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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
September 01 2010
Managing THE LOST CHILDREN Storyworld with WordPress: Part 1
This is going to be basically a four part series on how we are going to try using WordPress to manage the storyworld of our project THE LOST CHILDREN. I’m hoping to deliver these parts about once a week. Might be a little off, since things with the film are very busy, but in general I am trying to document what we’re actually doing for the film as we go. I wrote a previous post about how to use WordPress to feed data to your mobile apps. In a sense, this is a follow-up to that post. Or more accurately, it is a prelude to that post. In part 3 of this series, I will loop back around to that JSON post and show you how it ties in with these.
Organizing Our Data
The first thing I need to say is I am no expert on Transmedia or ARGs or anything like that. There are many other people who are. So this post is not meant as me preaching The Truth down from on high. This post is meant as an exploration of what I am working on now, in the hopes that it sparks some others’ imaginations. In the interest of us all learning, I’m simply sharing the process we’re going through right now.
The second thing I need to say is that this is not a tutorial, and not something that just anyone can do. I’m actually writing some software for this, and the things I’m talking about here will require more custom software to deliver to users. Eventually, if this works, I will likely write a set of WP plugins to simplify this process and make it something anyone can use. But for now, I believe that ideas are what count, and I think many people will be able to understand the ideas here and maybe contribute some of their own.
Half-assed Diagram of Data RelationshipsThis is sort of an experiment in stretching WordPress beyond it’s original purpose. The goal here is to see if we can use WordPress as a place to maintain our entire storyworld, and then feed that storyworld out to our various platforms; Tweets, Text Messages, Phone Calls, Location-based content, blogs, etc. The benefit here is that all of our data is in one place, it can be queried, analyzed, related, tagged with metadata, etc. Another benefit is that we are using a good deal of free tools.
What we want to end up with here, is a matrix of our related data, so we can easily know which characters are involved in a which storylines, campaigns, etc., or all of the platforms a certain character is involved in, etc.
There are some various groups out there writing Transmedia software systems right now, with the idea of licensing the technology. I’m sure these systems are far, far superior to what I’m doing. But another goal here is to encourage the lowest of low budget storytellers to think about these things, and know that you too can do them to some degree. Don’t be daunted by your lack of budget. Yes, I have software skills that save me money on a number of these things, but I am also using a lot of free software. Essentially, if you don’t count my time, and say hosting costs and the cost of asset creation, I am spending $0 on this.
WordPress 3.0
Many of you know WordPress as blog software. In recent times, it has grown in popularity to be more like CMS software. In reality, there is no difference between the two, it’s all just organizing data. But WP has added more and more features that can make it useful for far more than just your blog.
In 3.0 WP introduced a couple of very important concepts. The first concept is the Custom Post Type. This means in addition to “Posts” and “Pages” you can now create “Books,” “Songs,” “Dogs.” “Cats,” whatever you want.
The second concept is that of Custom Taxonomies. A taxonomy is just a big word for categorization(which I guess is a bigger word), it’s just a way to group stuff. WordPress comes out of the box with “Categories.” Now you can create a taxonomy called: “Buzzwords,” and then tag your content with Buzzword->Transmedia. That means you can now query your content and look for all of the content that tagged with the “Buzzword,” “Transmedia.” Make sense?
What We’re Using
-WordPress 3.0. This is the newest version of the software and you probably should be on this anyway.
-2 Plugins. So far, I have been doing what I’m doing with available plugins. Sort of. In a couple of cases, I made changes to those plugins for what I needed. But generally, I submit those changes back to the creators and they generally include the changes in their next release.
–The first plugin is Custom Post Type UI by WebDevStudios – allows you to have an admin interface for managing custom post types, then puts those in your admin menu on the left hand side of the Dashboard.
–The next one is Related by Matthias Siegel – allows you to manually relate posts to the current post you are editing. I altered it to call up all post types. Have not submitted this back to creator yet, but will do so probably this week.
Plugins Menu
I also make liberal use of what WordPress already comes with: The ability to add custom fields to a post, the ability to add media to a post, like images. This is all built in, saving us untold numbers of hours writing it ourselves.
Data is just Data
So what do we mean by data? A character is data in your storyworld. Their backstory, upbringing, photos, relationships, etc. Locations are data. A storyline is data. All of your content is data. The thing you have to understand is data is just data. A “post” post type is the same thing as a “page” post type as the same thing as a “character” post type, as a “text message” post type. These are all just buckets with different names.
So here is the content breakdown I’m working with for THE LOST CHILDREN:
Post Types available with WordPress install:
-Post – Main Site
-Page – Main Site
These are the types that come with every WordPress install. So I am allowing these to populate the main site: http://www.thelostchildrenmovie.com. Simple enough. Along with the built in Categories, this allows me to serve up content just like any other WordPress site.
Custom Content Types:
So once we’ve installed the Custom Post Type UI plugin, the left hand nav of the admin screen will have a new option for managing Custom Post Types. It’s at the very bottom. When you click add, you come to a screen for creating Custom Post Types.
Create Storylines Custom Post TypeAs you can see on this screen, we are able to determine which standard post fields are available to this new post type. I usually just add them all. You never know when you might need something. You can also choose to mark a custom post type as “hierarchical.” This means that these post types can have parent post types and child post types. This too might come in very handy. So I mark it as true.
Bottom Half of Create Post TypeHere are the Custom Post Types we’re starting with for THE LOST CHILDREN, along with some of the custom fields that affect their functionality.
Storyline
BUILT IN FIELD: Title
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: StartDate
CUSTOM FIELD: EndDate
Character
BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( for the character’s name )
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
Shadowman – We have a character in THE LOST CHILDREN called a Shadowman. No one knows how many of these there are and they can pop up at almost any time. Our first ARG will be based on these guys. The idea will be that they can be scattered around a city, and you go find them, and figure out what they really are. So I wanted to create a type that represents a character that may not really have a name or an identity of his own, but be available when we need him any number of times.
BUILT IN FIELD: Title
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: Latitude
CUSTOM FIELD: Longitude – These fields make it possible for us to place this character on a map for location-based stuff.
Short Film – We’re assuming in our case, that any short films will be online, so we will give them a URL.
BUILT IN FIELD: Title
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: URL
CUSTOM FIELD: StartDate
CUSTOM FIELD: EndDate
Text Message
BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( maybe for the subject field? )
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: From
Phone Call (A phone call you receive in an ARG, say)
BUILT IN FIELD: Title
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: URL – Perhaps to the audio file?
CUSTOM FIELD: Phone Number
External Blog – In THE LOST CHILDREN, some characters keep outside blogs on the web
BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( for the title of the external blog )
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: External URL
Talisman – in our ARG, you can find certain talismans which help you discover, fight off, subdue and interrogate the Shadowmen for information
BUILT IN FIELD: Title
BUILT IN FIELD: Body
CUSTOM FIELD: Latitude
CUSTOM FIELD: Longitude – Make it possible to place this object on a map for location-based stuff.
Left Admin NavSo once you have created these custom post types, you’ll start to see them show up in the left hand admin nav. You can see the highlighted “Storylines” type in the image over there.
So, I’m still not sure if we are actually going with the idea of a “Storyline,” but it demonstrates a couple of things you can do with WordPress. Another word for this might be a “Campaign?” But I think the central idea is that it is a piece of content designed to last over a certain period of time. So I go to add new.
The Hector & Celia ARG
So here I create a storyline called “Hector & Celia.” The ARG we’re creating is about a young man and his sister, who are abducted by the Shadowmen. In the ARG, you will receive messages from Hector, you will chase down Shadowmen at actual physical locations, snap photos of them( through Augmented Reality ), gather talimans to fight them, interrogate them for info, and hopefully find Hector & Celia before it’s too late.
So this entry simply defines that particular storyline.
