Skot Leach, creator of Lost Zombies, talks about crowdsourced film, monetization, and building an online community. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) Special Guest: Skot Leach from Lost Zombies From This Episode: Skot solicits some of the final submissions for Lost Zombies. Max Brooks’ zombie short story collection World War Z. Lost Zombies’ community is hosted by the social network building service Ning Lost Zombies stickers are posted to mark the sites of zombie outbreaks. The ad that Lost Zombies ran on Adult Swim through Google TV Ads. Leach said the site’s traffic jumped from roughly 1,200 visits a day to around 3,500 after airing the ad. Austin’s KXAN reports on the Lost Zombies booth at SXSW Interactive 2009. Dead Inside: Do Not Enter is the Lost Zombies scrapbook. It will be released September 21. Academy Award winning site Star Wars Uncut introduced many audiences to the idea of a crowdsourced film project.

Transmedia Talk 26 – Dave Szulborski Memorial Show

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:19:40 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a podcast covering all things Story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia, Dee Cook, and Haley Moore and looks to shed light on the topic of transmedia storytelling with commentary, interviews and tips on how storytelling is moving into the 21st century. Download | Subscribe with iTunes Mike Monello, Brian Clark, Michelle Senderhauf, and longtime ARG player Roxanne (Enaxor) join us to honor the life and games of indie ARG creator Dave Szulborski. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) Special Guests: Mike Monello, Founder and CEO of Campfire Brian Clark, CEO of GMD Studios Michelle Senderhauf of Dog Tale Media Roxanne, also known as Enaxor From This Episode: Dave Szulborski’s personal site with his biography, game descriptions and puzzles. Dave Szulborski’s book This is Not a Game Varin’s guide to Chasing the Wish Dee’s guide to Dread House EA’s game Majestic Push, Nevada Search4E Legend of the Sacred Urns Art of the Heist Monster Hunter Club Art of the Heist cube word search puzzle, aka The Evil Cube Over the Hedge Puzzle Trail Who is Benjamin Stove The Strange Creatures video from Monster Hunter Club, currently at over 4,700,000 views on YouTube. The Host Cryptid Love, a video from Monster Hunter Club. Dave’s character stringsends at Top Secret Dance Off Dave Memorial Video

Find Out How To Monetize Transmedia Storytelling And ARG On Hollywood 2.0!

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:19:40 GMT

My co-host Rich Silverman (Emmy-winner writer) and I (producer/neurocinema innovator) will tell you how…Welcome to Hollywood 2.0, a new podcast that covers innovation in the entertainment industry.

Subscribe to Hollywood 2.0. Follow Rich and Peter.

Augmented Reality

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:33:10 GMT

Below is a short interview with Fred Steube – Digital Innovation Manager, Cox Target Media/Valpak. I watched him speak on an interesting panel about Augmented Reality at the DMA2010 conference.

What’s your experience with AR?

Our experience with AR includes a Martha Stewart promotion we did with our Valpak coupon envelope that allowed consumers to see if they won a daily prize and to see daily previews for the Martha Stewart show by holding up the envelope to their webcams. Additionally, we did a B2B ad campaign in Ad Age and DMNews that showed Marketers what our product offerings are by holding up a AR marker to a webcam and viewing in 3D.

What are your favorite examples of AR?

Favorite AR experience has to be the Toyota example we showed at DMA and the Coke Zero and McDonald’s Avatar promotions. Also the Mini AR campaign. Anything by Total Immersion (an AR technology developer) is typically very high caliber.

Virtual reality never lived up to consumer’s expectations. Is AR heading in that direction?

AR appears to continue to gain traction along with QR codes, particularly with mobile. The key there is the location based benefit of seeing content that geographically relevant and relevant to what they are looking for.

The word innovative is overused. What is truly innovative?

Innovative is anything that transcends a current way of doing something by being new. It should add value to a key stakeholder. It should break molds and be out of the box; something new and impactful. This can be a product or process.

Elan Lee: The “Rolling Stone” Interview, Part II

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:35:04 GMT

Elan Lee wants you to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience

Thanks to a fortuitous mix of chance and invention, Elan Lee has found himself to be one of the few recognizable names in the transmedia business. With four separate companies (Fourth Wall Studios, edoc laundry, 42 Entertainment, and the “not worth mentioning” collaboration with Jordan Weisman called Myriad Mobile), a handful of patents, and a certain amount of reckless (or naive) experimentation, his projects have helped to define – or redefine – cross platform storytelling in the 21st century.

Last time we talked philosophy. This time we’re down to brass tacks: what works, what doesn’t, and what you do when you’re in the right place at the right time.

[This dude is dropping some serious insights - read closely, and between the lines - and you, Dear Reader, are better off hearing it straight from him. And he's a talker.]

Holy crap! Steven Spielberg walked into my office!

Phoebe: As a maker of ARGs, what are you selling?

Elan Lee: At first, when I personally started this whole crazy thing, it was not even a marketing effort. I can talk about where the first one came from, if that helps?

So, I was doing game design at Microsoft, and one day Steven Spielberg walked into my office…cause… Holy crap! Steven Spielberg walked into my office! And he basically said, ‘So, hey, your boss just bought the rights to my movie A.I. (A.I. Artificial Intelligence).’ And, the sort of fill-in-the-blank part there was that my boss really wants to get into Hollywood, and he bought anything with Steven Spielberg’s name on it. And he had signed us up to do a fighting game, and a racing game, and a gladiatorial combat game, and all of that sort of fell in my lap. And it was like, you get to build all these great games!

