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September 02 2010
Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 2
Welcome to the second episode of 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 edition of Transmedia Talk covers the following…
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 (start time shown in bold)
0:00:54 Apple’s iTV, Google TV, Boxee, Roku and Amazon on Demand
0:07:25 StoryLabs – international network of transmedia & new technology mentors
0:10:18 TransmediaNext – 3 days intensive transmedia training in London Sept 8th-10th
0:14:30 Transmedia funding – public vs private?
0:30:23 YouSuckatTransmedia, Christy’s top 5 tips for transmedia consultants and discussion about what can go wrong
0:46:11 J.J. Abram’s Super8 ARG: Scariestthingieversaw.com, http://www.rocketpoppeteers.com/, http://www.hooklineandminker.com/
Hosts
Nick Braccia from Culture Hacker
Robert Pratten from TransmediaStoryteller.com
Guests
Christy Dena from Universe Creation 101
Anita Ondine from Seize the Media
Dee Cook from Dog Tale Media
August 05 2010
A Content Strategy For Audience Engagement
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.
July 07 2010
Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started
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
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….
June 30 2010
CALL FOR ENTRY: The Pixel Pitch
Power to the Pixel has just opened calls for it’s annual Pixel Pitch. Now in its second year the Pixel Pitch offers transmedia projects an opportunity to present their work to an international panel of judges consisting of producers, funders, sales agents and distributors. This year’s top project will be award a cash prize thanks to support from ARTE. To find out more read below or visit www.powertothepixel.com
The Pixel Market – How Does It Work?
Power to the Pixel will select up to 20 cross-media projects to be presented to potential international financiers, investors and partners at The Pixel Market, part of Power to the Pixel’s annual Cross-Media Forum held in association with The BFI London Film Festival. Selected participants will also gain free accreditation to Power to the Pixel’s Conference Summit on the first day of the Forum.
The Pixel Pitch, 13 October 2010
Up to half of the selected projects will be presented In Competition at The Pixel Pitch, a public event on the first day of the market on 13 October 2010 at NFT1, BFI Southbank. These project teams will compete for the £6,000 ARTE Pixel Pitch Cash Prize.
Producer-led teams will present to a hand-picked roundtable jury made up of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media & entertainment companies.
Each team will have 10 minutes to pitch their project (including visual presentations) with a further 20 minutes for comments and feedback from the roundtable.
The Pixel Meetings, 14 October 2010
Day Two of the market is a by-invitation-only event. The 20 international teams selected for The Pixel Market will attend a day of one-to-one business meetings with potential creative and financial partners from across the tech, online, interactive, film, broadcast, arts, publishing and gaming industries.
This will be followed by an evening networking drinks reception where the Winner of the ARTE Pixel Pitch Prize will be announced.
Submission Guidelines
1. Projects must have a Producer attached and be submitted through a production company
2. Submissions must be made by the Producer
3. Producer(s) must own the rights to develop and produce the project in all required media
4. Applications from producers who are students on the dates of The Pixel Market will not be eligible
5. A maximum of 2 members per team will be allowed to present In Competition at The Pixel Pitch (if selected) one of whom must be the Producer or Director
6. Applications and supplementary materials must be delivered in the English language
7. Power to the Pixel will give preference to projects whose team members have a track record within their sector (eg. broadcast, online, gaming, theatrical, publishing)
8. Projects must be at an advanced stage of development
9. Application forms and all supplementary materials must be delivered online eg. stills, storyboards, moving imagery (10 mins max) by uploading files and providing urls to where materials have been uploaded
10. All application forms and supplementary materials must be received by 18.00 BST on 6 August 2010 at market@powertothepixel.com
Key Dates
16 June 2010 Call open for submissions
6 August 2010 Deadline for submissions (18.00 BST)
3 September 2010 Successful applicants informed
13 October 2010 The Pixel Pitch at NFT1, BFI Southbank in London
14 October 2010 The Pixel Meetings (venue tbc)
ARTE Pixel Pitch Prize Winner announced
CALL FOR ENTRY: The Pixel Pitch
Power to the Pixel has just opened calls for it’s annual Pixel Pitch. Now in its second year the Pixel Pitch offers transmedia projects an opportunity to present their work to an international panel of judges consisting of producers, funders, sales agents and distributors. This year’s top project will be award a cash prize thanks to support from ARTE. To find out more read below or visit www.powertothepixel.com
The Pixel Market – How Does It Work?
Power to the Pixel will select up to 20 cross-media projects to be presented to potential international financiers, investors and partners at The Pixel Market, part of Power to the Pixel’s annual Cross-Media Forum held in association with The BFI London Film Festival. Selected participants will also gain free accreditation to Power to the Pixel’s Conference Summit on the first day of the Forum.
The Pixel Pitch, 13 October 2010
Up to half of the selected projects will be presented In Competition at The Pixel Pitch, a public event on the first day of the market on 13 October 2010 at NFT1, BFI Southbank. These project teams will compete for the £6,000 ARTE Pixel Pitch Cash Prize.
Producer-led teams will present to a hand-picked roundtable jury made up of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media & entertainment companies.
Each team will have 10 minutes to pitch their project (including visual presentations) with a further 20 minutes for comments and feedback from the roundtable.
The Pixel Meetings, 14 October 2010
Day Two of the market is a by-invitation-only event. The 20 international teams selected for The Pixel Market will attend a day of one-to-one business meetings with potential creative and financial partners from across the tech, online, interactive, film, broadcast, arts, publishing and gaming industries.
This will be followed by an evening networking drinks reception where the Winner of the ARTE Pixel Pitch Prize will be announced.
Submission Guidelines
1. Projects must have a Producer attached and be submitted through a production company
2. Submissions must be made by the Producer
3. Producer(s) must own the rights to develop and produce the project in all required media
4. Applications from producers who are students on the dates of The Pixel Market will not be eligible
5. A maximum of 2 members per team will be allowed to present In Competition at The Pixel Pitch (if selected) one of whom must be the Producer or Director
6. Applications and supplementary materials must be delivered in the English language
7. Power to the Pixel will give preference to projects whose team members have a track record within their sector (eg. broadcast, online, gaming, theatrical, publishing)
8. Projects must be at an advanced stage of development
9. Application forms and all supplementary materials must be delivered online eg. stills, storyboards, moving imagery (10 mins max) by uploading files and providing urls to where materials have been uploaded
10. All application forms and supplementary materials must be received by 18.00 BST on 6 August 2010 at market@powertothepixel.com
Key Dates
16 June 2010 Call open for submissions
6 August 2010 Deadline for submissions (18.00 BST)
3 September 2010 Successful applicants informed
13 October 2010 The Pixel Pitch at NFT1, BFI Southbank in London
14 October 2010 The Pixel Meetings (venue tbc)
ARTE Pixel Pitch Prize Winner announced
June 28 2010
My Thoughts on E3
At a spectacle known as E3, I witnessed everything from 3D games without glasses to controller-free gaming. Before this conference I didn’t think Star Trek-like technology could be available in 2010. Can Hollywood learn from the constantly evolving game industry?
Below are some highlights from E3 and how I think they will impact filmmakers.
X-Box 360’s Kinect created by PrimeSense
Audience members could place themselves into scenes and those clips will automatically be shared on Facebook. How many girls would love to have an appearance in Twilight? Maybe, Kinetic could track where a viewer is in a living room to change the perspective of how they watch a movie. Additionally film environments could be interactive e.g. you can pause a film and then run your hand through raindrops.
Nintendo 3D DS
There aren’t any TVs on the market that deliver 3D film viewing on a budget. 3D DS gives consumers an incentive to purchase a movie vs. watching it through Netflix, pirating, or Red Box. With over a 125 million of the previous DS models sold, this could be a big market. The LA Times reports that Nintendo has already made deals with Warner Bros, Disney, and DreamWorks.
What are your predictions? Let us know in the comments.
June 15 2010
Transmedia Storytelling-Fishing where the fish are
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
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.
June 11 2010
Quick Hit: You Suck at Transmedia
Transmedia designer and sometime WBP contributor Chrisy Dena launched a new site last night called You Suck at Transmedia, which plans to catalog transmedia failures and the lessons we can learn from them.
How do you/we/us stop sucking at transmedia? Well, this site is a step in that direction. This site welcomes contributions that really do aim to progress the state of the art. Here we can discuss the consequences of transmedia design, production and execution decisions.
In short, this site will cover transmedia decisions that never, sometimes, and always work.
The site already hosts one lovingly-rendered account of a failure scenario, as well as a great article on event scalability which asks my favorite question: “How can props be delivered in a replicatable manner to screens across continents?”
The blog is written toward encouraging discussion between creators. Drop by and join the conversation.
Quick Hit: You Suck at Transmedia
Transmedia designer and sometime WBP contributor Chrisy Dena launched a new site last night called You Suck at Transmedia, which plans to catalog transmedia failures and the lessons we can learn from them.
How do you/we/us stop sucking at transmedia? Well, this site is a step in that direction. This site welcomes contributions that really do aim to progress the state of the art. Here we can discuss the consequences of transmedia design, production and execution decisions.
In short, this site will cover transmedia decisions that never, sometimes, and always work.
The site already hosts one lovingly-rendered account of a failure scenario, as well as a great article on event scalability which asks my favorite question: “How can props be delivered in a replicatable manner to screens across continents?”
The blog is written toward encouraging discussion between creators. Drop by and join the conversation.
June 07 2010
Transmedia documentation
Last year I posted an idea of how to document transmedia projects. I’m now back with an improved version 
Note that this is another two-part post… kinda… with more downloadable content related to documentation and project bibles over here.
To illustrate my latest documentation, I’ve use the 10 minute ARG created by No Mimes Media LLC called International Mimes Academy. If you’re not already familiar with this game, you can download an explanation at the Unfiction forum.