As I said above, a storyline will have a start date and an end date. WordPress posts already come with a publish date, meaning, you can set something to go live at a certain future date. But there is no concept of an end date. And if we’re doing a “storyline” or a “campaign” we want that. So I am using the Custom Fields capability available to every WordPress post type:
Okay there’ s a lot of information here. So I think I will cut off part 1 at this point. In part 2, I will pick up with creating other content types and relating them all to one another. In part 3, I will show how we are going to actually send this data out into our Transmedia elements. And I think in part 4, I will start to look at metrics and gathering user responses.
As I said at the top, this is an ongoing work in progress, what I am trying right now for my film’s launch in 2011. So I welcome any and all dialog.
August 31 2010
PULSE – Every Person in New York
Jason Polan is truly, the new wave of Renaissance Man. Michigan born, Jason moved to New York City and quickly made himself an institution. It began, with a New Yorker Cartoon that ran March 6th of 2006. By the next year, Jason had begun a multitude of projects. First, there was the Taco Bell Drawing club. This is where at first – Jason and a few friends would simply meet up and do some drawing at a Taco Bell restaurant. Now, this has spread all across the country. They even have tote bags. At the same time he started The Hand Project, a series in which he photocopied his hand in different positions which he then sold for 20 dollars a piece. However for a considerably larger sum Jason will come to your house, shake your hand, write up a certificate of authenticity for the encounter, and take a photo of the two of you with the certificate.
Now Jason has taken it upon himself to draw every single person in New York. A daunting task to most so Jason made it easier for all of us. Using a regular email account anyone can send a message directly to Jason listing what street corner they’ll be on, what you’ll be wearing, and a 2 minute window for him to arrive. In case he can’t make it there in time he doesn’t want you to wait. He has recently past 8300 portraits and threw himself a party . It was called the “One Tenth of One Percent Event” (as there are 8,363,710 New Yorkers awaiting him). The drawings are black ink on paper, and simple.
To the trained eye they resemble the work of long time New Yorker Magazine Cartoonist Roz Chast. Jason has also had a published New Yorker cartoon, bringing him to one of the highest planes of notoriety a New York artist can achieve.
Currently, Jason has 6 web sites operating covering all of his work. He also maintains a personal site. Not only is his work versatile, but also it is accessible. One day Jason walked through the Museum of Modern Art in January of 2005, and drew each and every piece in the building. This book is now sold through his website. The deluxe edition you ask? For $100 dollars, Jason will meet you at the museum, give you a personal tour, and buy you a hot dog or a pretzel afterwards. This is the new approach to art. Instead of cloaking himself in anonymity, Jason is readily available. Email him. He’ll write back.
His work can be found at JasonPolan.com
email: Art@jasonPolan.com
August 30 2010
Engaging Your Audience
This is a two-part blog post with this being the first part. The second part is here. And you can get a PDF of the full piece, including my earlier associated work on Content Strategy.
When creative people get in the zone they generate a ton of ideas for content and experiences that could all work with their transmedia world. However, with resources always limited, these ideas have to be whittled down to essentials, nice-to-haves and stuff-for-later. One approach is to optimize the mix of content such that it (a) maximizes audience engagement and (b) the longevity (or likelihood of traction) of the experience. In this context I’m using “content” to mean all the things and tools that the audience has at their disposal – from videos, images and text to forums, chat rooms, leaderboards and so on.
If we are to design transmedia projects that engage audiences then we need to understand what it means to be engaged. Most would agree that it’s more than just “a view” and that there are probably degrees of engagement ranging from “doing something” (like a click) to “creating something” (like remixing a video).
Audience engagement is explained in the next section.
1.1.1 Measuring engagement
In 2006, Ross Mayfield stated in his blog:
“The vast majority of users will not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value. But patterns have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence”.
He coined the term “The Power Law of Participation” which is shown in his diagram below (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Power Law of Participation
This participation curve can also be applied to transmedia worlds and will be evident to those who’ve run an ARG. Figure 2 shows the participation law at work in Mike Dicks diagram “Rules of Engagement” in which he expects that only 20% of the audience will engage in the gaming content of a cross-platform experience compared to 75% with the “sit-back” media.
Figure 2 Audience Participation with Content
What this means is that if there’s less effort involved in participating in the storyworld (for example watching a video vs remixing a video) then more of the audience is likely to do it but you can’t say that they’re as engaged with world as those who are expending more effort. More effort on behalf of the audience implies that they must be more engaged, right? Well, yes and no.
It depends on how the individual audience member derives his or her pleasure from the world. Not everyone wants to or feels able to remix videos or contribute user-generated content yet nevertheless may be a strong advocate for the world – telling friends, family and strangers that they really ought to check out the content. Surely that’s an engaged audience too?
Forrester Research identifies four measures for engagement with media content: involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence. Developing this for our purposes of understanding engagement with a transmedia world, we should measure not only the audience’s interaction and contribution but also their affection and affinity towards the world – that is, what they say and how they feel about it.
Taking this approach, a Facebook “Like”, while taking such little time and effort, ranks pretty well on the engagement scale. It’s more than just any click. It’s a show of affection.
But to get that “Like” or to get a “Share”, you need to provide the mechanism and the content.
Figure 3 shows the three stages of engagement – Discovery, Experience & Exploration – that inform your content choices across my five levels of increasing engagement:
- Attention
- Evaluation
- Affection
- Advocacy
- Contribution.
Figure 3 Measuring Engagement
Stages of Engagement Discovery Experience Exploration Level of Engagement Attention Evaluation Affection Advocacy Contribution Content Type Teaser Trailer Target Participation Collaboration Goal for your content Find me.Fan comes to site and consumes low-involvement free “teaser content”
Try me.Fan increases engagement and consumes free “trailer content”
Love me.Fan spends money and decides that what I offer delivers on the promise, is entertaining and is worthwhile.
Talk about me.Fan tells friends.
Be me.Fan creates new content
How Be relevant Be credible Be exceptional Be spreadable Be open Measurement views, hits, time spent per view, number for content viewed (per channel & content (e.g. emails, blogs, videos, Twitter etc.) clicks, downloads, trials, registrations purchases, ratings, reviews, comments, blog posts, Twitter follows, Likes, community sign-ups, other memberships, subscriptions, repeat purchasesreferrals, reTweets, forwards, shares, embeds, satisfaction polls & questionnaires
Offline: focus groups, surveys
uploads, remixes, stories written, collaborations, fan moderators for forum, events held, other UGC
August 29 2010
Let’s Make a Web Series
In my opinion, web series are one of the best ways discover talent and incubate projects. In this post you will be introduced to individuals who are doing interesting things on the web:
Mike Rotman is an Emmy nominated writer for his work on “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher”-now he is taking over the interweb with such shows as “Stupid for Movies”.
Michael Ferrell, with only a tiny budget and a local coffee company sponsor he co-created/co-produced the hilarious web series “Stoop Sale” with his girlfriend Devin Sanchez.
Describe your background and what inspired you to make a web series?
I’m Italian/Irish by way of Northern New Jersey and Devin thought that she was Mexican up until she was a young woman, when she found out she was actually of Spanish descent. True story. Doesn’t stop her from loving Mexican food, however. She puts jalapenos on everything. To be fair, I put garlic on everything and cook it in beer. We have amazing burritos.
We were inspired to make a web series while still in college, in the late 90’s, right after people started “e-mailing” each other. I found this “e-mail” that I sent Devin with my POP mail account:
“Dear Devin,
This e-mail thing is crazy, huh? Do you get this right away or does it take awhile? Call me when you get this and let me know. Anyhoo-I hear you’re studying theatre in Wyoming. We should get together one day and work on a play that I wrote. Or even a film. Who knows, with the way technology seems to be going, we could even get some friends together and use somebody’s small digital camera, film a few episodes of a show, put it in our computers to edit, then put it on the World Wide Web. Maybe I’m thinking crazy. But not half as crazy as my ideas for “websites” I want to create, such as Mybook,Facepage, Ourtube, and Twiddle. I’ll e-mail you about those things in a letter to follow. I’m gonna go smoke outta this dope new bong my boy got!!! Hope you get this soon!
Sincerely,
Michael”
How did you get the word out about your show?