I went and watched the movie… Actually, even before watching the movie, we built those games. We actually built an A.I. fighting game for the Xbox, a racing game for the Xbox, and a gladiatorial combat game for the Xbox. And the problem with all those games was that an audience isn’t going to know how those fit together. They’re not gonna understand how the characters kind of move from one game, to the next game, to the next, especially with a franchise where some of them may not have even seen the movie.

So we thought, what we really need is just kind of like, the glue between those properties. So we thought, what if we built a game that didn’t actually live on any platform, it just sorta lived everywhere. And characters could call you, and characters could send you email, and the characters that you saw in one game could hop out of that game into the real world for a while, and you’d play along with them. And then they’d hop into the next game, and that’s episode two. Episode three they’re gonna hop back out into the real world, play with you, and then episode four they jump into the next Xbox game. So we built that, and we called it The Beast, because we didn’t know what else to call it and we thought it would be cool.

No one’s gonna buy these things

Then we saw the movie A.I., and… I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie A.I., but umm, you don’t exactly… It’s a movie about a fake boy who really wants the love of his mom and would do anything to be real, but at the end we realize he can’t actually be real and his heart is broken and he’s buried at the bottom of the sea forever… No one walks out of that movie thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to play the Xbox game!’ right? You’re screwed. So me and my team walked out of the movie and just thought, ‘Oh, we’re so f**ked!’ We have nothing.

So we went back to Redmond and we canceled all the games. We just killed them that day cause we thought, ‘We have no chance, no one’s gonna buy these things.’ But as we’re slashing these games, we kinda realize ‘But that other thing, the glue, that’s still kinda cool. That actually has emotional resonance, and actually fits in really well with the movie, because it’s all about people’s real lives. And their passions and their hatreds and their conflict, and, it’s just gritty and real and awesome.’ And so we thought, ‘Well, we own the rights anyway, so let’s just release that, even though it’s not promoting any of our games.’ Even though it’s not carrying characters from one piece to the next. We built it anyway, so we might as well just launch it. And so we did. And it wasn’t meant to be promotion for the movie… it was meant as a clue for these other Xbox games, which no longer existed. So we had no agenda. I mean, absolutely no agenda.

And after about a month of running it, we kinda realized – this is really powerful. We’re onto something here. And so I went to my boss and said, ‘I wanna build more of these. This is cool, we’ve just entertained millions of people in a way that no one has ever entertained them before.’ And he said, “How much money did it make?” And we said, “Well, it didn’t make any money. It wasn’t supposed to.” And he said, “Well, go build an Xbox game, then.” And I thought…this job kinda blows. So I resigned from Microsoft, and started a company to build more of these things. And that’s even worse, cause now I wanna build these things that make no money…

Twelve hours later, Microsoft called…

Phoebe: What made you think you could form a company on the basis of this model when you knew…?

Elan Lee: Absolute naivete. I was so dumb. I just thought, this is really cool. This feels like more compelling storytelling than anything I’ve ever done. And I wanna just build them. And I can worry about the realities of… probably that I’m going to starve to death doing so. So, me and some friends literally started a company – we each put in a little bit of cash, and spent about twelve hours freaking out because now none of us have any income and we have no clients, and… Holy crap! What do we do now? And twelve hours later, Microsoft called and they said, ‘So, we’ve got Halo 2 coming out, and you guys are the only ones who know anything about the game (cause we were some of the original designers of Halo 1), and how do you feel about marketing it using that crazy A.I. thing you did?’ And we thought, ‘Uhh…Awesome! Okay!’

Phoebe: When you say twelve hours, do you mean literally twelve hours?

Elan Lee: Yes. It was a very tense twelve hours. … It was the silver platter. It was like, ‘Hey, how would you like to do exactly what you set out to do, and make money doing it?’

It was total wild west

Once we realized that there was money in marketing, and that in fact it was the only revenue we could come up with, then we just went full steam ahead with that. And we said, ‘Alright, let’s become a marketing company. And that will let us fund a lot of this research on someone else’s dime. Cause it really was research at that point. I mean, there were no rules. It was total wild west. Who knows what the hell is gonna work? …

So, 42 Entertainment was built as a marketing company. And to answer your question, ‘What were we selling?’ We were absolutely selling promotional materials. We could walk into most marketing firms, most giant studios, and say, ‘Your revenue model is dying. People are learning how to skip commercials, they pay no attention to billboards anymore, they have absolutely no tolerance for banner ads and every day that gets worse. But we just finished two projects in a row that had unprecedented numbers…’ It was a really easy business. I mean, it was such a compelling case that we could make to say, ‘We have a mechanism by which you can entertain someone in a new way.’

If you fast-forward that about seven years, now it’s impossible to launch a movie, or a TV show, or a rock album, or a videogame without an ARG. Everyone’s doing it. Or, at least, what they call ARGs. Because the traditional stuff doesn’t work, and it’s only the tent-pole projects that a company is willing to put so much marketing money into. Those things work, but everything else needs some edge, it needs some hook. And the irony of the whole situation is that ARGs are no longer an edge or a hook. They’re just commonplace now.

“ARGs” is such a stupid term that no one knows what it means

Phoebe: Well, commonplace, I think, to a certain subculture. A certain niche of people that are technologically proficient… I mean, even though I have a media-engaged background, I have never accidentally come across the rabbit hole for an ARG.

Elan Lee: Fair enough. Nor have I. In fact, I’ve never actually played one. So… (He laughs.)

