remixable - posts tagged 'audience-building'

Transmedia Talk 39: Clockwork Watch

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:04:06 GMT

Transmedia Talk 33: ARGFest Special with JC Hutchins

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:04:35 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 Author and transmedia creator J.C. Hutchins joins us as we recap ARGFest-o-Con 2011. Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore (and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller) Special Guests: J.C. Hutchins, author of Seventh Son and Personal Effects: Dark Art, and keynote speaker at ARGFest. From This Episode: ARGfest Keynote 2011: “Getting To Good” from J.C. Hutchins on Vimeo. JC’s podcast novel Seventh Son, and his transmedia novel Personal Effects: Dark Art with Jordan Weisman. We usually don’t link guests’ twitter feeds, but we’re linking JC’s here since we talked about it quite a bit on the show. The Darkest Puzzle, and Andrea Phillips’ response Awkward Hug’s game The Wisconsin Hustle opened ARGFest for attendees at the opening night cocktail party. JC’s and Violet Blue’s unboxing videos of a handmade scent kit, released earlier this year for Campfire’s experience for Game of Thrones. Our episode featuring Steve Coulson, about the Game of Thrones campaign the Maester’s Path. JC wrote animated videos for Smith and Tinker’s game Nanovor Video games from JC’s rundown include Mass Effect, Dragon Age, God of War, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, and Fable. Rob Jagnow of Lazy 8 Studios, who contributed to the Potato Sack ARG for Portal 2, is in pre-launch for his game Extrasolar Balance of Powers, an extended story from many of the creators of Perplex City, has been funded on Kickstarter. Zombies, Run! by Six to Start and Naomi Alderman, has now raised $50k of its $12k goal, with over a week left open on its campaign. The steampunk comic, theater and film experience Clockwork Watch, created by Yomi Ayeni, is still accepting backers on IndieGoGo. DIY DAYS LA will be held on the UCLA campus on October 28. Tickets are free. Story World Conference will be held in San Diego October 31-November 2.

Transmedia Talk 29: Lost Zombies

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:51:32 GMT

The Power of User Generated Content

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:12:28 GMT

At SXSW I watched Nick Poole (founder of the infamous 4chan) introduce his new project Canvas. This isn’t as edgy as his previous meme factory. Canvas provides basic tools for users to post and alter pictures. Think of it like a message board where users have conversations through constantly evolving images. A long thread starting with a picture of Dos Equis’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” can end randomly with him as Rebecca Black and the caption: “It’s not always Friday. But when it is…Saturday comes next.”

The success of Canvas hinges on growing a community of people excited to create remixes. With just viewers, there won’t be user generated content to entertain visitors. So, Nick makes sure the collaborative process is fun/easy and doesn’t focus on attracting professional quality design work. Without high standards more lurkers will become contributors.

Now more than ever, everyone from artists to storytellers should learn how to hone the power of UGC to build their internet presence. Facebook is the second most popular site in the world-Twitter, Youtube, Yelp, Fanfiction.net, and many other successful destinations wouldn’t exist without non-professionals.

Here are some different ways to get people to create user generated content:

View more presentations from Peter Katz.

What is your experience with user generated content?

Branded Distribution

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:07:45 GMT

The Cool Kids and other popular musicians at SXSW are signed to a new kind of record label-Mountain Dew’s Green Label Sound. In my opinion, this trend will grow in the world of music and move into the world of indie film distribution as well.

This phenomenon is happening because of the combined economic challenges of record labels and the decreased reach of branded television advertising. Traditional record labels have been struggling to earn enough money through record sales because of piracy. Therefore, record labels are now insisting on 360 deals, in which musicians give labels a percentage of all their income. Many artists aren’t happy with this arrangement. Simultaneously, the reach of branded television advertisements are decreasing due to TiVo and Netflix. “Interrupting TV shows is ‘not something most people will tolerate,’ says TiVo CEO Tom Rogers. In the 40% of all households that have a DVR ‘the amount of commercial avoidance is huge.’” (Source David Lieberman at Deadline Hollywood.com) Netflix has over 23 million members on their ad free platform (Source Netflix Investor Relations), some of whom are beginning to cut their cable cords. In response, some brands are finding a new way to reach an audience.

Remember the music industry isn’t struggling because people don’t love music. Social networks allow artists to have more reach and powerful connections with their listeners. Green Label Sound signed The Cool Kids to be part of their relationship with fans (consumers). I think that is a good investment when you consider the depth and duration of the relationship the fans have with the rap crew. This combined with (last time I checked) 3,370,297 views for their Black Mage music video on Youtube, 4,850,369 plays and 423,384 listeners on Lastfm, 187,861 Likes on their Facebook page, and they have 12,878 followers on Twitter. At SXSW The Cool Kids performed at the Green Label Sound Showcase and many top music blogs mentioned their label.

In exchange, the Cool Kids get to keep all of their income from iTunes album sales, except for processing fees (Source Billboard). They are promoted by a marketing budget much larger than most record labels, since Green Label Sound is owned by PepsiCo, a Fortune 500 company that has sold billions of dollars worth of soft drinks vs relying on album sales. “Labels suck,” the Cool Kids’ Chuck Inglish said, “What can they do that Pepsi can’t do? We had a good experience with Green Label Sound — we got more from that single than we got from our previous album. I was tired of the album sitting around and just wanted to get it out.”(Source Billboard)

Here’s where indie film distribution fits in. Sponsors at prestigious film festivals might evolve into distributors: starting to acquire titles that make sense for the brand’s identity, focusing on marketing themselves as patrons of the arts, distributing films to theaters where their target demographic lives e.g. college towns. This strategy increases brand loyalty by adding value to people’s lives.

Content producers will win because all of the typical costs associated with theatrical film distribution will be covered by the brand. So, creators are going to be able to keep more money. Filmmakers will still own the digital rights for their project and the buzz from screenings will increase the projects’ value. “Theatrical will drive awareness of the film,” WME agent Liesl Copland said regarding distribution for Blue Valentine (Source Eugene Hernande at IndieWire).

What are your thoughts on branded distribution?

Transmedia Talk 27: Socks, Incorporated

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 19:46:40 GMT

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.

Documentary + Game = Independent Transmedia Project called “THE GREAT WORK”

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:05:02 GMT

“The Greak Work” is a documentary by two Swedish filmmakers, Oskar Östergren & Fredrik Oskarsson (details at the end) about 30-year-old Christer Böke from Malmö, Sweden. He has taken one year off from his well-paid job as an IT-salesman to become a full-time Alchemist. The film concerns mankind’s eternal ambition of wealth and immortality and one mans dedicated struggle to solve “The secret of all secrets”. This struggle is known at The Great Work.

What’s particularly interesting about this project is that the filmmakers have teamed up with an independent game designer, Niflas, to create a game to complement the movie.

The Great Work will be screened on SVT (Swedish Television) as a 58 minute version, winter 2011. So don’t forget you heard about it here first!

Here’s the movie trailer…

About the Documentary

The documentary follows Christer from the day he leaves the city to the first day back at work the next year. During this year he moves to the island of Gotland on the Swedish countryside where he builds a laboratory in his dead grandfather’s garage, he lives three months in France to study the language and exchange ideas with French alchemists. Christer gets contacted by a strange international organisation called Ars regia that says “-We have been watching you…”. He keeps a blogg and start writing a book. He has a big argument with his best buddy and fellow alchemist since 15 year (they later reunite). He uses his “detective skills”, makes lots of experiments and gets closer and closer to his interpretation of the “recipes” of how to make The Philosophers Stone.

The Idea for The Game

Rob: How did the idea for a game come about?

Early in the process, we discussed that it would have been nice to make a game for the film because the topic of alchemy itself invites such thoughts. We had spent hours with our friend and the main character Christer Böke where we tried to solve “word puzzles” in old alchemical manuscripts and quotes that could lead you to the right subject which the great alchemist Fulcanelli was talking about.

At the same time I read an article about “Nifflas” and his game, Saira. We thought that a collaboration with him would be exciting and he lived in the same town and we had some common friends.

Together, we concluded that the game should stand on its own but our main goal was off course to use it as advertising for the documentary film. We had never really heard about a collaboration between a documentary and a indie-gamemaker. We have a strong interest in games and its form of narrative, and we thought the theme of alchemy would be suitable for Nifflas as a game developer. And, after our first meeting we felt that it could work out very well!

When we contacted Nicklas the first time he was skeptical about cooperating with us. He had expected the documentary would be about a major political topic and could not see the similarities with his own narrative, often based on a specific mystery and a character-driven portrait. Once we met everything fell into place and our collaboration has been great.

Nifflas never had any problems understanding our characters who defied science in search of “the philosopher’s stone”. Many of our financiers from the world of television and film were very doubtful about whether the story was real and at the same time are provoked by a person who claims to believe that he will be able to solve this amazing riddle. People think our documentary character must be a crazy guy or else we’re trying to fool them with a mocumentary. In the game world, however, these kinds of stories are not so strange and Nifflas could directly relate to our character and never doubt our way of telling his story.

Game Trailer

The Relationship Between the Documentary & Game

Rob: How would you describe the relationship between the documentary and the game – in terms of story, marketing, possible revenue model?

Our main story in the game is very similar to the film’s alchemical elements, that through the characters and manuscripts find different things that will lead you to new discoveries that will then guide you through the story of the great goal of making the Philosopher’s Stone.

All these characters are people from the alchemical history or allude to contemporary alchemists from the documentary and their aliases used on various internet forums. For example, you will meet our main character (Christer) who in the game is called “Spintheros”. Google that name and you will find a number of posts and articles written on various forums of our man Christer Böke.

From the beginning, we had much bigger ambitions for the game. We tried to make a budget so that Nifflas could work full time for a long time. We were sitting with Nifflas and Christer and brainstormed ideas that later turned out to be too advanced for an average gamer to understand. We had some intense discussions with Christer about this. He knows so incredibly much about the subject and couldn’t really see why some things were too advanced. For example we had a long discussion about whether people know the Periodic Table and all the latin names and planet/gods related to these.

Together with that and a much smaller budget we developed a simpler and much shorter game. We found 50% of 30 000 skr (4500 dollar) to pay Nifflas to program our idea. We got this money from Filmarc (www.filmarc.net) and he started to develop environments and how the puzzles could be adapted in the game. Then we discussed the characters and which different material we would use in the game. Material like Stibnit, Galen etc. It was very important that this material was familiar to alchemists. when people play the game they should know that this is not just some random stuff – it’s the real thing. You will get a very good idea how to start your own alchemical experiments by playing the game if you want…and some grand secrets too.

