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20 Apr 2010
Crossover Labs, crossplatform 2 Comments Permalink

docShIFT Crossmedia Weekend

April 20, 2010 2 Comments

There are just two days left to apply for the docSHIFT Crossover Weekend being held May 8-9th, 2010.

..a cutting edge initiative aimed at fostering collaborations and business partnerships between interactive media producers and documentary filmmakers. We are currently seeking applicants interested in participating in a 2-day weekend workshop facilitated by the UK’s Frank Boyd. Frank is the past BBC Director of Creative Development and the visionary behind world-renowned Crossover Labs. If you are an experienced interactive digital media professional (games, mobile, web, AR) looking for opportunities in the burgeoning interactive documentary genre, this weekend is not to be missed! Through participatory creative group exercises, the workshop is designed to break down walls between professional silos, develop common languages and perspectives and establish best practices for working together and ensuring success.

The docSHIFT Crossover Weekend is a pre-cursor to a five-day residential lab this Fall where select interactive documentary project ideas will move into development with incubation support by the CFC Media Lab and Ryerson University. While it is not mandatory that people apply for and attend the May 8/9th docSHIFT Crossover Weekend in order to be eligible for the docShift- CFC Media Lab 5 day residential program this Fall 2010 –it is strongly advised.

There isn’t a whole hell of a lot to the application.  In two pages (max) tell them about your professional background and why you want to participate.  There’s more info on the docSHIFT sit.  

I’ve been to Crossover and all I can say is do it!

16 Apr 2010
Friday NIght Lights, transmedia 3 Comments Permalink

Transmedial Musings

April 16, 2010 3 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time in front of various screens the last few days leaning back.  I watched Funny People, Up In the Air, Something the Lord Made, Paper Heart and few episodes of the fourth season of Friday Night Lights (and it’s very hard for me to be sitting at my desk instead of binging on the rest of the FNL episodes I have waiting for me).

Total sidebar: These screen-based entertainments came to me in a variety of ways.  Download, theatrical release and cable-based on-demand.  I watched them on computer screens, big screen televisions, theatre screens and my little portable DVD player.

Because transmedia is on my mind at all times now, after watching each my mind went straight to how I could build the storyworlds out into other media.

Up in the Air has already been expressed in two mediums (the film is an adaptation of  the 2001 novel Up in the Air written by Walter Kirn)  and we’d only need one more platform to call it transmedia.

You could easily build up some websites to explore aspects of protagonist, Ryan Bingham’s world.  Character Natalie Keener is a natural for a blog.  You could build out a little customizable app to send to your friends that fired them.  You could set up a forum in which people could tell the stories of how they’ve been fired (think PostSecrets only for getting fired).

But because the story is about an isolated man, the world created in the film is one that feels constricted and closed off. As the story begins, Ryan Bingham thinks he’s got life figured out and by the end, he realizes that he’s built a tiny, surgical box around himself.   Like Bingham, I don’t want to spend more time in this world. After the closing credits, I didn’t want to think about the film anymore.  So no wonder I don’t feel much like developing other platforms for it.

Funny People offers up a world that’s fairly bleak at times, but I ended up spending a lot of post-viewing time thinking about the story, characters and world.  I keep going back to it in my mind.  Does that make it a great transmedia candidate?

According to Wikipedia a number of properties were created in order to market the film:

A website for a fictional television show-within-a-film was created on NBC.com.  The sitcom, Yo Teach!, “stars” the film’s egocentric character Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman), who is a C-list actor portraying a young teacher with a class of failing students, and includes a cameo by internet celebrity Bo Burnham.

A website for Aziz Ansari’s character Randy Springs was created, along with a documentary of the character on FunnyOrDie.com. The documentary was directed by Jason Woliner.

Comedy Central aired a special, “Inside Funny People” on July 20, documenting the making of the film and showing clips of the stand-up. The channel also aired “Funny People: Live” on Friday, July 24, which is a live broadcast stand-up of Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill as part of the film’s promotion.

Tons more could be done, not just to market the film, but to allow fans to spend more time in the universe created. I  I’d love to explore the lives of some of the minor characters including Ira’s love interest, Daisy Danby.   You could do a film, book or web series just about her.  You could make one of George’s early comic films.  You could create a comic book series “written by” Ira’s roommate, Leo.  It would be fun to put out a comedy album featuring the work of the various comedian-characters from the film including both George and Ira.  They could even go on tour.  I’d love to see a movie or read a book about George’s early years and the story of Ira, later in life, taking a young comic under his wing, seems like a natural.

I enjoyed Funny People quite a bit, so I’d like more of that world.  But of all the worlds I visited recently, Friday Night Lights is my fav.