Most marketing companies, at this point, will call whatever it is they’re doing an ARG. Because what they’re doing is basically saying ‘Let’s do traditional marketing, plus a Twitter account. Let’s do traditional marketing, plus a weird interactive website with a flash game on it.’ And they’re calling that stuff ARGs because “ARGs” is such a stupid term that no one knows what it means. So that stuff I think is actually commonplace – the things that they’re calling ARGs I think are commonplace, and most people at least know they exist. Every movie that comes out, you at least know how to find the website, if you wanted to. And if you were to go there, there would be some embedded flash experience, or there would be a link to a Twitter account, or a link to some other weird thing if they’re more elaborate.

An actual ARG, in the sense of what I Love Bees was, or in the sense of what A.I. was, and the few that we did after that…those are not nearly as commonplace. And those are – very much to your point – entertaining the hell out of that same group of hardcore geeks over and over again…

There is no upside to trading time for money

Which is exactly why I resigned from the company. I woke up one morning and realized two very important things: one is that I’m really good at entertaining the hell out of that small group of people, and two is that there is no upside to trading time for money. In other words, I only make money if I put time into this. And the moment I stop putting time into this, I stop making money. And that’s a service industry. That’s not a happy moment for me. I’m very uncomfortable with that.

And so I started–with some friends–Fourth Wall Studios because I wanted to change that. I wanted to not only entertain the same million people over and over again, but I also wanted to build things with permanence to them, so that even once I stopped pouring time into them, they would continue to generate revenue.

And so now what I’m selling – this is the longest answer to your question ever – so now what I’m selling is a true media experience with built in revenue models, established revenue models. We’ve got some that have microtransactions, we’ve got some that we’re building actual TV shows so those have ad sponsored revenue models built in. People already know these. We’ve got some with text messaging revenue models. We’ve got a book coming out that’s got a built in revenue model. All of those things, what we’re essentially selling to the user is…it’s everything you know, but the coolest version of it you’ve ever seen. Here’s a book! You know how to buy a book…here’s the coolest book you’ve ever seen. Here’s a TV show. You know how to watch commercials in a TV show, but it’s the coolest TV show you’ve ever seen. That’s the new proposition: it’s what you’re used to, plus.

It’s just a psychological manipulation

Phoebe: Now I guess what you’re doing with Fourth Wall is a slightly different take on embedding a business model into the delivery of your story, which is clearly a huge evolution from what you were doing with 42. Most of us, when we think about funding an “interactive experience” (for lack of a better term), the introduction of a new business model is often a hard sell. Especially because people in the media industry are trying so many different things and so many of those things are failing miserably.

Elan Lee: Yeah.

Phoebe: And so you go back and look at the marketing model that 42 was using, and you go, ‘OK, but still every marketing person is asking me about ROI and “Engagement”.’ And if I’m only selling the same story, or a different story to the same market, even if those people are fully engaged – which they may be – it doesn’t necessarily translate to selling products.

Elan Lee: There’s a few answers to that. First, let me put my 42 hat on for a second and answer that specific one. Whenever we took on a new client at 42, we would ask one very important question, which is: ‘What are you guys gonna use to judge the success of this project?’ Not, ‘What does success mean?’ but, ‘What do you think?’ And oftentimes, they would answer, ‘Oh, we just want column inches. We just want reporters all over this.’ And so we would tailor things to accomplish that very specific goal. Or they would say, ‘We want to sell movie tickets.’ OK, so we’re gonna tailor that. So, there’s tricks you can use to do exactly that, even if you don’t have a lot of players, you can tailor it to get a sh*t-load of press, or you can tailor it to get massive traffic to a website, even if it’s the same people over and over again, right? You can encourage repeat behavior… So that was one thing that we’d be really clear on: ‘What do you want to get out of this?’ And we’re gonna give you that. And we were very successful at that because it’s just a psychological manipulation…(He laughs.)

It’s not the game that has to be entertaining, it’s the players

The second thing is… Have you ever seen that inverse pyramid of the players?

So, the goal there, what we were always able to say which I think was actually really true, is: If you can build the game that has three core functions – one super hardcore thing that’s gonna keep the players engaged…and it’s gonna be hard and complicated and geeky, and all that’s actually good, cause those are the guys that are going to keep coming back. If you can build one medium engagement thing, so that you can play ten minutes a day–a flash game is a great example of that–then you’re gonna keep that middle group occupied. And, if you can build something that only takes ten seconds, like a really awesome website, something super spooky happens when you’re visiting, or you call a phone number. Then you’re going to get that upper crowd.

When it works right. When all those things are powering each other, what happens is, you get the bottom group entertaining the top. So, the core players are entertaining the medium players, the medium players are entertaining the really casual people. Cause they’re watching, like ‘Oh my god, these guys are going out in hurricanes and answering payphones!’ And you have all that insanity. And what happens is that triangle grows, because people from the top, every once in a while they trickle down to the middle. And people at the middle level start to trickle down to the bottom level. And that bottom level grows when there’s more core players doing more and more and more, the whole triangle grows because now there’s more to be entertained by. And although it looks like a triangle, it’s actually a circle. And if you build it the right way, you can get the player–nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd–you can get these guys to generate the viral spread for you. Because it’s not the game that has to be entertaining, it’s the players that have to be entertaining.

You don’t have to teach your customers how to spend money

Phoebe: So, back to Fourth Wall…and rather than selling somebody else’s product, selling your own original IP [Intellectual Property] in new forms… It sounds like you’ve already experimented with a number of different models, so what have been the most successful? Where do you wanna go?

Elan Lee: The two that have been the most successful so far is actually edoc [that's edoc laundry] clothing company – selling shirts, or clothes, makes a lot of money – and Cathy’s Book makes a lot of money. And I think the reason those two make a lot of money is because they’re established revenue models. If you have to teach someone how to spend money, that’s a loooooong road. So, using those established mechanisms is really good.

