I was asked to write an article for Digital Book World (up here) on transmedia and publishing. As I researched and wrote the article, a debate was on involving amongst others Mike Monello on Twitter about transmedia vs transmedia methods (i.e. transmedia is transmedia, but a lot of projects that aren't transmedia are using transmedia methods). I can totally understand this thinking, even if it will not affect the way I develop stuff in any sense, but it got me thinking about what methods should be used when, and where...
I do not have the time to write that post now, but will strive to in the next few days. Until then, Glada Wappen as we say over here, as we prepare to celebrate the onslaught of spring :)
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Transmedia Gardener
So, spring is in the air, finally. I’ve been holed up in a studio and have had no time to blog at all. Which is perfectly fine, as I’ve instead been able to actually DO something. Always a nice feeling, especially if the end result will be as good as I think it’ll be. Will post on the project in due time!
Spring is in the air, the snow had melted (partially at least :P) and it was time to sharpen all necessary utensils to get to grips with what passes for a garden around these parts. Standing there, looking at the devastation revealed by the receding snow, my mind started turning around the similarities between that and what I do for a living.
See, gardening and transmedia development, they’ve got a lot in common. No no, hear me out! Like with gardening, where the soil is the one most important aspect – more important than, say hours of sun or how much you water your plants – the foundation needs to be strong and needs to be built and prepared in the right way for any transmedia project.
All that soil-work then, is laying the foundation for the planning work you’ll do for your garden. This then, is totally dependent on the location you’ve got for your garden. Is it a spacious one, where you can spread out and imagine different settings, different themes, different … well, yeah, Entry Points? Is it a narrow ledge, with room for only the barest necessities, like some herbs and suchlike? Is it sunny, is it shady? What are your possibilities, and what are your limitations?
In a transmedia setting, this is equivalent to both your a) budget and b) project. Naturally, what resources you have will affect what you can plan for your project. But more importantly, the project itself will tell you what can – or rather should – be done in the context of the project. Do not order an iPhone app just ’cause it’s cool, if it doesn’t fit your project naturally and logically. At the same time, make sure you don’t order that pine tree plant if all you’ve got is a 3 m2 patch of grass behind your house.
Now, if you look at a garden, you need to plan for longevity or short bursts. Is it going to be an explosion of colors in spring that will then fade away, not needing maintenance, or do you prefer a garden where different things are in bloom at different times of the spring, summer and autumn? When developing transmedia, you need to take these things into consideration as well – are you merely marketing a major release later on, so a quick, massive burst will do? Or are you in it for the long run, maintaining your stories and your story world for months and years on end? Be prepared though – it’s extremely easy, in gardening as in transmedia, to underestimate the time and effort needed to complete a vision and maintain it properly.
I could go into how you chose your plants correlates with how you chose your platforms, but I won’t. Instead, I will end by saying that gardening could learn a thing or two from transmedia as well. I’ve yet to see an immersive, interactive, crowdsourced garden, for instance. If there is one, I’d love to see it.
Now then, MacBook and spade in hand – off to the garden! Or was it the study??
Spring is in the air, the snow had melted (partially at least :P) and it was time to sharpen all necessary utensils to get to grips with what passes for a garden around these parts. Standing there, looking at the devastation revealed by the receding snow, my mind started turning around the similarities between that and what I do for a living.
See, gardening and transmedia development, they’ve got a lot in common. No no, hear me out! Like with gardening, where the soil is the one most important aspect – more important than, say hours of sun or how much you water your plants – the foundation needs to be strong and needs to be built and prepared in the right way for any transmedia project.
All that soil-work then, is laying the foundation for the planning work you’ll do for your garden. This then, is totally dependent on the location you’ve got for your garden. Is it a spacious one, where you can spread out and imagine different settings, different themes, different … well, yeah, Entry Points? Is it a narrow ledge, with room for only the barest necessities, like some herbs and suchlike? Is it sunny, is it shady? What are your possibilities, and what are your limitations?
In a transmedia setting, this is equivalent to both your a) budget and b) project. Naturally, what resources you have will affect what you can plan for your project. But more importantly, the project itself will tell you what can – or rather should – be done in the context of the project. Do not order an iPhone app just ’cause it’s cool, if it doesn’t fit your project naturally and logically. At the same time, make sure you don’t order that pine tree plant if all you’ve got is a 3 m2 patch of grass behind your house.
Now, if you look at a garden, you need to plan for longevity or short bursts. Is it going to be an explosion of colors in spring that will then fade away, not needing maintenance, or do you prefer a garden where different things are in bloom at different times of the spring, summer and autumn? When developing transmedia, you need to take these things into consideration as well – are you merely marketing a major release later on, so a quick, massive burst will do? Or are you in it for the long run, maintaining your stories and your story world for months and years on end? Be prepared though – it’s extremely easy, in gardening as in transmedia, to underestimate the time and effort needed to complete a vision and maintain it properly.
I could go into how you chose your plants correlates with how you chose your platforms, but I won’t. Instead, I will end by saying that gardening could learn a thing or two from transmedia as well. I’ve yet to see an immersive, interactive, crowdsourced garden, for instance. If there is one, I’d love to see it.
Now then, MacBook and spade in hand – off to the garden! Or was it the study??