This pictorial flowchart is pretty good because it shows the media and links or calls-to-action between the media and there’s an implied sequence of experience (from top to bottom).
Updating my earlier ideas, the diagram below shows how the NoMimes flowcart would be represented if the media were separated onto it’s only timeline.
What’s good about this approach is that it hits a lot of the goals desired by Christy Dena:
* indicate which part of the story is told by which media
* indicate the timing of each element
* indicate how the audience traverses the media (what’s the call to action?)
Separating out the media like this is particularly useful if it’s being created by partners or collaborators: it shows what has to be created and how it relates to other media. The colored vectors represent the different platforms and the thin arrows between them document the calls-to-action or bridges between the platforms. I’m sometimes a little inconsistent with how I use these linking arrows, erring on the side of better explanation than rigid documentation dogma.
One “exception” I made here is the inclusion of the final phone call. Typically I wouldn’t include the audience in the diagram but as it’s a concluding part of this experience it felt incomplete without it.
Although this is a nice example to start with, it doesn’t illustrate the strengths of my approach. Hence, let’s take a more complicated example.
The transmedia project documented in the following figures is called Colour Bleed created by Rhys Miles Thomas at Glass Shot in Wales, UK.
The first thing you see at a glance is the experience runs for six months in three phases each lasting two months and you can see that there are Offline and Online platforms.
You can also quickly see what platforms are being used and their relative timings. So, for example, you can see that “live performance” plays a significant role in this production – starting the experience and ending it. Indeed, Colour Bleed kicks-off with impromptu live dance performances at shopping malls and other public place – I’ve called them “flash dances” – intended to immediately draw a crowd and attention. But this is the start of a futuristic story in which kids rebel against an authoritarian regime that’s banned color and creative expression.
At the flash dances, members of the project team hand out business cards that contain the call-to-action to go online and check out the History of Colour website. Note that I’ve shown two types of video production – “our video”, that produced by the project, and “UG video, for user-generated video that we hope will be captured by bystanders on their mobile phones.
Both types of video are hosted at the website and shown as “uploaded”. This isn’t a call-to-action but it does link and explain how video features in the live performance and on the web. It identifies media that needs to be produced and can be assigned a responsibility.
Other notable things in Phase 1 and Phase 2 are the use of a “rabbit hole” to gain access to the ARG, graphic novels given as rewards for completing phases of the ARG and a series of barcodes given in newspapers to access the second phase of the ARG.
Note that the ARGs are shown as a single platform in this diagram but might they will have their own additional documentation showing a second layer of complexity that’s hidden here.
Phase 3 has slightly more complicated documentation because merchandise given away at a series of live events (DJ-led music events and dance offs) offers two paths to revealing the date and time of a final performance:
* A URL to an augmented reality app on the community website that requires the AR marker on the merchandise to unlock
* A phone number to a voice message.
The first video in Phase 3 is shown to require two pieces of information to unlock it – the webcam app and the AR marker on the merchandise.
Note that the final cinema screening is partially colored indicating that although the date & time is revealed, the event can’t happen until the location is unlocked.
Conclusion
This is a pretty good method for documenting the flow across platforms in a transmedia project.. unless you think otherwise?
Transmedia documentation
Last year I posted an idea of how to document transmedia projects. I’m now back with an improved version
Note that this is another two-part post… kinda… with more downloadable content related to documentation and project bibles over here.
To illustrate my latest documentation, I’ve use the 10 minute ARG created by No Mimes Media LLC called International Mimes Academy. If you’re not already familiar with this game, you can download an explanation at the Unfiction forum.
This pictorial flowchart is pretty good because it shows the media and links or calls-to-action between the media and there’s an implied sequence of experience (from top to bottom).
Updating my earlier ideas, the diagram below shows how the NoMimes flowcart would be represented if the media were separated onto it’s only timeline.
What’s good about this approach is that it hits a lot of the goals desired by Christy Dena:
* indicate which part of the story is told by which media
* indicate the timing of each element
* indicate how the audience traverses the media (what’s the call to action?)
Separating out the media like this is particularly useful if it’s being created by partners or collaborators: it shows what has to be created and how it relates to other media. The colored vectors represent the different platforms and the thin arrows between them document the calls-to-action or bridges between the platforms. I’m sometimes a little inconsistent with how I use these linking arrows, erring on the side of better explanation than rigid documentation dogma.
One “exception” I made here is the inclusion of the final phone call. Typically I wouldn’t include the audience in the diagram but as it’s a concluding part of this experience it felt incomplete without it.
Although this is a nice example to start with, it doesn’t illustrate the strengths of my approach. Hence, let’s take a more complicated example.
The transmedia project documented in the following figures is called Colour Bleed created by Rhys Miles Thomas at Glass Shot in Wales, UK.
The first thing you see at a glance is the experience runs for six months in three phases each lasting two months and you can see that there are Offline and Online platforms.
You can also quickly see what platforms are being used and their relative timings. So, for example, you can see that “live performance” plays a significant role in this production – starting the experience and ending it. Indeed, Colour Bleed kicks-off with impromptu live dance performances at shopping malls and other public place – I’ve called them “flash dances” – intended to immediately draw a crowd and attention. But this is the start of a futuristic story in which kids rebel against an authoritarian regime that’s banned color and creative expression.
At the flash dances, members of the project team hand out business cards that contain the call-to-action to go online and check out the History of Colour website. Note that I’ve shown two types of video production – “our video”, that produced by the project, and “UG video, for user-generated video that we hope will be captured by bystanders on their mobile phones.
Both types of video are hosted at the website and shown as “uploaded”. This isn’t a call-to-action but it does link and explain how video features in the live performance and on the web. It identifies media that needs to be produced and can be assigned a responsibility.
Other notable things in Phase 1 and Phase 2 are the use of a “rabbit hole” to gain access to the ARG, graphic novels given as rewards for completing phases of the ARG and a series of barcodes given in newspapers to access the second phase of the ARG.
Note that the ARGs are shown as a single platform in this diagram but might they will have their own additional documentation showing a second layer of complexity that’s hidden here.
Phase 3 has slightly more complicated documentation because merchandise given away at a series of live events (DJ-led music events and dance offs) offers two paths to revealing the date and time of a final performance:
* A URL to an augmented reality app on the community website that requires the AR marker on the merchandise to unlock
* A phone number to a voice message.
The first video in Phase 3 is shown to require two pieces of information to unlock it – the webcam app and the AR marker on the merchandise.
Note that the final cinema screening is partially colored indicating that although the date & time is revealed, the event can’t happen until the location is unlocked.
Conclusion
This is a pretty good method for documenting the flow across platforms in a transmedia project.. unless you think otherwise?
May 22 2010
Broadcasting Tangible Narratives
I think we all dream of one day having a holodeck – the perfect storytelling tool. It would let us employ visuals, audio, touch, smell, and taste to pull the audience through our stories, allow us to mix archeaological, environmental and immediate storytelling. In some ways, transmedia storytelling nudges us toward that goal.
But our theater, the real world, is so diffuse. If we want to convey touch or smell, we have to compile a mailing list and send out packages. The bulk of our players generally have to make do with audio and visuals.
So one of my pet questions is, how can we broadcast more things digitally? With 3D television already on its way, it bears saying that I’m not talking about more vivid illusions, but about actual physical objects. Instead of a holodeck, can we just get a replicator and go from there?
Delivering Physical Objects Digitally
Of course, detailed patterns for real objects can be transmitted over the Internet, and we’ve been doing that for a while.
This complex paper model exists online in the form of a pattern that can be downloaded for free and built anywhere, by anyone who has a printer, a few basic office supplies, and patience. I really like papercraft – I’ve already written here about my love for simpler, less work-intensive papercraft as distributed art projects.
This gives us an idea of one way we might be able to broadcast physical objects to deliver a narrative through them. There is the issue, however, of skill. Putting together advanced papercraft like this one is very much like traditional model building, and not every potential player will necessarily have the skill or the inclination to build a complex model.
Papercraft has a history in alternate reality gaming. The Beast asked players to construct a real world paper crane from a digital design to solve a puzzle. The MSN Search ARG also included a casual link to a popular optical illusion papercraft, the Gardner Dragon, that players, myself included, actually built despite the fact that it wasn’t related to the story.
DIY culture is certainly on the rise, and anyone skilled enough can create virtually anything with plans and guidance from the net. But how simple does a building process have to be, and how important to the narrative, to reliably get players to make their own artifacts?
One alternate approach is to automate the process of making the physical object altogether. The reprap community and Makerbot are already working on desktop 3D printers that might, in the foreseeable future, allow anyone to just straight up print out objects. One day, you might be able to send your players physical puzzle pieces, have them build working devices, or make their own game pieces for a physical board game in real space with other players.
Some clever contributors to Thingiverse are already working on gamelike ideas that use 3D printers as a platform. Check out the Surprise box, a digital design meant to be printed out and opened to discover the actual contents!
Integrating It Into A Game
In terms of gameplay and narrative overall, there are some challenges to transmitting tangible objects. Players have to want to make these objects. There are several different ways you can do this.
Embed some information in the physical object that would not exist in its digital counterpart. The paper crane from The Beast is one example, but I can also imagine designing an ocarina whose exact tonal properties couldn’t be known until it was printed out and actually played.
Have the players seek out other objects in the real world that interface with the ones they’ve made. This could basically be a cutting edge take on the classic “missing gear” puzzle.
Use the transmitted objects to play some other physical game. Imagine a papercraft tabletop war game, or a game played with irregular solid dice from a 3D printer.
Use the physical object as a costume piece to encourage roleplay.
