Getting funding for transmedia – a comment

A brief post on funding and transmedia; I read the Storify of the latest StoryCode event with great interest, as I – along with most other practicioners in this field – am constantly on the lookout for new ways to get the funding in to create and produce and distribute what I want to create and produce and distribute.

Great graph from Futurelab, "Trough of Sorrow".
Applies to transmedia projects as well as startups, I'd say.

The event had some good advice and some good links to follow up. A couple of things were missing though, if I look at it from my angle. The following couple of things need, in my book, to be taken into consideration if you want to raise funding for a transmedia project:

Split it up. Take a good look at your content and what platforms you intend to distribute it on. Is part of it good enough to make a television fiction series or a television documentary, the revenues from this alone might pay for the rest of the transmedia venture (depending on scope, naturally), and also open up for roll-out of the full transmedia experience in global territories. If you can hook into a current trend with the part of your project you’ve designed to work as a graphic novel, you might get either a publishing deal or rack up some revenue through e-books. Bottom line; look at the parts of your transmedia project from a revenue perspective; add them all together, and you might just achieve your goal.

What new knowledge can be gained from your project? Yes, you have a great story and a well crafted mythology and narrative superstructure. Yes, you have tapped into an existing community relating to your content and you are quite confident of actually having an audience. But you still lack a bit of $$ to actually create what you plan to create. Now, look at what new knowledge there is to be learned from what you are about to do. Will you know more about a certain segment of the population? Will you understand more about how call-to-actions work? Will you develop the way social media is integrated into a campaign or a story? This knowledge can be turned into funds, if packaged the right way and sold to the right buyer – a brand, a service, a research institution (who might even offer to put a researcher on your team to do the dirty work) a governmental institution…

There are probably as many ways to get the full funding as there are transmedia projects. My advice would be to be creative, not only when it comes to your content, but also with regards to your funding.