remixable - posts tagged 'experimental'

Transmedia Talk 29: Lost Zombies

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:51:32 GMT

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

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 Podcast – Episode 18

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:40:51 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. Download | Subscribe with iTunes Running Time: 55:24 Hosts: Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media Haley Moore and Host Emeritus Robert Pratten from Transmedia Storyteller Special Guest: Lance Weiler creator of Pandemic 1.0. Filmmaker and story architect Lance Weiler joins us to talk about his transmedia experience Pandemic 1.0, which ran during this year’s Sundance Film Festival. From This Episode: ‘Pandemic 41.410806, -75.654259′, the short film shown at Sundance alongside the Pandemic 1.0 experience. How I Learned to Start a Pandemic -Lance walks us through the Pandemic 1.0 experience. Lance gives us a tour of the “memorial room” in the basement of Pandemic’s headquarters at Sundance. Lance talks about his approach to storytelling in an interview with Christine Vachon and Ted Hope. Note: We were unable to record the show last week due to inclement weather and blackouts, so in the audio of Episode 18, we accidentally refer to this as Episode 19. We apologize for the error.

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 3

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:11:11 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. This episode is in TWO parts PART ONE: download PART TWO: 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 Topics cover in this episode (start time shown in bold) PART ONE (47 mins) Audience building: 01:04 Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, 02:53 Fallout New Vegas iPhone App 05:46 Savage County 09:51 Pervasive Games – JeJune Institute and Nonchalance [Jeff Hull will be speaking at TedxSOMA] 29:34 Mongoliad - collaborative storytelling PART TWO (40 mins) 0:00 Dexter ARG Hosts Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com Guests Jeffery Hull from Nonchalance Jeremy Bornstein from Subutai Corp Haley Moore from Culture Hacker Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media

ARGFest’s Artifact Academy Puzzle Trail

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:33:47 GMT

At ARGFest 2010, Michelle Senderhauf and I ran a workshop on game artifacts – how to use them to tell a story, deliver puzzles, and reward players. We invited our workshoppers to create artifacts to continue an ARG scenario I cooked up, and lead the players to the next part of the game using physical objects.

The facts were these:

The players had been asked to help a hot brunette recover his grandfather from mysterious kidnappers who have also stolen his uncrackable safe and hidden it in an unknown location. After remotely blowing up a courier car sent to retrieve the safe, and getting the coordinates of its destination from an apparently indestructible GPS unit, the players find themselves in the woods, unearthing the safe. It’s contents may reveal a secret about the hot brunette’s grandfather that he never would have guessed, or they may raise even more questions.

We brought in the tools and materials for a little ARG propmaking jamboree, and what the ARGFesters came up with was truly remarkable. As you can see, we left the prompt wide open for participants of the workshop to create as much or as little content as they desired, and to take the story in any direction they chose.

I never expected that at the end of a frantic hour and a half of crafting, we would have a complete puzzle trail, leading players to the next “live event” in our game.

Let’s rifle through this box of treasures. What you’re about to see is written, conceived, and assembled by the workshoppers. Michelle and I just facilitated.

First, we have a postcard that looks like it was shot in the 1960’s, but the caption on the back says it’s from the 1919 Indy 500 race. Curious.

Michelle found these postcards (front and back) in an antiques store in her native Chesterton, IN, on an artifact shopping trip. Michelle gave herself a $20 budget and was able to procure a good stock of old photographs and other things to modify to tell our story.

Next, we have a compass with no directions on it. Also curious.

I found these toy compasses in the party supply aisle of my local dollar store, with the pirate hats and paper eyepatches. I think they were six to a pack. They did have a direction sticker on the bottom, which was removed for the purposes of the game.

A letter about secret government research into…time travel?

“Dear Adrian,

You were not yet born when it all started, so I do not expect you to predict what will happen should the UNRC’s predictions be incorrect. But despite the agreement I signed and the importance of the information, I feel morally obliged to tell you what our last hope is. If the speculation of our scientists – my coworkers – is correct, we will be able to change history. Time can be changed, and if it cannot then it is already too late for us. I am writing to tell you that despite my distracted behavior recently, your father loves you. Tomorrow I move to the facility constructed in the late Piedmont Park in Atlanta. There everyone is gathering to complete the Algorythm. I only hope we are correct.

God help us.

~ Stefan”

It has a mysterious glyph at the bottom – is it a map?

This letter was hand written at the workshop on some paper that I enoldenated en masse a few months ago. I bought a cheap writing pad from the dollar store and steeped it in tea and coffee at near-boiling temperature.

The scroll unrolls into a nearly unreadable map.

I drew this as a “bonus” at the end of the workshop. The “scroll” is a roll of thermal paper I saved from an old thermal fax machine. Thermal paper is cool in that it “antiques” itself when it is exposed to heat. It is also translucent, like vellum.

There’s also this strange device – is it from the future, or the past? It has a blue monocle on a reel, and a UV LED on the side.