Make the physical object a representation of some other thing in the game world that is intangible. This works really well if the object in question is sought after, beloved, magical, or lost. Fans will create representations of their favorite objects in a game world even without any extra encouragement. And if you don’t believe me, check these out:
Make the tangible object perform some neat function all on its own. This is what drives people to download and build the Gardner Dragon, and it’s probably the best way to get people making things. Keep in mind that an artifact with a standalone cool factor could also go viral.
Of course, barring all that, you can always just make the tangible object look really, really cool.
Broadcasting physical objects to play a game with a widespread audience also breaks a lot of common game conceptions. For one, collectibility is right out. Set completion is in. Personal unlockables are out, but universal unlockables are very in.
The kind of stories that could be told using a mechanic like this would be very different from what we’ve come to expect of interactive online media. We can’t make the same basic narrative assumptions that we make when we’re sending out packages in the mail or leaving artifacts in a dead drop. In that frame, objects have a history and their origins can be sinister, uplifting, or mysterious. The players usually get these objects at the end of their journey, or pass them from one person to another.
In a world where the player makes their own artifacts, they are intimately familiar with each object’s origins. They are joining the object at the beginning of its journey, and where it goes from there is up to them.
May 18 2010
Transmedia: 5-Steps to Selecting the Right Platforms
In my earlier post on Culture Hacker and in my SlideShare presentation created for the Sacramento Film Festival, I described the process for creating transmedia entertainment as shown in Figure 1.
In this post I’d like to focus on selecting the right platforms.
This post is in TWO PARTS.
This is the first part and the second part is at http://zenfilms.typepad.com where you’ll find downloadable content such as a nicely formatted & printable PDF of the whole post and an Excel tool for ranking platforms.
PART 1 of 2
Figure 1 The Development Process
In this post, when I say “platforms” I mean the combination of media plus technology and here I’d like to get you thinking about how you might go about selecting the right platforms. Of course there is no universal truth in platform selection – the right platforms are those that best suit you and the project. Although I would advocate that all projects have a community platform but that might not be part of your storytelling.
While keeping in mind the larger iterative development process, I recommend a similar five-stage iterative approach to selecting your platforms:
- Stage 1: go with your gut
- Stage 2: consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each platform
- Stage 3: support the weaknesses of a platform with the strengths of others
- Stage 4: consider the timing of platforms relative to each other
- Stage 5: consider changes to the story to bake-in the platforms and timing.
1. Go with your gut
In the first instance, just go with your gut and list a few platforms that you think will suit your story and audience. This first pass will likely identify platforms based on the following:
- personal desire or bias
- experience
- popularity with audiences (including fashions and fads)
- ability to collect payment
- availability to find funding or sponsorship
- popularity with the press & bloggers (at certain times some platforms are more sexy that others)
- suitability to the story
- resources available.
Now take a closer look at each platform.
2. Determine each platform’s strengths and weaknesses
In determining a platforms’ strengths and weaknesses:
- first – consider the experience you’d like to create and which platforms are best suited to it
- second – rank a short list of platforms and ensure they create a mix that works synergistically .
Choosing the right platform for the right experience
A senior executive at Yahoo spoke on Fora.tv recently about how Apple asked Yahoo to design an app for the iPad that would be a “coffee table experience”. The idea was that the iPad would be out on the coffee table in the living room when friends visited and the owner would want to pick up the device and share the Yahoo entertainment with her guests. Yahoo tailored its online content to suit the specifics of the iPad – not just the unique form factor but the unique consumption context too.
Device manufactures spend a lot of time thinking about how their products will be used. Learn a lesson from these guys and don’t just partition your story across platforms but take time to adapt it so it works in the context of the device and the audience lifestyle.
Table 1 and Table 2 present possible ways to segment your platforms by the nature of audience participation. Use this type of approach to inform the platform selection around the type of experience you’d like to create.
Table 1 Possible platform segmentation 1
Personal Shared “Passive”(Lean back) Watching movie: mobile phone, laptop, slate
Reading: book, mobile, laptop, slate, Kindle
CinemaTV
Theatre?
“Interactive”(Lean forward) Handheld game
Mobile
Laptop
Slate
Kindle (interactive fiction)
Multiplayer gameTheatre?
iPad/Slate? – see comment above
Table 2 Possible platform segmentation 2
Location agnostic Location-dependent Personal Shared Personal Shared Web seriesComic/Graphic novel
Motion comic
Book
eBook
Pin (badge)
PosterEvent
Façade projection mapping[1]
Merchandise Exhibition Mobile gameARG (alternative reality game)
AR (augmented reality)
Postcards and flyers
Find the right mix of platforms
Given that each platform will have its own strengths and weaknesses, the goal of this stage is to be objective about why a certain platform should remain in the mix. My approach is to score each platform based on the following criteria:
- Revenue gained
- Cost (inc. time) of delivering content
- Ability of platform to enable social spread of content
- Fit to audience lifestyle
- Remarkability (uniqueness/coolness/timeliness/quality) of platform or content
- Timing of release to audience
The table below shows how these might be scored from 5 to 1 and Figure 2 presents an example from the Excel spreadsheet tool that’s available for download from the Zen Films website.
While the exercise feels a little academic, if you have to justify external funding and justify to yourself that it’s worth putting time into something, it’s worth quickly running through the numbers – you might find some surprising results.
Table 3 Rating a Platform
Rating Revenue Good=5, Poor=1 Cost Low=5, High=1 Spreadability Good=5, Poor=1 Lifestyle Fit Good=5, Poor=1 Remarkability Remarkable=5, Unremarkable=1Figure 2 Platform Tool Example
3. Have platforms support each other with calls-to-action
Now you know the pros and cons of each platform, you need to find ways to have them support each other. By this I mean that some platforms will be great for spreading awareness but lousy at making money. To combine the strengths of each platform means getting the audience to cross between platforms.
So how do we do this? Firstly it’s important to remember that crossing platforms introduces friction. So rather than assume that audiences want multi-platform experiences, it’s better to ask yourself three questions:
- What’s my objective in having audiences cross platforms?
- How can I motivate audiences to cross platforms?
- What’s the reward when they get there?
The Call to Action
Before I continue, I’d like to introduce a little jargon: the “call to action”.
In web design, the button and wording on a page that asks you to “click here” or “sign up” is known as the “call to action” (CTA). It’s a plea for the user to do something and good designers make these calls-to-action appear to be the default choice – you’re nudged to take action through clear layout, positioning of the button, use of colors and so on.
The term is also used in advertising: “for a limited time only”, “while stocks last”, “a once in a lifetime offer”. These are all calls to action to get you to do something now and not put off your decision.
A transmedia experience needs similar CTAs to get audiences to cross platforms.
What’s the objective?
Part of your objective will be to create a fun experience but it will also relate to your business model. Here are three examples.
Example 1. A transmedia project has a comic book and a web series: the comic book will carry advertisements because it’s believed that print advertising is less intrusive than pre-roll video advertising (because the ads won’t get in the way of the story). The value of the advertising is such that it pays for both the comic book and the web series. Both will be given away for free but the advertiser has been promised a minimum number of comic book readers. Hence, it’s important to get web series viewers to cross platforms to the comic book.
Example 2. A transmedia project has a mix of free and revenue-generating platforms: the free platforms build the audience and the revenue-generating platforms pay for the project.
In Example 2 Your first thought might be that CTAs are needed to ensure the free audience migrates to a revenue platform. But this only provides part of the solution. Table 4 compares the relative audience sizes and revenue potentials across platforms and offers possible strategies to maximize the opportunities. Note that CTAs are used not only to grow revenue but to grow the audience – migrating them to more social platforms and providing spreadable content with CTAs to promote further growth.
Table 4 Assessing your call-to-action: comparing audiences across platforms
Audience Size and Loyalty/Enthusiasm Casual Audience Hardcore Audience Big Small Platform Revenue BiggestRevenue
Big Win. Keep the audience here and keep them spending! Refresh content, allow audience to create content (includes discussions, suggestions, live chat). Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore Respect this audience: don’t milk them for money. Use their enthusiasm to grow casual audience. Invest in community and provide spreadable content with CTAs to build wider audience. Smaller Revenue Small Win. Can a gentle CTA motivate them towards a bigger revenue platform? Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore – more revenue will likely follow. Maximize spreadability of content (see above). Provide gentle CTA to nudge onto higher revenue platforms. NoRevenue
If revenue is important, need a CTA to send audience to a revenue platform How is this platform contributing to the experience? Maximize spreadability of content. CTAs to grow audience and nudge this audience to revenue platforms.Example 3. In my Lowlifes[2] project, physical and device-specific copies of the content is paid content while web-based content is free. My primary, albeit weak, CTAs are:
- the project “logo” that displays three media types – informing audiences that this story spans multiple platforms
- the story in each media begs questions that the audience desires to be answered – and expects to find them in the other media; hence enticing them to cross platform.
With Example 3 in regard to moving from a free platform to a paid platform, I’m hoping that the friction of being tied to a desktop (free platform) will encourage supporters to migrate to a paid platform for a better experience more in keeping with their lifestyle – for example, the ability to read a paperback book in the bath!
In these examples you can see that the business model creates different objectives for cross-platform traversal.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXcfvWhdDQ
Transmedia: 5-Steps to Selecting the Right Platforms
In my earlier post on Culture Hacker and in my SlideShare presentation created for the Sacramento Film Festival, I described the process for creating transmedia entertainment as shown in Figure 1.
In this post I’d like to focus on selecting the right platforms.
This post is in TWO PARTS.
This is the first part and the second part is at http://zenfilms.typepad.com where you’ll find downloadable content such as a nicely formatted & printable PDF of the whole post and an Excel tool for ranking platforms.