We have a lot of other mechanisms. One of the projects that we’re starting to develop right now – actually, the one I’m most excited about – which I can’t say too much about… is… how do I phrase this without totally screwing myself over? OK. (He pauses.) There’s a way that we all behave online. Nope, that’s a bad way to say it… OK. (Another pause.)

Here’s a statement: Marketers spend billions of dollars every year to make television commercials to get you to look at a product. Another statement is: Marketers spend a nearly equal amount to build banner ads to get people to redirect their behavior to a certain URL. To move their eyeballs to a certain URL. I think those are both true statements. OK. We have an experimental revenue model that I’m very excited about, because what it does is it makes part of gameplay moving your eyeballs to very specific websites, over and over and over again. And because that has such tremendous value, I think it’s a revenue model that you don’t have to teach. That you don’t have to teach your customers how to spend money. They just do it. And that has incredible value to marketers.

Let’s call that chocolate and peanut butter

I realize how nebulous I’m being about that, but if you look at it in that very abstract way, there’s something kinda beautiful about that, right? There’s value in people looking at your thing online, and the game is built out of things online, so let’s call that chocolate and peanut butter and put those things together, and build something where everyone wins.

Phoebe: So, if I can summarize: You’re talking about building a revenue model that is based on existing behaviors?

Elan Lee: Correct.

Phoebe: You’ve also had an opportunity with Fourth Wall to explore your own IP, instead of leveraging existing IP. And it seems like you’ve had a lot of opportunity to experiment with different media. Can you talk a bit about that?

Elan Lee: None of those have launched yet. However, we have started the process of writing and selling scripts in Hollywood. Some are television shows, some are webisodes, and some are feature length films. They’re all properties that we wrote in-house. And they’re all properties that have the interactive components baked into the DNA of the property. So, while it is possible to just sit back and watch a TV show…cause that’s not massively broken, and enough people know how to do it.

Lean forward and live in that world

All of the interactive components are an extension of that same experience across your cell phone, across your email address, across your facebook page. And rather than the interactive elements feeling like a marketing thing that was slapped on afterwards, what we’re trying to build – and what’s so exciting – is… When you participate in passive media, when you watch a TV show and watch a movie, you are sitting back. It’s a lean-back experience. And our claim is, in addition to that, the opportunity to then lean forward and live in that world – so that, when you decide to lean back again and watch the characters, they’re just continuing where you left off. My assertion is that that is the future of entertainment.

And getting to work with media where they let us play with that, and fund massive projects geared to not entertain that same million people who look for those marketing projects, but instead geared towards the 30 million people that are going to watch a TV show and then hopefully say, ‘Oh, there’s more? I wanna see what the more is, I wanna see what else there is.’ That’s a much more fun sandbox to get to play in. So, that’s what I’m excited about right now.

I’m sooo happy American Idol exists

Phoebe: Do you think that shows like American Idol, which are scratching surface of some type of audience interactivity – do you think that’s going to help with educating an audience so that they can deal with a cross-device experience?

Elan Lee: Yeah. For sure. I’m sooo happy American Idol exists. And I’m soo happy it’s doing as well as it is. Well, I guess it’s sort of declining a little but…what a run, right? I think that they showed…they took the first and hardest step in this process. They said, ‘For a massive audience, they are not gonna be scared to interact. And we’re gonna teach them over the course of many years how to do it. And we’re gonna reward them along the way, and we’re gonna introduce conflict along the way, and we’re gonna make it part of the experience. Part of the experience of American Idol is picking up another device – a computer or a phone and doing something. And we’re not gonna punish you for that, we’re not gonna make it complicated. We’re gonna make it fun and easy. And that’s the hardest damn step. And they did such a phenomenal job at it! Now, what’s even more exciting is what comes next.

You can just do it. Just do it today, this afternoon.

Phoebe: If I want to grow up and become a “transmedia designer”, what do I do? What’s the path for that?

Elan Lee: Right. Well, the shortest path is build one. What’s really cool about all this stuff is, you can just build one. If you’ve got a microphone and basic HTML skills, or a friend who has basic HTML skills, you can build one.

I think we’re in this phase that I call ‘wild experimentation,’ and no one has any idea what’s gonna work. There are certain lessons out there, but there are no rules. Everything is worth trying. And it’s rapid prototyping, and it’s rapid failure, and it’s wild experimentation. And for anyone who wants to grow up and be a ‘transmedia designer’…there’s no growing up involved. You can just do it. Just do it today, this afternoon. And those lessons that you learn there are what transmedia houses are looking for. Anyone who’s got any experience in this at all is what they’re looking for. But in success, and even in moderate success, people come to you and say, ‘That was awesome! What’s next? What are you going to build next? And can you slap this onto my product? And here’s some development money, and can you build it bigger and better and involve this thing instead?’ There’s quite a boom in this industry right now, because no one’s good at it. And there’s huge potential.

You get to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience

Phoebe: What’s been interesting for me in watching the development of this whole, quote-unquote transmedia environment, has been the role of academia and the media itself shaping the way people understand what it is. I mean even the term “transmedia” is not… I mean, did you coin that term?

Elan Lee: (Shakes his head.)

Phoebe: Right. So, the definitions have influenced what people expect. For example, there seems to be a set of conventions that go along with an Alternate Reality Game. And even within this frame of wild experimentation, it appears that what people are looking for is something formulaic… What do you think of when you think of an Alternate Reality Game? What does “transmedia” mean to you? Or does it have any meaning?