Friday, April 08, 2011
MIPTV 2011 Wrap Up
So, Friday and writing this while flying back from six days of MIPFormats, MIPTV and Connected Creativity. I see no real point in going throught the proceedings in too great a detail in this post, as you can find all live blogs, links to videos and pretty great insighty stuff at the MIP Blog pages here. Kudos to James, Angela, Stuart and anyone else involved, they did an absolutely marvellous job of keeping people – including me – up to date with what was happening. I’m going to try – as was suggested to me – to Storify my tweets from the past week. I’ll let you know when I’m up to scratch on that.
Gavin McGarry asked me during his wrap up session what had been the key things I’d seen or experienced during these past days… and in a way, there wasn’t anything really new to get me excited and up-in-arms, not directly. In a way, the Palais was still filled with people selling or buying animated series, drama or documentaries, much as it has been for the past six years I’ve been attending.
A new deal on the horizon
But still, something is clearly afoot. You hear about Netflix commissioning series from major producers, Facebook teaming up with Warner Brothers to offer tier one movies for Facebook Credits, Google earmarking 100 million dollars for low-cost content for re-branded YouTube channels… TV is under pressure. Yet, in my book, it’s a good pressure, as the aforementioned ventures are great examples of cost-effective ways to get content to people via services they use daily anyway. When thinking of combining content with FB and YouTube there are also a lot of possibilities from a storytelling and transmedia angle – challenges, yes, but first and foremost possibilities.
One possibility I for one will be looking into is the possibility to combine content distribution with the very well working platform that BitTorrent can offer. Now, as CEO Erik Klinker pointed out, they offer a distribution platform and over 100 million active users, but they are not going into commissioning or producing. Again, I don’t believe this is the only or ultimate solution, but is is A solution, and one that could work very well in combination with others.
Such a lot of people are touching on the convergence between mobile and televison and online and what have you. Still, these days gave me the feeling that – as I tweeted during the week, with regards to SXSW vs MIPTV – you have social media and location based services people on one side, trying to figure out how to reach the massive audience and the massive revenue streams that television still has to offer, while on the other side are the television people, scratching their heads while trying to figure our how to integrate social media and other new servicese with their shows and online content. What is needed is some sort of translation service and/or facilitating service that would just put the right people together with each other and explain one’s viewpoint to the other . (Need something like that, give me call ☺ ).
Mind over matter
This was what Connected Creativity along with their Experience Hub was about, at least as far as I understood it. To a point it worked well; the talks at MIPCC differed quite a bit from the ones in the Palais. Many of them gave great insights into areas I had been lacking in. Especially Tomi Ahonen’s talk (where the way he delivered it was half of the experience), the talk from Fjord on the future of augmentation and AR, Facebook’s visions… I heard so much good things said about Tiffay Shlain’s presentation, which I unfortunately missed, but will try to catch up on later.
On the other hand with regards to Connected Creativity, so many of the people who would’ve needed to hear those talks were in meetings at the Palais or elsewhere during the sessions – not to mention that there being an extra and pretty substantial fee for registering to MIPCC had deterred a number of people from even registering.
The Experience Hub was a nice feature – a big tent quite close to Lionsgate by the beach, essentially straight ahead if one decended the stairs from Riviera Seaview – showcasing a lot of new technology to, with luck, be part of the entertainment and media toolbox in the future. For example, Emotiv’s helmet with it’s almost magical use-this-to-control-anything-on-the-screen-in-front-of-you-with-only–your-brain powers was pretty amazing. We’re getting one for research purposes – as we have a state-of-the-art User Experience and Media laboratory – so I’ll let you know my verdict when I’ve had the chance to play around with it for a while.
IMHO one of the best speakers at the MIPTV panels was Kevin Slavin of Starling.tv (see more about his talk here). Many others touched on the same subject, but he was the clearest and most to-the-point; what the industry has been thinking of as the ”audience” or the ”consumer” or the ”target group” or the ”ratings” are actually human beings, and they set the agenda. They can be as much a part of your story as any scripted character (or show host, or contestant) that you as a producer choose to show as part of the content. If there is a vacuum – as in there not being any Mad Men characters on Twitter – the audience will fill that vacuum for you (there are over 20 Mad Men characters on Twitter to date, registered and managed by fans). If they like (or even better, love) your content, they will also take extremely good care of these characters.
So, a much frowned-upon term....
This then is where the magic of transmedia would enter. Only that transmedia, in the setting of MIPTV, still is more of a hindrance than a help when trying to get something commissioned. As we all know, it is a lot easier to say NO than YES, if you are in acquisitions, and making people unsure about what they actually are buying is a sure-fire way of making the likelihood of a NO reach 99,5%. And, unfortunately, ”transmedia” is still a term that often makes people at least a little bit unsure of what they exactly are being pitched. As Nuno Bernardo said, many a good sales pitch has been ruined by not stopping in time and instead continuing with the fatal words ”…this is also multi-platform, integrating the web and mobile solutions…”. What we need are a lot more great transmedia tv examples to point to – ”hey, like that one, but a little bit different, yeah!”.
Will try my best to do my part on that account.