PART 1 of 2
Figure 1 The Development Process
In this post, when I say “platforms” I mean the combination of media plus technology and here I’d like to get you thinking about how you might go about selecting the right platforms. Of course there is no universal truth in platform selection – the right platforms are those that best suit you and the project. Although I would advocate that all projects have a community platform but that might not be part of your storytelling.
While keeping in mind the larger iterative development process, I recommend a similar five-stage iterative approach to selecting your platforms:
- Stage 1: go with your gut
- Stage 2: consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each platform
- Stage 3: support the weaknesses of a platform with the strengths of others
- Stage 4: consider the timing of platforms relative to each other
- Stage 5: consider changes to the story to bake-in the platforms and timing.
1. Go with your gut
In the first instance, just go with your gut and list a few platforms that you think will suit your story and audience. This first pass will likely identify platforms based on the following:
- personal desire or bias
- experience
- popularity with audiences (including fashions and fads)
- ability to collect payment
- availability to find funding or sponsorship
- popularity with the press & bloggers (at certain times some platforms are more sexy that others)
- suitability to the story
- resources available.
Now take a closer look at each platform.
2. Determine each platform’s strengths and weaknesses
In determining a platforms’ strengths and weaknesses:
- first – consider the experience you’d like to create and which platforms are best suited to it
- second – rank a short list of platforms and ensure they create a mix that works synergistically .
Choosing the right platform for the right experience
A senior executive at Yahoo spoke on Fora.tv recently about how Apple asked Yahoo to design an app for the iPad that would be a “coffee table experience”. The idea was that the iPad would be out on the coffee table in the living room when friends visited and the owner would want to pick up the device and share the Yahoo entertainment with her guests. Yahoo tailored its online content to suit the specifics of the iPad – not just the unique form factor but the unique consumption context too.
Device manufactures spend a lot of time thinking about how their products will be used. Learn a lesson from these guys and don’t just partition your story across platforms but take time to adapt it so it works in the context of the device and the audience lifestyle.
Table 1 and Table 2 present possible ways to segment your platforms by the nature of audience participation. Use this type of approach to inform the platform selection around the type of experience you’d like to create.
Table 1 Possible platform segmentation 1
Personal Shared “Passive”(Lean back) Watching movie: mobile phone, laptop, slate
Reading: book, mobile, laptop, slate, Kindle
CinemaTV
Theatre?
“Interactive”(Lean forward) Handheld game
Mobile
Laptop
Slate
Kindle (interactive fiction)
Multiplayer gameTheatre?
iPad/Slate? – see comment above
Table 2 Possible platform segmentation 2
Location agnostic Location-dependent Personal Shared Personal Shared Web seriesComic/Graphic novel
Motion comic
Book
eBook
Pin (badge)
PosterEvent
Façade projection mapping[1]
Merchandise Exhibition Mobile gameARG (alternative reality game)
AR (augmented reality)
Postcards and flyers
Find the right mix of platforms
Given that each platform will have its own strengths and weaknesses, the goal of this stage is to be objective about why a certain platform should remain in the mix. My approach is to score each platform based on the following criteria:
- Revenue gained
- Cost (inc. time) of delivering content
- Ability of platform to enable social spread of content
- Fit to audience lifestyle
- Remarkability (uniqueness/coolness/timeliness/quality) of platform or content
- Timing of release to audience
The table below shows how these might be scored from 5 to 1 and Figure 2 presents an example from the Excel spreadsheet tool that’s available for download from the Zen Films website.
While the exercise feels a little academic, if you have to justify external funding and justify to yourself that it’s worth putting time into something, it’s worth quickly running through the numbers – you might find some surprising results.
Table 3 Rating a Platform
Rating Revenue Good=5, Poor=1 Cost Low=5, High=1 Spreadability Good=5, Poor=1 Lifestyle Fit Good=5, Poor=1 Remarkability Remarkable=5, Unremarkable=1Figure 2 Platform Tool Example
3. Have platforms support each other with calls-to-action
Now you know the pros and cons of each platform, you need to find ways to have them support each other. By this I mean that some platforms will be great for spreading awareness but lousy at making money. To combine the strengths of each platform means getting the audience to cross between platforms.
So how do we do this? Firstly it’s important to remember that crossing platforms introduces friction. So rather than assume that audiences want multi-platform experiences, it’s better to ask yourself three questions:
- What’s my objective in having audiences cross platforms?
- How can I motivate audiences to cross platforms?
- What’s the reward when they get there?
The Call to Action
Before I continue, I’d like to introduce a little jargon: the “call to action”.
In web design, the button and wording on a page that asks you to “click here” or “sign up” is known as the “call to action” (CTA). It’s a plea for the user to do something and good designers make these calls-to-action appear to be the default choice – you’re nudged to take action through clear layout, positioning of the button, use of colors and so on.
The term is also used in advertising: “for a limited time only”, “while stocks last”, “a once in a lifetime offer”. These are all calls to action to get you to do something now and not put off your decision.
A transmedia experience needs similar CTAs to get audiences to cross platforms.
What’s the objective?
Part of your objective will be to create a fun experience but it will also relate to your business model. Here are three examples.
Example 1. A transmedia project has a comic book and a web series: the comic book will carry advertisements because it’s believed that print advertising is less intrusive than pre-roll video advertising (because the ads won’t get in the way of the story). The value of the advertising is such that it pays for both the comic book and the web series. Both will be given away for free but the advertiser has been promised a minimum number of comic book readers. Hence, it’s important to get web series viewers to cross platforms to the comic book.
Example 2. A transmedia project has a mix of free and revenue-generating platforms: the free platforms build the audience and the revenue-generating platforms pay for the project.
In Example 2 Your first thought might be that CTAs are needed to ensure the free audience migrates to a revenue platform. But this only provides part of the solution. Table 4 compares the relative audience sizes and revenue potentials across platforms and offers possible strategies to maximize the opportunities. Note that CTAs are used not only to grow revenue but to grow the audience – migrating them to more social platforms and providing spreadable content with CTAs to promote further growth.
Table 4 Assessing your call-to-action: comparing audiences across platforms
Audience Size and Loyalty/Enthusiasm Casual Audience Hardcore Audience Big Small Platform Revenue BiggestRevenue
Big Win. Keep the audience here and keep them spending! Refresh content, allow audience to create content (includes discussions, suggestions, live chat). Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore Respect this audience: don’t milk them for money. Use their enthusiasm to grow casual audience. Invest in community and provide spreadable content with CTAs to build wider audience. Smaller Revenue Small Win. Can a gentle CTA motivate them towards a bigger revenue platform? Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore – more revenue will likely follow. Maximize spreadability of content (see above). Provide gentle CTA to nudge onto higher revenue platforms. NoRevenue
If revenue is important, need a CTA to send audience to a revenue platform How is this platform contributing to the experience? Maximize spreadability of content. CTAs to grow audience and nudge this audience to revenue platforms.Example 3. In my Lowlifes[2] project, physical and device-specific copies of the content is paid content while web-based content is free. My primary, albeit weak, CTAs are:
- the project “logo” that displays three media types – informing audiences that this story spans multiple platforms
- the story in each media begs questions that the audience desires to be answered – and expects to find them in the other media; hence enticing them to cross platform.
With Example 3 in regard to moving from a free platform to a paid platform, I’m hoping that the friction of being tied to a desktop (free platform) will encourage supporters to migrate to a paid platform for a better experience more in keeping with their lifestyle – for example, the ability to read a paperback book in the bath!
In these examples you can see that the business model creates different objectives for cross-platform traversal.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXcfvWhdDQ
April 30 2010
ARGFest heads to Atlanta
I had the opportunity to speak at ARGFest in 2008 and had a wonderful time. It’s a great group of people doing some amazing work in the transmedia space. I was thrilled to hear that ARGFest this year would be getting bigger and better. I had a chance to ask ARGFest Chair Brooke Thompson a few questions about this year’s event which will be traveling to Atlanta, GA.
What is ARGFest?
ARGFest is a four day event (July 15-18 in Atlanta, GA) celebrating the best in alternate reality games & transmedia entertainment. It started back in 2003 when Steve Peters (then of ARGN) and Sean Stacey (of unfiction) wanted to get together over drinks instead of over email (or chat). A dozen or so others decided to join them, named it ARGFest, and an annual event was born! Over the years, it has grown from a small group of us hanging out in Vegas into a full-fledged conference that attracts some of the most innovative and influential minds in the field. But, despite the changes, we’ve never let go of our roots – it is still a community oriented event, created by fans & creators for fans & creators. This helps to keep the conference from ever taking itself too seriously – you don’t come to ARGFest for the sessions, you come to have fun and meet (or make) friends with people who share your passion. What’s great is that actually makes the sessions more interesting and the conference all the better. I love how that works!
Brian Clark at ARGFest 2008
How will the fest be expanding this year?
So many ways! The most noticeable is that we’re going from two days to four. In the process, we’ve expanded the conference to two days and added a weekend long game festival. It’s all quite huge and seems a bit drastic, but it was a very natural move for us to make.
For the last five years, ARGFest has been a weekend event with Saturday devoted to a conference. This has worked well, but we reached the point where we were turning away some fantastic speakers & conference sessions. While we could have just expanded the conference to two days, the thought of spending our entire weekend shut in some conference room made us all a bit crazy. Last year, when we had a few creators talking about and showing off some of their location-based games, we realized that two worlds were converging. There’s always been an interest in urban play (from street games to geocaching to live events, ARGs have used real-world spaces for years), but with the rise in location aware phones, people are really beginning to look at place as a platform for transmedia entertainment. With that, we realized we could manage a two day conference and, if we moved the conference to Thursday & Friday, we could have the entire weekend for urban play, location based games, and explorations into the ways in which transmedia creators can play with space and/or live interactions.