Elan Lee: I think that all it really means is that you get to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience. And the best ones are the ones where you get to define what part of your life that is. I don’t think there’s any formula about what it has to include or what it shouldn’t include. I’m such a huge fan of making people feel like superheroes. I just think that’s the key to everything. And so, if you can get someone to invite your story into their life, and what they’re gonna get in return is to feel like a superhero for doing so…that’s the ultimate transmedia experience. And I hate to define it more than that. I really think that’s the core of it.

Phoebe: More like transcendental media?

Elan Lee: Yeah! That’s a great way to look at it. (He laughs.) Yeah. I mean…I’ve had small experiences watching TV or movies, where I felt like a superhero just voyeuristically, but it wears off immediately. You know where the border of that TV is, and I know if I look to the left it’s not the TV anymore. That’s the wall of my apartment, and that’s the not having that experience anymore. And so transmedia is one where we say, well, the border doesn’t have to be there, the border is wherever I want it to be. And I really believe that’s the future of entertainment.

[But wait! There's more. Next time we'll cover Elan's take on creativity, and what makes him more successful at this than you.]

Elan Lee: The “Rolling Stone” Interview, Part I

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:22:03 GMT

Elan Lee wants you to be a superhero!

[More on that later.]

“I’m trying to define a role in the world that doesn’t quite exist yet.”

A note of introduction: Through the good graces of Lee Sheldon (a game writer/designer and professor with whom I worked during my graduate program), the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, and others at Indiana University, we were able to host Elan in Bloomington, Indiana for a series of talks on the arts of storytelling and game design. I was lucky enough to listen to him speak on these and related subjects, a lot. This three part, “Rolling Stone” style profile/discussion is a mash-up of those talks, a one-on-one interview, and a lot of coffee-fueled conversations–with me and others–over the duration of that visit (and even a couple of follow-up emails).

I should also state that I am now an awestruck fan of his work (the intentions that inform it, even more so), and though I aim to provide some substance, I can’t avoid the occasional out-pourings of puffery that is the hallmark of celebrity profiles. But I guess that begs the question – is Elan Lee even a celebrity?

Elan Lee is Famous

Elan Lee is one of the first individual identities ever associated with Alternate Reality Games, and with the “transmedia” [what do you call it? genre? evolution? debacle? … I’ll settle on…] arena more generally. Along with his fellow 42 Entertainment and Fourth Wall founders, he represents an approach to storytelling and game design that is lauded as the Next Big Thing. He’s the “transmedia” equivalent of Stephen Spielberg (with whom he has, of course, worked). But this gives him a little too much credit. According to Elan Lee, the stories we tell don’t change, it’s the way we tell them that evolves.

The Future of Storytelling

In the early stages of preparation for his TEDxSeattle talk on “The Future of Storytelling,” Elan is obsessed with the image of the horseless carriage, and it’s as an apt metaphor. In the early stages of exploration, the identity of something new is not yet understood or established, so we use the language of the past to intellectually encompass the future. Even further, we use the symbols of the past to iterate what we think will be the future.

Let me be more illustrative: The “Horseless Carriage” is the name for a car in the world of the horse. The “Alternate Reality Game” is the name for a story/game/something whose characters may or may not inhabit physical bodies and whose setting may or may not exist within the boundaries of reality or imagination…in the world that accepts a distinction between those two states.

[Who knew this would get metaphysical so fast?]

The Mercedes F-Class “Horseless Carriage” – new old school

Try Everything

But what does that mean?! Well, according to Elan it means that the field is wide open, and without any hard and fast conventions, we can make anything we want. And it may fail, but that only helps us define this incoming genre for the era where it becomes mundane.

The other half of this, of course, is the participation of the audience. Without an audience that comprehends the mechanisms of cutting and zooming and reverse shots, movies would look inconsistent, and the stories they tell would appear to be nonsensically non-linear and emotionally disconnected.

Such are the frustrations of the “transmedia” designer. We develop vast universes, profound characters, world changing events, the elements of which are constructed in the same way that we acquire narratives in our “real” lives – we see newspaper headlines, watch video clips, monitor facebook pages, and repost twitter feeds. There’s nothing about these activities that appear non-linear or disconnected, and yet, when we make up a story that is absorbed and distributed in these ways, it becomes somehow less easily understood, even though the behaviors stay the same.

“If It’s Not Broken”

Elan’s solution to this is two-fold: 1) talk about what you do in the blandest possible way, and 2) don’t try to fix what isn’t broken. Here’s a factoid that sheds some light on both statements – Elan is now writing TV shows. Don’t be dismayed, he’s bringing a little something new to the table. But only a little. Elan Lee is a pragmatic guy, and this is, of course, pragmatic. If the first car was an Enzo, the local horsebacked posse would have strung up the inventor of that deviltry by his thumbs.

That doesn’t make for very good ratings.

So point two reminds us that we can innovate without intending to spark a revolution, and we’re more likely to change the way people think, what they believe, and how they behave if we nudge them ever so softly, instead of pushing them off the ledge.

And of course, the language in which we talk about what we do has to be consistent with the language that is understood. So if we call something a “comic book” when it’s really an episodic, stop-motion, illuminated epic poem accessed through a fictional character’s Vimeo account, the more traction it’s likely to get with the funders and the audience when it doesn’t sound so avant-garde.

Discussion of the “transmedia” industry, strategic storytelling, and creativity in Part II (7.11.2010)

Elan’s TEDxSeattle presentation

Elan Lee: The “Rolling Stone” Interview, Part I

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:20:15 GMT

Elan Lee wants you to be a superhero!

[More on that later.]

“I’m trying to define a role in the world that doesn’t quite exist yet.”

Elan Lee is Famous

The Future of Storytelling

[Who knew this would get metaphysical so fast?]