So, a mix between the old and the new, this week’s MIP – now more so than ever, in my book. Thanks again to all the great people I met – both old friends and new – and hope to see you all again in the not too distant future!
Gavin McGarry asked me during his wrap up session what had been the key things I’d seen or experienced during these past days… and in a way, there wasn’t anything really new to get me excited and up-in-arms, not directly. In a way, the Palais was still filled with people selling or buying animated series, drama or documentaries, much as it has been for the past six years I’ve been attending.
A new deal on the horizon
But still, something is clearly afoot. You hear about Netflix commissioning series from major producers, Facebook teaming up with Warner Brothers to offer tier one movies for Facebook Credits, Google earmarking 100 million dollars for low-cost content for re-branded YouTube channels… TV is under pressure. Yet, in my book, it’s a good pressure, as the aforementioned ventures are great examples of cost-effective ways to get content to people via services they use daily anyway. When thinking of combining content with FB and YouTube there are also a lot of possibilities from a storytelling and transmedia angle – challenges, yes, but first and foremost possibilities.
One possibility I for one will be looking into is the possibility to combine content distribution with the very well working platform that BitTorrent can offer. Now, as CEO Erik Klinker pointed out, they offer a distribution platform and over 100 million active users, but they are not going into commissioning or producing. Again, I don’t believe this is the only or ultimate solution, but is is A solution, and one that could work very well in combination with others.
Such a lot of people are touching on the convergence between mobile and televison and online and what have you. Still, these days gave me the feeling that – as I tweeted during the week, with regards to SXSW vs MIPTV – you have social media and location based services people on one side, trying to figure out how to reach the massive audience and the massive revenue streams that television still has to offer, while on the other side are the television people, scratching their heads while trying to figure our how to integrate social media and other new servicese with their shows and online content. What is needed is some sort of translation service and/or facilitating service that would just put the right people together with each other and explain one’s viewpoint to the other . (Need something like that, give me call ☺ ).
Mind over matter
This was what Connected Creativity along with their Experience Hub was about, at least as far as I understood it. To a point it worked well; the talks at MIPCC differed quite a bit from the ones in the Palais. Many of them gave great insights into areas I had been lacking in. Especially Tomi Ahonen’s talk (where the way he delivered it was half of the experience), the talk from Fjord on the future of augmentation and AR, Facebook’s visions… I heard so much good things said about Tiffay Shlain’s presentation, which I unfortunately missed, but will try to catch up on later.
On the other hand with regards to Connected Creativity, so many of the people who would’ve needed to hear those talks were in meetings at the Palais or elsewhere during the sessions – not to mention that there being an extra and pretty substantial fee for registering to MIPCC had deterred a number of people from even registering.
The Experience Hub was a nice feature – a big tent quite close to Lionsgate by the beach, essentially straight ahead if one decended the stairs from Riviera Seaview – showcasing a lot of new technology to, with luck, be part of the entertainment and media toolbox in the future. For example, Emotiv’s helmet with it’s almost magical use-this-to-control-anything-on-the-screen-in-front-of-you-with-only–your-brain powers was pretty amazing. We’re getting one for research purposes – as we have a state-of-the-art User Experience and Media laboratory – so I’ll let you know my verdict when I’ve had the chance to play around with it for a while.
IMHO one of the best speakers at the MIPTV panels was Kevin Slavin of Starling.tv (see more about his talk here). Many others touched on the same subject, but he was the clearest and most to-the-point; what the industry has been thinking of as the ”audience” or the ”consumer” or the ”target group” or the ”ratings” are actually human beings, and they set the agenda. They can be as much a part of your story as any scripted character (or show host, or contestant) that you as a producer choose to show as part of the content. If there is a vacuum – as in there not being any Mad Men characters on Twitter – the audience will fill that vacuum for you (there are over 20 Mad Men characters on Twitter to date, registered and managed by fans). If they like (or even better, love) your content, they will also take extremely good care of these characters.
So, a much frowned-upon term....
This then is where the magic of transmedia would enter. Only that transmedia, in the setting of MIPTV, still is more of a hindrance than a help when trying to get something commissioned. As we all know, it is a lot easier to say NO than YES, if you are in acquisitions, and making people unsure about what they actually are buying is a sure-fire way of making the likelihood of a NO reach 99,5%. And, unfortunately, ”transmedia” is still a term that often makes people at least a little bit unsure of what they exactly are being pitched. As Nuno Bernardo said, many a good sales pitch has been ruined by not stopping in time and instead continuing with the fatal words ”…this is also multi-platform, integrating the web and mobile solutions…”. What we need are a lot more great transmedia tv examples to point to – ”hey, like that one, but a little bit different, yeah!”.
Will try my best to do my part on that account.
So, a mix between the old and the new, this week’s MIP – now more so than ever, in my book. Thanks again to all the great people I met – both old friends and new – and hope to see you all again in the not too distant future!
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
MIPTV Round Up Day One
The first day of MIPTV drew to a close, as the lawn in front of Grand was packed with people, the beer was as good (and as expensive) as ever and the Cannes night was a very (for a Finn) suitable +15C.