This is a world first describe in the nonfiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger.  The film Friday Night Lights, written by Peter Berg and David Aaron Cohen, was based on the book.  After the film, Berg and producer Brian Grazer, weren’t ready to leave the story world behind, so they developed the television series of the same name.

But weekly episodes do not quench my hunger for this world and the people who inhabit it.  I could delve more deeply into any of the characters’ lives through spin off TV or web series or blogs for examples.  I’d definitely follow Principal Tammy Taylor’s tweets.  I imagine she’d have some damn practical advice.

In fact, a little book of wisdom from Friday Night Lights (you could title it Clear Eyes, Full Heart) would do well on my coffee table.  Tammy and Eric Taylor are both quick with the pithy one-liners.  You could learn a lot from them about coaching football, raising teens and successful marriage.

Is there a map of Dillon online somewhere?  A guide to the other teams in the league the Panthers and East Dillon’s Lions play against?   A collection of cheers and football traditions?  A website for Garrity Motors?  Probably fans have created many of these things.

FNL has three important ingredients for transmediation.

  • It’s got a world.  Football crazy, Christian, small town Dillon Texas is a rich place that offers the opportunity for us to drill down much deeper.  The comedy world of Funny People has that too.  Up In the Air doesn’t.  It’s hermetically sealed world of isolation doesn’t offer the same potential unless of course you’re interested in airport lounges and chain hotel rooms.
  • It’s got a wealth of characters with lots of life outside the TV series.  The ensemble cast of FNL is big and there’s lots of room to know more about them.  This is again true for Funny People, but not so much for Up In the Air which has only three leads.
  • It’s got a deep philosophy or theme.  FNL has a lot to say about how to lead your life.  Funny People does as well. Up In the Air definitely has an underlying philosophy, it’s wrong to have an empty backpack.  Fill it up with people or your life will be empty.  But the world created in the film, doesn’t offer me multiple opportunities and characters through which to explore this philosophy.  Instead it urges me to go be with real people.

I think I’ll watch another episode of FNL instead.

12 Apr 2010
David Simon, story, Treme Permalink

The Power of Story

April 12, 2010

From David Simon’s letter to the people of New Orleans:

Pablo Picasso famously said that art is the lie that shows us the truth”.

By referencing what is real, or historical, a fictional narrative can speak in a powerful, full-throated way to the problems and issues of our time. And a wholly imagined tale, set amid the intricate and accurate details of a real place and time, can resonate with readers in profound ways. In short, drama is its own argument.

12 Apr 2010
crossplatform, Jeff Gomez, transmedia 3 Comments Permalink

Defining Transmedia

April 12, 2010 3 Comments

What is transmedia and is it different than crossplatform?

Good question. The terms are new and lots of people are using them in different ways. I can only tell you what they mean to me.

When I use crossplatform and multiplatform I’m talking about projects and content that make use of several different platforms or media. The world of Harry Potter appears in books, movies, video games, clothing lines and much much more. It’s a multiplatform — maybe even omniplatform. Any TV show or movie with a web site qualifies as multiplatform as does a song that’s available as live performance, CD, iTunes download and a video.

transmedia-storytelling.jpgTransmedia is a subset of crossplatform. All transmedia is crossplatform, but not all crossplatform is transmedia. Most of the properties which I incorporate into my internal definition of transmedia come from Jeff Gomez‘s principles of transmedia which I blogged last year.

When I use transmedia two conditions have to be met:

The story world must be expressed on at least three platforms. It can be more, many more, but three is the minimum. Three is probably a fairly arbitrary number here, but Jeff said it should be so and I am happy to take it as a rule of thumb. (Interesting but totally unrelated is the fact that three is the minimum number of killings required in order for a murderer to be called a serial killer. I also like to include at least three items in a list. But I digress.)

The expression of the story world on each platform must be unique, not the same content repurposed on a different platform. So Harry Potter, in which the movies, video games and other elements are all retellings of the books that JK Rowling wrote? Not transmedia. Julia Child’s autobiography, My Life in France, Julie Powell’s blog The Julie/Julia Project and Nora Efron’s movie, Julie and Julia? Transmedia. (I have a post elaborating on this thought on the blog TransmediaTracker.)

There are plenty of other examples of transmedia out there. The Matrix unfolds over features, animated shorts, comic books and video games. Heroes is a tv series, web series, graphic novels, books and online games.

For both the fan and the creator part of me, transmedia is very exciting. It offers a depth and richness of story that I love.