It’s a bit of an experiment, I’ll admit, but we’re really excited about it all. Not only does this allow us to both talk about and showcase the various ways that people are exploring transmedia, it lets us reach out to the general community in ways that we’ve never done before. I like to think of urban play (especially if it has a strong narrative) as one of the gateway drugs to the transmedia world – it’s accessible and just strange enough to make you feel like you’ve experienced something special. Once people get a taste of that, their minds open up to all sorts of possibilities and they want to see & experience more.
What can be done to make ARGs and transmedia experiences more accessible?
Transmedia experiences, especially alternate reality games, can become very complex very quickly. This means that making experiences accessible is incredibly important – even when they are not aimed at a large or mainstream audience. Its no surprise, then, that over the years designers have played with a number of ways to make (and keep!) experiences accessible to their audience (and potential audience). I’m not going to say that time has been wasted – there is definitely much to learn and, even, a few techniques worth using. But I am going to say that there has been an abundance of over-thinking. In my mind, it’s quite simple… an accessible transmedia experience connects with the audience on their terms, where they already are, with tools that they’re already using, and in ways that they already understand. Ok, maybe it’s not that simple – but it’s only four things! How hard can that be? More than that, it’s four things that make sense! Think about it…
After you’ve put all this time and energy into creating your transmedia masterpiece, you want to show it off. That means, you want to make it as easy as possible for an audience to discover you. But you don’t want people to just see the front page, get confused, and walk away – so you need to do things that they already know and understand. And, while it might be interesting, you don’t want to make them angry before they’re committed to the experience – so do things on their terms. All of these things can change the deeper someone falls down the rabbit hole. But, until they get there, don’t force them to jump through too many hoops.
Once you’ve mastered those four things, then you can start exploring other techniques such as narrative guides and tiered experiences designed to immerse the audience at different levels of engagement. But, until then, you’ll only have minimal success with anything else.
For those wishing to design their own games where does one start?
Talk to people who have created and played games. They’re fairly easy to find – unfiction and the IGDA ARG SIG are good places to look if you’re interested in alternate reality games and twitter has become my tool of choice to connect with all sorts of people working in and with transmedia. There’s a strong feeling floating around in the transmedia sphere that we’re at the start of something huge. The thing is… nobody really knows how huge or, even, what that something is. The only way we’re going to figure that out is by encouraging people to create in this space. So, ARG & transmedia folk love to talk… a lot. They like questions. They like to think. They like meeting new people. And they love to share ideas and advice. So don’t be shy, come find us and say hi.
What are some of your favorite ARGs / transmedia experiences of the last year?
It’s so hard to choose – a lot of interesting things have happened in the space in the last year. Personal Effects: Dark Art seems to jump out for me. If you aren’t aware, Personal Effects: Dark Art is a book that comes packaged with a number of artifacts (business cards, ids, notes, etc.). In addition to supporting the text of the book, these items lead to websites and phone numbers that help bring the world to life. Granted, the idea and execution isn’t new – Cathy’s Book did the same thing a few years ago (and both were created by Jordan Weisman who was the ARGFest keynote last year). However, they each reached very different audiences as Cathy’s Book was geared towards girls in their early teens and Personal Effects was an adult thriller. Publishers seem to be more willing to try transmedia experiences with books geared towards younger audiences, so seeing a similarly executed experience succeed for two very different audiences has been great! Hopefully this will help encourage more publishers (and authors!) to explore the potential of transmedia storytelling.
If someone wants to attend, speak or volunteer where can they find out more information?
The ARGFest website (www.argfest.com ) will have all of the information that you will need. For more up to the moment news & announcements, you can follow us on twitter (@argfest). Whether or not you’re familiar with alternate reality games, I want to encourage you to come. ARGs are but one type of transmedia experience and, if you’re at all interested in transmedia entertainment, you’ll find like minds at ARGFest. If you are interested in speaking and/or have a great idea for a session – let us know! There are submissions forms on the website that we review on a regular basis and they really do help guide us as we pull this thing together. With more space to play with than ever before, we really do want (need!) your suggestions to help us fill it. This truly is a community driven event and that makes it your event… What do you want to see? Who do you what to hear? Let us know so that we can try to make it happen! And, of course, we’ll see you in July!
ARGFest heads to Atlanta
I had the opportunity to speak at ARGFest in 2008 and had a wonderful time. It’s a great group of people doing some amazing work in the transmedia space. I was thrilled to hear that ARGFest this year would be getting bigger and better. I had a chance to ask ARGFest Chair Brooke Thompson a few questions about this year’s event which will be traveling to Atlanta, GA.
What is ARGFest?
ARGFest is a four day event (July 15-18 in Atlanta, GA) celebrating the best in alternate reality games & transmedia entertainment. It started back in 2003 when Steve Peters (then of ARGN) and Sean Stacey (of unfiction) wanted to get together over drinks instead of over email (or chat). A dozen or so others decided to join them, named it ARGFest, and an annual event was born! Over the years, it has grown from a small group of us hanging out in Vegas into a full-fledged conference that attracts some of the most innovative and influential minds in the field. But, despite the changes, we’ve never let go of our roots – it is still a community oriented event, created by fans & creators for fans & creators. This helps to keep the conference from ever taking itself too seriously – you don’t come to ARGFest for the sessions, you come to have fun and meet (or make) friends with people who share your passion. What’s great is that actually makes the sessions more interesting and the conference all the better. I love how that works!
Brian Clark at ARGFest 2008
How will the fest be expanding this year?
So many ways! The most noticeable is that we’re going from two days to four. In the process, we’ve expanded the conference to two days and added a weekend long game festival. It’s all quite huge and seems a bit drastic, but it was a very natural move for us to make.
For the last five years, ARGFest has been a weekend event with Saturday devoted to a conference. This has worked well, but we reached the point where we were turning away some fantastic speakers & conference sessions. While we could have just expanded the conference to two days, the thought of spending our entire weekend shut in some conference room made us all a bit crazy. Last year, when we had a few creators talking about and showing off some of their location-based games, we realized that two worlds were converging. There’s always been an interest in urban play (from street games to geocaching to live events, ARGs have used real-world spaces for years), but with the rise in location aware phones, people are really beginning to look at place as a platform for transmedia entertainment. With that, we realized we could manage a two day conference and, if we moved the conference to Thursday & Friday, we could have the entire weekend for urban play, location based games, and explorations into the ways in which transmedia creators can play with space and/or live interactions.
It’s a bit of an experiment, I’ll admit, but we’re really excited about it all. Not only does this allow us to both talk about and showcase the various ways that people are exploring transmedia, it lets us reach out to the general community in ways that we’ve never done before. I like to think of urban play (especially if it has a strong narrative) as one of the gateway drugs to the transmedia world – it’s accessible and just strange enough to make you feel like you’ve experienced something special. Once people get a taste of that, their minds open up to all sorts of possibilities and they want to see & experience more.
What can be done to make ARGs and transmedia experiences more accessible?
Transmedia experiences, especially alternate reality games, can become very complex very quickly. This means that making experiences accessible is incredibly important – even when they are not aimed at a large or mainstream audience. Its no surprise, then, that over the years designers have played with a number of ways to make (and keep!) experiences accessible to their audience (and potential audience). I’m not going to say that time has been wasted – there is definitely much to learn and, even, a few techniques worth using. But I am going to say that there has been an abundance of over-thinking. In my mind, it’s quite simple… an accessible transmedia experience connects with the audience on their terms, where they already are, with tools that they’re already using, and in ways that they already understand. Ok, maybe it’s not that simple – but it’s only four things! How hard can that be? More than that, it’s four things that make sense! Think about it…
After you’ve put all this time and energy into creating your transmedia masterpiece, you want to show it off. That means, you want to make it as easy as possible for an audience to discover you. But you don’t want people to just see the front page, get confused, and walk away – so you need to do things that they already know and understand. And, while it might be interesting, you don’t want to make them angry before they’re committed to the experience – so do things on their terms. All of these things can change the deeper someone falls down the rabbit hole. But, until they get there, don’t force them to jump through too many hoops.
Once you’ve mastered those four things, then you can start exploring other techniques such as narrative guides and tiered experiences designed to immerse the audience at different levels of engagement. But, until then, you’ll only have minimal success with anything else.
For those wishing to design their own games where does one start?
Talk to people who have created and played games. They’re fairly easy to find – unfiction and the IGDA ARG SIG are good places to look if you’re interested in alternate reality games and twitter has become my tool of choice to connect with all sorts of people working in and with transmedia. There’s a strong feeling floating around in the transmedia sphere that we’re at the start of something huge. The thing is… nobody really knows how huge or, even, what that something is. The only way we’re going to figure that out is by encouraging people to create in this space. So, ARG & transmedia folk love to talk… a lot. They like questions. They like to think. They like meeting new people. And they love to share ideas and advice. So don’t be shy, come find us and say hi.
What are some of your favorite ARGs / transmedia experiences of the last year?
It’s so hard to choose – a lot of interesting things have happened in the space in the last year. Personal Effects: Dark Art seems to jump out for me. If you aren’t aware, Personal Effects: Dark Art is a book that comes packaged with a number of artifacts (business cards, ids, notes, etc.). In addition to supporting the text of the book, these items lead to websites and phone numbers that help bring the world to life. Granted, the idea and execution isn’t new – Cathy’s Book did the same thing a few years ago (and both were created by Jordan Weisman who was the ARGFest keynote last year). However, they each reached very different audiences as Cathy’s Book was geared towards girls in their early teens and Personal Effects was an adult thriller. Publishers seem to be more willing to try transmedia experiences with books geared towards younger audiences, so seeing a similarly executed experience succeed for two very different audiences has been great! Hopefully this will help encourage more publishers (and authors!) to explore the potential of transmedia storytelling.