Whereas MIPFormats was a lot about discussing the creative challenges, rights issues and suchlike of formats, MIPTV is, as always, about business. Still, there are a number of interesting panels and talks going on during the day, where creators and industry people share insights and cases. I was quite happy to see a panel on Transmedia, called ”Transmedia Storytelling: How to achieve Creative Excellence?” – especially as the panel featured people like Nuno Bernardo (Sophie’s Diary, Final Punishment), Christopher Sandberg (Truth About Marika, Conspiracy for Good), Tracey Robertson (The Lost Experience), Tom Thirlwall (Kate Modern) and Matt Costello (Polar Productions).
Transmedia at MIP
Now, the live blog of the session is up here, and the whole of the session can be viewed on YouTube here, so I won’t go into detail on what every said during the 1h+ session. Some notes though:
- It seems like the divide is still there, between creatives, tech, marketing etc. ”Sometimes I have made the mistake of pitching a tv show really well, only to – at the end of the pitch – go into multiplatform aspects and possibilities. Then every department must get involved, and no ones wants to assume responsibility for the project”, said Nuno Bernardo more or less. So yes – even though we are getting there, slowly but surely – there is no one person that is a great creative, great producer, knows all the tech involved intimately… Teamwork is a must. We just need to get the teams to work together better and understand each other better.
In my opinion, that is also one of the strengths of thinking transmedially when building a project (no matter if it is drama, game show, news, documentary, kids show…). By building the ”world” of your project and defining core values, it’s place in the world and all actions and reactions that can happen in that world and why they can happen, it is infinitely more easy to explain the content and what you want to achieve to anyone who gets involved, be it tech, creatives, marketing people or anyone involved in the production.
(For example news; they are set in the real world obviously. But to create a good news show, first create the world that is the news show, everyone working with it, all the facilities, all the equipment, building up all the thoughts and the values you want to promote through your news).
- I also can’t help but ponder at the difference between the crowd at SXSW and the crowd at MIPTV – especially, as I tweeted yesterday, the fact that many of the tech-savvy social media and localization service and funky-photo-app-people at SXSW are really really eager to somehow get into television – partly because that’s where some money can be found but to a greater degree because that’s where they can reach an audience better and get involved in ”real” content. At the same time we have a lot of tv and media people here at MIPTV thinking about and wonder how on earth to capitalize on social media and other types of emerging tech and services. I can’t but think these two worlds would need to collide at some point - which will happen, I’m sure, and #MIPCC is perhaps a step in the right direction.
Please do watch the video, or read the live blog, some nice takes there.
Content 360
I had a look at the pitches for the Content 360 competition in the Fremantle/RTL category (which was called Interactive & Cross Media but was quickly rebranded ”Transmedia”, much to the surprise of the people pitching). Four pretty good efforts – one location-and-app-based national treasure hunt, one build-communities-with-music-and-extreme-sports-and-compete-between-communities, one make-your-online-profile-your-lottery-ticket-in-an-online-game-show and one convince-audience-to-part-with-their-money-and-give-to-you-for-your-cause. Not bad ideas at all, will be interesting to see who wins – revealed tomorrow, Wednesday, night.
Fresh?
The Fresh TV Around The World showcase was actually not all that fresh, IMHO, as much of the stuff on display was things looking a lot like stuff we’ve seen before. Here’s the list of the shows shown, from my Twitter feed:
1. Trasformat (Italy) - decode disfigured pics of celebs
2. Honey Pack the bags (Banijay)
3. The Shuffle (Shine) – sort stuff in right order, get clues by performing challenges
4. The Call (Zodiak) – based on prank calls, must prank call friends to win
5. The Recruits (Talpa) Find recruites to finish challenges to go on and win
6. You Deserve It (SevenOne) - main contestant gives money to someone who deserves it (mother etc)
7. Holding out for a hero (ITV) - three contestants play for prize to make someone else's dream come true
8. Still Standing (Armoza) - 1 against 10, and a bit of Million Pound Drop as well
9. The Magicians (Shine) Three magicians in pairs w/celebs compete
10. Impossible (2waytraffic) - 1 couple against 1 magician; is the trick impossible or not?
11. Lady Burlesque (Veralia) - talent show, next burlesque star
12. Dance Cam Slam (MTV) - compete in dance contest via web cams
13. Ano 0 (Canal 13/Chile) - apocalyptic game show, 22 ppl have survived devastating flood
14. Family Explorer (Zodiak) - 5 families out in the wilderness, competing for cash prize
15. Flashback (Warner Bros) - physical game show + memory skills
16. The Village (All3) - couples must charm villagers to win a home in the village
17. A Farmers Life for Me (BBC) - 9 couples compete to get a farm for a year, through farming challenges
18. Love Triangle (Eyeworks) - contestant must chose between two lovers
19. Man Up The House (Eyeworks) - man & friends get to renovate the home, w/o wife getting in the way
20. How to live with women (DRG) - Men go to bootcamp to learn how to live w/ women
21. Service w/ a Smile (Shine) - mentally disabled persons working in a hotel, fulfilling their dream of a real job
22. Beauty and the Beast:Prejudice (Zodiak) where "beauty junkie" lives together w/ disfigured person #miptv
23. It Gets Better (Shine) - 8 celebs who've been victims help other victims
24. Sun, Sex and Supsicious Parents (Zodiak) - parents peeping in on kids doing naughty stuff
25. Meet The Parents (All3) - boyfriends must impress potential in-laws, only thing is, they are actors + hidden camera
I had unfortunately missed out on all the fun that happened in the Experience Hub tent outside the Palais, but went there for a quick look; lo and behold, I saw a fairly interesting product, showcased by Metaio from Germany – a slick app-based participate-in-television-through-AR-tv solution that I think I need to examine a bit closer; might be good to integrate in some format in the future.