Our show is not yet released, so the fact that we’re being interviewed is a great step in getting the word out. We submitted to festivals and got into an awesome one – the Independent Television Festival in L.A. I think submitting to festivals is the way to go if you’re an independent web series producer. We had one informal screening for the cast at a bar, which went horribly because the manager of the bar was an idiot and assured us the DVD player would work fine, but instead, it worked the opposite of fine. We will also screen “Stoop Sale” on AUGUST 24th AT “THE CREEK” IN QUEENS AS PART OF THE “WATCHDOWN” SERIES http://www.watchdown.com/ and we screened the episodes in Brooklyn for a group of filmmakers. So we definitely believe in doing some fun, live, actual-real-people-talking-to-each-other promotional events, as long as you take pictures and videos so that you can post them on facepage, mybook, and twiddle.
What have been your most interesting interactions with fans?
Well, Devin made the mistake of saying “Stoop Sale” was more popular than “Jesus: The Web Series,” and then people started uploading videos of them deleting their subscription to our youtube page and unfollowing us on twitter. It was hard to swallow, but we’re artists, so fuck it.
No, really, when we do launch the series, hopefully we will get some fans. And then we’ll have some interesting interactions with them, for instance, them sending me bottles of Macallan 12.
What mistakes did you learn from when you started creating your first web series?
I did a web series called “Hard Times,” which I’m very proud of. Through that process though, I learned that the amount of time in pre-production and post-production should far outweigh the time actually shooting and doing all the fun stuff, unfortunately. We shot “Stoop Sale” in one weekend, maybe 16 hours total. And we’ve been working on the project for almost a year. It’s not ideal for actors and writers like us, but its paid off so far. You do all the other work so that one day you won’t have to. It’s kinda like when you form a club, someone’s gotta be the secretary and someone’s gotta be the treasurer, not everyone can be the prostitute.
What is your prediction for the future of creating a web series?
I am wondering when someone is going to pull their dick out in a web series. I know it sounds like I’m joking, but the thing about the internet is that there’s no censorship. So how come some crazy college kid hasn’t made a web series where he’s doing a scene in a coffee shop or something and then he just says, “You know what?” and pulls his dick out and lays it on the table. I mean, it couldn’t be on youtube, but it can be online. The show could be called “This Guy’s Gonna Pull His Dick Out.” You’re welcome, for the idea.
Besides that, I think that the problem with most web series is the writing. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer but I’m saying this objectively, most web series are comedy and most comedy web series don’t have good writing. Some funny bits, for sure, but even if it’s sketch, I mean, real, deep, sketch writing – I feel like it’s missing in a lot of cases. And that’s one thing I’d like to see, more good writing. In the acting world, we say “theatre is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s medium, and TV is a writer’s medium.” It seems like the internet is most like TV, so it’d be nice to see better writing in the future. Of course, I may be wrong and the internet might be the kind of medium where a guy pulls his dick out in a coffee shop and it’s the most viewed web series ever.
Describe your background and what is ITV Fest?
After graduating from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Speech and a Theatre major, AJ stayed in Chicago, forming the small web production company Goldingeye Productions. After producing hours of content for a number of now defunct websites, AJ relocated to New York City where he worked as a New Media Analyst for d2 Capital. By day AJ would pour over notes and records in search of new entertainment channels, while at night AJ was a hilariously mediocre stand up comedian. Anxious for more, Tesler moved again, this time to Los Angeles where he immediately found success as an actor, appearing on television shows such as It’s All Relative and The Gilmore Girls. As much as he enjoys acting, AJ has always been drawn to produce and in the summer of 2002, he produced the first of almost 50 installations of the New and Improv-Ed Stand Up Show, an official selection of the Chicago Improv Festival as well as the 2004 and 2005 Los Angeles Improv Festivals. In 2004, AJ began producing television , independently, on spec, and with production company support. In 2005, AJ formed what is now widely recognized as the premier festival in the world for TV and New Media, The Independent Television Festival Corporation, a non profit, public benefit corporation. In 2008, AJ was hired to be the Manager of Development for Lion Television, a UK based development and production company. Since leaving Lion in 2009, AJ has produced shows for MTV, Babelgum, Atom.com, and Fox TV Studios. He is currently freelance producing under his recently set up production company, Apostrophy Productions.
What are your favorite success stories from your fest?
I just love the stories of people getting jumpstarts to heir careers. People getting represented, people making connections, those are the types of success stories that make me proud. On top of that, however, are shows like Urban Wolf which got licensed by Sony, Johnny B Homeless which got licensed by Atom.com, the script deal at NBC for This is My Friend and the development deal at Starz for a show called Partners…those are great stories that we can hang our hat on as well.
Are there any trends you see when it comes to submissions?
Every year we see different trends in submissions. This year over 70% of all of our submissions came in as webseries which would certainly be a trend…the rise of the webseries. In terms of the specific content, though, we got a lot of ghost hunters parodies and a lot of lesbian content as well this year. I’d say we got too many submissions shot in the mockumentary/Office style. We’re looking for innovation so it becomes very difficult to program things when we see so many people trying the same concept.
Do you have any advice for new web series creators?
Know that you don’t know it all. The one man band is the path of least resistance, but people specialize in cinematography, editing, directing, writing for a reason. Use people who are good at their jobs and your project will be significantly better for it. Other than that, make sure you have a plan for what you want to do with your show. Making something and hoping it attracts the attention of the professional world is not the smartest endeavor, but if you go in with a plan, you can deliberately attract the audience you’re seeking.
August 28 2010
Let’s Make a Web Series
Remember waiting forever to watch a video on your computer, with a 56k modem? Those days sucked. Now you can instantly view a cornucopia of high quality Internet content on a massive television. Inside your living room, a web series made for less than a $100 can compete for your eyeballs against a TV show produced for over 10,000 x the budget (Lost). Think about this: years ago independent producers could only use a cable access channel to get their shows on TV to reach a local audience. Now a small crew can shoot a comedy series for fans living everywhere from Texas to Turkey.
In my opinion, web series are one of the best ways discover talent and incubate projects. In this post you will be introduced to individuals who are doing interesting things on the web:
Mike Rotman is an Emmy nominated writer for his work on “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher”-now he is taking over the interweb with such shows as “Stupid for Movies”.
Michael Ferrell, with only a tiny budget and a local coffee company sponsor he co-created/co-produced the hilarious web series “Stoop Sale” with his girlfriend Devin Sanchez.
Describe your background and what inspired you to make a web series?
I’m Italian/Irish by way of Northern New Jersey and Devin thought that she was Mexican up until she was a young woman, when she found out she was actually of Spanish descent. True story. Doesn’t stop her from loving Mexican food, however. She puts jalapenos on everything. To be fair, I put garlic on everything and cook it in beer. We have amazing burritos.
We were inspired to make a web series while still in college, in the late 90’s, right after people started “e-mailing” each other. I found this “e-mail” that I sent Devin with my POP mail account:
“Dear Devin,
This e-mail thing is crazy, huh? Do you get this right away or does it take awhile? Call me when you get this and let me know. Anyhoo-I hear you’re studying theatre in Wyoming. We should get together one day and work on a play that I wrote. Or even a film. Who knows, with the way technology seems to be going, we could even get some friends together and use somebody’s small digital camera, film a few episodes of a show, put it in our computers to edit, then put it on the World Wide Web. Maybe I’m thinking crazy. But not half as crazy as my ideas for “websites” I want to create, such as Mybook,Facepage, Ourtube, and Twiddle. I’ll e-mail you about those things in a letter to follow. I’m gonna go smoke outta this dope new bong my boy got!!! Hope you get this soon!
Sincerely,
Michael”
How did you get the word out about your show?
Our show is not yet released, so the fact that we’re being interviewed is a great step in getting the word out. We submitted to festivals and got into an awesome one – the Independent Television Festival in L.A. I think submitting to festivals is the way to go if you’re an independent web series producer. We had one informal screening for the cast at a bar, which went horribly because the manager of the bar was an idiot and assured us the DVD player would work fine, but instead, it worked the opposite of fine. We will also screen “Stoop Sale” on AUGUST 24th AT “THE CREEK” IN QUEENS AS PART OF THE “WATCHDOWN” SERIES http://www.watchdown.com/ and we screened the episodes in Brooklyn for a group of filmmakers. So we definitely believe in doing some fun, live, actual-real-people-talking-to-each-other promotional events, as long as you take pictures and videos so that you can post them on facepage, mybook, and twiddle.