This is cobbled together from a dollar store intrusion detector toy, a UV keychain light from an invisible ink kit, and a real antique monocle that Michelle had picked up (along with a pair of glasses) on her shopping excursion.

And here we have the easiest puzzle of the bunch. Look through the monocle, and you’ll see a US map denoting some ominous and bizarre landmarks.

However, the most interesting thing in the safe is this framed photo – is this the hot brunette’s grandfather as a younger man?

The back of the frame has scuff marks where the backing is held in place. That’s odd. It’s not like you open and close picture frames a whole lot. Or do you?

The image is a real old photo -another of Michelle’s finds. According to her, photos like this usually run a few dollars at antiques stores. The frame is from the dollar store, and was roughed up with a pair of scissors.

Oh-ho! Secrets!

There is a page with letters and holes, and clock drawn on the back of the photo – but it has no hands! However, the shape in the middle looks familiar…

This is the real back of that photo. I love it – its so pretty, and its even more gorgeous with the hand-drawn clock face on it. The letter page was done with stamps for the letters, and hand written numbers. More antiqued paper.

The compass has a notch in it – and it turns out that we can use that to line it up perfectly with the “map” on the letter. We point the compass to the arrow on the letter…

And when we line it up with a similar mark on the clock, we get a time. 6:30. Perhaps this is the time of Stefan’s meeting in Piedmont Park (two blocks from the convention.) But Stefan is a time traveler? What day are we supposed to meet him on?

At this point, we know we’re missing a piece in the puzzle. We have that piece of paper with the holes in it, but the holes don’t line up with anything on the letter, or the clock piece. Where could the missing key to this puzzle be?

Hmm….

Found it! The glue holding the two cards together separates without damaging either, and now we can see that there is a secret star chart inside.

When we stack them, we can see that some of the letters are marked with red dots. From left to right and top to bottom – J, 2, Y, 8, 0, 0, U, 1, L, 1.

I’ll leave that one little puzzle for you to solve. If anyone has spotted time travelers at Piedmont Park, please drop us a line.

The ARGFest workshop was attended by @Ancalime, @DavFlamerock, @egotist, @JimBabb, @TheBruce0, and many others, who made these awesome things. Michelle and I mostly just watched.

Hard Knocks of Crowdsourcing: Don’t Throttle Participation

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:02:32 GMT

Today, I am going to share a parable of net-native design for those interested in learning from the mistakes of others.

A few weeks ago, I launched the site and resources for my distributed object project, Sew By Numbers. Basically, I made a template that anyone could print out on a sheet of inkjet fabric, and if you followed the instructions on the sheet, you’d end up with a little doll. Because the whole thing is printed on the fabric, the doll’s and features can be easily customized without changing the template. It is basically papercraft, for fabric.

I had always planned to include a crowdsourcing element in Sew By Numbers, but since this was something I did in my spare time, I didn’t think I would get anyone interested customizing dolls without talking to them one on one.

And so, I published a blank template, with the half-hearted suggestion that people could design on them if they wanted to. The blank template had some flaws. The parts weren’t clearly labeled, and because constructing the doll involved flipping pieces over, it was almost assured that an arm or a foot would be backward if you didn’t know exactly where to place your graphics. The blank was really designed for testing, and to make “sketch dolls” that artists could draw on after assembling them.

There was also an artist template, with all of these flaws fixed, but at the time I was simply passing it around by email to a small group of artists, and had held off making it publically available, so I could tweak it if I felt like it.

Turns out I was wrong. About an hour after the project was mentioned to Aaron, an excellent character artist I’d never met, he finished a really excellent doll design on the publically available template – the one with all the design flaws. The result was usable, but needed hours of tweaking to add bleeds and fix one of those upside-down legs.

To fix it, I did three things – first, I made the proper template available at a short URL on our web site. Second, I emailed it to Aaron directly. Third, after talking to him a bit, I did all the necessary testing and tweaking for his design myself. I didn’t want the miscommunication to discourage an interested and talented person from making more designs in the future. The result looks great:

The lesson we can take from this snafu is – if you are going to get content from the crowd, make as many of your own resources as possible available to everyone. Don’t limit the average participant to working with substandard tools. This is doubly important for early adopters, who are more skilled, focused, and passionate about contributing than later participants.

It should also be mentioned that Aaron was a friend of a friend, not a complete stranger. It makes me think that crowdsourcing strategies might be useful even in smaller groups – basically, for anyone who you don’t speak to personally, your public presence is going to be your connection to them.

Luckily, this is not a post-mortem of my project. SBN looks to be proceeding apace – even in the early stages, it’s gotten the nod from Thingiverse, and Andrea demoed it at foo camp. I was even filmed putting together one of the alpha dolls for a documentary short about the Dallas Makerspace. So far, the process of making internet dolls has been fun and rewarding – as long as it’s done with the right tools.

Hard Knocks of Crowdsourcing: Don’t Throttle Participation

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:47:20 GMT

Today, I am going to share a parable of net-native design for those interested in learning from the mistakes of others.

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.

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