The Mercedes F-Class “Horseless Carriage” – new old school

Try Everything

“If It’s Not Broken”

That doesn’t make for very good ratings.

Discussion of the “transmedia” industry, strategic storytelling, and creativity in Part II (7.11.2010)

Elan’s TEDxSeattle presentation

Trans-Canada transmedia: Christopher Bolton’s multi-platform search for identity, sound, and story

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:46:50 GMT

Christopher Bolton is a Canadian writer, producer, and actor, best known for his award-winning comedy series, Rent-a-Goalie. A few months ago, Christopher — AKA “Bolts” — contacted me asking for feedback on his latest project’s transmedia strategy. After a few minutes of chit-chat and an exchange of development documents, I realized that the project, a comedic exploration of Canadian landscapes popular and physical, entitled In Search of Gordon Lightfoot, was much more than a TV series with a few transmedia extensions tacked on just for the hell of it; no, this was something different, something much more integrated — transmedia from the get-go. And, as it happens, it was also something that sounded quite funny and more than a little community-minded in its direct engagement with audiences and Canuck mythology. Naturally, I wanted to be a part of it. A few web chats later, we came to an agreement — I would consult on the project and shadow Christopher as he worked his way through the development process, and in return he would share what he learned with me, here, in the form of a series of interviews.

This first interview is a snapshot of Christopher’s thinking as the project moves through the funding process and into the first stages of pre-production. It reveals a considered and well-informed view of transmedia and the new storytelling landscape. It is an inspired and often very funny view of the future of entertainment, and I look forward to speaking to Bolts more as his work on the project progresses.

You’ve worked in the Canadian film and television industry for a while now. What’s your background, and what’s changed since you got started?

My background is varied. Until my mid-20’s it was solely acting. In ’93 I took a stab at writing and that landed me at the CFC in 94 as a writer. I did the directing curriculum at nights and on weekends and directed my first two – and only two – short films there. In 2003 I teamed up with a fella goes by the name Chris Szarka and we formed a company to develop and ultimately produce a cable ½ hour comedy up here called Rent-A-Goalie. In there somewheres I did a few stints as A.D. and Props Man.

As for how it’s changed since I began…televisions are colour now and very crisp and clear.

It was during the production of RAG that I became interested in Transmedia though I didn’t know it was a concept with a name. I suggested ideas to the broadcaster, ideas intended to drive traffic to and from the mother ship – some UGC, a genre bending prequel movie, some mobile applications – but it was always met with a no. It was a licensing issue and I get that but…well…I’ll leave it there. I blame myself. I should have pushed harder.

When I began developing In Search of Gordon Lightfoot I met a woman named Jill Golick, a digital pioneer in Canada. She began my indoctrination into this world.

Man-oh-man, forget how the industry has changed since I started; in just 7 years, dated to when we began development on RAG, it has broken almost to the point of no-fixee. I was at a card table recently of smart broadcasting folk with impressive CV’s discussing the future of our industry. The hardcore estimate for conventional broadcaster life expectancy in Canada was 2 years and the optimistic guess, if you’re said broadcaster, was 10 years. Basis or not to such speculation I was rocked. The consensus was that cable isn’t going anywhere fast because subscription is consumer-choice. It just won’t look like pay cable does today.

The web has blown shit wide open. Access, audience contact and engagement, community building, social media, distribution platforms, the very nature of what content is (stop calling it a Television show for cryin’ out loud) is so drastically different that it needs to be called something new. There is a good and big explosion at the point that industries are colliding – tv/film/branding/communications/tech – and where the smoke clears is an opportunity to re-imagine and develop content specifically to meet the unique demands of all interested parties and, more importantly, audience. The excitement for content creators lay in the exploration of new ways to tell story. A fractured media landscape is exactly what I needed as it helps to make sense of how I think and speak.

This is a frontier and frontiers benefit the entrepreneurial spirit greatly. I think it was Ted Hope who said that it’s the era of Artist as Entrepreneur and it behooves anyone taking that notion seriously to look at how those industries conceive of and deliver content and will do in participation with one another.

The logline for my new company, Forty Farms, is…

The client is the brand is the consumer is the experience is the entertainment.

…and that could just as easily read…

The experience is the consumer is the client is the brand is the entertainment.

Ruminating on this one-hand-clapping-esque driver is a good way to get inside the headspace necessary for making resonant, profitable entertainment going forward.

What is In Search of Gordon Lightfoot?

ISOGL is the title of two of six platforms in an as-of-yet-unnamed Transmedia Project about searching for an identity, a sound, a connection to a landscape, and a warm dry spot to pitch camp for the night. The first is a 13 x 30 minute comedy that sees Ed Robertson (frontman for the pop-rock outfit Barenaked Ladies) and myself flying around Northern Canada in an iconic bush plane looking for reclusive rock legend Gordon Lightfoot. Why? Because he has something that belongs to us. We just miss him everywhere we look and become embroiled, instead, in some small town, wilderness related mayhem before a narrow escape back to the skies to search for another day. The second is a tribute record to the man himself. Our guest stars in the series will be well-known Canadian music acts who will do double duty – act their asses off for the show and then sing them back on covering one of Gordon’s tunes for the album. These two properties are designed for distribution together but that ain’t prescriptive.

The remaining platforms are a game, feature, feature documentary, and graphic novel. Our point of identification in the meta-narrative is a guy, a creative guy, who stumbles, flies, loves, fishes, hikes, and writes his journey. It’s a walk through time, media, story and Canada with a fella trying to make sense of it all. Taken together it will serve as a big ol’ love letter to this country as well as warm, beautiful, funny and musical showcase of Canada to the rest of the world. The idea is to entice more Germans – as if that were possible – to come canoe our rivers and lakes.