If someone wants to attend, speak or volunteer where can they find out more information?
The ARGFest website (www.argfest.com ) will have all of the information that you will need. For more up to the moment news & announcements, you can follow us on twitter (@argfest). Whether or not you’re familiar with alternate reality games, I want to encourage you to come. ARGs are but one type of transmedia experience and, if you’re at all interested in transmedia entertainment, you’ll find like minds at ARGFest. If you are interested in speaking and/or have a great idea for a session – let us know! There are submissions forms on the website that we review on a regular basis and they really do help guide us as we pull this thing together. With more space to play with than ever before, we really do want (need!) your suggestions to help us fill it. This truly is a community driven event and that makes it your event… What do you want to see? Who do you what to hear? Let us know so that we can try to make it happen! And, of course, we’ll see you in July!
April 27 2010
One from the archive: Filmmakers That Think Outside the Film
The following article is one from the WBP archives.
In the 1940’s filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (known as “The Archers”) championed a multi-artform cinema. They created films that represented music, dance, painting, literature and photography; for they believed that ‘all art is one’. Now, with the proliferation of media platforms, the palette for filmmakers is stupendous. Not only is it impossible to encompass all artforms in a single film, but there are aesthetic and economic reasons for maintaining their integrity. All art is not one within the film, but in its relationships with artforms around it. Filmmakers are now thinking beyond cinema and DVD to include the web, theatre, books and mobile technology in their canvas.
In this article I’ll take you through a whirlwind tour of some of the ways filmmakers are thinking beyond the film. Our first stop is a look at how the assets of a film are repurposed. This is not a discussion about distribution methods or how the medium of delivery influences the experience. Instead it is an exploration of the ways assets can be reused to create new works. The first example is that of filmmakers offering components of their film in digital format for anyone to ‘remix’. Remixing is rife with fans, but it is only in the last few years that filmmakers have begun to offer their content for remixing.
Sometimes the offering is driven by a desire to create ‘citizen marketers’, such as New Line Cinema’s release of footage and music so that people could create a new trailer of Liz Friedlander’s Take the Lead (2006). They also specifically commissioned ‘official’ remixes (see Addictive). The logic behind New Line Cinema’s approach is best understood with this quote in the New York Times (6th April) by Russell Schwartz, president for domestic marketing for New Line Cinema: “Our assets become their assets, and that’s how they become fans of the movie.” For Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (2006), assets – video, stills, audio – are provided so that audiences can create a music video at The Fountain Remixed . In this case, the offering is explained as giving audiences who want to contemplate eternal life the “chance to delve deeper” (from website). Peter Greenaway has made finding fragments, of a movie that is part of a large storyworld The Tulse Luper Project, a game. The Tulse Luper Journey involves players collaborating to complete 92 puzzles. On completion of each puzzle, a 1 minute film fragment is released to the player. It is then their task to compile the 92 minute film of Tulse Luper. The logic behind these offerings are manifold, from facilitating ‘citizen marketing’ to a highly personalized exploration of a storyworld. It should be noted too, that some filmmakers are experimenting with creating films specifically designed for remixing, such as Michelle Hughes’ Stray Cinema (2006), Aryan Kaganof’s SMS Sugarman (2007) and Michela Ledwidge’s (in-development) Sanctuary.
Filmmakers also engage in remixes of their own films. For the past year Peter Greenaway has been performing live VJing sessions of assets of his cross-media project The Tulse Luper Project . Workbook Project’s own Lance Weiler is currently touring the USA and Europe with his – ‘cinema ARG‘ of Head Trauma (2006). Weiler’s cinema event includes a remix, live music, theatrics and mobile phones. It is a unique experience of the film’s storyworld carefully curated by the filmmaker. His cinema theatrics are helping to revive the notion of cinema as event.
As well as remixing their own work, and offering their assets up for others to do with what they will, filmmakers are also commissioning artists to create interactive works out of the assets. On the main website of Head Trauma, for instance, Lance Weiler has included an interactive graphic novel that includes footage, stills and audio of the film. The website for David Slade’s Hard Candy (2005) has an – experience, and so too with Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain Experience . Indeed Peter Greenaway has also commissioned Digiscreen to create what they call a “webler” of The Tulse Luper Suitcases:
“Website constructed entirely from a film’s visual and aural elements that can be navigated and interacted with by a general audience. A webler should offer both an experience of the actual film as with a film trailer and an alternative expression of that experience.” (Digiscreen)
There are also non-web creative constructions of a film’s assets is ‘Blossoms and Blood’, a 12 minute montage of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002). The short film is on the DVD and is constructed with deleted scenes. Since most of the shots included are of different points of view than those in the film, the work moves from vignette to being a kind of parallel universe. Poetic explorations of a theme are also rendered in print. Peter Greenaway has art books that accompany The Tulse Luper Suitcases (that he created), the Wachowski Brothers commissioned two volumes of graphic novels for The Matrix and Darren Aronofsky has written a graphic novel adaptation of The Fountain with painter Kent Williams. Aronofsky describes his entire project as “[a] story so grand, one medium couldn’t contain it” (source).
All of these works augment the film, providing a poetic rendition, but they also stand on their own as a work of art. They are at times a specifically designed prologue and epilogue. Indeed, some filmmakers push administrative detail to the side and instead prefer the films website to be a meditation on the theme. Examples are the websites for Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000); Christopher Nolan’s Momento (2000); Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001); Darren Lynn Bousman’s Saw II (2005) and more recently Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2007).
[Screenshot from Momento website]
This treatment of the web as an expressive medium extends even further. Some filmmakers are populating their storyworld on the web shoulder to shoulder with real world sites. Sites for fictional companies and characters in films are emerging across cyberspace, almost indistinguishable from their real world counterparts… if not for their outlandish nature. For instance, the company that erases Joel Barish’s memory in Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004) has its own corporate site: Lacuna Inc. The company that provided the cloned child in Nick Hamm’s Godsend (2004) is likewise online: Godsend Institute. Companies mentioned in the Enter the Matrix digital game (2003), such as Omega Hardware Solutions were also online. The company that produces the NS-5 in Alex Proyas’ I, Robot (2004) has a site dedicated to the robot: NS-5. The company has even issued a press release detailing how the “NS-5″ will play several major roles in the film. Indeed, Count Olaf, the evil character in Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) has his own website and blog, a place where he relishes in his starring role in the film.
In all of these examples it is clear that the storyworld is not married to the primary medium, to film, anymore. For some, this multi-medium existence has an immersive effect. Just like real life, it is present in all communication channels. Of course, this can be encouraged with websites that are set within the universe of the film. Early examples of this are seen with Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast website in 1996 and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project website in 1998. The later went on to also broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel a mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, of the mockumentary and published a dossier of the “evidence” in 1999. Over the past few years, it is has been these practices – representing the world of the film as being real – that have emerged as a primary aesthetic for many audiences and creators. Four months before the screening of Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge 2 (2006) a blog by Jason C was launched. Jason C is postgraduate student who is covering the making of the film as part of his research. So, the site works as both a making-of and fictional prologue. Why fiction? Jason C is a fictional character who, over the next few months, witnesses mysterious events on the set. Slowly, all of the cast and crew are affected by the strange events. In the end, Jason C disappears and his roommate takes over the blog in an effort to get help to find him.
Despite many diegetic web to film references, there are not many instances of references to fictional sites within films. Movie Poop Shoot, was in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and the character Paul Duncan in Godsend does search the Net for the Godsend Institute website mentioned earlier. But the only explicit referral by a character I’ve seen is Professor Bedlam’s mention of his website in Ivan Reitman’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006): ProfessorBedlam.com. The cross-platform traversal was not well executed however, as the website featured content that was set in the plot at the beginning of the film, not the end. These traversals need to make sense in terms of the flow of the narrative, which means creative control over them. Despite this flaw, the explicit referral of another element of the storyworld in another medium is a sign that the craft of multi-platform expression is maturing. Each component is not divorced of the others, in other words, it is a carefully constructed experience.
The majority of examples I have given thus far are adaptations of some kind. There are examples emerging of a storyline being extended. For instance, at the end of the Donnie Darko website (which requires moving through various levels by solving puzzles) the viewer/player is rewarded with press clippings that detail what happened to some of the characters after the events of the film. The Grudge 2 blog I cited previously is also an example of a metafictional prologue. A different approach to the extension of a storyworld is found in the DVD of Brad Bird’s animated film The Incredibles (2004). Near the end of the film, the mother (Elastigirl) listens to messages left by the babysitter of her child Jack-Jack on her mobile phone/cell. As we progress through the messages it is clear the babysitter is getting more and more frantic. The film ends, however, without us knowing what happened with the babysitter and the son Jack-Jack. We find out what happened, though, in the short animated film in the DVD: “Jack-Jack Attack”. Here we have a change of POV and an elaboration of narrative point in the film. Filmmakers are also starting their narrative in books. Unlike the adaptation model that has dominated, these books are designed to start the plot, which will then continue in the film. Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2007) begins with three novels, and Chair Entertainment has begun their Empire story with a specifically written novel by Orson Scott Card. Chair Entertainment describe their approach as follows:
Chair’s unique value proposition is that we (1) create compelling original stories, (2) own and maintain creative control of our IP, and (3) create marketing synergy around that IP in 5 core franchise areas: video games, books, movies, comics, and merchandise. Each product we develop offers a unique perspective of the story and works together to expand the franchise. [source]
A similar multi-platform approach to addressing unexplored elements in a film is seen in EA Game’s The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-Earth II (2006). It is set during events that coincide with the events in Peter Jackson’s films, but take place in areas of Middle-Earth not covered in it. They are, of course, known from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. With massively multiplayer online games, we have the Matrix Online (2005) as a good example of the continuation of a storyworld into a game. The gameworld is set after the events of the last film and although there have been mixed reviews, there are interesting plot developments such as the death of Morpheus. Due to the popularity of the genre, there will be many more integrated game and film projects over the next few years. Of note is the project Titantic director James Cameron has been working on for the past few years: Project 880. Once it comes out (a year or so apparently), it will be the first project that will begin as a multiplayer game and then continue in a feature film. But before looking too far into the future, lets return to the innovative transmedia expansions that are happening now and in the not-too-distant past.