Marketing & Business Model

Already at the first meeting we decided that the game would be free and marketed freely from both our site www.grtwrk.com and Nifflas website. We were aware of Nifflas position among indie gamers and wanted them to recognize his style. To access the gamer audience, we have made a menu in the beginning of the the game that includes the trailer for the film, we will also add a direct link to the film that allows players to download the movie via the game. This could get us in some trouble with the Swedish Televison but I think they will understand our idea when we release it – they tend not to like it when you put stuff from the film on internet before you have screened it on TV. (www.studioparallell.com who made the menu for both the movie and game ensured that they’re the same style).

Last but not least, we will use open-source code so people can make their own puzzles and characters – perhaps based from the discussions in the film or from discussion that will come after you seen the movie. Alchemists always debate “the true matter”.

We have also discussed posting the script ahead of the movie release. The script contains the high-end solutions based on Christers hardcore alchemy puzzle. Some of the puzzles in this game will certainly also be discussed on alchemy forums and then it will be interesting to see if you are able to influence the game. For example, if it should be Stibnit or any other topic and then the player can change this can do their own version of the game.

We see the game as an interesting model to distribute the film in larger circuits because we think some relevant audiences might otherwise never discover our film. Even after several days, Nifflas’ game trailer 10 000 hits on youtube. All these people also visited our website to learn about the film. Similarly, Nifflas will get people who never played his game to visit his site and maybe even play more of his game. It’s a great cross-collateralization of audiences.

Partnering with a game is also a way to get the film’s story to survive and develop. Our main character and our film will hopefully create a movement on the internet which questions the scientific truths and interests people to go deeper into the subject. It is obvious that Christer has become very well-educated when he read and researched about alchemy. And, imagine if you in a playful way, can get people to understand that learning can be presented in different ways than through ordinary books or teachers that is rarely questioned. So we hope this cooperation will both promote our film and the game as entertainment but also educate and raise ideas that can live on after the premiere of the movie, and become more than a DVD and a game on your PC.

We must look at how the gaming industry markets itself. The film industry is hopelessly behind and the music industry has begun to learn with Spotify, itunes, etc.. To survive as a documentary filmmaker, we need to think outside the box to survive. This may be one way?

Additional Marketing?

In order to spread among gamers we focus on blogs and forums. To get them to see the film, we understand that we need to make it as easy as we can for them to download the movie as well. We hope to find a solution to this by uploading the movie on iTunes or similar channels and then place a link to this page in the game. We also run a facebook group and website and through these we hope to communicate with our audience. Then we will try to get som material published in traditional media like newspapers and say, culturalnews on TV. But, above all, we hope that the movie and the game spread itself through short clips on youtube, blogs, forums, Twitter, etc.

Example Puzzle & Initial Game Meeting Video

Mineral Stibnit + Mars (Iron) + owen – regulus of antimon + Caput mortuum

Give the Regulus av antimon to character ”Newton” – he will then give you a glove, that you can climb with.

Give Caput Mortuum to ”Spintheros” – and he will give you the second glove and now you can climb the roofs.

This video is from one of the first meeting together with Nifflas and our main character Chriter. They discuss ideas about the developing of the game (it’s in Swedish, naturally!).

Timescales

We hope that both the film and the game is fully completed in June but we still have not decided whether we will be releasing the game a bit earlier.
We will soon have a meeting and try to find a good strategy for this. Anyway, the documentary has been scheduled for a television premiere in October in Sweden.

We would also like to show the movie at some film festivals abroad and try to do a screening in which the visitors before and after have the opportunity to test the game at the cinema. One could also imagine an exclusive screening where our main character performs a simple experiment with the audience. We try to think that we should give the people who come to watch the movie something beyond the expected.

About The Filmmakers: Oskar Östergren & Fredrik Oskarsson (oskar&oskarsson)

Oskar Östergren (born 1976) and Fredrik Oskarsson (born 1979), both born and raised in Swedish Lapland. We are educated at ”Nordens Documentary Film School, Biskops-Arnö” (2002-2004) and, since 2003, we run the film production company oskar&oskarsson based in Umeå, specialising in documentaries. Our productions have been co-produced with SVT Dokumentär and Film i Västerbotten and besides directing and producing films we teach documentary film making at The Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå and work as photographers and editors for other productions and TV-shows. Our last SVT Co-production “The Police and Lapland” has been seen by more than one million viewers on SVT.

Contact: +46 70-555 13 17 (Oskar) or +46 70-640 23 67 (Fredrik); Email: oskar at oskarochoskarsson.se or fredrik at oskarochoskarsson.se

Web: www.oskarochoskarsson.se

Transmedia Talk at SXSW 2011 – Roundtable Discussion on Pervasive Entertainment

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:17:58 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk, a new 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. In this special edition from SXSW 2011, Robert Pratten hosts a roundtable discussion with transmedia practitioners from different disciplines. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Haley Moore Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Special Guests Adrian Hon, Co-Founder and Chief Creative at Six to Start Marcus Romer, Artistic Director of Pilot Theatre in the UK Rachel Clarke, Head of Engagement Intelligence at Momentum London

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 16

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:20:52 GMT

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 15

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:56:04 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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 Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Regular Hosts and Contributors Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore Special Guest Andrea Phillips This show talks about Andrea’s work on a range of ARG and transmedia projects and discusses staffing for participation, developing narrative that allows for participation, editorial control & ethics/responsibilities of producers. Projects mentioned include: Cloudmakers for the movie AI Perplex City 2012 Routes - including the game Ginger Dawn! And of course I managed to get in another plug for Lowlifes

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 14

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 04:19:38 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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 Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts.. and Guests for this week Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Dee Cook from Dogtail Media Haley Moore The panelists discuss their early & current experiences with developing and executing transmedia projects. Good discussion about the thrill of interactivity and designing ARGs. Running Time 00:00 Introductions 00:40 Getting started in transmedia (Rob’s story) 04:40 The Lowlifes transmedia project : Objectives & narrative design 16:40 Developing the interactive game for Lowlifes 29:00 Haley Moore discusses The Sketchbook Project 41:00 Dee Cook discusses her work with DogTail Media 44:45 The market for ARGs in 2011 46:00 Changing nature of ARG and developing for different audience segments

How to Improve Engagement with your Webisodes

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:02:55 GMT

Why do some web producers release their webisodes weekly when they have evergreen content? That is, if their series of web videos are not tied to current events, why not release them all at once?

One answer might be that the release schedule is tied to the production schedule – episodes are being produced one week and released the next. But why not release them two weeks apart or wait until enough episodes have been produced to release all at once or daily? Why not four hours apart or on demand?

My point is only that there should be some reasoning behind the scheduling and not just because TV has scheduled weekly content.

You see, if TV has taught us one thing about audiences, it’s that they don’t like to be kept waiting. They don’t like to wait while the commercial plays, they don’t like to wait while the episode downloads and they don’t like to wait week-to-week. Many people record several episodes of a series before the viewing or they’ll buy the complete series on DVD. But of course audiences come to TV and the web with different expectations so why copy the TV model online if you don’t have to?

Re-thinking your web series

This blog post looks at how you might optimize the release schedule for your webisodes. Core to my approach is understanding how you want the audience to engage with your story and then designing an integrated experience that consequently determines how the video will be released. There is no initial assumption that the schedule should be weekly or any other time period.

There is, I suppose, an assumption that most web series will have more than just the videos: there’s usually a website, a blog, a forum, a mailing list, a Facebook page or some other mechanism that represents an opportunity to inform the audience of a new release and provide them with a backchannel. These additional non-video platforms are what makes your web series “an experience” rather than a series of videos. Even a single YouTube channel with the comments and likes enabled creates a participatory experience. Whatever the implementation, it is the experience that builds, empowers and engages your audience – it multiplies the draw of the video.

Here’s a short list of considerations for determining the time interval between episodes with the key objective being to maintain engagement between episodes (i.e. you want audiences to watch the next episode):

production limitations & opportunities
distribution limitations & opportunities
business model limitations & opportunities
strength of story episode to episode (the narrative hook)
length of each episode (longer webisodes might benefit from longer periods between episodes to avoid overload)
audience expectations and headroom (giving too much to consume between releases may lead to abandoned subscriptions).

Mind The Gap: Is the Narrative Strong Enough to Bridge the Delay?

Figure 1 illustrates how we’d like audience to move from episode to episode. In this example there’s enough interest or engagement to have them come back for more.

Figure 1: Audience follows episode to episode

Unfortunately there are a number of failure scenarios if the period between each release is wrong. In Figure 2, the audience abandons the web series because the content isn’t strong enough to have them come back – there’s not enough pull to bridge the gap.

In Figure 3, the audience is asked to work too hard to keep up and soon they find they’re overwhelmed with content for the given schedule.

Figure 2: Abandons

Figure 3: Overload

In both these failure scenarios one solution is to adjusted or fine-tune the schedule – if that’s possible. As I mentioned earlier, there may be reasons why you’re stuck with the schedule.

Figure 4: Release schedule adjusted

Using Transmedia Storytelling to Maintain Engagement

Web series can be expensive to produce and the number of episodes is as likely to be determined by budget as anything else. This could mean you don’t have enough webisodes to span the schedule you’d like or you need to maintain engagement between webisodes because the schedule is fixed.

Figure 5 shows how narrative spread to secondary, less expensive, media can be used to stitch together the web series – providing a mid-episode fix of story for those eager for more. The trick here is in the storytelling: to have the webisode and secondary media satisfying in their own right and hence consuming all media is optional which hence alleviates the chance of overload. Implied in the notion of “secondary media” is that it may indeed not stand alone and should be consumed as additional exploratory content (e.g. another optional layer).

Figure 5: Transmedia Storytelling applied to web video series

Figure 6 in contrast shows two equal media platforms both scheduled for episodic release but appealing to different audience sub-segments or consumption habits: e.g. media 1 is consumed while at work and media 2 consumed on the commute.

Here, each media has its own (intervening?) release schedule with additional narrative hooks and branches to take the audience to the next episode in the same media or to alternative media.

Figure 6: Native Episodic Transmedia Storytelling

Finally of course, additional secondary media might be added to two primary media platforms – as shown in Figure 7

Figure 7: Multi-layered Transmedia Story.

Allow Audience to Go with the Flow

So far I’ve assumed that all audience members are to be treated equally. But why not reward engaged followers with either additional content or early “pre-release” content? And if you do, does it matter that they might share with others ahead of the “proper” release?

I believe that when you have someone that’s engaged you should allow them to ride the engagement out and see where it takes them. This means allowing them to request additional content on demand ahead of the release schedule which I further believe has the potential to turn engaged audiences to advocates – hence recruiting more audience.

YouTube’s “Unlisted” video option is perfect for this: casual viewers won’t see or find the video before it’s made public but engaged audiences can be sent the link.