Do you conceive of the project as a show with a Transmedia experience, or a Transmedia experience that includes a show? Is there a difference?

I’m reluctant to answer this question because it implicates me by rendering the project’s history a little less pure than I’d like it to be. The series was to be my sophomore ½ hour effort. Discussions with broadcasters were frustrating me – one guy’s problem with it was that he didn’t like flying so he bumped on the aviation part – and I figured that it was the right time to dig in the dirt of new business models and alternative modes of storytelling. I began thinking of an extended narrative for Search, ideas I wanted to implement but that didn’t fit in the series as well as different platforms that interested me. Writing for gaming for instance has particular cache. Are you kidding me? No limits storytelling? It was like my head exploded and I knew my time in traditional would serve me well here because what that did teach me was restraint. Restraint, I think, is key to navigating a world as full of opportunity as No Limits Storytellingville.

That’s the long way round to saying that, though I didn’t conceive of it as such, I absolutely consider this project a Transmedia Experience that includes a show.

I love that you call it a Transmedia Experience because that is key to how I frame this thing. It’s a creative and production process experience and the user can consume it soup-to-nuts or in parts. Empowering the audience to participate breeds pride of ownership and I think people will respond to that. What’s really blowing me away is people contacting me with platform ideas of their own as well as reach-outs that I initiate bearing fruit as well. This dialogue between you and I is a prime example: a) it helps us both in our respective missions b) it is content c) it will drive traffic to our mutual benefit. That’s some performing shit in my opinion.

As to whether there is a difference between a Transmedia experience with a show or a show with a Transmedia experience? Abso-lute-ly and it’s as important a distinction there is in defining Transmedia. It’s essential that TM design be ground up rendering every platform essential to the broader stroked narrative. Tacked on properties will feel like tacked on properties and your audience will at best dock you points for that and at worse abandon the project altogether. It seems to be the mistake producers are making in trying to design additional platforms for their fleshed out traditional properties – done in this order it becomes re-purposed material as opposed to original, non-linear content that is platform-specific.

What got you thinking about developing a Transmedia strategy for Lightfoot? Why not do things the same way you’ve done them in the past?

What gets me excited about Transmedia is the belief that the present (past) model is broken and that the opportunities inherent in being an early adopter to this kind of storytelling are huge. It seems simple: a fractured media landscape begs a splintered approach and a savvy user demands that it be robust. I leapt at the chance to create within those parameters. And some of the best minds I know, people who’ve made good, albeit waning, livings in Traditional are meeting in dingy bars to discuss how to make ground-up changes in their industry because they don’t feel they have anything to lose. It’s electrifying to hear the talk. And it’s not griping ‘make the writer matter’ or ‘actors are people too’ stuff either. These are talented and frustrated professionals, who’ve read the writing on the wall, discussing a renovation of the system that values what they do and has everyone thinking creative + business + tech from step 1. Who was it said it feels like 1911 and we’re the guys learning that different angles and editing are good? Oh right, that was you. Spot on Mr. Watson. Makes me crave a cigarette and I don’t smoke.

Reminds me of a joke about lemon meringue pie. I’ll have my friend Jeremy deliver it to camera and post it on my site when I get a site.

Canadian TV productions have notoriously low operating budgets. How are you going to pay for all the different components of this project?

F@#ed if I know.

Kidding. Sort of.

Yes we have tiny budgets up here and they are getting tinier by the day. We shot Rent-A-Goalie for a half million bucks an episode in 3^rd season and that was extraordinarily high then. Today you’d probably have to bring in a CSI for that. Not quite but, y’know, almost.

In my opinion the answer to low budgets is to go lower. Don’t try to make a $200,000 show look like a ½ million bucks because it’ll suck. Make a 100 K per episode show and don’t apologize for it. Don’t try to stretch the dollar. Don’t try to stretch anything. Just make the most awesome content you can possibly make with what you have and concentrate on what hooks – story. Necessity is the mother of invention and with today’s technologies you can make it beautiful for peanuts. The key is knowing how to make it beautiful and that is art as it’s always been. Ted Hope again – he tweeted recently that ‘A return to less could be more.’ Yes. Just plain yes indeed.

The agencies that help us make entertainment in Canada are trying hard to keep up with the changes and, on the business side of it, are thinking progressively. We’ve pitched the project to the Funds with no real ask other than a dialogue. We ask whether the model makes sense and how could they see being involved? They appreciate it because they’re trying to wrap their heads around new models as well and we appreciate the response because it helps us create accordingly. Assuming we get the Funds, and if we keep the thing indie-spirited, there will be shortages to make up but they aren’t prohibitively huge. For that we’re looking at brand relationships plus some crowd-sourcing options and a bit of private investment to top off. I’m not frightened by the financing plans yet. But then I’m the guy who writes fart jokes in these partnerships.

How has taking a Transmedia approach changed the way you’ve gone about raising development money and securing licensing agreements?

The absence of a broadcaster has cleaned rights up immensely. And, again, the wild west of the Internet means very few precedents so we’re kind of making it up as we go along. Talks with musicians, writers, performers have been positive – everyone seems to want to see it work. A western spirit of Kereitsu – a Japanese business model based on industries working with one another to the benefit of all – is what we’re looking to build. There’s power in that. The power of community.