Finally a quick CONGRATULATIONS to the Emmy winners of yesterday, nice party and SO nice to see Shankaboot from Lebanon pick up an Emmy. Well done!
Second day starting now, with meetings, meetings, and then the kick-off of the Connected Creativity – will be back with that later.
Whereas MIPFormats was a lot about discussing the creative challenges, rights issues and suchlike of formats, MIPTV is, as always, about business. Still, there are a number of interesting panels and talks going on during the day, where creators and industry people share insights and cases. I was quite happy to see a panel on Transmedia, called ”Transmedia Storytelling: How to achieve Creative Excellence?” – especially as the panel featured people like Nuno Bernardo (Sophie’s Diary, Final Punishment), Christopher Sandberg (Truth About Marika, Conspiracy for Good), Tracey Robertson (The Lost Experience), Tom Thirlwall (Kate Modern) and Matt Costello (Polar Productions).
Transmedia at MIP
Now, the live blog of the session is up here, and the whole of the session can be viewed on YouTube here, so I won’t go into detail on what every said during the 1h+ session. Some notes though:
- It seems like the divide is still there, between creatives, tech, marketing etc. ”Sometimes I have made the mistake of pitching a tv show really well, only to – at the end of the pitch – go into multiplatform aspects and possibilities. Then every department must get involved, and no ones wants to assume responsibility for the project”, said Nuno Bernardo more or less. So yes – even though we are getting there, slowly but surely – there is no one person that is a great creative, great producer, knows all the tech involved intimately… Teamwork is a must. We just need to get the teams to work together better and understand each other better.
In my opinion, that is also one of the strengths of thinking transmedially when building a project (no matter if it is drama, game show, news, documentary, kids show…). By building the ”world” of your project and defining core values, it’s place in the world and all actions and reactions that can happen in that world and why they can happen, it is infinitely more easy to explain the content and what you want to achieve to anyone who gets involved, be it tech, creatives, marketing people or anyone involved in the production.
(For example news; they are set in the real world obviously. But to create a good news show, first create the world that is the news show, everyone working with it, all the facilities, all the equipment, building up all the thoughts and the values you want to promote through your news).
- I also can’t help but ponder at the difference between the crowd at SXSW and the crowd at MIPTV – especially, as I tweeted yesterday, the fact that many of the tech-savvy social media and localization service and funky-photo-app-people at SXSW are really really eager to somehow get into television – partly because that’s where some money can be found but to a greater degree because that’s where they can reach an audience better and get involved in ”real” content. At the same time we have a lot of tv and media people here at MIPTV thinking about and wonder how on earth to capitalize on social media and other types of emerging tech and services. I can’t but think these two worlds would need to collide at some point - which will happen, I’m sure, and #MIPCC is perhaps a step in the right direction.
Please do watch the video, or read the live blog, some nice takes there.
Content 360
I had a look at the pitches for the Content 360 competition in the Fremantle/RTL category (which was called Interactive & Cross Media but was quickly rebranded ”Transmedia”, much to the surprise of the people pitching). Four pretty good efforts – one location-and-app-based national treasure hunt, one build-communities-with-music-and-extreme-sports-and-compete-between-communities, one make-your-online-profile-your-lottery-ticket-in-an-online-game-show and one convince-audience-to-part-with-their-money-and-give-to-you-for-your-cause. Not bad ideas at all, will be interesting to see who wins – revealed tomorrow, Wednesday, night.
Fresh?
The Fresh TV Around The World showcase was actually not all that fresh, IMHO, as much of the stuff on display was things looking a lot like stuff we’ve seen before. Here’s the list of the shows shown, from my Twitter feed:
1. Trasformat (Italy) - decode disfigured pics of celebs
2. Honey Pack the bags (Banijay)
3. The Shuffle (Shine) – sort stuff in right order, get clues by performing challenges
4. The Call (Zodiak) – based on prank calls, must prank call friends to win
5. The Recruits (Talpa) Find recruites to finish challenges to go on and win
6. You Deserve It (SevenOne) - main contestant gives money to someone who deserves it (mother etc)
7. Holding out for a hero (ITV) - three contestants play for prize to make someone else's dream come true
8. Still Standing (Armoza) - 1 against 10, and a bit of Million Pound Drop as well
9. The Magicians (Shine) Three magicians in pairs w/celebs compete
10. Impossible (2waytraffic) - 1 couple against 1 magician; is the trick impossible or not?
11. Lady Burlesque (Veralia) - talent show, next burlesque star
12. Dance Cam Slam (MTV) - compete in dance contest via web cams
13. Ano 0 (Canal 13/Chile) - apocalyptic game show, 22 ppl have survived devastating flood
14. Family Explorer (Zodiak) - 5 families out in the wilderness, competing for cash prize
15. Flashback (Warner Bros) - physical game show + memory skills
16. The Village (All3) - couples must charm villagers to win a home in the village
17. A Farmers Life for Me (BBC) - 9 couples compete to get a farm for a year, through farming challenges
18. Love Triangle (Eyeworks) - contestant must chose between two lovers
19. Man Up The House (Eyeworks) - man & friends get to renovate the home, w/o wife getting in the way
20. How to live with women (DRG) - Men go to bootcamp to learn how to live w/ women
21. Service w/ a Smile (Shine) - mentally disabled persons working in a hotel, fulfilling their dream of a real job
22. Beauty and the Beast:Prejudice (Zodiak) where "beauty junkie" lives together w/ disfigured person #miptv
23. It Gets Better (Shine) - 8 celebs who've been victims help other victims
24. Sun, Sex and Supsicious Parents (Zodiak) - parents peeping in on kids doing naughty stuff
25. Meet The Parents (All3) - boyfriends must impress potential in-laws, only thing is, they are actors + hidden camera
I had unfortunately missed out on all the fun that happened in the Experience Hub tent outside the Palais, but went there for a quick look; lo and behold, I saw a fairly interesting product, showcased by Metaio from Germany – a slick app-based participate-in-television-through-AR-tv solution that I think I need to examine a bit closer; might be good to integrate in some format in the future.
Finally a quick CONGRATULATIONS to the Emmy winners of yesterday, nice party and SO nice to see Shankaboot from Lebanon pick up an Emmy. Well done!
Second day starting now, with meetings, meetings, and then the kick-off of the Connected Creativity – will be back with that later.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
MIPFormats Round Up Day Two
So, second – and final – day of the MIPFormats are done and dusted, and it’s time to evaluate what became of it. Generally speaking, I’m very much in favor of there being a weekend dedicated to formats (which I would, being a format developer by trade). There was reportedly 600 people signed up for this years MIPFormats, but I doubt all showed up at the same time, as I don’t believe there were that many people in attendance at any of the panels I took part of.
I will say that I was slightly disappointed in the lack of fresh-thinking stuff on display during these two days. The winner of the Fresh Talent Pitch was basically dating for seniors, with a bit of elimination and some sexy young bodies thrown in for fun. Not to take away from the creators of that format – I believe it will get produced, and I believe it will get ratings. It’s just doesn’t ooze newness in any way.
Furthermore, the formats that were shown later on in the day under different circumstances – from showcases by big companies to Fresh Format-looks at new stuff – not really much caught your imagination. Just twists on things we’ve seen before (while the Hypno-surgery format was a bit new, I’ll admit that, not that I’d probably watch it…☺ )
Some light
So, you say, do something better yourself then, eh? Yeah, I am trying to. I believe that the next-to-last panel I witnessed, which was the second part of the MIPFormats Interviews sessions – featuring Scott/Ogilvy, Morley/Sony, Brickle/Monterosa and Fenton/Zig Zag – talked the most about where we are heading. Brands are increasingly looking to integrate themselves into content. Producers NEED to look at how to integrate these brands, so that it is done in a natural, logical way and not forced upon the end consumer in the bullyish kind of way we’ve witnessed before.
We all know that the money that was in the TV industries – from the broadcasters that is – isn’t really there anymore. So fresh money needs to come into the game. IMHO this is where transmedia storytelling enters the fray, as this gives any creator a multitude of options to integrate brands into a storyworld, and brands a multitude of options to connect to content that fits in with their core values.
An example
A very simple thought experiment – what if one of the side characters in a television show blogged about her life outside the show? And what if she, in that off-tv life, got a job at a certain brand? That brand could naturally be integrated in the show, and have it’s own, scripted life on the blog. Where it could tie in to real life events; when the character tweets about an upcoming promotional event – the next day the event is launched for real… blurring the lines between real and fiction, and creating engaging content.
I won’t delve further into the takes from the day, as you can see the sessions and read the comprehensive live blog by the competent people of ReedMIDEM and MIP here. Instead, I’ll have a beer and tend to that bloody foot of mine :P
Remember, it is a kindness to buy formats from people with crutches!! ;)
I will say that I was slightly disappointed in the lack of fresh-thinking stuff on display during these two days. The winner of the Fresh Talent Pitch was basically dating for seniors, with a bit of elimination and some sexy young bodies thrown in for fun. Not to take away from the creators of that format – I believe it will get produced, and I believe it will get ratings. It’s just doesn’t ooze newness in any way.
Furthermore, the formats that were shown later on in the day under different circumstances – from showcases by big companies to Fresh Format-looks at new stuff – not really much caught your imagination. Just twists on things we’ve seen before (while the Hypno-surgery format was a bit new, I’ll admit that, not that I’d probably watch it…☺ )
Some light
So, you say, do something better yourself then, eh? Yeah, I am trying to. I believe that the next-to-last panel I witnessed, which was the second part of the MIPFormats Interviews sessions – featuring Scott/Ogilvy, Morley/Sony, Brickle/Monterosa and Fenton/Zig Zag – talked the most about where we are heading. Brands are increasingly looking to integrate themselves into content. Producers NEED to look at how to integrate these brands, so that it is done in a natural, logical way and not forced upon the end consumer in the bullyish kind of way we’ve witnessed before.