12 Apr 2010
David Simon, Treme 2 Comments Permalink

Treme Online: Lost Opportunities

April 12, 2010 2 Comments

I’m a huge The Wire fan, in fact my first post to this blog — which remains one of the most popular — is a breakdown the pilot of the The Wire. I think Simon is one of the masters working in the TV industry now and I particularly admire his work because he bends the television form to his will. The Wire has way more in common with the narrative stylings of a novel than with typically episodic storytelling of television.

Treme YouTube videos

So I have been extremely excited about Treme and have spent a lot of time online looking for news and information obout the series — especially stuff I can embed or report on in the blog. There has been little. In the last couple of weeks there has been a flood of interviews with Simon in magazines and on TV, but the web has been seriously under used.

Yesterday, in the hours leading up to the premiere, I did a quick survey of how the series is using the web. Many of the right components are in place, they’re just not being used to advantage.

There’s a YouTube channel, with just 25 subscribers and six videos. You can’t even see who the subscribers are and there’s no wall for discussion. There are a few comments under the videos, but no moderator, so no one answers questions or stimulates the discussion.

There’s a Facebook fan page with 8,000 fans before the pilot aired and 9,200 as of this morning. There’s lots of fan commenting but almost nothing in the way of official content about the series. There are 2 videos, 2 images of the series and 2 half hearted attempts by the admin to start discussions. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of user generated content but none of it supported or aknowledged by the hosts of the page. About half the links which are mostly to magazine articles are supplied by the admin and the rest by fans with no thanks, comments or encouragment by the admin. There are three user started discussions, again no participation by the admin. And there are 30 user photos, including an actor-submitted headshot and some advertizing for a documentary on Treme, which at the very least deserve some comment from the admins if they are going to remove it.

Treme HBO Canada

There’s no Treme twitter account, but there were five tweets about the show over the last five days from HBO’s official twitter feed and the hash tag #treme is very well-used.

What about Treme.com? It’s just a holding page that doesn’t seem to belong to the series. The only web sites are on the HBO sites, as usual Canada’s version of the page is a lot thinner than the US page, offering only a splash page with a single image of the series, a one paragraph “about the show”, an episode guide (synopses of the episodes that have aired), a schedule and a page of videos which — to Canada’s credit — actually has more videos than the US page — but alas, not embeddable.

The HBO US site looks busier and certainly has a little more effort put into it, but it’s still a big fail. You can watch a mere 7 videos, six of which are on YouTube. There are six photos in the slideshow, none of which I can embed on my blog or use for my profile picture this week on Twitter. There is a forum for user discussion which is great, but there are only five topics seeded by “HBO insiders” with little discussion on them. And when there is discussion the HBO Insiders who should be doing the community management, haven’t added any new comments or responded to questions. Thee’s a link to an offsire benefit for the musicians of New Orleans, a link to a Twitter search for the hashtag Treme, but not that much else.

Treme HBO US

Even the usual boring stuff that every series manages to put on the web is missing: no cast bios, no character descriptions, nothing about the crew or David Simon.

What a wasted opportunity. You can see from the Twitter buzz, the fan comments on the Fasebook fan page and the number of blog posts written about Treme that the online world is hungry to talk about the show. So why is the series putting so little effort into helping them do it, by providing spaces, encouraging discussion and giving them assets like photos, video and music to dress up their blog posts, Twitter streams and Facebook pages?

I think part of the problem is that David Simon blames the web for the demise of the newspaper industry. Yeah, it’s true that the newspaper business has suffered with the growth of the online world. But it’s pretty silly to ignore the potential of the medium because another medium has suffered. And in many ways, the web is extremely well suited to David Simon and vice versa.

Look at the letter Simon sent to the people of New Orleans on the eve of the premiere of Treme, not found by the way on any of the official Treme sites even if it is linked to. Simon speaks profoundly and directly to the people of New Orleans. That something that the web does incredibly effectively — allows creators to build an intimate, one-to-one relationship with the audience. A little more of this kind of thing from Treme would go a long way to promoting the series, building audience and setting up an enormous loyalty to the brand.

But there are a ton of simple things that Treme could do cheaply and effectively. First, they need to get their community managers — the “HBO Insiders” and the Facebook admins — to be more active. They should be responding to user comments and contributions, joining and encouraging conversation and at the very least responding to the many questions on Facebook and the HBO site about how and when to watch the show. Secondly, they need to supply the web with more sharable video and lots and lots more images that can be used in blog posts and as profile pictures and so on.

