Talk about DIY!

What can you make at home with the help of a few friends and a few thousand bucks raised on Indiegogo? If you’re Rob Mills the answer is an awesome broadcast quality Christmas special for the whole family… But instead of delivering it to television by cable or dish network that www.satellite911.com offers, you give away for the whole Internet to enjoy for free.

Don’t read, just watch… although, Ruffus the Dog is all about promoting reading… but watch first, read later.

If you don’t know him, Rob Mills is a Henson trained puppeteer. That’s right, he was the animatronics puppeteer for Donatello in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. More impressively, he was a writer, director, producer and puppeteer on Big Comfy Couch.

In 1998, he had a TV series called Ruffus the Dog.  The series is set in a library and retells classic stories with puppets.  It’s meant to encourage kids to read.  When the TV rights reverted back to Rob a few years ago, he started putting the episodes online for everyone’s enjoyment.

Then he got a stupid idea.  How about making a new episode of Ruffus? Only this time, instead of producing it with a big TV budget in a full featured studio with a well paid cast and crew, why not do this new one in his living room without any funding and only his family and a few friends to help?

Okay, maybe the idea wasn’t so stupid.  No matter what, the result is amazing!  It has taken a lot of work and a lot of time to get Ruffus the Dog’s A Christmas Carol completed, but it is astounding that so much can be accomplished with so little.

Not that the work is done by any means.  Rob screened the episode on Saturday for friends and family at the Revue Cinema on Roncesvales. It  looked incredible on the big screen and it was fun to celebrate the completion of that phase. But Rob still had (and even now, still has) work ahead of him.

Later on Saturday, there was all the uploading to do and the work of embedding the video on sites around the web.  Now there is tons of promotion to do. And eventually, he’ll have to get the business piece in place and start offering his audience opportunities to give him money for his work

And since this is a Christmas special, all that promotional work is going to come around annually.

Rob is up to the challenge. He’s a massively talented and hard working guy who understands the web space.  He has some plans and a whole lot of enthusiasm.  I am always excited to see his next move.

This — just in time for the holiday season — is a Christmas miracle for all creators: a beautiful example of how much we can make with so very little.  Here’s hoping we see more creators just going out on their own and making great entertainment in 2012.

Anti-Social is a digital drama about four teenage residents in an experimental treatment facility: Jessica Jamerson, wrongly convicted but not beaten; Harry, the deeply hurt lone wolf; Flame, a flower child with an affection for fire and Grainger, some rich kid who decked the principal. Their treatment involves the radically new virtual milieu therapy, which has the kids re-imagining themselves and learning to be part of a community by blogging and participating in the web’s social networks.

Equal parts Breakfast Club, MisFits, Skins and In Treatment, Anti-Social is a black comedy multiplatform series about teens grappling with the big issues of the teenage years: relationships, drugs, sex, morality, the future and friendship. It is filled with comedy, action, romance and outrageous pushed-to-the-limit teen drama.

I’m looking for partners to help me bring the series to many screens. Here’s more on it:

K7 Media is very cool U.K. company that provides its clients “with information and strategic advice about trends in video content.” Among their services is to provide “Quicklists”, monthly curated compilations of interesting content that might interest their TV and agency clients.

A new feature of their Digital Quicklist is to present projects in early stages of development.  This month, they are featuring Anti-Social. The above video is part of the current digital Quicklist and it’s also currently featured on their homepage.

That’s Mike McPhaden, playing Dr. Stu, the psychiatrist in the series.

Many thanks to the wonderful Mark Croasdale for putting the video together.

Nuno Bernardo, the smartest man in transmedia today, on financing and business models:

…why do producers keep saying that there is still no business model in transmedia (and other forms of digital online content)?

The answer is: the problem is not the business model, or the possibility of producers making money on their digital content experiments, but on the funding model associated with transmedia content. TV and film producers are used to getting funding from broadcasters (or networks) or film boards and film public bodies, combining that money with probably some sort of tax credit and an advance from a distributor. That is the funding model established a long time ago, and the base of thousands of TV and film productions made in the last few decades.

The notion that transmedia doesn’t have a business model comes from the fact that there’s still no template to fund this type of production. Broadcasters that commission transmedia or online projects are still rare. There are few film and public bodies that have funding for these type of projects, the tax incentives still do not apply to transmedia or digital productions (except in Canada) and the few distributors operating in this arena don’t usually provide MG to producers.