We all know that the money that was in the TV industries – from the broadcasters that is – isn’t really there anymore. So fresh money needs to come into the game. IMHO this is where transmedia storytelling enters the fray, as this gives any creator a multitude of options to integrate brands into a storyworld, and brands a multitude of options to connect to content that fits in with their core values.
An example
A very simple thought experiment – what if one of the side characters in a television show blogged about her life outside the show? And what if she, in that off-tv life, got a job at a certain brand? That brand could naturally be integrated in the show, and have it’s own, scripted life on the blog. Where it could tie in to real life events; when the character tweets about an upcoming promotional event – the next day the event is launched for real… blurring the lines between real and fiction, and creating engaging content.
I won’t delve further into the takes from the day, as you can see the sessions and read the comprehensive live blog by the competent people of ReedMIDEM and MIP here. Instead, I’ll have a beer and tend to that bloody foot of mine :P
Remember, it is a kindness to buy formats from people with crutches!! ;)
Saturday, April 02, 2011
MIPFormats Round Up Day One
So, MIPFormats occupies the two days pre-MIPTV, showcasing a lot of up-and-coming formats, discussing format rights and format disputes and during this first day taking a look at the future of the format business in general.
Format Futures
The day started off with a look at the Format Futures 2011, where David Jenkinson from C21 begun with a brief look at which conclusions the C21 Formats Report 2011 had drawn. Amongst the facts – 91% of buyers say they will buy as many formats or more than last year, 60% say they are going to buy more (which is nice if you are selling formats of course). Top three in format genres are thought to be Constructed observational documentary, Expert-led factual entertainment and social network-related formats, while elimination-based reality formats and cooking/food formats are seen to be waning. Happy to see that Finland is thought of as the 6th hottest country when it comes to new formats (behind the US, the UK and Holland, but ahead of Israel and Japan). I’m pretty sure the formats report will be available online at some point, as it was shared to all attendees at MIPFormats, will notify when I know more about that.
The talk featured Karoline Spodsberg from Banijay, Nicola Söderlund from Sparks Network and Jan Salling from Nordic World. Big take-aways from that was Spodsbergs opinion that "We will be moving away from constructed formats to less constructed, more story driven types of formats" (which resonates well with the creation of more transmedia type formats) and Sallings very true take on the questions of rights and revenue splits - "Big challenge is to retain rights for producers; no plug-and-play solution. Need to give more back to producers" (so true, more shares to the one creating will mean that more and better will be developed and produced in the future). There was also a big concern about the consolidation of the business – everything is becoming one big company, so whom should new concepts be pitched to? David Jenkinson wasn’t too concerned - "as companies consolidate, the people that don't like it leave and found new companies".
The session about mediating format disputes was set up as a sort of play where two fictional production companies went head to head regarding two very similar formats. I had to leave the session before the end, but I will echo Mikko Silvennoinens opinion: “Let's discuss real cases please! Come Dine vs Four Star Dinner. Survivor vs Celebrity Get Me Out of Here”. Key point, try to come to some sort of solution and not go to court.
Fresh Formats in the Factual vein
In the Fresh Formats this Saturday (there will be another tomorrow) the focus was on Factual Entertainment. To recap, I will make it easy for myself and copy my tweets from the sessions. Here are the 12 featured formats:
1st format: Shedding for the wedding, from CBS, engaged couples losing weight
2. Coming Soon: Love, 5 single/famous women search for true love (Israel/Endemol)
3. Threesome, where three ppl share a flat and experiment sexually (Norway, DRG)
4. The Joy Of Teen Sex, from Zodiak. Advice on teen sex in walk-in clinic
5. Teenage Boss (DRG, Norway) teenager takes responsibility for family financies for 1 month
6. Hijos de Papa (Plural, Spain) 8 rich kids kicked out, must adjust to tough jobs to manage
7. Working Girls (endemol, UK) lazy ladies (WAGs?) whipped into shape by biz women
8. Junior Doctors (BBC) 7 newly qualified doctors, their 1st month documented
9. Toughest place to be a Paramedic (BBC) ordinary people go abroad to test themselves in hardest jobs
10. Cover Me (2waytraffic) 2 music stars create new hits based on each other's work
11 The House That Made Me (BBC) Celebs back in reconstructed childhood homes
12. You can't take it with you (Fremantle) following families as they prepare wills
All in all, not all that many really exciting formats. I did get the feeling I’ve seen most of them before, in one take or another. The Threesome and Teen Sex ones were slightly interesting, but then again they would, wouldn’t they?
The Freshest of Talents
The Fresh Talent Pitch was the last session I went to, where six formats had been chosen by The Wit to be presented to a jury consisting of Anniea Wegelius from SVT/Sweden, David Lyle from Fox Look and Colin Jarvis, formerly BBC. The six formats were BuS STOP from Spain, Crossword is coming to town (Germany), Dracula Tour Challenge (Romania), My Baby's Name (France), On the Wave of Love (France) and Queen of Style (Germany).