Transmedia Example

My Lowlifes project has three primary media: novella, webisodes and blog. I determined that it should be scheduled to be released two days apart over a period of 15 days or so. I felt that daily would lead to content overload and at three days the whole release would drag on too long.

One approach would have been to alternate the media – novella chapter on day 1, video on day 2, blog on day 3 and so on. But this would have incorrectly implied a sequence or priority to the media platforms that I was keen to avoid.

Consequently, at the same time content is made public, subscribers receive an email with links to the three media episodes plus the ability to request additional content from anywhere within the series. This would allow someone who was really into the videos, for example, to watch them all in one sitting by simply requesting them.

It’s not a problem for me if someone grabs all the videos and posts them all on their own blog because my objective is to get them seen. It’s evergreen content and within 3 weeks it would all be available in any case.

For Lowlifes, the scheduling and on-demand requests for content is made possible by a service called Conducttr -a pervasive entertainment platform from my company TransmediaStoryteller.com and will soon be available for all members of our Community.

Take-away

In summary then, if you assume that the audience always has something better to do with their time and money, it will absolutely focus your mind on maintaining engagement between webisodes and this will:

determine the optimum release schedule where you have the flexibility to choose it
highlight the need for a transmedia experience around an inflexible release schedule
provoke a discussion about whether you should allow content on demand for the most engaged audience members.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 13

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:16:08 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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 Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Running Time 01:14 Origins and early experiences 12:00 The Storybible 12:45 Working with Clients 16:40 Understanding the value-proposition at the contract stage 20:20 Types of client 21:45 Removing barriers from transmedia narratives 25:50 Conflicts between writer and producer 28:00 Market development for the role of Transmedia Producers 33:40 Organisation and staffing at Starlight Runner 41:50 Does narrative get diluted as it is spread across platforms? 49:50 Growing an audience across platforms 55:00 Implementing transmedia internationally 58:12 Transmedia misperceptions 1:00:00 Growth of transmedia 1:06:00 New transmedia example (LowLifes) and Industry Discussion. 1:18:00 End

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 12

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:26:03 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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 Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Nathan Mayfield, co-founder of transmedia storytellers Hoodlum. Hoodlum are well know for thier work with such shows as Fast Forward, Spooks (MI5), Emerdale & Lost. At the time of recording they’re in production on a new show called Slide to be release in Australia on pay channel Fox8.tv in 2011 Interview with Nathan Mayfield, co-founder of transmedia storytellers Hoodlum.Hoodlum are well know for thier work with such shows as Fast Forward, Spooks (MI5), Emerdale & Lost. At the time of recording they’re in production on a new show called Slide to be released in Australia on pay channel Fox8.tv in 2011

Audience Building and Distribution EVENT hits NYC and LA

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:41:13 GMT

This November Distribution U returns with a stops in NYC and LA. The day long event provides a crash course in distribution and audience building. We caught up with Scott Kirsner co-founder of Distribution U to get his take on interesting trends, projects and services that are doing innovative things in the space.

WBP: What are some of the interesting trends you’re paying attention to within tech that could benefit filmmakers?

Scott Kirsner: Obviously, iPhone apps and Android apps continue to be huge. I think filmmakers collaborating with software developers (maybe at a local college) holds a lot of promise. And I just heard about a new startup called Groundcrew that’s doing neat stuff around helping you coordinate activities for people in your social networks — actually getting them to do things in the real world and participate using their mobile phones.

WBP You cover the tech industry with a focus on start-ups. How could filmmakers learn from start-ups? What are some of the takeaways that would directly apply to filmmaking?

SK: I think many start-ups try to build something cheap and simple — a prototype, or a “minimally viable product” — and then get feedback on it from the market. That’s antithetical to the way many filmmakers work, raising and spending lots of money on something, finishing it, and then seeing what people think. I’m not an advocate for letting the Internet community write your script (thought that could work for some projects), but I do think there are creative ways to get input from your target audience earlier in the process.

WBP: If you were sitting down to write Fans, Friends & Followers now what would you include that you didn’t in previous editions?

SK: Probably more examples of people who’ve not only created big networks on Twitter or Facebook, but actually used them to get people to do something, whether it’s buying an iTunes download or a t-shirt or showing up for a screening. There’s a big gap between “friending” or “following” someone and taking an action.

WBP: What do you think our the top 5 things for filmmakers to consider when taking their film to market?

SK: Oh man, I’m not sure I have a top 5 list all baked and ready to hand you. But one thing that very few films do is show they’ve built up a potential audience — a following — online before they get to their first festival, or start talking to distributors. Showing that you’ve generated 50,000 views on a YouTube channel or 5,000 Twitter followers can give you more leverage in any negotiation, since it’s a promotional platform that you can use when you launch the film.

Iron Sky

WBP What are interesting projects that you’re seeing that are doing innovative things with distribution and audience building? Can you share some links?

SK: Well, I like how much Tiffany Shlain has been giving presentations and public talks in advance of her next doc, “Connected.” She has also been posting footage and montages from the film on YouTube. I think she has some innovative distribution ideas once it gets into festivals next year. (http://www.connectedthefilm.com/Connectedthefilm/About.html) I’m also curious to see what Timo Vuorensola has up his sleeve with “Iron Sky,” where he has raised north of 300,000 Euros through crowdfunding. And I was really impressed by all of the outreach that “Winnebago Man” did to influential blogs, and what they’re doing with DVD and t-shirt sales online.

WBP: What is distribution u and why now?

SK: We did the first one last November, at USC in Los Angeles. It was a first attempt to really collect and present examples of how filmmakers have been successfully taking control of their marketing and distribution strategy, and connecting directly with an audience. That one sold out, and people seemed to think it was really helpful, in terms of helping them make new connections and think through what they would do for their next project. The New York Times did a big piece on it, too. Obviously, a lot more has happened since last November, so these two Distribution U. events will present more recent data points, and also dive in a bit deeper to crowdfunding, where we’ve seen people having more success in the last year.

For those interested in attending Distribution U see the following links

Links to register:

New York, Nov 13th:
Distribution U – NYC

LA, Nov 20th
Distribution U – LA

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 9

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:40:37 GMT

Pt2: Investigating the Possibilities of Transmedia; Collapsus, a Case Study

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:55:09 GMT

Segment II: Why is Collapsus an example of a transmedia project? How is this a useful tool?

The concept of transmedia is grounded in the delivery and curation of specific information across various platforms. As compared with traditional media’s pattern of distribution (the same set of images relayed to viewers repeatedly through the same modes of communication) the innovation of transmedia is grounded in choice: developing successful projects means inspiring viewers to follow subject matter from one media platform to another. Information is provided as a reward, acting as an agent of incentive to produce sustained interest within the viewer. These “messages” act as a resource independent to a greater whole. (Culture Hacker: Transmedia Storytelling Getting Started) Content, therefore, has the capacity to enrich the spread of entertainment across multiple platforms.

Segment II of this blog series will examine what platforms the brand-new, transmedia project, Collapsus utilized. The distribution of factoids within this project highlights the benefits of using alternative methods to expand a project’s reach beyond traditional audiences.

A basic breakdown of existing communication reveals reading, listening, interaction, and watching to be the modern foundation of possible sensory content application. Reading (books, comics, ebooks), listening (radio, mobile, online), interaction (online, mobile, social, console, ARG) and watching (TV, theatre, mobile, live performance, online) are all media sources useful in releasing information and encouraging viewers to seek further analysis. (Henry Jenkins: Transmedia Education)

Inspiring viewers to self-reflect in the context of a project’s subject matter is directly related to the availability of information within a transmedia project. In Collapsus, “visitors to the Collapsus site can cut away from soap-opera-like webisodes to learn about energy issues through an interactive map, view fictional newscasts on the Citizenergy Channel, or watch real interview clips with experts, analysts, activists and journalists.” (Mq2: Collapsus)

Executing platforms that support and encourage choice is imperative in creating and sustaining viewer interactivity. As the sole content provider, producers control exactly what information is released, at what time, and to which audience; they guide the story (or project) as it unfolds. What exactly does this mean? It speaks to the nucleus of the transmedia experience: widened exposure equals more choice, and, more choice equals widened exposure. This implies a need to thoroughly understand one’s projected audience: who would be most interested in this material? What are the best modes of communication for conveying this on multiple media platforms?

Collapsus was produced with the goal of exposing a broader audience to the information found in the traditional documentary, Energy Risk, released by VPRO. See the original doc HERE

With an idea of audience in mind, creators and producers of the project conceptualized a multi-linear experience that blended genres of documentary, animation, fiction, and interactivity. Producer Tommy Pallotta explains, “This hybrid approach allows us to look at a serious documentary subject, but also to shift from the usual talking head approach to something that better reflects our time.”(MQ2: Collapsus)

Citizenergy, the Youtube channel for the original Dutch documentary, compliments the transmedia project, Collapsus: The Energy Risk Conspiracy, and is an example of this approach to media multi-tasking. (See the channel HERE) The CitizEnergyChannel provides several video segments linked to Collapsus’ theme of risk; clips provide expert analysis on the danger of a growing dependency on fossil fuels. Each video on Citizenergy is packaged content, the producer actively chose what was delivered to audiences. Utilizing Youtube and other video sharing sites give a lot of information to viewers, while allowing them to review at their convenience.

In transmedia projects the audience must chose to further his/her knowledge through exploring subject matter, playing games, and chatting with others. The endeavor of exploring a specific topic through various media can inspire a “community” culture of individuals working with a cohesive goal. When players are able to pool their knowledge with others, audience capacity multiplies. For Collapsus, this directly relates to the project’s undertone of social responsibility. As players and viewers interact with the material, they consult each other on personal methods to approach content. This allows for alternative modes of thinking, and the development of a furthered sense of self in a global community. A global community means increased global communication and a wider audience.

In researching the intersection of education and transmedia I came across an example of a school in Texas that utilized multiple media platforms to integrate education and technology. On August 22, 2009 in Rio de Janeiro, NAVE (Ncleo Avanado em Educao – Advanced Education Center ) a Brazilian high school, hosted Heroes and Smallville’s associate producer Mark Warshaw to teach a lesson on Transmedia Storytelling. The event was live streamed and interactive, as the audience, both live and online, participated in an interactive SMS game. The release of the Descolagem App later that day furthered the audiences span. The audience was literally guided through a lesson on transmedia storytelling through an actual transmedia experience. Beto Largman, who curated the event, hopes the format of the lesson displays the process as a resource; a strategy evolved to distribute content personally to a mass audience. (Transmedia Experience Streamed At Highschool )

The choice to pursue more components of a project is the apex of transmedia success. The interactive component of Collapsus’ narrative is directly linked with the information provided by the clips on Youtube. Soap-opera-like webisodes, an interactive map, fictional newscasts, along with the Citizenergy Channel, provide players with a platform of knowledge on the energy crisis, which gives them the ability, and inspiration, to interact within the overall narrative of the game. The goal clearly defined: Reviewing Collapsus for Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0, Julie Drizin states, “Truthfully, this is the kind of media that is better experienced than explained.”
Experience Collapsus HERE.