What have been your most interesting interactions with fans?
Well, Devin made the mistake of saying “Stoop Sale” was more popular than “Jesus: The Web Series,” and then people started uploading videos of them deleting their subscription to our youtube page and unfollowing us on twitter. It was hard to swallow, but we’re artists, so fuck it.
No, really, when we do launch the series, hopefully we will get some fans. And then we’ll have some interesting interactions with them, for instance, them sending me bottles of Macallan 12.
What mistakes did you learn from when you started creating your first web series?
I did a web series called “Hard Times,” which I’m very proud of. Through that process though, I learned that the amount of time in pre-production and post-production should far outweigh the time actually shooting and doing all the fun stuff, unfortunately. We shot “Stoop Sale” in one weekend, maybe 16 hours total. And we’ve been working on the project for almost a year. It’s not ideal for actors and writers like us, but its paid off so far. You do all the other work so that one day you won’t have to. It’s kinda like when you form a club, someone’s gotta be the secretary and someone’s gotta be the treasurer, not everyone can be the prostitute.
What is your prediction for the future of creating a web series?
I am wondering when someone is going to pull their dick out in a web series. I know it sounds like I’m joking, but the thing about the internet is that there’s no censorship. So how come some crazy college kid hasn’t made a web series where he’s doing a scene in a coffee shop or something and then he just says, “You know what?” and pulls his dick out and lays it on the table. I mean, it couldn’t be on youtube, but it can be online. The show could be called “This Guy’s Gonna Pull His Dick Out.” You’re welcome, for the idea.
Besides that, I think that the problem with most web series is the writing. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer but I’m saying this objectively, most web series are comedy and most comedy web series don’t have good writing. Some funny bits, for sure, but even if it’s sketch, I mean, real, deep, sketch writing – I feel like it’s missing in a lot of cases. And that’s one thing I’d like to see, more good writing. In the acting world, we say “theatre is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s medium, and TV is a writer’s medium.” It seems like the internet is most like TV, so it’d be nice to see better writing in the future. Of course, I may be wrong and the internet might be the kind of medium where a guy pulls his dick out in a coffee shop and it’s the most viewed web series ever.
Describe your background and what is ITV Fest?
After graduating from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Speech and a Theatre major, AJ stayed in Chicago, forming the small web production company Goldingeye Productions. After producing hours of content for a number of now defunct websites, AJ relocated to New York City where he worked as a New Media Analyst for d2 Capital. By day AJ would pour over notes and records in search of new entertainment channels, while at night AJ was a hilariously mediocre stand up comedian. Anxious for more, Tesler moved again, this time to Los Angeles where he immediately found success as an actor, appearing on television shows such as It’s All Relative and The Gilmore Girls. As much as he enjoys acting, AJ has always been drawn to produce and in the summer of 2002, he produced the first of almost 50 installations of the New and Improv-Ed Stand Up Show, an official selection of the Chicago Improv Festival as well as the 2004 and 2005 Los Angeles Improv Festivals. In 2004, AJ began producing television , independently, on spec, and with production company support. In 2005, AJ formed what is now widely recognized as the premier festival in the world for TV and New Media, The Independent Television Festival Corporation, a non profit, public benefit corporation. In 2008, AJ was hired to be the Manager of Development for Lion Television, a UK based development and production company. Since leaving Lion in 2009, AJ has produced shows for MTV, Babelgum, Atom.com, and Fox TV Studios. He is currently freelance producing under his recently set up production company, Apostrophy Productions.
What are your favorite success stories from your fest?
I just love the stories of people getting jumpstarts to heir careers. People getting represented, people making connections, those are the types of success stories that make me proud. On top of that, however, are shows like Urban Wolf which got licensed by Sony, Johnny B Homeless which got licensed by Atom.com, the script deal at NBC for This is My Friend and the development deal at Starz for a show called Partners…those are great stories that we can hang our hat on as well.
Are there any trends you see when it comes to submissions?
Every year we see different trends in submissions. This year over 70% of all of our submissions came in as webseries which would certainly be a trend…the rise of the webseries. In terms of the specific content, though, we got a lot of ghost hunters parodies and a lot of lesbian content as well this year. I’d say we got too many submissions shot in the mockumentary/Office style. We’re looking for innovation so it becomes very difficult to program things when we see so many people trying the same concept.
Do you have any advice for new web series creators?
Know that you don’t know it all. The one man band is the path of least resistance, but people specialize in cinematography, editing, directing, writing for a reason. Use people who are good at their jobs and your project will be significantly better for it. Other than that, make sure you have a plan for what you want to do with your show. Making something and hoping it attracts the attention of the professional world is not the smartest endeavor, but if you go in with a plan, you can deliberately attract the audience you’re seeking.
Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 1
Welcome to the first 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.
download the podcast running time 51:22
This edition of Transmedia Talk covers the following.
Topics:
The Web is Dead
Facebook Places
Transmedia Panels at the 2011 SXSW
Scvngr
foursquare
Gowalla
Hosts:
Nick Braccia
Robert Pratten
Guests
Lance Weiler
Dee Cook
Haley Moore
Transmedia Talk Podcast – Episode 1
Welcome to the first 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.
download the podcast running time 51:22
This edition of Transmedia Talk covers the following.
Topics:
The Web is Dead
Facebook Places
Transmedia Panels at the 2011 SXSW
Scvngr
foursquare
Gowalla
Hosts:
Nick Braccia
Robert Pratten
Guests
Lance Weiler
Dee Cook
Haley Moore
August 25 2010
Fiction Films in Non-Fiction Formats: Why we shot THE LOST CHILDREN as a Doc
THE LOST CHILDREN is a fiction film, but being shot as if a documentary. This isn’t anything new these days. From the beautiful work of Guest and Co, to the inescapable Blair Witch, to the TV show The Office, this has become a pretty accepted dramatic format. So I wasn’t under any delusions of breaking new ground.
I wanted to write up an article detailing the reasons I did make this decision, in the hopes of clarifying, both for myself and others, some of the things I’m after with this project. I also wanted to provide this because I see a lot of people choosing the same format, without really thinking through why. I think it deserves some thought.
Economics of Independent Film in 2009
When we started this project, our intention was to make a $100K indie feature, shot on RED, and (hopefully) distributed through the usual means. We had the script ready for this production and had gone into pre-production. We had shoot dates set, the cast ready, and we were all set to roll.
But at the same time, everyone started talking about how distribution was changing, failing, crumbling, etc. And this stuff was coming from so many places, I started to get worried. I had not really thought about distribution up to that point, assuming we would worry about it when the film was done. But hearing all of this hue and cry, I decided I needed to do some research. I put the production on hold and did that. And the conclusion I came to was that we could probably make a good $100K RED film, but it was entirely likely that this film would be lost in the massive ocean of similar films pouring out of every nook and cranny. It’s not hard to have production value anymore. And the lower the point of entry gets, the higher the baseline gets.
Now, I do believe our story is good and unique and multi-dimensional, but I didn’t have faith that that would be enough. We had no name actors. I was a first time feature director. When I looked at it practically, I just thought there were going to be too many things to overcome. With $100K in borrowed money, I didn’t like the odds. I know that’s nothing in movie terms, but…it’s kind of a lot of money to me, when I wasn’t certain I could pay it back.
So I put the old brainbox in gear and started to really think about what my goals were with this film.
- Get through my first feature alive. I actually think this is a laudable goal; to actually finish a feature film that’s coherent, watchable, and compelling. Many first time features don’t even accomplish two of these.
- Challenge myself as a filmmaker. Paint myself into some corners and fight to get out of them.
- Focus on characters over visuals.