The problem is that the distribution platforms like iTunes, YouTube, Hulu or Facebook allow producers to connect with a big and global audience but they don’t “commission” content in the same way broadcasters do for TV. This makes funding a transmedia project something very difficult and dependent on the creativity of the producer in finding the money in less usual places.

Read the rest here.

Do we really need funding? Is finding financing really the way to start a project?

Old media producers start projects by looking for money. In most cases, the only people who do work before the financing falls into place are the writer/creator who puts together the pitch document or original proposal and the producer, who likely sketches up a development budget and a financing plan. Some producers might even find some dough at this stage to option the writer’s work or to pay for it if it’s an assignment. Then the two of them trip off to find the money to move the project forward.

This is the pattern that’s ingrained in me from a career in the TV industry and when I had my first transmedia idea that I wanted to try out, I followed the pattern I knew. I went a-knocking — looking for a producer, a broadcaster, funding agency partners.

I was met with… confusion.

People didn’t understand what I was on about and more importantly, the parameters of their jobs didn’t allow for what I wanted to do. But it took me many months of rejection to give up looking for money and try a new strategy.

I figured they would understand better if I could show them how it work, rather than telling them about it. If the money guys had a demo, I figured, they’d pony up.

Right then, time to really write it. The concept of boymeetsgrrl — which was revolutionary at least to me in 2007 — was to tell a story by letting the characters bring it to life through their blogs, vlogs, Facebook activity, Tweets, social bookmarking and more. I wrote the scripts for the vlogs, built the websites and filled the blogs with posts. I wrote the tweets, set up character Facebook profiles and so on. Then I created a program that let you step through the elements in order so that you could follow the story. Where the video portions belonged, the scripts popped up so you could read them. Missing was the big element of the audience interaction with the project.

I schlepped around with that for quite a while but guess what? The money did not flow. Time was a-wasting and I was feeling frustrated.

Instead of giving up, I did something ridiculous. I took $5000 out of my pocket and decided to make it myself. It was still old skool thinking, really. I was still imagining this as a demo that would pry the money loose. Proof of concept.

I found a few friends willing to help with production and went for it. For cast, we put up flyers at drama schools (like Academy Art Acting Schools), went to improv shows and even put ads on Craig’s List.   We shot three videos in a day. An old friend on maternity leave did the cutting. The videos became the tent poles in a week’s worth of narrative and interactivity (before the days of Conducttr mind you) .

I had a lot of fun. Learned an incredible amount. Built an audience that stretched around the world. It was probably one of the coolest experiences of my whole career.

And then I spent months trying to parlay that into funding without any success.

What I eventually learned from all this is that it is sometimes better to just make something. Looking for funding wastes a lot of time and effort. It can be exhausting and demoralizing. If you’re an indie without an infrastructure behind you, it is nearly impossible to access the various funds.

On the other hand, if you just get out there and make something, it’s exhilarating. You learn an incredible amount. You begin to build an audience and a reputation. You gain experience.

I made three or four little projects before I was able to access funding. My experience and little reputation were key in landing it, plus an idea that the jury judged as strong.

Believe me, I’m not rolling in dough yet. The funds to do what I want to do are flowing like molasses or maybe something even more viscous like tar.

And still, when I spend months chasing after money, I wonder if I’m not wasting valuable time. Maybe I should be out there making something and building an audience. Because in the end, the audience is what is valuable. If you can draw them to your project, then the money people will turn up too.

Plus making something is a whole lot more fun than writing another funding proposal.

Are the streets of Canada paved with gold for transmedia creators? According to Carrie Cutforth-Young Storyworld was all abuzz with the notion. I heard exactly the same thing repeatedly a few weeks ago at Power to the Pixel‘s London Forum.

When Nuno Bernardo, in his address on financing transmedia projects, said “move to Canada,” I shook my head and snorted. Clearly this is the view of an outsider. Not a Canadian. After all, this Canadian was in London looking for financing partners. And just days before, I’d been in New York looking for money there.

I sat down to write a rebuttal to this silly notion using my project Ruby Skye P.I. as a case study. And by the time I finished the first draft, I realized that… actually, maybe the hype isn’t so far off after all.