Director of Collapsus, Tommy Pallotta, will be interactively interviewed in Pt2:
Investigating the Possibilities of Transmedia; Collapsus, a Case Study.

Interview questions will come directly from reader comments to Tommy- the questions and his responses will be included in next weeks feature. Previously, he produced Waking Life, the first independently financed and computer animated feature produced, as well as A Scanner Darkly, and a multitude of other projects. Let’s delve into his animation process of rotoscoping, and understand how imperative it is to develop successful visual reaction in transmedia and cross-media projects.

Email any questions to Tommy: work@workbookproject.com
Please subject with: Tommy Pallotta questions

Source Links
1. http://workbookproject.com/culturehacker/2010/07/07/transmedia-storytelling-getting-started/
2. http://henryjenkins.org/2010/06/transmedia_education_the_7_pri.html
3. http://www.mq2.org/Collapsus
4. http://www.hastac.org/blogs/nancykimberly/transmedia-experience-livestreamed-brazilian-high-school

Pt1: Investigating the Possibilities of Transmedia; Collapsus, a Case Study

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:45:12 GMT

This blog post focuses on the intersection of transmedia and learning. Presented in 4 segments, we will look at how transmedia is revolutionizing media creation and presentation. As modes of human communication continue to change, so too does the concept of audience, and the projects envisioned and produced. Through a case study on Collapsus, an Energy Risk Conspiracy project, I will expose components necessary for building a successful transmedia project, along with the capabilities and influence accessible through employing such processes. Gain access to exclusive storyboards and scripts, behind the scene details, and interactive interviews as WorkBook Project delves deeper into the process of transmedia.

I. What does it mean to experience a Transmedia Project?

Almost a year ago (November, 2009) Alison Norrington, for Wired News, posed the question: “The value of a good story remains; the question is will you prefer to read, listen, watch, or do?” (Wired UK: Transmedia Tales and the Future of Storytelling)

Since this publishing, how has the relationship between media and consumers changed? As the print to screen revolution continues, so too does the process, and production, of the content delivered. At the time of Norrington’s writing, transmedia had been introduced to many, but had yet to conquer the attention of general audiences.

Now a growing buzzword, transmedia can be defined as an approach to content delivery that weaves various storylines across multiple platforms intending to further immerse their audience within a specific media experience. (Seize The Media: What is Transmedia?)

This process transforms the viewer into somewhat of information “detective.” Transmedia projects have the potential to develop a relationship of trust between consumer, content provider, and the product delivered. Because the concept of transmedia is grounded on utilizing multiple outlets to distribute a variety of information, content producers need to immediately develop credibility to ensure a project’s success. Interest is the participant’s motivation, learning digitally no longer a passive role. A well-anchored vision can instill reliable participant relations.

Exposing accurate information through a multitude of well-designed media platforms give players/viewers the tools to build their own infrastructure of knowledge around a communal topic. To ensure a fluid audience while working with multiple media endeavors, pioneers in the field like Lance Weiler, plan “for multiple platforms from the start. They design fictional universes that are consistent however the audience engages.” (Wired: What is Transmedia) This leads to one of the best benefits to the transmedia approach: The cliché “there’s no ‘I’ in team.” Each participant gathers a “data-bank” of unique information that is bettered by employing other participant’s results. (Henry Jenkin’s article) Community building can be fostered and encouraged.

This innovative platform has shifted the production of culture and has revolutionized the concept of storytelling. Weiler recently helped to script Collapsus, a transmedia project developed by SubmarineChannel, with the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO. Collapsus signals a new experience in transmedia storytelling. Through documentary, fiction, animation, players interact within the narrative, choose his/her own perspective, and make decisions to affect the global energy crisis.

Does the innovative production of Collapsus signal a change in consumer choice as Norrington predicted? Yes- the meme spawned around the potential energy crisis reveals that to choose transmedia is to utilize options. Check out the project at http://www.collapsus.com.

Stay tuned for Part II: Why is Collapsus an example of a transmedia project? How is this a useful tool?
Delving into the significance of employing various media outlets in transmedia projects, taking a closer look at Collapsus, the creators behind it, and the capabilities of transmedia as a tool to inspire.

Source Links:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-11/25/transmedia-tales-and-the-future-of-storytelling?page=all
A brief education, this article breaks the surface of how technology is directly affecting writing and reading stories.

http://seizethemedia.com/what-is-transmedia/
A basic definition on transmedia accompanied by helpful info graphic. Check out the article’s home site to learn more on Chief Story Architect Lance Weiler.

http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/08/features/what-is-transmedia?page=all
Entertaining article that details the origin of transmedia storytelling and its progression to the mainstream market.

http://www.submarinechannel.com/articles/item/543
Submarinechannel.com is an interactive production studio based in Amsterdam. This article featured on their site details the development of the project Collapsus.

http://henryjenkins.org/2010/06/transmedia_education_the_7_pri.html
Henry Jenkins speculates on the future of transmedia education.

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 7

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:15:37 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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. In a temporary departure from our usual format while Robert was in the UK, we present the second of two interviews from leading practitioners in the UK. In this podcast Hazel Grian – leading light in the transmedia world for her ARG work with Star Trek (and here), The Red Cross and 221b for the Sherlock Holmes movie (and here) – and specialist in interactive narrative and AI. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Hazel Grian Video for two of Hazel’s projects… Tweeture Daemon

Communicating your transmedia experience

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:14:11 GMT

This is a quick post but I thought this template might be useful for some people when they’re explaining their transmedia project. You’ll notice that this is focused on the experience rather than the technology: there’s no mention of platforms or business case or even audience. So there’s more that needs to be communicated to get the full picture but this is a cool way to get your point across in certain circumstances.

This is my Transmedia Radar Diagram – use it to communicate your transmedia experience to interested parties… but probably not your audience Note that there’s no absolute scale for the four axes, it’s their strength relative to each other. Of course, if you’re comparing projects then they need to compare across projects too.

Here’s a few examples to illustrate how you might use the radar diagram…

Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 5

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:50:23 GMT

Welcome to Transmedia Talk a new podcast covering all things story. Transmedia Talk is co-hosted by Nick Braccia and Robert Pratten 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. In a temporary departure from our usual format while Robert has been in the UK, we present the first of two interviews from leading practitioners in the UK. In this podcast Mike Dicks, Senior Policy Exec at PACT (kind of the UK equivalent to the US’ producers guild) talks about transmedia, Dr Who, Canvas/YouView, getting your work financed and selling your finished product. download Or Subscribe iTunes NB: If you’d like to give us feedback, recommend yourself as a guest or suggest topics to cover – please email us at talk@workbookproject.com or Tweet away with the hashtag #tmediatalk Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Mike Dicks, PACT

Engaging Your Audience

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:58:20 GMT

This is a two-part blog post with this being the first part. The second part is here. And you can get a PDF of the full piece, including my earlier associated work on Content Strategy.

When creative people get in the zone they generate a ton of ideas for content and experiences that could all work with their transmedia world. However, with resources always limited, these ideas have to be whittled down to essentials, nice-to-haves and stuff-for-later. One approach is to optimize the mix of content such that it (a) maximizes audience engagement and (b) the longevity (or likelihood of traction) of the experience. In this context I’m using “content” to mean all the things and tools that the audience has at their disposal – from videos, images and text to forums, chat rooms, leaderboards and so on.

If we are to design transmedia projects that engage audiences then we need to understand what it means to be engaged. Most would agree that it’s more than just “a view” and that there are probably degrees of engagement ranging from “doing something” (like a click) to “creating something” (like remixing a video).

Audience engagement is explained in the next section.

1.1.1 Measuring engagement

In 2006, Ross Mayfield stated in his blog:

“The vast majority of users will not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value. But patterns have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence”.

He coined the term “The Power Law of Participation” which is shown in his diagram below (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Power Law of Participation

This participation curve can also be applied to transmedia worlds and will be evident to those who’ve run an ARG. Figure 2 shows the participation law at work in Mike Dicks diagram “Rules of Engagement” in which he expects that only 20% of the audience will engage in the gaming content of a cross-platform experience compared to 75% with the “sit-back” media.

Figure 2 Audience Participation with Content

What this means is that if there’s less effort involved in participating in the storyworld (for example watching a video vs remixing a video) then more of the audience is likely to do it but you can’t say that they’re as engaged with world as those who are expending more effort. More effort on behalf of the audience implies that they must be more engaged, right? Well, yes and no.

It depends on how the individual audience member derives his or her pleasure from the world. Not everyone wants to or feels able to remix videos or contribute user-generated content yet nevertheless may be a strong advocate for the world – telling friends, family and strangers that they really ought to check out the content. Surely that’s an engaged audience too?

Forrester Research identifies four measures for engagement with media content: involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence. Developing this for our purposes of understanding engagement with a transmedia world, we should measure not only the audience’s interaction and contribution but also their affection and affinity towards the world – that is, what they say and how they feel about it.

Taking this approach, a Facebook “Like”, while taking such little time and effort, ranks pretty well on the engagement scale. It’s more than just any click. It’s a show of affection.

But to get that “Like” or to get a “Share”, you need to provide the mechanism and the content.

Figure 3 shows the three stages of engagement – Discovery, Experience & Exploration – that inform your content choices across my five levels of increasing engagement:

Attention
Evaluation
Affection
Advocacy
Contribution.

Figure 3 Measuring Engagement

Stages of Engagement Discovery Experience Exploration Level of Engagement Attention Evaluation Affection Advocacy Contribution Content Type Teaser Trailer Target Participation Collaboration Goal for your content Find me.

Fan comes to site and consumes low-involvement free “teaser content”

Try me.

Fan increases engagement and consumes free “trailer content”

Love me.

Fan spends money and decides that what I offer delivers on the promise, is entertaining and is worthwhile.

Talk about me.

Fan tells friends.

Be me.

Fan creates new content

How Be relevant Be credible Be exceptional Be spreadable Be open Measurement views, hits, time spent per view, number for content viewed (per channel & content (e.g. emails, blogs, videos, Twitter etc.) clicks, downloads, trials, registrations purchases, ratings, reviews, comments, blog posts, Twitter follows, Likes, community sign-ups, other memberships, subscriptions, repeat purchases

referrals, reTweets, forwards, shares, embeds, satisfaction polls & questionnaires

Offline: focus groups, surveys

uploads, remixes, stories written, collaborations, fan moderators for forum, events held, other UGC

This post continues here.