07 Apr 2010
comedy, creating series, crossplatform, Just for Laughs, pitching, web series 1 Comment Permalink

Web Series Pitch Competition

April 7, 2010 1 Comment

Just for Laughs Comedy Conference announced a pitch competition for comedy web series. I’ve read the guidelines which are sort of on the confusing side. Even the title of the thing is confusing:

“PITCH ”˜TIL YOUR SIDES SPLIT” JUST FOR LAUGHS COMEDY CONFERENCE PITCH PROGRAM and the COMEDY BOOTCAMP FOR FILM

This is how I understand the thing. There’s going to be a web series pitching competition as part of Just for Laughs. The competitions will be held Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 10:15 am — 11:30 am at the Hyatt Regency in Montreal. At the competition, you get five minutes to pitch your comedy web series idea before an audience and a panel of judges who will then give you feedback “regarding the strength of individual pitches, the appeal of the project and anything else the panelists feel appropriate to impart.” There will also be a 15 minute Q&A with the audience.

To be part of the pitch competition, you have to apply and pay a $40 fee. The submission deadline is May 1th, 2010. The details on what you have to submit are below and verbatim from the site. It looks to me like you need a lot of material and maybe the submission guidelines were based on what you need for TV and not created with any particular understanding of web series.

Nonetheless this is another indication that web series are coming of age and considered a real part of the entertainment industry.

The following materials must be included at the time of submission for the Multi-Platform Web Series:

  • Completed pilot episode (digital video up to five (5) minutes running time) to be screened as part of pitch;
  • Budget top sheet
  • Complete series ”˜bible’ (includes project synopsis, character breakdown, first season episode descriptions);
  • Bio’s of creative and producing team;
  • Evidence that one (1) of creative and producing team has at least one (1) professional credit on a currently airing or recently aired webisode, music video, – TV commercial, on-line game or feature/short film (link to reel should also be included in submission);
  • It is understood that submitted materials will not be returned.

In all categories, please ensure that all uploaded and submitted documents and materials are clearly labeled with the project title, applicants name, contact telephone and email. All applicants will be contacted via email so please ensure that you provide a working email address.

What do you think? Are you going to apply?

07 Apr 2010
branded entertainment, digital marketing 1 Comment Permalink

Marketing Goes Big

April 7, 2010 1 Comment
Heineken Italy Activation Milan AC Real Madrid

Where are the ad dollars that are bleeding out of television going?  This amazing marketing ploy for Heineken took a lot of planning and work, but you can see at the end how they are building the business case for it.  Although only about a thousand people were part of the actually event, thousands more watched the videos or read about it on blogs.

Is this the way that brands will promote themselves in the future?  With big events that give people a real-life experience?

Was this an entertainment experience?  Should we as creators be thinking about how to create real-life experiences that brands can be part of or is this just the realm of advertising?

06 Apr 2010
Jeff Gomez, transmedia Permalink

Transmedia Producer

April 6, 2010

It’s official.  As in an official credit as sanctioned by the Producers Guild of America.  Transmedia Producer was adopted this week according to Nikki Finke at the behest of transmedia guru, Jeff Gomez.

Here’s the definition:

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms:  Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.

A Transmedia Producer credit is given to the person(s) responsible for a significant portion of a project’s long-term planning, development, production, and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and creation of original storylines for new platforms. Transmedia producers also create and implement interactive endeavors to unite the audience of the property with the canonical narrative and this element should be considered as valid qualification for credit as long as they are related directly to the narrative presentation of a project.

Transmedia Producers may originate with a project or be brought in at any time during the long-term rollout of a project in order to analyze, create or facilitate the life of that project and may be responsible for all or only part of the content of the project. Transmedia Producers may also be hired by or partner with companies or entities, which develop software and other technologies and who wish to showcase these inventions with compelling, immersive, multi-platform content.

To qualify for this credit, a Transmedia Producer may or may not be publicly credited as part of a larger institution or company, but a titled employee of said institution must be able to confirm that the individual was an integral part of the production team for the project.

It sounds like a writing function to me or at the very least a show running position.  But that’s the way with the digital media, everything melts and dissolves into everything else.  Silos disappear.  Writers and producers and audiences all become the same thing…

In any case, this is a step forward.  Because transmedia will grow from here on in and this will be good for audiences.  Transmedia is all about allowing the story to spread into many media and platforms, to be told from many points of views, to explore different characters and different timelines and to integrate interactive elements.  And that is the story’s future.

06 Apr 2010
Banksy Permalink

Banksy

April 6, 2010
Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film by street artist Banksy.  

Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner with spectacular results. The film contains exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the worlds most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, Its basically the story of how one man set out to film the un—filmable. And failed.

CONTACT

Hire me

Amy Stulberg, Vanguarde Artists Management

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Contact Me

Please email Jill Golick at [email protected] for all other inquiries.