- Make the film for an amount low enough that I can afford to experiment with distribution strategies. I feel like this is critical for filmmakers right now. If I try one thing and it doesn’t work, I need to be able to try some others without the pressing need to make the money back. In fact, it’s much more important to me right now to learn what works and what doesn’t than to actually make the money back on this film. As it stands now, I don’t owe anyone anything for this film. It’s paid for.
“Filmmaking” and Storytelling
I made a short in 2009, called EVIE. With EVIE, I was still working very much on my “filmmaking” techniques; telling a story visually, manipulating elements to exact certain emotions from the audience. But as I finished the film and screened it at the Downtown Independent in July of that year, I realized I was getting bored with filmmaking. It seemed like everyone was doing it now, and so much of it was just starting to look the same, and there was a part of me that simply didn’t like the act of manipulating those elements to pull up emotions. I think it’s the part of me that needs to examine and think about everything. It’s hard for me to shut up and enjoy a summer popcorn movie if that movie is just stupid, lacking in logic of events or character. I’m just not willing to turn off the part of my brain that wants things to make sense.
Throughout 2009, I had started to really take an interest in things like mobile, transmedia, alternate entertainment forms. As I looked about more and more, it kept nagging at me that so many independent filmmakers were busy investigating 21st century distribution models, when they should be looking at 21st century entertainment forms. And increasingly, these forms are becoming multi-media. They can use filmed elements, text elements, interactive elements. For instance, while many struggle to get their films on mobile platforms, I find this largely a waste of time. I think we should be figuring out how to make content for mobile platforms.
All of this led me to decide that I was going to tell the story of THE LOST CHILDREN, as a more multi-media effort. This would be how we would try to differentiate ourselves in the ocean of pretty-good films. There is a LOST CHILDREN film, to be sure. It is told in the form of a documentary, but it follows a pretty standard 3 ACT structure.
But we’re also working on other ways of extending the storyworld out beyond the movie. There are going to be websites that tell certain aspects of the story. For instance, we removed one whole subplot from the film onto a website. This means the story plays out through the website, through comments on blog posts, through webcam videos, etc. Likewise, on our mobile platforms, the goal will not just be to put the movie on a phone, but to tell parts of the story through the phone; text messages, phone calls, location-based content, etc. Things only a phone can use to tell a story.
I came to view what I was doing with THE LOST CHILDREN, more as storytelling, than just filmmaking.
Filmmaking Exercise
There’s always been much debate on DVXUser( A filmmaker’s site I frequent ) about how much your gear does or does not matter. For my own viewing, gear matters almost not at all. I would much rather see a good story, well told and acted shot on crappy cameras, than the slickest thing on Earth lacking those same elements.
I’ve also always been fascinated by documentaries, and their ability to weave stories out of random and found materials. For instance, Ken Burns is able to tell a compelling story about the Civil War with little more than 150 yr old photos, voice-over, and music. I got to thinking about this a lot. See, with my own short films, I had been working toward ever slicker visual styles, trying to learn how to use the camera to build a certain emotion in the viewer, how to manufacture a specific moment for a specific impact. And I like all of this stuff. But I also started to get really interested in this question: What if I were limited to the material I had? How would I tell a compelling story then? Well, the story itself would have to be mighty compelling, wouldn’t it? The story of the Civil War or the Brooklyn Bridge are pretty friggin’ compelling.
At this point, I went back through THE LOST CHILDREN script, pretty much scene by scene. I was still confident that we were telling a pretty unique story, that we were telling it well. And as I read and re-read it, my confidence grew. And I thought, what if we tell this with only limited materials? It’s kind of the ultimate filmmaking exercise, I think. I’m not sure if they teach this in any film schools, but if I were teaching a filmmaking class, I would probably start by giving them a box of random old photos, and telling them to make a story out of those.
I’m also reminded of the comment Jack White made in It Might Get Loud. He says he likes old broken guitars. He likes making the process hard, forcing himself to fight the instrument, and wrestle a sound out of it. He thinks that pushes him forward as an artist. This idea just shot through me like a lightning bolt. And I realized I had been applying the same to THE LOST CHILDREN. What if I not only shot it like a documentary, with shaky cams and all the rest, but also actually shot some of the footage badly? Meaning, what if I had to go through some crazy post processes just to extract the image from the footage, as you might have to with found footage? What if I made it hard on myself?
Maybe it’s because movies are so hard to make anyway that people don’t think this way. Or maybe it’s because people are so focused on career and the business side these days, that they are too afraid to do anything but what’s accepted.
I joked with my girlfriend, an artist herself, that I had a confession to make: “I think I’m a video artist!” Which is funny because I am typically so critical of video art because so much of it lacks both discipline and basic mastery of the tools.
I became obsessed with this idea and spent the next several months re-working the script. Same story. I simply looked at how to tell the story in a different way. And I decided to be very strict about it. Meaning, if there was no valid reason to have a camera in the scene, then I would have to figure out some other way to tell that scene. Maybe it’s a voice recording. Maybe it’s a person re-telling it accompanied by photos. But if there was no real reason for a camera to be there, then that scene did not get shot.
Brecht
There’s another thing I like about documentaries, which is their purpose: to make you think about a subject and/or potentially do something about it. This is not the primary purpose of a fiction film. Certainly, some fiction films have causes and purposes associated with them, and the filmmakers are using the film as a way to raise awareness about those, but the primary purpose of the fiction film is to suck you into that world and take you on a ride. To make you forget what’s going on outside of that world for that hour and a half ( or increasingly, 3 hrs ). I started to realize that I love the purpose of documentaries. This is just kind of how I’m wired. I love reading, I love knowing how things work. I love history. I love thinking about things. But there was always something in the back of my mind nagging me and telling me that this was the road to a boring-ass film.
Then I saw my friend Vern’s latest play: “Lenin’s Embalmers.” In Lenin’s Embalmers, the characters regularly step out of the action and speak to the audience. After the play, over beers, I asked Vern why he had made this choice, and he said he was working with a “Brechtian kind of thing.” And that’s when it hit me. This is why I’m doing this.
I started in theater, so of course I was well aware of Brecht and his theories of theater. He often employed conventions which would intentionally remind the viewer that they were watching an artificial thing. And he did this for the very same reasons I like documentaries; so that the audience wouldn’t get so caught up in the emotion that they forgot to think about what they were seeing on stage. He intended the audience to maintain some measure of distance. Again, this is typically not the purpose of a fiction film.
Holy moly, what if this movie sucks???
I don’t know if documentary makers go through this, though I suspect they do, but the problem with shooting the way we did, is that you have about a million hours of footage. And you have to make that into something worth watching. In the past, I was a storyboard Nazi. I had the entire movie drawn out as a comic book ahead of time, so shooting it was largely a technical exercise; make sure you get the performances and the shots, and it’s going to be really hard to screw it up.
I’ve been editing THE LOST CHILDREN since about June 2010. And I’ve been one nervous mofo this whole summer. I’d dread looking at the edit for fear that it was as bad as I feared. But invariably, every time I did go back to it, I was drawn in, and it wasn’t so bad after all. When people asked how it was going, I would respond with: “I don’t think it will suck too badly.” Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to have some manner of validation. I sent an extremely rough draft of ACT I to a friend I could trust to be honest, and I had one question for him: “Should I just jump off a bridge right now?” His answer was without a doubt “No.” He felt like I had something there. Whew! But honestly, I didn’t completely believe him until this past week. I took off from all client work and secluded myself in my office to edit full time. I tightened up the first act and just about all of the second, and even moved into the third. And for the first time since we started shooting, I am honest to God excited to show this film.
Our goal right now is to have the project ready for the world by Jan 2011. That includes Transmedia content, mobile apps, and the completely finished film.
I’d say after that I am taking a vacation, but I know that’s just the beginning…
Fiction Films in Non-Fiction Formats: Why we shot THE LOST CHILDREN as a Doc
THE LOST CHILDREN is a fiction film, but being shot as if a documentary. This isn’t anything new these days. From the beautiful work of Guest and Co, to the inescapable Blair Witch, to the TV show The Office, this has become a pretty accepted dramatic format. So I wasn’t under any delusions of breaking new ground.