Engaging Your Audience

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:46:39 GMT

This is a two-part blog post with this being the first part. The second part is here. And you can get a PDF of the full piece, including my earlier associated work on Content Strategy.

Audience engagement is explained in the next section.

1.1.1 Measuring engagement

In 2006, Ross Mayfield stated in his blog:

He coined the term “The Power Law of Participation” which is shown in his diagram below (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Power Law of Participation

Figure 2 Audience Participation with Content

Taking this approach, a Facebook “Like”, while taking such little time and effort, ranks pretty well on the engagement scale. It’s more than just any click. It’s a show of affection.

But to get that “Like” or to get a “Share”, you need to provide the mechanism and the content.

Figure 3 shows the three stages of engagement – Discovery, Experience & Exploration – that inform your content choices across my five levels of increasing engagement:

Attention
Evaluation
Affection
Advocacy
Contribution.

Figure 3 Measuring Engagement

Fan comes to site and consumes low-involvement free “teaser content”

Try me.

Fan increases engagement and consumes free “trailer content”

Love me.

Fan spends money and decides that what I offer delivers on the promise, is entertaining and is worthwhile.

Talk about me.

Fan tells friends.

Be me.

Fan creates new content

referrals, reTweets, forwards, shares, embeds, satisfaction polls & questionnaires

Offline: focus groups, surveys

uploads, remixes, stories written, collaborations, fan moderators for forum, events held, other UGC

This post continues here.

Let’s Make a Web Series

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:53:49 GMT

Remember waiting forever to watch a video on your computer, with a 56k modem? Those days sucked. Now you can instantly view a cornucopia of high quality Internet content on a massive television. Inside your living room, a web series made for less than a $100 can compete for your eyeballs against a TV show produced for over 10,000 x the budget (Lost). Think about this: years ago independent producers could only use a cable access channel to get their shows on TV to reach a local audience. Now a small crew can shoot a comedy series for fans living everywhere from Texas to Turkey.

In my opinion, web series are one of the best ways discover talent and incubate projects. In this post you will be introduced to individuals who are doing interesting things on the web:

Mike Rotman is an Emmy nominated writer for his work on “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher”-now he is taking over the interweb with such shows as “Stupid for Movies”.

twitter.com/mikerotman

Michael Ferrell, with only a tiny budget and a local coffee company sponsor he co-created/co-produced the hilarious web series “Stoop Sale” with his girlfriend Devin Sanchez.

twitter.com/mickeyfickey

Describe your background and what inspired you to make a web series?

I’m Italian/Irish by way of Northern New Jersey and Devin thought that she was Mexican up until she was a young woman, when she found out she was actually of Spanish descent. True story. Doesn’t stop her from loving Mexican food, however. She puts jalapenos on everything. To be fair, I put garlic on everything and cook it in beer. We have amazing burritos.

We were inspired to make a web series while still in college, in the late 90’s, right after people started “e-mailing” each other. I found this “e-mail” that I sent Devin with my POP mail account:

“Dear Devin,

This e-mail thing is crazy, huh? Do you get this right away or does it take awhile? Call me when you get this and let me know. Anyhoo-I hear you’re studying theatre in Wyoming. We should get together one day and work on a play that I wrote. Or even a film. Who knows, with the way technology seems to be going, we could even get some friends together and use somebody’s small digital camera, film a few episodes of a show, put it in our computers to edit, then put it on the World Wide Web. Maybe I’m thinking crazy. But not half as crazy as my ideas for “websites” I want to create, such as Mybook,Facepage, Ourtube, and Twiddle. I’ll e-mail you about those things in a letter to follow. I’m gonna go smoke outta this dope new bong my boy got!!! Hope you get this soon!

Sincerely,
Michael”

How did you get the word out about your show?

Our show is not yet released, so the fact that we’re being interviewed is a great step in getting the word out. We submitted to festivals and got into an awesome one – the Independent Television Festival in L.A. I think submitting to festivals is the way to go if you’re an independent web series producer. We had one informal screening for the cast at a bar, which went horribly because the manager of the bar was an idiot and assured us the DVD player would work fine, but instead, it worked the opposite of fine. We will also screen “Stoop Sale” on AUGUST 24th AT “THE CREEK” IN QUEENS AS PART OF THE “WATCHDOWN” SERIES http://www.watchdown.com/ and we screened the episodes in Brooklyn for a group of filmmakers. So we definitely believe in doing some fun, live, actual-real-people-talking-to-each-other promotional events, as long as you take pictures and videos so that you can post them on facepage, mybook, and twiddle.

Besides that, @stoopsale and /stoopsale. Weird that that makes sense, right?

What have been your most interesting interactions with fans?

Well, Devin made the mistake of saying “Stoop Sale” was more popular than “Jesus: The Web Series,” and then people started uploading videos of them deleting their subscription to our youtube page and unfollowing us on twitter. It was hard to swallow, but we’re artists, so fuck it.

No, really, when we do launch the series, hopefully we will get some fans. And then we’ll have some interesting interactions with them, for instance, them sending me bottles of Macallan 12.

What mistakes did you learn from when you started creating your first web series?

I did a web series called “Hard Times,” which I’m very proud of. Through that process though, I learned that the amount of time in pre-production and post-production should far outweigh the time actually shooting and doing all the fun stuff, unfortunately. We shot “Stoop Sale” in one weekend, maybe 16 hours total. And we’ve been working on the project for almost a year. It’s not ideal for actors and writers like us, but its paid off so far. You do all the other work so that one day you won’t have to. It’s kinda like when you form a club, someone’s gotta be the secretary and someone’s gotta be the treasurer, not everyone can be the prostitute.

What is your prediction for the future of creating a web series?

I am wondering when someone is going to pull their dick out in a web series. I know it sounds like I’m joking, but the thing about the internet is that there’s no censorship. So how come some crazy college kid hasn’t made a web series where he’s doing a scene in a coffee shop or something and then he just says, “You know what?” and pulls his dick out and lays it on the table. I mean, it couldn’t be on youtube, but it can be online. The show could be called “This Guy’s Gonna Pull His Dick Out.” You’re welcome, for the idea.

Besides that, I think that the problem with most web series is the writing. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer but I’m saying this objectively, most web series are comedy and most comedy web series don’t have good writing. Some funny bits, for sure, but even if it’s sketch, I mean, real, deep, sketch writing – I feel like it’s missing in a lot of cases. And that’s one thing I’d like to see, more good writing. In the acting world, we say “theatre is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s medium, and TV is a writer’s medium.” It seems like the internet is most like TV, so it’d be nice to see better writing in the future. Of course, I may be wrong and the internet might be the kind of medium where a guy pulls his dick out in a coffee shop and it’s the most viewed web series ever.

AJ Tesler is a producer and founder of ITVFest, a festival for independent TV pilots and web series.

twitter.com/AJTESLER

Describe your background and what is ITV Fest?

After graduating from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Speech and a Theatre major, AJ stayed in Chicago, forming the small web production company Goldingeye Productions. After producing hours of content for a number of now defunct websites, AJ relocated to New York City where he worked as a New Media Analyst for d2 Capital. By day AJ would pour over notes and records in search of new entertainment channels, while at night AJ was a hilariously mediocre stand up comedian. Anxious for more, Tesler moved again, this time to Los Angeles where he immediately found success as an actor, appearing on television shows such as It’s All Relative and The Gilmore Girls. As much as he enjoys acting, AJ has always been drawn to produce and in the summer of 2002, he produced the first of almost 50 installations of the New and Improv-Ed Stand Up Show, an official selection of the Chicago Improv Festival as well as the 2004 and 2005 Los Angeles Improv Festivals. In 2004, AJ began producing television , independently, on spec, and with production company support. In 2005, AJ formed what is now widely recognized as the premier festival in the world for TV and New Media, The Independent Television Festival Corporation, a non profit, public benefit corporation. In 2008, AJ was hired to be the Manager of Development for Lion Television, a UK based development and production company. Since leaving Lion in 2009, AJ has produced shows for MTV, Babelgum, Atom.com, and Fox TV Studios. He is currently freelance producing under his recently set up production company, Apostrophy Productions.

What are your favorite success stories from your fest?

I just love the stories of people getting jumpstarts to heir careers. People getting represented, people making connections, those are the types of success stories that make me proud. On top of that, however, are shows like Urban Wolf which got licensed by Sony, Johnny B Homeless which got licensed by Atom.com, the script deal at NBC for This is My Friend and the development deal at Starz for a show called Partners…those are great stories that we can hang our hat on as well.

Are there any trends you see when it comes to submissions?

Every year we see different trends in submissions. This year over 70% of all of our submissions came in as webseries which would certainly be a trend…the rise of the webseries. In terms of the specific content, though, we got a lot of ghost hunters parodies and a lot of lesbian content as well this year. I’d say we got too many submissions shot in the mockumentary/Office style. We’re looking for innovation so it becomes very difficult to program things when we see so many people trying the same concept.

Do you have any advice for new web series creators?

Know that you don’t know it all. The one man band is the path of least resistance, but people specialize in cinematography, editing, directing, writing for a reason. Use people who are good at their jobs and your project will be significantly better for it. Other than that, make sure you have a plan for what you want to do with your show. Making something and hoping it attracts the attention of the professional world is not the smartest endeavor, but if you go in with a plan, you can deliberately attract the audience you’re seeking.

Let’s Make a Web Series

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:48:38 GMT

In my opinion, web series are one of the best ways discover talent and incubate projects. In this post you will be introduced to individuals who are doing interesting things on the web:

Mike Rotman is an Emmy nominated writer for his work on “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher”-now he is taking over the interweb with such shows as “Stupid for Movies”.

twitter.com/mikerotman

Michael Ferrell, with only a tiny budget and a local coffee company sponsor he co-created/co-produced the hilarious web series “Stoop Sale” with his girlfriend Devin Sanchez.

twitter.com/mickeyfickey

Describe your background and what inspired you to make a web series?

“Dear Devin,

Sincerely,
Michael”

How did you get the word out about your show?

Besides that, @stoopsale and /stoopsale. Weird that that makes sense, right?

What have been your most interesting interactions with fans?

No, really, when we do launch the series, hopefully we will get some fans. And then we’ll have some interesting interactions with them, for instance, them sending me bottles of Macallan 12.

What mistakes did you learn from when you started creating your first web series?

What is your prediction for the future of creating a web series?

AJ Tesler is a producer and founder of ITVFest, a festival for independent TV pilots and web series.

twitter.com/AJTESLER

Describe your background and what is ITV Fest?