[Screenshot from EA's Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II]
The most referred to past project is the Wachoswki Brother’s The Matrix universe. Their storyworld existed in films, anime, comics and games. But unlike tie-ins and franchises of the past, the Wachowski Bros. creatively controlled each element and designed a continuous narrative across them. A highly cited example is the narrative thread of “the message”. In the short anime, “The Last Flight of Osiris” (2003), the character Jue and her crew discover the machines are boring to Zion. Their aim is to warn Zion of the impending danger by sending a message to the Nebuchadnezzar crew. At the end of the story Jue just manages to post the letter (thus ending a narrative thread), but we do not know what happens to the letter (a continuing thread). What happens to the letter is addressed in the digital game, Enter the Matrix (2003). The first mission for the player is to retrieve the letter from the post office. The player succeeds in continuing the narrative but we still do not know of the consequences of our actions. It is at the beginning of the second film, The Matrix Reloaded (2003), when Niobe (who is one of two characters in the game) reports on the ‘last transmissions of the Osiris’. The transmissions posted in the anime and retrieved by players in the digital game.
The Wachowski Brothers weren’t the only ones to persist their storyworld across media platforms though. In 2003 a group of fans conceived and implemented a unique project. Fan production is nothing new, but the form of this continuation of the Matrix storyworld was with a creative type that was only two years old. This group created an ‘alternate reality game’ (ARG): a storyworld that requires players all over the world to collaborate to find it and solve. Stories are distributed across numerous websites, emails, faxes, phone calls and real life events. Characters have blogs and chat to players via email, fax and phone. Fictional companies have sites that players have to ‘hack’ into and retrieve information from. The entire narrative is played out in real time, 24 hours a day and requires players to work together to solve very difficult puzzles to access information. The outcome is never fixed, for the creators always alter the world in real time according to the actions of the players. The ARG for The Matrix, MetaCortechs, is one of the most successful ARGs, with over 125,000 players from 115,000 countries. An invaluable book for those considering creating an ARG is the Project Mu Archives, for it documents The Matrix ARG from the player’s perspective. It is also available online. An ARG design book is also available: ARG designer Dave Szulborski’s This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming.
Other films augmented by fans in the Jim Miller’s web-only Exocog in 2002. He chose the then forthcoming Minority Report as his storyworld and produced a 5-week project played in the build up to the film’s release. In 2004, VirtuQuest created an ARG set in the universe of George Lucas’ first feature film: THX 1138 (1971). SEN 5241 continued the narrative after the events of the film and was created to coincide with the launch of the DVD.
Fans are the not the only who have created ARGs though. Indeed, the first ARG (as it known now) was actually a commissioned by Microsoft and Dreamworks to publicize Stephen Spielberg’s A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001) but ended up being described by Internet Life magazine as the ‘Citizen Kane of online entertainment’. The Beast was played by over 3 million people all over the world and created the new form of entertainment. Players who followed 150 characters across hundreds of websites, emails, faxes, files and puzzles for months and generated over 300 million impressions for the film through mainstream press such as Time, CNN, and USA Today, as well as niche outlets such as Wired, Slashdot, and Ain’t it Cool News, and won numerous awards including best idea (New York Times Magazine) and best web site (Entertainment Weekly). [4orty 2wo Entertainment]
[Screenshot of the Monster Hunt Club website for The Host]
In 2007, Magnolia Films commissioned ARG Studios to create an ARG for Bong Joon Ho’s The Host (2007). The ARG, Monster Hunt Club, helped market the release of the Korean film in the US. It was, I believe, the first ‘horror’ ARG (and Lance Weiler’s ‘cinema ARG’ the first of its kind, for scary movies too). More recently, an ARG-like campaign has started for the upcoming Batman film by Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight. So far there have been fictional sites, such as the political campaign site for the character Harvey Dent (who becomes ‘Two-Face’) and clues left on playing cards left in comic book stores. One of the techniques that ARGs use is to remove all cues to fictionality: fictional sites almost indistinguishable from real ones. But as we have seen with the various projects mentioned in this article, this trope is not unique to ARGs. Indeed, making a fictional world seem as real as possible, extending it across media platforms, playing with it and enabling audiences to share and participate in its construction are just some of the key drives for filmmakers now.
In a keynote speech delivered at the Cinema Militans in September 2003, Peter Greenaway described the Tulse Luper Suitcases (a work that includes 3 feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs and CD Roms, books and numerous websites) as: “an attempt to make a gathering together of today’s languages, to place them alongside one another and get them to converse.” Creators of film, print, TV, radio, theatre, games, new media and painting are all moving into this new paradigm of creation. Indeed, the future will not be the domain of artists who adapt or extend from their primary medium, but the domain of people who are transmedia artists from the beginning. Filmmakers don’t create films anymore, they create worlds.
One from the archive: Filmmakers That Think Outside the Film
The following article is one from the WBP archives.
In the 1940’s filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (known as “The Archers”) championed a multi-artform cinema. They created films that represented music, dance, painting, literature and photography; for they believed that ‘all art is one’. Now, with the proliferation of media platforms, the palette for filmmakers is stupendous. Not only is it impossible to encompass all artforms in a single film, but there are aesthetic and economic reasons for maintaining their integrity. All art is not one within the film, but in its relationships with artforms around it. Filmmakers are now thinking beyond cinema and DVD to include the web, theatre, books and mobile technology in their canvas.
In this article I’ll take you through a whirlwind tour of some of the ways filmmakers are thinking beyond the film. Our first stop is a look at how the assets of a film are repurposed. This is not a discussion about distribution methods or how the medium of delivery influences the experience. Instead it is an exploration of the ways assets can be reused to create new works. The first example is that of filmmakers offering components of their film in digital format for anyone to ‘remix’. Remixing is rife with fans, but it is only in the last few years that filmmakers have begun to offer their content for remixing.
Sometimes the offering is driven by a desire to create ‘citizen marketers’, such as New Line Cinema’s release of footage and music so that people could create a new trailer of Liz Friedlander’s Take the Lead (2006). They also specifically commissioned ‘official’ remixes (see Addictive). The logic behind New Line Cinema’s approach is best understood with this quote in the New York Times (6th April) by Russell Schwartz, president for domestic marketing for New Line Cinema: “Our assets become their assets, and that’s how they become fans of the movie.” For Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (2006), assets – video, stills, audio – are provided so that audiences can create a music video at The Fountain Remixed . In this case, the offering is explained as giving audiences who want to contemplate eternal life the “chance to delve deeper” (from website). Peter Greenaway has made finding fragments, of a movie that is part of a large storyworld The Tulse Luper Project, a game. The Tulse Luper Journey involves players collaborating to complete 92 puzzles. On completion of each puzzle, a 1 minute film fragment is released to the player. It is then their task to compile the 92 minute film of Tulse Luper. The logic behind these offerings are manifold, from facilitating ‘citizen marketing’ to a highly personalized exploration of a storyworld. It should be noted too, that some filmmakers are experimenting with creating films specifically designed for remixing, such as Michelle Hughes’ Stray Cinema (2006), Aryan Kaganof’s SMS Sugarman (2007) and Michela Ledwidge’s (in-development) Sanctuary.
Filmmakers also engage in remixes of their own films. For the past year Peter Greenaway has been performing live VJing sessions of assets of his cross-media project The Tulse Luper Project . Workbook Project’s own Lance Weiler is currently touring the USA and Europe with his – ‘cinema ARG‘ of Head Trauma (2006). Weiler’s cinema event includes a remix, live music, theatrics and mobile phones. It is a unique experience of the film’s storyworld carefully curated by the filmmaker. His cinema theatrics are helping to revive the notion of cinema as event.
As well as remixing their own work, and offering their assets up for others to do with what they will, filmmakers are also commissioning artists to create interactive works out of the assets. On the main website of Head Trauma, for instance, Lance Weiler has included an interactive graphic novel that includes footage, stills and audio of the film. The website for David Slade’s Hard Candy (2005) has an – experience, and so too with Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain Experience . Indeed Peter Greenaway has also commissioned Digiscreen to create what they call a “webler” of The Tulse Luper Suitcases:
“Website constructed entirely from a film’s visual and aural elements that can be navigated and interacted with by a general audience. A webler should offer both an experience of the actual film as with a film trailer and an alternative expression of that experience.” (Digiscreen)
There are also non-web creative constructions of a film’s assets is ‘Blossoms and Blood’, a 12 minute montage of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002). The short film is on the DVD and is constructed with deleted scenes. Since most of the shots included are of different points of view than those in the film, the work moves from vignette to being a kind of parallel universe. Poetic explorations of a theme are also rendered in print. Peter Greenaway has art books that accompany The Tulse Luper Suitcases (that he created), the Wachowski Brothers commissioned two volumes of graphic novels for The Matrix and Darren Aronofsky has written a graphic novel adaptation of The Fountain with painter Kent Williams. Aronofsky describes his entire project as “[a] story so grand, one medium couldn’t contain it” (source).
All of these works augment the film, providing a poetic rendition, but they also stand on their own as a work of art. They are at times a specifically designed prologue and epilogue. Indeed, some filmmakers push administrative detail to the side and instead prefer the films website to be a meditation on the theme. Examples are the websites for Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000); Christopher Nolan’s Momento (2000); Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001); Darren Lynn Bousman’s Saw II (2005) and more recently Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2007).