We’ve received some development money from regular avenues for traditional deliverables like series bibles and pilot scripts for the 13 x ½ hr. I’m writing the feature script during the month of April as part of a month long script competition. With no dough attached to its development I am hungry to work completely and feverishly to reduce the time it takes to develop. That platform is a No-Budget film we want to make as a Canadian nod to the Mumblecore tradition. We were soft-offered some development dough for it but it would be recoupable so what’s the point? I’d rather put it on the screen down the road. That property sits with a different producer than the one who has the series, which is a different producer than the one who has the feature doc. So you see how the heavy lifting is spread out while the creative remains central. So there’s a bit of my own money – well, my wife and children’s too – in play on this one but that’s not a bad thing because I’m positive we can make a business out of it.

Here’s a two-parter: 1) What role, if any, do you see for the audience in producing and developing content for Lightfoot? and, 2) as an artist, how do you feel about opening up parts of the creative process to audience participation?

It is my sincere hope that the audience will do the lion’s share of the work. My favourite thing, by far, of having a popular show was that, love it or hate it, everyone had something to say about it. Inviting them to voice those opinions netted us feedback and story fodder. When I began developing Lightfoot I continued to invite that input. Everyone I talked to had a Lightfoot story – some were first-person accounts, some were major life events with Lightfoot as the soundtrack and some were tales of mistaken identity. They were all fantastic though and enthusiastically told. There is one that stands out – a guy nearing 40 now told me about a Sunday morning in the early 80’s where he and a buddy were playing hockey in an alley, taking shots against a neighbour’s garage. The puck-on-metal clang is a very common ruckus up here but it might be a little much for a rock-star early on a Sunday morning. This grizzled dude walks out in his robe and asks the children, in a charming and patient manner no doubt, to stop interrupting his sleep. The storyteller’s friend told him that was Gordon Lightfoot. I told Gordon the story and he swore it was his dad who tromped around city alleys in his robe.

An aside re. the organics of this thing – that story got back to Gordon and Gordon commented on it. Commenting is content.

So I wondered if it was possible to formalize this relationship between creator and audience and that’s the plan for ‘Search’. We are opening up the process, inviting anyone who has been touched by the subject matter to chime in. I want tales of bush piloting gone wrong and small town yarns, the instances where a song played over a formative time in one’s life. And then we want to be invited to shoot in the places where the story was originally set. We want to engage the people who helped develop the content in producing it as well. Maggie Ancaster of Herring Neck, Newfoundland gets to be prop master for a day or two. The result here, we hope, is to make shooting the show as much of a celebration of this country and it’s people as the content is. Totally 360.

This isn’t a new idea. One of the great Canadian storytellers of this generation, Stuart McLean, has been doing exactly this forever and a day. His material resonates because, beyond being talented, he sits with the people and listens to them. Gordon too. He says it’s dialogues with the people who consume his art that shapes it. Sure, he loves to play because he loves to play but it’s more than that. It’s an exchange.

Writing tv and film in the traditional manner doesn’t offer that opportunity exactly.

I’ve been warned off what this means to me as an artist but I don’t buy it. There’s a quote from Martha Graham posted above my desk that says, paraphrased – don’t be a donkey, you’re no genius. You’re a dude who types for a living. Just stay open and let flow through you what will. What I want flowing through me are the stories of the people I want to write stories for. If I can conceptualize a boundary that resonates with people, inspiring them to tell their version, my job simplifies to merely taking good notes. And ain’t it nice for Maggie Ancaster to get a credit on some quality Canadian content? Story by: Maggie Ancaster has a good ring to it don’t ya think?

I made the name Maggie Ancaster up. Any similarities to any living persons, dead or alive…yadda yadda yah.

Are there any touchstones that serve as inspiration for this project?

Stuart McLean’s stories for sure. Properties that have been sent my way since I began talking about it – Murray McLauchlan’s ‘Floating Over Canada’ is a good example. Specific properties have specific inspirations: the series is homage to John Lurie’s ‘Fishing with John’; the feature is inspired by films like ‘Wendy and Lucy’ and ‘Old Joy’; the feature doc by Werner Herzog’s Encounters At The Edge of the World; the record was a Rick Rubin inspired thing; and the graphic novel is egged on by the likes of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Seth.

Is this the future of TV?

It’s the future of entertainment for sure. The single media property is done and so are sloughs of other givens we ‘know’ about entertainment. The audience is now referred to as the user and respecting them as a client will take us a long way. The power they have in pressing little buttons is unprecedented and so creating experience and empowering them to participate are paramount moving forward. In the not so distant future Networks will be of people around people not corporations defining content and retaining sole authority to distribute it. Speaking of which…has anyone tackled the David and Goliath story in the new era? They should.

About Christopher Bolton: Christopher Bolton began acting in his teens appearing in feature films Global Heresy, Killing Moon, A Colder Kind of Death, Dead By Monday and The Third Miracle, as well as the Showtime television movies Hendrix and Our Fathers. Additional television credits include roles on the series Northwood, Mutant X, Blue Murder, Little Men, PSI Factor, La Femme Nikita, Street Legal and The Outer Limits. Bolton earned a Gemini nomination for his guest-starring role as ‘Joey Williams’ on the award-winning series Cold Squad.

His work in film and television led him to try his hand at writing. This effort landed him a spot at the esteemed Canadian Film Centre in the Resident Programme. He entered as a writer, but left having written and directed his own short film entitled The Tooth.

He then completed a two-year stint acting on the highly regarded Showtime Network television series Street Time. It was on Street Time in 2002 that he met producer Chris Szarka, forming a partnership to create and produce the multiple award-winning television series Rent-A-Goalie for Showcase.

Bolton is the executive producer, star and creator/writer of Rent-A-Goalie. He is represented by DF Management in the US and Celia Chassel/Gary Goddard in Canada. His new Transmedia Production House, Forty Farms, will launch in May, 2010.