What are your favorite success stories from your fest?

Are there any trends you see when it comes to submissions?

Do you have any advice for new web series creators?

What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:34:34 GMT

Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:

Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.

EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.

The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.

Why are they thriving (even in a recession):

Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.

You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.

Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.

Creators of TV shows and movies can now use similar techniques to have a stronger relationship with their fans. Emerging web start ups are making that possible. Miso injects interactivity into the TV and film viewing experience by utilizing a smart phone, laptop, or tablet as a duel screen with supplemental content. SCVNGR is an user generated location based scavenger hunt for your smart phone.

SCVNGR can create challenges based on a elements from a story e.g. a player is asked trivia from True Blood and if they get the answer correct they are given a clue to find their next location in their city. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D and Dexter made SCVNGR a part of their marketing campaign by creating scavenger hunts around the San Diego Comic Con. To reach fans where they shop, scavenger hunts can be sponsored e.g. visit Best Buy and purchase a product marked with QR code to get your next clue. People can expand the experience to new locations by creating scavenger hunts revolving around fan fiction.

This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.

Players receive points and badges in Miso for checking into their favorite shows and movies like Four Square for content. Miso has a list of their highest ranking watchers; this competition keeps an audience coming back to a program to be number 1. By rewarding their engagement over time, I think this can transform casual viewers into hardcore fans.

Users on Miso can share what they are watching on Facebook and Twitter, their friends can now start following that show and converting more fans. They can also recruit them directly on Miso. This sustains and builds a fanbase.

Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.

What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?

What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:34:34 GMT

Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:

Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.

EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.

The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.

Why are they thriving (even in a recession):

Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.

You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.

Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.

This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.

Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.

What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?

TCIBR: Ted Hope and Katie Holly on creative producing [audio]

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:37:10 GMT

TCIBR returns with a special podcast featuring Ted Hope (21 Grams, Adventureland) and Katie Holly (producer of One Hundred Mornings ). Topics covered include creative producing, community curation, making films you’re passionate about as well as what it takes to sustain as a filmmaker in today’s changing landscape. The WorkBook Project is proud to present One Hundred Mornings the winner of the WBP Discovery and Distribution Award. One Hundred Mornings opens Sept 16th at the Downtown Independent Theater in LA and will run for a week. Special thanks to our partners IndieFlix, Slamdance, The Downtown Independent Theater, Cinema Speakeasy, and CineFist.

A Content Strategy For Audience Engagement

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:29:46 GMT

When audiences connect well to your content, they go through three stages of engagement: Discovery, Experience and Exploration as shown in below.

The key to a successful content strategy is understanding (a) that there are these stages of engagement (b) what content is required for each stage and (c) what the goals are for each stage.

Failure to appreciate or acknowledge that there are these stages of engagement typically results in audiences being expected to do too much work too soon – which most won’t do – and hence the content fails at the Discovery stage and the real experience never begins. Or, expositional-type content that belongs in Exploration is offered as Experience content and hence fails to engage because it doesn’t tell a story.

Ignoring these stages is like expecting a kiss from a stranger before flirting with them or expecting to run off and get married after only the first date. Maybe in Vegas, but usually not anywhere else.

With transmedia, one media may act as Discovery content for another. For example, the comic book serving as Discovery content for a movie or, in the example of the Xbox game Alan Wake, six webisodes act as Discovery content for the game. However, it’s important to remember that each media also has its own Discovery>Experience>Exploration stages as shown in below.

This is particularly important for indies who may think that creating a comic book for their movie will result automatically in an audience for their movie. It won’t. The comic book first has to be discovered and experienced and it’s only if the content is good enough will the reader begin exploring and “discover” the movie.

Note that I’m fond of encouraging an iterative approach to creating transmedia projects but here I’m also proposing a recursive approach: each and every piece of content should attempt to lure, convince and deliver.

Engaging the Five Senses

The next illustration uses the metaphor of sensory engagement to illustrate how audiences connect to your content. The concept is that audiences are at first suspicious of new content and that if we are to draw them in and lead them to the highest level of engagement – contributing to the canon – then we must resolves their reservations and satisfy their needs at each stage.

Smell and teasers

The first sensory stage is smell. The audience approaches tentatively and sniffs: is there a whiff of the familiar?

We are creatures of habit because evolution has shown it serves us well. Repeating past satisfying experiences is a successful strategy for survival in the wild and with entertainment it’s a good indicator too.

The audience needs to be reassured that your content is worth its time and attention. You need to reduce the perceived risk by communicating “trustworthyness”, “coolness”, “quality”, ”appropriateness” – whatever values are sought by the audience for this type of project.

To communicate the correct values, I’ve created a content class called “Teasers”. Of course the “teaser” is familiar to indie filmmakers – a 30 second or less video intended to bait the trap; not to explain or reveal too much but only to temp further engagement. In this model however, I’ve broadened the teaser into a full content category to include all content that can be digested with the minimal amount of attention.

The figure shows the five content classes I’ve defined for each stage of engagement: Teaser, Trailer, Target, Participation and Collaboration.

Note that I had to create a name for the “target content” to avoid confusion with all the other content! Because of the recursive nature of this approach, any content might be at one time the target content and another time Discovery content.

Note too that because of the need to communicate quickly, visual clues from pictures, photos and web design are going to dominate the Teaser content class. But it’s also the headlines you communicate: well-known cast or crew, one-line quotes from reviewers and so on.

Taste and trailers

If your project smells familiar then the audience can progress to a more specific, personal question: will I like it?

The teaser has convinced the audience your project is something they might like, but what can you tell them to reassure them it’s worth their additional time and (possibly) money?

The movie trailer is a commercial. Its intention is to convince the audience that this movie is for them. In this model I’ve expanded the trailer to a class for all content that persuades. By which I mean content that removes the barrier between Discovery and Experience: it’s the barrier between the known – the Teaser and Trailer content – and the unknown – the target content.

This barrier is represented by toll gate 2 – TG2.

Tollgates

In this model, tollgates are barriers between one stage and another.

TG1 is tollgate 1. It’s the barrier that prevents audiences knowing that your project exists. TG1 can be breached by search engine optimization (SEO), recommendations, links and anything that puts your content on the map. But the first audience encounter should be with your Teaser content.

Tollgate 2 requires a little more explanation.

Think of TG2 as a wall that the audience must climb. The first tollgate image below shows how the project and business model will unavoidably create barriers to your content – some unintentional, some intentional.

Content that you provide in Discovery helps the audience scale the wall – as shown in below. In this example, price creates a barrier to entry that of course can only be scaled by the audience paying the fee. However, the tollgate is far higher than solely the price and the audience will only part with its money once the perception of the tollgate is lower than the payment. Stated simply, buyers rarely make decisions not to purchase based on price – it’s all those other barriers that have to be overcome first: value, suitability, risk, convenience, context and so on.

Touch and sight

It’s only when the audience touches the target content that it can see it for what it is. If your Discovery content has done its job then the audience’ expectations will be met or exceeded. But if you have deceived or misled them then they’ll be disappointed.

There is nothing more you can do at this point. The target content is what it is. This is what the audience came for and it has to deliver.

After – though sometimes during- the Experience comes the Exploration. The tollgate TG3 is the barrier to be climbed to have the audience increase its willing engagement. Sometimes there can be confusion and this will lead to unwilling engagement: the audience experiences the content but doesn’t quite “get it” and hence searches for an explanation or for help. In these situations of unwilling engagement, a high barrier at TG3 will lead to resentment.

Ordinarily we want the audience to engage further so reducing the height of TG3 should be a priority: make content easy to find and easy to access; signpost what content should follow the target content.

Listening and Participation

Although content in the participation stage may be available before the Experience, its goal is to aid exploration – not to tease or persuade (even though audiences might use it for reassurance to lower TG2).

Having experienced the target content – either in part or in full – the audience now listens for affirmation. They ask questions to themselves and to others and seek content that answers their questions or fulfils their desire for more.

Good content stimulates debate. Audiences want to discuss and share their experiences with others. They’ll also want to extend the experience and will search for add-ons or new target content.

Some audience members will want to show their affiliation to the content by buying merchandise or embedding widgets; they’ll want to encourage their friends to try the target content.

Content in this Exploration category is intended to reward and empower the advocate and to educate: it provides additional understanding and value to the target content. In this regard it may be acceptable to have “expositional” content such as character biographies, backstories and so on.

Collaboration

In this engagement model the ultimate audience engagement is collaboration or contribution. Not everyone in the audience will progress to this stage and some authors may think this undesirable.

Collaboration is not that same as participation. Participation might be passive (reading additional content and exploring the world) or active – voting, sharing, commenting, discussing, Tweeting and so on. Collaboration is adding to the storyworld: writing fan fiction, creating videos or illustrations. It’s providing new content that you, as author, are free to embrace or reject.

Between participation and collaboration is tollgate 4 – it’s a barrier created by the audience’ perceived lack of time and skills, fear of ridicule and lack of information about how to contribute to the world. You can lower this barrier by providing tools, methods, encouragement and a supportive environment.

How To Use The 5-Senese Engagement Model

The premise with this approach is that a transmedia storyworld maybe too vast to expect an audience to jump right in. They have to be teased and led like Hansel and Gretel by a trail of breadcrumbs. Imagine your world to be a huge cavern – if you blindfold your audience and then first open their eyes once they’re inside, the vastness is overwhelming – it’s a new and scary place. Your audience needs orientation. They have to be guided through an entrance tunnel and see the cavern open up before their eyes and at their own pace. The more complex the world, the more handholding you need to do.

There’s also the issue of the time, energy and cost required to digest a whole storyworld. Far better to give the audience smaller snacks at first until their appetite grows for larger, more time-consuming content.

Note that this content strategy is for audience engagement. When combined with the platform selection methodology, start first with revenue-generating target content and see how it might be prioritized by platform. Then use this engagement model to understand the relationship between the platforms and to identify additional content to aid Discovery and Exploration.

Collaborative Music Production

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:38:46 GMT

Launched this week is the latest innovation from Finland – the country that brought us Linux and Wreckamovie – a community-based music production service called AudioDraft.

AudioDraft allows musicians to record and upload music not necessarily as complete pieces but as tracks (or stems as would be the jargon) for each individual instrument or vocal. This means a singer in Finland can work with a guitarist in Germany and a drummer in America. They each record their part, upload to the site and then the three stems can be mixed and saved as would be done with any other digital mixing program: think of AudioDraft as a cloud-based ProTools or Adobe Audition.

What could be amazing about the service is that bands are able to allow fans to mix their own tracks. Don’t like that damn bass? Think the sax solo should be louder and the drums drop out? Mix it yourself. It could be a fantastic way to build community around music artists with each fan able to tweek the original work to suit their taste.