I wanted to write up an article detailing the reasons I did make this decision, in the hopes of clarifying, both for myself and others, some of the things I’m after with this project. I also wanted to provide this because I see a lot of people choosing the same format, without really thinking through why. I think it deserves some thought.
Economics of Independent Film in 2009
When we started this project, our intention was to make a $100K indie feature, shot on RED, and (hopefully) distributed through the usual means. We had the script ready for this production and had gone into pre-production. We had shoot dates set, the cast ready, and we were all set to roll.
But at the same time, everyone started talking about how distribution was changing, failing, crumbling, etc. And this stuff was coming from so many places, I started to get worried. I had not really thought about distribution up to that point, assuming we would worry about it when the film was done. But hearing all of this hue and cry, I decided I needed to do some research. I put the production on hold and did that. And the conclusion I came to was that we could probably make a good $100K RED film, but it was entirely likely that this film would be lost in the massive ocean of similar films pouring out of every nook and cranny. It’s not hard to have production value anymore. And the lower the point of entry gets, the higher the baseline gets.
Now, I do believe our story is good and unique and multi-dimensional, but I didn’t have faith that that would be enough. We had no name actors. I was a first time feature director. When I looked at it practically, I just thought there were going to be too many things to overcome. With $100K in borrowed money, I didn’t like the odds. I know that’s nothing in movie terms, but…it’s kind of a lot of money to me, when I wasn’t certain I could pay it back.
So I put the old brainbox in gear and started to really think about what my goals were with this film.
- Get through my first feature alive. I actually think this is a laudable goal; to actually finish a feature film that’s coherent, watchable, and compelling. Many first time features don’t even accomplish two of these.
- Challenge myself as a filmmaker. Paint myself into some corners and fight to get out of them.
- Focus on characters over visuals.
- Make the film for an amount low enough that I can afford to experiment with distribution strategies. I feel like this is critical for filmmakers right now. If I try one thing and it doesn’t work, I need to be able to try some others without the pressing need to make the money back. In fact, it’s much more important to me right now to learn what works and what doesn’t than to actually make the money back on this film. As it stands now, I don’t owe anyone anything for this film. It’s paid for.
“Filmmaking” and Storytelling
I made a short in 2009, called EVIE. With EVIE, I was still working very much on my “filmmaking” techniques; telling a story visually, manipulating elements to exact certain emotions from the audience. But as I finished the film and screened it at the Downtown Independent in July of that year, I realized I was getting bored with filmmaking. It seemed like everyone was doing it now, and so much of it was just starting to look the same, and there was a part of me that simply didn’t like the act of manipulating those elements to pull up emotions. I think it’s the part of me that needs to examine and think about everything. It’s hard for me to shut up and enjoy a summer popcorn movie if that movie is just stupid, lacking in logic of events or character. I’m just not willing to turn off the part of my brain that wants things to make sense.
Throughout 2009, I had started to really take an interest in things like mobile, transmedia, alternate entertainment forms. As I looked about more and more, it kept nagging at me that so many independent filmmakers were busy investigating 21st century distribution models, when they should be looking at 21st century entertainment forms. And increasingly, these forms are becoming multi-media. They can use filmed elements, text elements, interactive elements. For instance, while many struggle to get their films on mobile platforms, I find this largely a waste of time. I think we should be figuring out how to make content for mobile platforms.
All of this led me to decide that I was going to tell the story of THE LOST CHILDREN, as a more multi-media effort. This would be how we would try to differentiate ourselves in the ocean of pretty-good films. There is a LOST CHILDREN film, to be sure. It is told in the form of a documentary, but it follows a pretty standard 3 ACT structure.
But we’re also working on other ways of extending the storyworld out beyond the movie. There are going to be websites that tell certain aspects of the story. For instance, we removed one whole subplot from the film onto a website. This means the story plays out through the website, through comments on blog posts, through webcam videos, etc. Likewise, on our mobile platforms, the goal will not just be to put the movie on a phone, but to tell parts of the story through the phone; text messages, phone calls, location-based content, etc. Things only a phone can use to tell a story.
I came to view what I was doing with THE LOST CHILDREN, more as storytelling, than just filmmaking.
Filmmaking Exercise
There’s always been much debate on DVXUser( A filmmaker’s site I frequent ) about how much your gear does or does not matter. For my own viewing, gear matters almost not at all. I would much rather see a good story, well told and acted shot on crappy cameras, than the slickest thing on Earth lacking those same elements.
I’ve also always been fascinated by documentaries, and their ability to weave stories out of random and found materials. For instance, Ken Burns is able to tell a compelling story about the Civil War with little more than 150 yr old photos, voice-over, and music. I got to thinking about this a lot. See, with my own short films, I had been working toward ever slicker visual styles, trying to learn how to use the camera to build a certain emotion in the viewer, how to manufacture a specific moment for a specific impact. And I like all of this stuff. But I also started to get really interested in this question: What if I were limited to the material I had? How would I tell a compelling story then? Well, the story itself would have to be mighty compelling, wouldn’t it? The story of the Civil War or the Brooklyn Bridge are pretty friggin’ compelling.
At this point, I went back through THE LOST CHILDREN script, pretty much scene by scene. I was still confident that we were telling a pretty unique story, that we were telling it well. And as I read and re-read it, my confidence grew. And I thought, what if we tell this with only limited materials? It’s kind of the ultimate filmmaking exercise, I think. I’m not sure if they teach this in any film schools, but if I were teaching a filmmaking class, I would probably start by giving them a box of random old photos, and telling them to make a story out of those.
I’m also reminded of the comment Jack White made in It Might Get Loud. He says he likes old broken guitars. He likes making the process hard, forcing himself to fight the instrument, and wrestle a sound out of it. He thinks that pushes him forward as an artist. This idea just shot through me like a lightning bolt. And I realized I had been applying the same to THE LOST CHILDREN. What if I not only shot it like a documentary, with shaky cams and all the rest, but also actually shot some of the footage badly? Meaning, what if I had to go through some crazy post processes just to extract the image from the footage, as you might have to with found footage? What if I made it hard on myself?
Maybe it’s because movies are so hard to make anyway that people don’t think this way. Or maybe it’s because people are so focused on career and the business side these days, that they are too afraid to do anything but what’s accepted.
I joked with my girlfriend, an artist herself, that I had a confession to make: “I think I’m a video artist!” Which is funny because I am typically so critical of video art because so much of it lacks both discipline and basic mastery of the tools.
I became obsessed with this idea and spent the next several months re-working the script. Same story. I simply looked at how to tell the story in a different way. And I decided to be very strict about it. Meaning, if there was no valid reason to have a camera in the scene, then I would have to figure out some other way to tell that scene. Maybe it’s a voice recording. Maybe it’s a person re-telling it accompanied by photos. But if there was no real reason for a camera to be there, then that scene did not get shot.
Brecht
There’s another thing I like about documentaries, which is their purpose: to make you think about a subject and/or potentially do something about it. This is not the primary purpose of a fiction film. Certainly, some fiction films have causes and purposes associated with them, and the filmmakers are using the film as a way to raise awareness about those, but the primary purpose of the fiction film is to suck you into that world and take you on a ride. To make you forget what’s going on outside of that world for that hour and a half ( or increasingly, 3 hrs ). I started to realize that I love the purpose of documentaries. This is just kind of how I’m wired. I love reading, I love knowing how things work. I love history. I love thinking about things. But there was always something in the back of my mind nagging me and telling me that this was the road to a boring-ass film.
Then I saw my friend Vern’s latest play: “Lenin’s Embalmers.” In Lenin’s Embalmers, the characters regularly step out of the action and speak to the audience. After the play, over beers, I asked Vern why he had made this choice, and he said he was working with a “Brechtian kind of thing.” And that’s when it hit me. This is why I’m doing this.
I started in theater, so of course I was well aware of Brecht and his theories of theater. He often employed conventions which would intentionally remind the viewer that they were watching an artificial thing. And he did this for the very same reasons I like documentaries; so that the audience wouldn’t get so caught up in the emotion that they forgot to think about what they were seeing on stage. He intended the audience to maintain some measure of distance. Again, this is typically not the purpose of a fiction film.