[Screenshot from Momento website]
This treatment of the web as an expressive medium extends even further. Some filmmakers are populating their storyworld on the web shoulder to shoulder with real world sites. Sites for fictional companies and characters in films are emerging across cyberspace, almost indistinguishable from their real world counterparts… if not for their outlandish nature. For instance, the company that erases Joel Barish’s memory in Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004) has its own corporate site: Lacuna Inc. The company that provided the cloned child in Nick Hamm’s Godsend (2004) is likewise online: Godsend Institute. Companies mentioned in the Enter the Matrix digital game (2003), such as Omega Hardware Solutions were also online. The company that produces the NS-5 in Alex Proyas’ I, Robot (2004) has a site dedicated to the robot: NS-5. The company has even issued a press release detailing how the “NS-5″ will play several major roles in the film. Indeed, Count Olaf, the evil character in Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) has his own website and blog, a place where he relishes in his starring role in the film.
In all of these examples it is clear that the storyworld is not married to the primary medium, to film, anymore. For some, this multi-medium existence has an immersive effect. Just like real life, it is present in all communication channels. Of course, this can be encouraged with websites that are set within the universe of the film. Early examples of this are seen with Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast website in 1996 and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project website in 1998. The later went on to also broadcast on the Sci Fi Channel a mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, of the mockumentary and published a dossier of the “evidence” in 1999. Over the past few years, it is has been these practices – representing the world of the film as being real – that have emerged as a primary aesthetic for many audiences and creators. Four months before the screening of Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge 2 (2006) a blog by Jason C was launched. Jason C is postgraduate student who is covering the making of the film as part of his research. So, the site works as both a making-of and fictional prologue. Why fiction? Jason C is a fictional character who, over the next few months, witnesses mysterious events on the set. Slowly, all of the cast and crew are affected by the strange events. In the end, Jason C disappears and his roommate takes over the blog in an effort to get help to find him.
Despite many diegetic web to film references, there are not many instances of references to fictional sites within films. Movie Poop Shoot, was in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and the character Paul Duncan in Godsend does search the Net for the Godsend Institute website mentioned earlier. But the only explicit referral by a character I’ve seen is Professor Bedlam’s mention of his website in Ivan Reitman’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006): ProfessorBedlam.com. The cross-platform traversal was not well executed however, as the website featured content that was set in the plot at the beginning of the film, not the end. These traversals need to make sense in terms of the flow of the narrative, which means creative control over them. Despite this flaw, the explicit referral of another element of the storyworld in another medium is a sign that the craft of multi-platform expression is maturing. Each component is not divorced of the others, in other words, it is a carefully constructed experience.
The majority of examples I have given thus far are adaptations of some kind. There are examples emerging of a storyline being extended. For instance, at the end of the Donnie Darko website (which requires moving through various levels by solving puzzles) the viewer/player is rewarded with press clippings that detail what happened to some of the characters after the events of the film. The Grudge 2 blog I cited previously is also an example of a metafictional prologue. A different approach to the extension of a storyworld is found in the DVD of Brad Bird’s animated film The Incredibles (2004). Near the end of the film, the mother (Elastigirl) listens to messages left by the babysitter of her child Jack-Jack on her mobile phone/cell. As we progress through the messages it is clear the babysitter is getting more and more frantic. The film ends, however, without us knowing what happened with the babysitter and the son Jack-Jack. We find out what happened, though, in the short animated film in the DVD: “Jack-Jack Attack”. Here we have a change of POV and an elaboration of narrative point in the film. Filmmakers are also starting their narrative in books. Unlike the adaptation model that has dominated, these books are designed to start the plot, which will then continue in the film. Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2007) begins with three novels, and Chair Entertainment has begun their Empire story with a specifically written novel by Orson Scott Card. Chair Entertainment describe their approach as follows:
Chair’s unique value proposition is that we (1) create compelling original stories, (2) own and maintain creative control of our IP, and (3) create marketing synergy around that IP in 5 core franchise areas: video games, books, movies, comics, and merchandise. Each product we develop offers a unique perspective of the story and works together to expand the franchise. [source]
A similar multi-platform approach to addressing unexplored elements in a film is seen in EA Game’s The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-Earth II (2006). It is set during events that coincide with the events in Peter Jackson’s films, but take place in areas of Middle-Earth not covered in it. They are, of course, known from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. With massively multiplayer online games, we have the Matrix Online (2005) as a good example of the continuation of a storyworld into a game. The gameworld is set after the events of the last film and although there have been mixed reviews, there are interesting plot developments such as the death of Morpheus. Due to the popularity of the genre, there will be many more integrated game and film projects over the next few years. Of note is the project Titantic director James Cameron has been working on for the past few years: Project 880. Once it comes out (a year or so apparently), it will be the first project that will begin as a multiplayer game and then continue in a feature film. But before looking too far into the future, lets return to the innovative transmedia expansions that are happening now and in the not-too-distant past.
[Screenshot from EA's Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II]
The most referred to past project is the Wachoswki Brother’s The Matrix universe. Their storyworld existed in films, anime, comics and games. But unlike tie-ins and franchises of the past, the Wachowski Bros. creatively controlled each element and designed a continuous narrative across them. A highly cited example is the narrative thread of “the message”. In the short anime, “The Last Flight of Osiris” (2003), the character Jue and her crew discover the machines are boring to Zion. Their aim is to warn Zion of the impending danger by sending a message to the Nebuchadnezzar crew. At the end of the story Jue just manages to post the letter (thus ending a narrative thread), but we do not know what happens to the letter (a continuing thread). What happens to the letter is addressed in the digital game, Enter the Matrix (2003). The first mission for the player is to retrieve the letter from the post office. The player succeeds in continuing the narrative but we still do not know of the consequences of our actions. It is at the beginning of the second film, The Matrix Reloaded (2003), when Niobe (who is one of two characters in the game) reports on the ‘last transmissions of the Osiris’. The transmissions posted in the anime and retrieved by players in the digital game.
The Wachowski Brothers weren’t the only ones to persist their storyworld across media platforms though. In 2003 a group of fans conceived and implemented a unique project. Fan production is nothing new, but the form of this continuation of the Matrix storyworld was with a creative type that was only two years old. This group created an ‘alternate reality game’ (ARG): a storyworld that requires players all over the world to collaborate to find it and solve. Stories are distributed across numerous websites, emails, faxes, phone calls and real life events. Characters have blogs and chat to players via email, fax and phone. Fictional companies have sites that players have to ‘hack’ into and retrieve information from. The entire narrative is played out in real time, 24 hours a day and requires players to work together to solve very difficult puzzles to access information. The outcome is never fixed, for the creators always alter the world in real time according to the actions of the players. The ARG for The Matrix, MetaCortechs, is one of the most successful ARGs, with over 125,000 players from 115,000 countries. An invaluable book for those considering creating an ARG is the Project Mu Archives, for it documents The Matrix ARG from the player’s perspective. It is also available online. An ARG design book is also available: ARG designer Dave Szulborski’s This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming.
Other films augmented by fans in the Jim Miller’s web-only Exocog in 2002. He chose the then forthcoming Minority Report as his storyworld and produced a 5-week project played in the build up to the film’s release. In 2004, VirtuQuest created an ARG set in the universe of George Lucas’ first feature film: THX 1138 (1971). SEN 5241 continued the narrative after the events of the film and was created to coincide with the launch of the DVD.
Fans are the not the only who have created ARGs though. Indeed, the first ARG (as it known now) was actually a commissioned by Microsoft and Dreamworks to publicize Stephen Spielberg’s A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001) but ended up being described by Internet Life magazine as the ‘Citizen Kane of online entertainment’. The Beast was played by over 3 million people all over the world and created the new form of entertainment. Players who followed 150 characters across hundreds of websites, emails, faxes, files and puzzles for months and generated over 300 million impressions for the film through mainstream press such as Time, CNN, and USA Today, as well as niche outlets such as Wired, Slashdot, and Ain’t it Cool News, and won numerous awards including best idea (New York Times Magazine) and best web site (Entertainment Weekly). [4orty 2wo Entertainment]
[Screenshot of the Monster Hunt Club website for The Host]
In 2007, Magnolia Films commissioned ARG Studios to create an ARG for Bong Joon Ho’s The Host (2007). The ARG, Monster Hunt Club, helped market the release of the Korean film in the US. It was, I believe, the first ‘horror’ ARG (and Lance Weiler’s ‘cinema ARG’ the first of its kind, for scary movies too). More recently, an ARG-like campaign has started for the upcoming Batman film by Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight. So far there have been fictional sites, such as the political campaign site for the character Harvey Dent (who becomes ‘Two-Face’) and clues left on playing cards left in comic book stores. One of the techniques that ARGs use is to remove all cues to fictionality: fictional sites almost indistinguishable from real ones. But as we have seen with the various projects mentioned in this article, this trope is not unique to ARGs. Indeed, making a fictional world seem as real as possible, extending it across media platforms, playing with it and enabling audiences to share and participate in its construction are just some of the key drives for filmmakers now.
In a keynote speech delivered at the Cinema Militans in September 2003, Peter Greenaway described the Tulse Luper Suitcases (a work that includes 3 feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs and CD Roms, books and numerous websites) as: “an attempt to make a gathering together of today’s languages, to place them alongside one another and get them to converse.” Creators of film, print, TV, radio, theatre, games, new media and painting are all moving into this new paradigm of creation. Indeed, the future will not be the domain of artists who adapt or extend from their primary medium, but the domain of people who are transmedia artists from the beginning. Filmmakers don’t create films anymore, they create worlds.
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