There’s little reason why AudioDraft could not be used for film production with sound effects designers and composers uploading their work from different parts of the world. Right now this isn’t possible because there’s no picture sync but it doesn’t take much imagination to see it working in the future.

Of particular interest to indie filmmakers and others is the other service offered by AudioDraft – the work-for-hire competition model that allows musicians to submit work for payment: think 99Designs for audio work. Three competitions are running at the time of writing with prize money between $1000 and $400. One of which is a competition to create the theme music for webseries part of my Lowlifes transmedia project

Definitely worth checking out.

Collaborative Music Production

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:01:44 GMT

Launched this week is the latest innovation from Finland – the country that brought us Linux and Wreckamovie – a community-based music production service called AudioDraft.

Definitely worth checking out.

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:38:33 GMT

Having decided that you want to get into transmedia and write a transmedia story, where do you start?

Well, I’d recommend that you start with what you know and branch out from there. But knowing where and how to branch out means considering the type of experience you want to create.

There are five questions to ask yourself (shown in Figure 1):

What is the story I want to tell?
How will I deliver the story?
What kind of audience participation do I want or need?
How will audience participation affect the story over time?
How much is based in the real world vs a fictional world?

Figure 1: Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

The more audience participation you want or need, the more you’ll tend towards writing the storyworld before the story. Figure 2 illustrates what I mean by story and storyworld.

Think of a “story” as one implementation of the world of the story among many potential implementations. I guess you might think of story as one plot line and associated characters from a world of many plots, subplots, and characters and so on – I’ve called this a single “narrative space”. Figure 3 illustrates how an author might take a single narrative space (one story) and develop it into additional narrative spaces (new stories).

Figure 2: Story vs Storyworld

Figure 3: Narrative Spaces

When thinking about delivering the story, put aside the specifics of particular platforms (just for now) and think about the experience in terms of:

the narrative spaces you want to cover (location, characters, time – see above)
the number and relative timing of the platforms (sequential, parallel, simultaneous, non-linear)
the extent and type of audience involvement (passive, active, interactive, collaborative) .

There’s a lot to consider here so let’s tackle it as a two-stage process:

Step 1: decide the narrative space, number of platforms and their timing
Step 2: decide the extent of audience involvement.

Step 1: Narrative Space and Relative Timing of Platforms

Figure 4 shows a “typical” Hollywood transmedia project. It’s a series of single-platform deliverables – a book, a movie, a game. In many ways the platforms are independent except that they often cover different narrative spaces: prequel, sequel, flashback which may dictate a release order or schedule. In any case there’s no apparent audience interactivity between the platforms.

Figure 4: Transmedia Franchise

By contrast, an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) might cover a single narrative space across multiple platforms – each alone insufficient to carry the complete story but like jigsaw puzzle pieces they must be assembled to complete the picture (well… you know… story).

Figure 5: Portmanteau Transmedia

These different types to transmedia can be represented by the diagram in Figure 6. Of course it’s also possible to combine different types of transmedia as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 6: Types of Transmedia

Figure 7: Mixed Transmedia Types

Step 2: Audience Involvement

Audience involvement in the story often bothers indie filmmakers. It’s not just that the indie wants to tell his story without interference; it’s also the fear that amateur involvement will sully the final result. And for those who have tried involving audiences there’s concerns about the effort of “community management” – the time and trouble to guide, motivate, appeal and appease.

It’s not only indie filmmakers that worry about how to tell their story and yet still find room for audience participation. Talk to game designers about audience (i.e. player) interaction and story and they’ll tell you that the more control you give to players (audiences), the less control is retained by the author. In fact the problem is even more pronounced in MMOs where virtual world guru Richard Bartle says “Virtual world designers can’t add story, they can only add content. Content provides experiences that can be made by those who come through or observe them into story.” So at its most open-ended, the virtual world (or transmedia experience) creates a world with lots of actionable content and choices but no plot?

This player-author struggle is tackled by games like Fallout3 and Red Dead Redemption (which are console games, not MMOs) by offering players the choice to explore (create their own stories) or tackle quests (follow the author’s story). Cut-scenes of course offer the most extreme authorial control.

It’s clear that transmedia experiences can borrow from the lessons of games and virtual worlds – creating a storyworld into which the author places a mix of story and content with opportunities for sit-forward and sit-back participation.

Looking further into audience participation I discovered the “storytelling cube” (Figure 8 ) first presented at the 2002 Game Developers Conference by Raph Koster and Rich Vogel to describe how narrative is explored in online virtual worlds. It applies particularly well to ARGs. The three axes are control, impact and context:

Control: How much freedom does the audience have to create their own experience and how much control will you have as the author?
Impact: What long-lasting impact will the audience have on the evolution of the experience?
Context: How much of the experience is based in a fictional world and how much exists in “real life”?

Figure 8 Storytelling Cube (Raph Koster & Rich Vogel)

There’s no right or wrong position to be inside this cube: it’s up to you to decide based on experience, preference and resources. At one extreme you might have an entirely fictional world, tightly controlled by the author with no audience interaction and at the other you could have an experience based around real-world places & events in which the audience is free to completely change how the story evolves and is experienced. And of course the two can be mixed and there’s a lot of space in between.

To be continued….

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:38:33 GMT

Having decided that you want to get into transmedia and write a transmedia story, where do you start?

Well, I’d recommend that you start with what you know and branch out from there. But knowing where and how to branch out means considering the type of experience you want to create.

There are five questions to ask yourself (shown in Figure 1):

What is the story I want to tell?
How will I deliver the story?
What kind of audience participation do I want or need?
How will audience participation affect the story over time?
How much is based in the real world vs a fictional world?

Figure 1: Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started

The more audience participation you want or need, the more you’ll tend towards writing the storyworld before the story. Figure 2 illustrates what I mean by story and storyworld.

Figure 2: Story vs Storyworld

Figure 3: Narrative Spaces

When thinking about delivering the story, put aside the specifics of particular platforms (just for now) and think about the experience in terms of:

the narrative spaces you want to cover (location, characters, time – see above)
the number and relative timing of the platforms (sequential, parallel, simultaneous, non-linear)
the extent and type of audience involvement (passive, active, interactive, collaborative) .

There’s a lot to consider here so let’s tackle it as a two-stage process:

Step 1: decide the narrative space, number of platforms and their timing
Step 2: decide the extent of audience involvement.

Step 1: Narrative Space and Relative Timing of Platforms

Figure 4: Transmedia Franchise

Figure 5: Portmanteau Transmedia

These different types to transmedia can be represented by the diagram in Figure 6. Of course it’s also possible to combine different types of transmedia as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 6: Types of Transmedia

Figure 7: Mixed Transmedia Types

Step 2: Audience Involvement

Control: How much freedom does the audience have to create their own experience and how much control will you have as the author?
Impact: What long-lasting impact will the audience have on the evolution of the experience?
Context: How much of the experience is based in a fictional world and how much exists in “real life”?

Figure 8 Storytelling Cube (Raph Koster & Rich Vogel)

To be continued….

Transmedia Storytelling-Fishing where the fish are

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:56:46 GMT

Multiplatform Storytelling: A Master Class with Tim Kring at SXSW brought a rock star–sized following of fans and some press excited to see the architect behind Heroes. Brian Seth Hurst moderated it. Their discussion started with them revealing how George Lucas invented transmedia storytelling. Prepare to be shocked-it all started November 17, 1978 with The Star Wars Holiday Special. A mysterious new character appeared on this show. His name was Bobba Fett. Before long Bobba Fett could also be purchased as a limited edition action figure in toy stores. Fans were confused and excited about this bounty hunter who came out of nowhere. About a year later when The Empire Strike Back was released Bobba Fett showed up again. Many fans were already aware of him. It was the first time a character originated on one platform then moved to the “mother ship of the property”.

Next Tim talked about his experience in the TV biz, then and now. When he started out a viewer had limited options: passively watch a show, at a certain time, via their TV. Now technology has offered new ways to distribute content at anytime to viewers e.g. smart phones and computers. It’s a double-edged sword; this has also brought about new competitors-including social networks and casual games that can steal eyeballs from a TV show.

Here is data that shows how things have changed:

Casual game FarmVille surpasses 80 million users http://mashable.com/2010/02/20/farmville-80-million-users/

Nielsen data shows that U.S. Facebook users now spend an average of seven hours per month on the site.

Apple announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store by iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/apples-app-store-downloads-top-three-billion-80694707.html

Some people have looked at transmedia storytelling like a novelty; Tim knew it was a necessity. So for Heroes his strategy was to “fish where the fish are”. He created Heroes Evolution, which expanded his stories beyond a TV screen with weekly web graphic novels connected to the show, interactive puzzles that engage fans with text messages and phone apps, among many other techniques to reach an elusive audience who have migrated all over the place. Tim’s closing remarks were he recommended that young producers should prepare to pitch TV executives their shows with a transmedia strategy. For future projects Tim is considering making his story the mother ship where everything is connected vs having his TV show at the hub.

Transmedia Storytelling-Fishing where the fish are

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:56:46 GMT

Here is data that shows how things have changed:

Casual game FarmVille surpasses 80 million users http://mashable.com/2010/02/20/farmville-80-million-users/

Nielsen data shows that U.S. Facebook users now spend an average of seven hours per month on the site.

Evolutionary Entertainment: A 5-stage Development Process for Transmedia Projects

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:22:09 GMT

The key to creating a great transmedia project is to see it as a living, breathing, evolving entity. Even though my preference is always to plan rather than wing it, trying to find all the pieces of the puzzle from the start can be exhausting, demoralizing and may later prove to be misplaced. Right now all media and entertainment experiences are built on shifting sands: better not to be locked in to one particular set of ideas if you don’t have to be.

The figure below expands on the transmedia business model to incorporate the idea of “evolutionary entertainment” – that is, entertainment that evolves. It evolves with time, technology, audience preferences, financing and your story. Adopting this approach will keep you open to new opportunities.

Evolutionary Approach to Transmedia Entertainment

Not only do I suggest that the “live” transmedia project evolves but also that it’s possible to use this evolutionary approach to development.

Five Stage Development Process

I’ve identified five key elements to a transmedia project:

The story
The audience
The (technical/media) platforms
The business model
The execution

The goal is to get all five working in harmony together – supporting and reinforcing each other.

Rather than try to tackle all five considerations in a single swoop, allow your ideas to evolve through multiple iterations – start with a small concept, run it through the all the stages and see what comes out. Now start again, this time taking the outputs from each stage and feeding them into the other stages.

Developing the project in this way makes the process manageable and ensures you think carefully about what you plan to do.