Holy moly, what if this movie sucks???
I don’t know if documentary makers go through this, though I suspect they do, but the problem with shooting the way we did, is that you have about a million hours of footage. And you have to make that into something worth watching. In the past, I was a storyboard Nazi. I had the entire movie drawn out as a comic book ahead of time, so shooting it was largely a technical exercise; make sure you get the performances and the shots, and it’s going to be really hard to screw it up.
I’ve been editing THE LOST CHILDREN since about June 2010. And I’ve been one nervous mofo this whole summer. I’d dread looking at the edit for fear that it was as bad as I feared. But invariably, every time I did go back to it, I was drawn in, and it wasn’t so bad after all. When people asked how it was going, I would respond with: “I don’t think it will suck too badly.” Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to have some manner of validation. I sent an extremely rough draft of ACT I to a friend I could trust to be honest, and I had one question for him: “Should I just jump off a bridge right now?” His answer was without a doubt “No.” He felt like I had something there. Whew! But honestly, I didn’t completely believe him until this past week. I took off from all client work and secluded myself in my office to edit full time. I tightened up the first act and just about all of the second, and even moved into the third. And for the first time since we started shooting, I am honest to God excited to show this film.
Our goal right now is to have the project ready for the world by Jan 2011. That includes Transmedia content, mobile apps, and the completely finished film.
I’d say after that I am taking a vacation, but I know that’s just the beginning…
What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games
Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:
Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.
EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.
The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.
Why are they thriving (even in a recession):
Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.
You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.
Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.
Creators of TV shows and movies can now use similar techniques to have a stronger relationship with their fans. Emerging web start ups are making that possible. Miso injects interactivity into the TV and film viewing experience by utilizing a smart phone, laptop, or tablet as a duel screen with supplemental content. SCVNGR is an user generated location based scavenger hunt for your smart phone.
SCVNGR can create challenges based on a elements from a story e.g. a player is asked trivia from True Blood and if they get the answer correct they are given a clue to find their next location in their city. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D and Dexter made SCVNGR a part of their marketing campaign by creating scavenger hunts around the San Diego Comic Con. To reach fans where they shop, scavenger hunts can be sponsored e.g. visit Best Buy and purchase a product marked with QR code to get your next clue. People can expand the experience to new locations by creating scavenger hunts revolving around fan fiction.
This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.
Players receive points and badges in Miso for checking into their favorite shows and movies like Four Square for content. Miso has a list of their highest ranking watchers; this competition keeps an audience coming back to a program to be number 1. By rewarding their engagement over time, I think this can transform casual viewers into hardcore fans.
Users on Miso can share what they are watching on Facebook and Twitter, their friends can now start following that show and converting more fans. They can also recruit them directly on Miso. This sustains and builds a fanbase.
Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.
What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?
What a Filmmaker Learned From Farmville And Other Social Games
Social games are rapidly becoming one of the most successful forms of entertainment:
Disney purchased Playdom for up to $763.2 million and Club Penguin for $700 million.
EA purchased Playfish for $400 million.
The research form Next Up for pre-IPO trading service SharesPost estimates Zynga is worth three billion dollars.
Why are they thriving (even in a recession):
Social games are accessible throughout the day over multiple platforms.
You are rewarded with digital prizes the more you play.
Players act as evangelists marketing the game all over social networks to recruit new users.
Creators of TV shows and movies can now use similar techniques to have a stronger relationship with their fans. Emerging web start ups are making that possible. Miso injects interactivity into the TV and film viewing experience by utilizing a smart phone, laptop, or tablet as a duel screen with supplemental content. SCVNGR is an user generated location based scavenger hunt for your smart phone.
SCVNGR can create challenges based on a elements from a story e.g. a player is asked trivia from True Blood and if they get the answer correct they are given a clue to find their next location in their city. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D and Dexter made SCVNGR a part of their marketing campaign by creating scavenger hunts around the San Diego Comic Con. To reach fans where they shop, scavenger hunts can be sponsored e.g. visit Best Buy and purchase a product marked with QR code to get your next clue. People can expand the experience to new locations by creating scavenger hunts revolving around fan fiction.
This keeps fans connected to a story no matter where they are located.
Players receive points and badges in Miso for checking into their favorite shows and movies like Four Square for content. Miso has a list of their highest ranking watchers; this competition keeps an audience coming back to a program to be number 1. By rewarding their engagement over time, I think this can transform casual viewers into hardcore fans.
Users on Miso can share what they are watching on Facebook and Twitter, their friends can now start following that show and converting more fans. They can also recruit them directly on Miso. This sustains and builds a fanbase.
Many games have been inspired by films/TV shows to create more compelling narratives e.g. Grand Theft Auto. Now Hollywood can learn from social games to keep fans connected to their stories.
What else can filmmakers and TV show creators learn from social games?
August 11 2010
Story Pirates – RADAR S3 ep 30 [vid]
The Story Pirates are a Theater Troupe like none other. Their stage is birthday parties, Public Schools and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Story Pirates combine education, writing, music and performance to excite kids about creative writing. By bringing the kids into the writing of the performance, they are able to stimulate creativity through storytelling, as well as build the confidence a child needs to continue to be creative. The kids are able to see the fruits of their labor live on stage, as the Story Pirates compose original music and a full script, performing the very words the children wrote themselves.
Relevant sites:
Credits:
CREATED by Lance Weiler & Alex Johnson
DIRECTOR Josh Cramer
DP Tom Quinn
EDITOR Jawad Metni
SERIES PRODUCER Josh Cramer
SEGMENT PRODUCER Janine Saunders
TITLE SEQUENCE Jordan Gray
POST PRODUCTION House of Trim
ADDITIONAL MUSIC by:
The Notwist “Boneless”
Mossyrock “I Know I’m Not Wrong”
Inside Voices “How is You Was”
August 09 2010
New Breed LA: Screening the Cut [vid]
For the community of working-class filmmakers at New Breed a constantly evolving creative process of telling our stories is the one thing we can count on in these changing times. Embarking on journeys through deeper methods of collaboration & engaging with fans across various platforms is certainly exciting – but one thing is for certain, the creative needs to be the driving force behind any and all approaches in order to preserve the integrity of the story (and the core reason we make our art).
In this series we begin at the beginning and explore what perhaps drew us all into making movies in the first place: the mystery of the creative process. What follows are short documentaries with creative tips, techniques, learning lessons & personal experiences from a handful of artists we encountered at the Los Angeles Film Festival 2010.
Episode Seven is titled: “Screening the Cut.” Featured in this episode are Jeff Malmberg and Ted Hope.
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.
RADAR NYC 8.5.10
Brian Newman – Reinventing Innovation
A few months ago, Brian Newman (former CEO of Tribecca Film Institute and founder of SpringBoard Media) gave a talk on innovation within the media space. We featured the video of the talk in DIY Days on April 25, 2010. In this hilarious and extremely insightful speech, Brian talks about the future of media and what we as artists can do to shape it. He laments the fact that at every single panel about film and new media that he’s attended, all people seem to talk about is distribution. “Where’s the innovation?” He asks, “Why isn’t anyone talking about true innovation?” He discusses new forms of storytelling, and explains that it makes no sense for us to take these new world technologies we have and trying to fit them into this old world way of thinking. He proposes strategies for innovation by going back historically and looking at where the arts have found it in the past when new technology has come along, and outlines what has worked. He meniones Monet’s impressionism (made possible by new paint technology – I know, sounds funny, right?), and the invention of the typewriter, which led to surrealism, and then applies it to today. Quoting Alan Kay (“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”), Brian gives no concrete formula for creating the future; just suggests that we apply what’s worked in the past to today, to our work, to our innovation. He provides extremely useful insight, and this video is definitely work taking a look at for anyone who is an artist and is looking to be legitimately inspired.