We have a great community here and I know lots of people who are making super stuff without money. I was once one of them. Not anymore.

Ruby Skye P.I. has had and does have the benefit of Canadian financing dollars. The wonderfully forward-thinking Independent Production Fund was a financing partner in our first season and is committed to our second, as well. I plan to access Ontario tax credits on season 2 of Ruby Skye P.I. and have figured them into my financing plan.

The Ontario Media Development Corporation has supported the project with an export grant which is what enabled me to travel to both the New York Television Festival and the Pixel Market. Export grant money will take me to two other markets in the coming year as well. Telefilm Canada supported my trip to SXSW last March.

But before you call the movers, you should know that the reality of the transmedia money is that there isn’t enough to go around or enough to complete financing, plus, as Carrie ably points out, it’s hard to get.

On the hard-to-get and not-enough-to-go-around side of things, there’s the pot of gold known as the CMF Experimental Fund. I’ve applied three times. Or more correctly, I’ve tried to apply three times. The first two times ended in tears and an incomplete application. Applying to the Experimental Fund is a lot like writing a PhD thesis in terms of size and detail. Plus, they are looking for something very specific. The third time I applied — with the support of a team of smart, able professionals — I felt we’d succeeded just by completing the application with our souls (mostly) intact. We didn’t get the money and we weren’t the only ones. Far more projects were turned down than funded. But who knows? Fourth time could be the charm. With an investment of up to a million dollars at stake, I’m already checking for the 2012 deadlines and guidelines.

Equally awesome and equally oversubscribed is the aforementioned OMDC’s IDM Fund – Interactive Digital Media Fund. A cool $150K — if you can get it. What makes this money particularly lovely is that it is a grant. Yes, my friends, you heard correctly: nonrefundable. Which is why so very many people are lined up to drink from this limited and glorious fountain. (Keep your fingers crossed for me, the results for this year haven’t yet been announced.)

Even the IPF, which I’ve had great success with, has passed over many other worthy projects. It’s simply not a very big pot and lots of people want a piece.

Cry me a river, right? At least there is some money, even if it is finite and you have to put in some effort to get it. But before you point your compass north, I want to make it clear that you can’t depend on getting ALL your funding in this country.

To complete your financing the logical places to look are to broadcasters and brands and their agencies. But don’t count on Canadian companies for these partnerships.

Most of what we do as transmedia artists is aimed at a global market. Geo-blocking is an anathema to many of us. And worse still, might prevent the natural spread of the work through the world wide web. Potential Canadian financing partners aren’t interested in a global audience. They only want to reach Canadians. This is true for our broadcasters and for our local arms of international brands and their agencies.

Many of our big brands are really just branch offices of international corporations. They are set up to serve the Canada and their agencies market within our borders. Often they don’t have the decision making power to create content that goes worldwide. For that you have to speak to HQ — which inevitably isn’t here in Canada.

And our broadcasters? They have little interest in anything that isn’t convergent — which is Canadian for “a TV project with a second platform.” (“Second platform” being Canadian for website or web-based game.)

In either case, they are unlikely to be help finance your original IP transmedia project.

Which is why I’m out on the streets of London and New York, looking for more money. (If you’ve got any, Ruby Skye P.I. is, by any standards, a top notch project. For season 2, I’ve got smart business and marketing plans, scripts and a cutting edge concept for 360 audience engagement. And I’ve got something else: most of the financing in place. Thank you, Canada.)

After talking to creators from many countries at the New York TV Festival, the Pixel Market and the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds, I know that there aren’t many places in the world where a creator with big ideas can get her hands on money to try them out.

Although I set out to write a piece about how Canada is no haven for transmedia, I have convinced myself otherwise. I have to agree with Nuno and anyone else who says the key to financing transmedia is moving to Canada. We can certainly get most of the way there.

Plus we’ve got health care, maple syrup, autumn leaves, mountains, lakes, vibrant and safe cities and a whole lot more. I love my country. I spend a lot of time discouraging my screenwriter friends from moving south, even as I write them letters to support their green card applications. So maybe with the bleed of screenwriters across the border to the US, it’s only fitting that transmedia creators flock to Canada.

We already have a brilliant, experienced, innovative and close-knit community of transmedia artists building this new industry. Come join us. You’ll fit right in.