5-Stage Transmedia Development Process

Each of the five stages warrants its own blog post but for now I’ll stick to explaining the process. Also, I know that ideas can come from many angles but I’m going to assume here it starts with an idea for a story.

Stage 1: Story

Start with the story basics: characters, plot, premise, theme, genre and location.

Stage 2: Audience

Who does this story appeal to? Try to identify as many audience segments as you can ranging from fans of this genre to those who will agree with the premise; those who will identify with the themes, characters, genre etc.

Now iterate back to the Story. What might you add to the story to increase its appeal to these audiences?

(There’s an excellent post related to identifying your audience at Dennis Peter’s blog)

Stage 3: Platforms

By “platforms” I mean the combination of media plus technology. So YouTube and iTunes would be two different platforms even if they can both deliver video. A printed book and The Kindle would be two different platforms. A cinema, a living room and an outdoor public are all different platforms.

Almost any technology, medium and place can be used to convey your story but think about your audience again – what’s their lifestyle? Where and how do they hang out? If you’ve got a story appealing to single-parent families is it likely they’re going to attend live events? Maybe if it’s during the day and they can bring their babies but most likely not in the evenings – they have problems with babysisters, cash and free time. Which platforms will appeal to this audience?

Think of your project as a lifestyle choice: it needs to slip into your audience’ lives with the minimum amount of friction.

Now iterate back to the story. What might you do with the story to have it play out better across these platforms?

Stage 4: Business Model

How are you going to pay for this project? You have three main choices:

Free
Premium (only available for sale)
Freemium (mix of free and paid).

Look at the platforms you’ve chosen for your audience – which of them supports free and which supports paid? Look again at your audience – what do they buy and what don’t they buy? Do you platforms and audience support your business model?

Consider the CwF+RtB=$$ equation – which parts of your content can be pirated (shown in the diagram below as “infinite” availability to all) and which parts are “scarce” (not easily or can’t be copied). What content can be easily copied but some audience members might pay on a platform that offers convenience and immediacy (for more on this see Ross Pruden’s excellent blog).

Offering Audiences Reasons to Buy

Now iterate back to the story but this time think about the timing of the story delivery. By this I mean how will the story be released to the audience on the platforms you’ve identified- a free book chapter a week over 12 weeks simultaneous with a paid Kindle version? A free feature film followed by a paid comic book?

How can you develop your story and platforms to better suit the business model?

Stage 5: Execution

Finally look at the resources you have. If you’re an indie you’ll likely have more time than cash – how can you use that to your advantage? How much cash do you actually need to get going on the Transmedia Business Model? What favors can you pull in?

To answer these questions, consider this equation: outcome = probability x impact. It’s usually used to measure risk – how likely are bad things to happen and if they do happen, what’s their impact. But you can use it to make informed choices about the steps you take to implement your project.

For example, you may feel that a feature film has the highest impact – on your career and/or your audience – but what’s the probability of getting it made? Only you can answer that because you know what resources you have available (money, crew, kit etc). If the probability is low – because, say, you need to get a studio to green light the project – then you might think it better to do something with a higher probability of success even if there’s potentially lower impact.

Ultimately you’ll likely have a range of things to implement – a “portfolio of opportunities” – that get you started with some quick wins and lay the foundations of longer term, higher impact successes.

Now iterate through the five stages again and keep honing and refining.

As I said at the start, don’t feel you need all the answers from the get-go. After a few passes through the five stages, start thinking about implementation and give it a go. Then, in the light of that early experience go back to the development process and evolve.

Creative extensions to the stories I tell

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:54:47 GMT

I find myself baffled at times by the lack of willingness to experiment. Where is the innovation? We find ourselves at an amazing time, one in which storytelling has vast possibilities thanks in part to advancements in technology. Yet many confuse this opportunity with what they literally see others doing or what bubbles up in various press coverage. Social media hype clouds the true creative potential. In fact in many ways the types of transmedia I find myself drawn to are all about story and have little to do with promotion and marketing. Now some of that becomes a natural byproduct but it isn’t what’s driving the story I’m telling. If I can build an audience along the way – why wouldn’t I? In fact they’re more than an audience to me they’re collaborators. Of course some will be passive viewers but others will be active participants.

The technology that we use to design, delivery and tell engaging stories with; is more than just a twitter, blog or facebook account for a character. It isn’t just about documenting the behind the scenes of a film or TV project that we’re making. Not that there’s anything wrong with documentation of a process in many ways that’s what makes the WorkBook Project possible. But for me It’s about creative choices that effect a vast world where the characters and stories we tell live. Where a scene can play through time and space. It can resolve itself on a mobile device, in a dark theater or in someone’s living room. The technology that we use is merely another creative tool no different than a lens or a camera.

There are some amazing projects that embrace technology and data sets. Data is something that touches all of our lives and it is a language that we all will find ourselves learning whether we like it or not. In many ways data is boring but it can also become a beautiful moving piece of art. For instance We Feel Fine jumps to mind. The project is emotional and tells a collective story that connects people all over the world. I could argue that it is as beautiful as some of the foreign films I love. It is an amazing piece of art yet informative and touching all at the same time.

Now Transmedia isn’t for all stories. In fact for some it could be considered a distraction especially if you try to shoehorn it into a project. But that’s because the language for telling stories across multiple devices and screens is relatively a new form. Like writing a good script it takes time to develop a rich storyworld one where you feel a connection to the characters, engage in the story and escape into the world that surrounds you.

One area that I’ve been focusing over the last year is within the mobile app space. The following column from Filmmaker Mag explains some of the reasons why.

It’s a known fact that the film industry has no shortage of middlemen. The path between filmmaker and audience is littered with them – some good, some bad. But the promise of a direct connection to an audience has become the currency of the future. These days it seems as if everyone is trying to find a way to capitalize on fostering stronger relationships with audiences. Much of these efforts are focused after the film is finished when it comes time to promote and market the work. Although some filmmakers are including audience development in their initial business plans, many are still only working to build awareness around traditional elements such as theatrical, DVD and VOD.

Are we missing a window of opportunity by limiting ourselves to formats, running times and traditional markets?

Consider the Following:

* To date, Apple has shipped more than 70 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices and it’s projected that within the next two years they’ll have more than 200 million in the market.

* More than 140,000 applications have been created for the iPhone and iPod.

* Each day, 60,000 Android devices ship.

* The fledging Android Market has more than 10,000 apps.

These stats are just one part of a growing mobile device market, which is currently expanding due to a new generation of tablets. Apple’s iPad and a slew of other computer and handset manufacturers have tablets entering the market over the next few months. Larger screens, faster processors, wireless connectivity and the ability to run various browser and mobile-based applications will all be here soon. We don’t know yet if this generation of tablets will resonate with consumers but, as we have seen in the past, devices do have the ability to influence user behavior and consumption. The iPod revitalized the value of a music track and now the publishing industry is hoping the iPad can do the same for books and zines.

READ MORE

Followers

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:56:35 GMT

Here is my interview with Scott Kirsner, who is the author of Friend, Fans & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age. Scott spoke on various panels at SXSW.

What did you take away from SXSW this year?

SXSW is always great. I tell filmmakers that it’s the best annual event for figuring out how film and technology work together, and how new online dynamics are changing the way people will consume video. As far as what I took away, I did sessions at SXSW with the videoblogger/Internet artist Ze Frank and Gary Hustwit, who makes documentaries like “Helvetica” and “Objectified.” Both of them really underscored for me that if you do something you’re interested in (or even obsessed about), do it well, and let people get involved (giving them ways to participate and support you), there really is a viable way to be an independent artist in these digital times…without being a shameless self-promoter.

How should film schools adapt to a new media landscape?

I think they ought to be encouraging students to think about making new forms of content that take advantage of technological possibilities: short-form stuff that’s linked in new ways, that connects to location, that engages the viewer in different ways than feature-length, cinematically-exhibited films do. What can you make that lives in Facebook, that spreads via Twitter? Does there need to be a boundary between film and games? I’d like to see more film schools encouraging students to ask those kinds of questions.

When you wrote Fans, Friends And Followers what information did you find surprising?

Mostly, how experimental you have to be to figure out a strategy that works for you to build an audience. A remix contest may work for someone, but not someone else. You need to let a thousand flowers bloom.

Will creators have to spend more money on marketing as the web becomes crowded with new entertainment?

Well, spending lots of money on marketing, whether it’s billboards along every major highway or a Super Bowl ad, is a pretty time-tested way to get people to be aware of your product. But I actually think the online world gives creators more opportunities to organically build word-of-mouth about what they’re doing, rather than buying awareness. And when you do buy stuff, like ads on Facebook or Google, you can do it in a targeted, inexpensive way, without needing to hire an ad agency. That’s really revolutionary for individual creators.

How can artists do more to recognize fans who actually buy their content?

Well, crediting or thanking them is one way. Integrating them into the content somehow is another. M dot Strange incorporated images of some of his fans into his debut feature, “We Are the Strange,” and Jill Sobule sings about some of the donors who made her 2009 album “California Years” possible.

Is content still king or have aggregators taken its crown?

I am a believer in democracy, not monarchy. I think great work will always be recognized, will always find an audience, and that there will be ways for its creators to earn a living. People vote with their dollars, and they are still purchasing books, CDs, movie tickets, movie downloads, videogames, etc. And I’m hopeful that content and aggregators can coexist peacefully.

If you were going to be a financier in the entertainment industry what would be the best investment and why?

Well, I’m really interested in companies like JibJab Media or Next New Networks that have been trying to create new kinds of studio models… What would the next Disney or Paramount look like? What would the production costs be? What kinds of stories would you be telling, and how can the audience be involved in new ways? That said, there have been some failures already in that arena— but I also believe we’ll eventually see some successes.

My Vision (guesses) for the Future

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:43:47 GMT

These predictions are based on my experience at SXSW:

1.The film and music industry will create casual games for Facebook. It will be an effective way to organize fan communities, sell them digital goods, merchandise, tickets to new media events, and introduce them to similar films and music they might like.

2.Apple, Amazon, and Netflix will compete against each other as film buyers to have exclusive rights to hot titles at the Sundance Film Festival.

3.Tastemakers who curate music and film content will actually get paid for their service.

4.Film studios will do more to reach out to Silicon Valley and fund/acquire their own web startups.

5.More entertainment created specifically for the web will be optioned to become TV shows or films.

6.Most film schools will teach 3D film production.

7.With a growing audience excited to watch everything in 3D, including ads, more TV shows are going be produced.

8.Major corporations will create platforms that support entertainment and finance the creation of content. They can own their TV network online versus paying for ads to place on another network.

9.Film studios will hire community managers and some will volunteer to manage fan communities for a movie even after a flick has left theaters.