Bear Hands – “What a Drag”
Check out “What a Drag” music video by Bear Hands, which we used in an upcoming season 4 episode. It sounds slightly reminiscent of Float On my Modest Mouse, but updated, and with higher, more echo-y vocals. And the music video is great for anyone who’s a fan of Fiddler on the Roof/ Heidi/ anything by Michel Gondry. Confused? See for yourself!
Listen / Purchase – Bear Hand’s music
Get Storied – Branding Yourself
Do you consider yourself a storyteller? Do you think you have a unique voice that nobody else can replicate? Do you have no idea what to do with it? In his blog, “Get Storied,” Michael Margolis talks about brand storytelling and branding yourself, with blog posts and podcasts. Worth checking out for anyone interested in branding, social media, and storytelling (and chances are, if you’re already reading this, you are!)
Cut and Paste – Competition Registration
Are you a designer? Check out http://cutandpaste.com/tours/forms/competitors/ and register to compete in Cut&Paste’s annual design competition. Think Iron Chef, but for design and much more “street”. Watch our RADAR episode on Cut and Paste to see what this competition is all about. Hurry! The deadline for submissions is September 10th.
Register here by Sept 10th
@kevinbracken
Into flash mobs? So are we! Check out Kevin Bracken, creator of Newmindspace (RADAR 10 – Newmindspace), which has put on several flash mob events around the city, including bubble battles, LED light saber battles, blanket fort parties, and pillow fights (http://www.newmindspace.com/pillowfightnyc.php). Follow him on Twitter to see what he’s up to next.
http://twitter.com/kevinbracken
New Breed LA: The Integrity of Story [vid]
For the community of working-class filmmakers at New Breed a constantly evolving creative process of telling our stories is the one thing we can count on in these changing times. Embarking on journeys through deeper methods of collaboration & engaging with fans across various platforms is certainly exciting – but one thing is for certain, the creative needs to be the driving force behind any and all approaches in order to preserve the integrity of the story (and the core reason we make our art).
In this series we begin at the beginning and explore what perhaps drew us all into making movies in the first place: the mystery of the creative process. What follows are short documentaries with creative tips, techniques, learning lessons & personal experiences from a handful of artists we encountered at the Los Angeles Film Festival 2010.
Episode Five is titled: “The Integrity of Story.” Featured in this episode are Julius Onah, Jeff Malmberg,Trieste Kelly Dunn & Brett Haley and Ted Hope. Check back on Monday for the remainder of the series.
July 31 2010
Film Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
I got the chance to see this film during a screening at San Diego Comic Con. It struck a chord with me, and so I wrote it up for Culture Hacker’s first film review.
From the moment the Universal splash screen comes up for Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, you know that this movie is going to have a very special relationship with the 8-bit culture that inspired most of the film’s schlocky, fast-hitting action. The logo and the accompanying music have been translated into video game terms – pixel graphics with a chirpy electronic interpretation of the usual fanfare. The world of Pilgrim is like this to the core – the real world envisioned through the mind of a game player.
There is much constant and legitimate griping about the representation of games in film – everything from outdated game choices, to overacted controller-waving, to video games as a motivation for violent crime.
A while ago, CH contributor Nick Braccia proposed that the best representations of games use relatable game experiences to establish and develop characters in a meaningful way. We all know what it feels like to apply ourselves to solve a puzzle, beat a boss or earn an extra life. The term “level up” is bleeding out of gaming. It almost refers to something in real life – the turning point in which it becomes clear that we are better at something than we were before.
Pilgrim is the first major feature film I’ve seen that embodies this synthesis of game terms and reality. Where many shows use geek culture as a bucket of references, to be used to making a quick audience connection – I’m looking at you, Big Bang Theory – Pilgrim makes proper allusions to the culture.
In one instance, the eponymous Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) wanders through a dream world set to the tune of the Fairy Fountain song from The Legend of Zelda. It’s a great moment of geek recognition, but also full of meaning for those in the know – this place is renewing, ephemeral, strange. Another pivotal scene near the end of the film will resonate deeply with everyone who has ever played a console role playing game, but I’d rather not spoil it.
The music plays a principal role in the film, with a condensed plot revolving around Scott’s band, Sex Bob-omb, competing in a battle of the bands. The film features three musical acts, all of whom are voiced by separate talent and have distinct sounds. And although fans at creator Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Comic Con panel expressed sadness that they can no longer imagine these bands from the comic as their own favorite musicians, the creative choices in the film are sound. Metric’s performance as The Clash at Demonhead stands out as a crowning moment in the film.
The soundtrack, as well as the sound engineering in general, is overwhelmingly crisp and immersive. One character, Julie Powers (Aubrey Plaza), speaks in a string of profanities that are hidden behind a censor bar. Instead of the standard bleep, her words are translated into a varying digital babble. I found myself wishing for more scenes with Julie, because I liked hearing the sound.
I must admit I was convinced, early on, that Scott Pilgrim Vs The World was not going to work. Screenshots early on in the production cycle showed giant, Batman-esque sound effect words worked into the frame, something I thought was a sure sign of failure. In practice, the effect words are very fast-paced and integrated into the action. Again, they feel like a video game experience writ large, and for the most part supplement the experience rather than distract from it.
The film is extremely true to its comic roots, with most scenes scripted directly from the comic, and panels reproduced in minute live action detail. A few scenes are even translated into animated comics. The story is slightly contorted, especially near the end. The 240-page final issue of the comic covers about the last 15 minutes of the movie, but most of the elements are intact. The film’s villain, Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), gets perhaps a more thorough treatment in the film – the books propose him as a mysterious and elusive figure, while the movie Gideon is nastier.
However, calling the film a faithful reproduction would misrepresent the creative process that went into the three pillars of the Scott Pilgrim world. The comics, the film and an upcoming video game were created in tandem over the past few years, and the final volume of the series was only released on July 20 of this year, just before Comic Con and the film’s premiere. Its easier to think of the Scott Pilgrim franchise as a larger project undertaken by O’Malley and a large pool of collaborators.
And that may be the reason Scott Pilgrim works so well. It hasn’t been finished and passed on to a secondary creative team to expand the world – the process has only just ended. All of the products are fresh and integrated, three retellings of the same story.
All of this means that older audiences may have a hard time connecting with the film. It speaks the language of people under 40, but for someone who has never beaten a mini-boss, the video game references may come across as obtusely wacky at best, and confusing at worst. The film’s MTV-inspired rock and roll credits sequence alone may induce sensory overload for some viewers. The film’s plot also proceeds at a fast pace – if your friends have a tendency to lean over and ask, “what just happened?” during a show, you may not want to take them to see this particular movie. You’ll want to keep your eyes, ears and brain free to take in the spectacle.
Based on what I saw at Comic Con, I’m giving Pilgrim a solid A for the young, and a B- for the older crowd. It hits theaters August 13.
July 29 2010
New Breed LA: Elements of Casting [vid]
For the community of working-class filmmakers at New Breed a constantly evolving creative process of telling our stories is the one thing we can count on in these changing times. Embarking on journeys through deeper methods of collaboration & engaging with fans across various platforms is certainly exciting – but one thing is for certain, the creative needs to be the driving force behind any and all approaches in order to preserve the integrity of the story (and the core reason we make our art).
In this series we begin at the beginning and explore what perhaps drew us all into making movies in the first place: the mystery of the creative process. What follows are short documentaries with creative tips, techniques, learning lessons & personal experiences from a handful of artists we encountered at the Los Angeles Film Festival 2010.
Episode Four is titled: “Elements of Casting.” Featured in this episode are rare insights from producer Ted Hope. Check back on every Monday and Thursday for the remainder of the series.
July 28 2010
Before I Die – RADAR S3 ep 28 [vid]
Before I Die is a rare form of Interactive Art, started by K.S. Rives and Nicole Kenney, creating life, out of death. Using a Polaroid camera, Rives and Kenney have traveled far and wide asking people what they would like to do before they die, and snapping their photo as they answer. Rives and Kenny found that asking an age-old question inspired people to reach for a goal they set from themselves. The project soon moved online enabling people from all around the globe to take their own photo, post it and share what they wanted to do before they die.
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