Of the six formats the Dracula one was the one with the richest story possibilities. I believe it didn’t win mainly since it was not really thought through to the end – there is a great backdrop, but the icing on the cake (and parts of the filling as well) just aren’t there yet. I’m convinced it will get made though, just need some more work. Bus Stop was a dating format based around a bus driving to different cities – definitely needs some work – while Queen of Style had “possibilities in any direction” (which is never a good thing to say in a pitch, as a potential buyer can think in a lot of directions and, like most people, dislikes to be confused, especially in a business meeting) which probably was it’s downfall in this competition.
My Baby’s Name had a complex game setup that I didn’t quite get – about guessing the name of an unborn child – and didn’t feel quite thought through either. As Colin Jarvis said, he thinks it may be better as just a part of another show. Crossword is coming to town was about painting a giant crossword on a town square and have a team try to solve it, with the help of the town’s population. It was a good public service-minded idea, and rightfully won the creator, Uwe Stanz, the Entertainment Masterclass scholarship. Nice one!
The winner then, was a French format called “On the wave of love” from NeweN. Seniors have a right to love too! So they are put on a cruiser with five suitors each, and one is eliminated in every harbor. Tricky things pop up as well – Mystery Suitors for instance, and the fact that the crew on the ship are sexy little young things (male and female) that can try to woo the seniors as well. Now, I don’t know if I would watch it, but as the jury also obviously saw, it does have potential. So, congratulations!
The last word
More tomorrow, but as a conclusion, and having been banging on about the powers of transmedia storytelling (and blogging for ReedMIDEM today on the possibilities of transmedia formats) I will say that I’m not surprised there are no transmedia formats on display. Not surprised, but I would have liked to be surprised by there being some. Perhaps ours are featured next year ;).
Until tomorrow!
Format Futures
The day started off with a look at the Format Futures 2011, where David Jenkinson from C21 begun with a brief look at which conclusions the C21 Formats Report 2011 had drawn. Amongst the facts – 91% of buyers say they will buy as many formats or more than last year, 60% say they are going to buy more (which is nice if you are selling formats of course). Top three in format genres are thought to be Constructed observational documentary, Expert-led factual entertainment and social network-related formats, while elimination-based reality formats and cooking/food formats are seen to be waning. Happy to see that Finland is thought of as the 6th hottest country when it comes to new formats (behind the US, the UK and Holland, but ahead of Israel and Japan). I’m pretty sure the formats report will be available online at some point, as it was shared to all attendees at MIPFormats, will notify when I know more about that.
The talk featured Karoline Spodsberg from Banijay, Nicola Söderlund from Sparks Network and Jan Salling from Nordic World. Big take-aways from that was Spodsbergs opinion that "We will be moving away from constructed formats to less constructed, more story driven types of formats" (which resonates well with the creation of more transmedia type formats) and Sallings very true take on the questions of rights and revenue splits - "Big challenge is to retain rights for producers; no plug-and-play solution. Need to give more back to producers" (so true, more shares to the one creating will mean that more and better will be developed and produced in the future). There was also a big concern about the consolidation of the business – everything is becoming one big company, so whom should new concepts be pitched to? David Jenkinson wasn’t too concerned - "as companies consolidate, the people that don't like it leave and found new companies".
The session about mediating format disputes was set up as a sort of play where two fictional production companies went head to head regarding two very similar formats. I had to leave the session before the end, but I will echo Mikko Silvennoinens opinion: “Let's discuss real cases please! Come Dine vs Four Star Dinner. Survivor vs Celebrity Get Me Out of Here”. Key point, try to come to some sort of solution and not go to court.
Fresh Formats in the Factual vein
In the Fresh Formats this Saturday (there will be another tomorrow) the focus was on Factual Entertainment. To recap, I will make it easy for myself and copy my tweets from the sessions. Here are the 12 featured formats:
1st format: Shedding for the wedding, from CBS, engaged couples losing weight
2. Coming Soon: Love, 5 single/famous women search for true love (Israel/Endemol)
3. Threesome, where three ppl share a flat and experiment sexually (Norway, DRG)
4. The Joy Of Teen Sex, from Zodiak. Advice on teen sex in walk-in clinic
5. Teenage Boss (DRG, Norway) teenager takes responsibility for family financies for 1 month
6. Hijos de Papa (Plural, Spain) 8 rich kids kicked out, must adjust to tough jobs to manage
7. Working Girls (endemol, UK) lazy ladies (WAGs?) whipped into shape by biz women
8. Junior Doctors (BBC) 7 newly qualified doctors, their 1st month documented
9. Toughest place to be a Paramedic (BBC) ordinary people go abroad to test themselves in hardest jobs
10. Cover Me (2waytraffic) 2 music stars create new hits based on each other's work
11 The House That Made Me (BBC) Celebs back in reconstructed childhood homes
12. You can't take it with you (Fremantle) following families as they prepare wills
All in all, not all that many really exciting formats. I did get the feeling I’ve seen most of them before, in one take or another. The Threesome and Teen Sex ones were slightly interesting, but then again they would, wouldn’t they?
The Freshest of Talents
The Fresh Talent Pitch was the last session I went to, where six formats had been chosen by The Wit to be presented to a jury consisting of Anniea Wegelius from SVT/Sweden, David Lyle from Fox Look and Colin Jarvis, formerly BBC. The six formats were BuS STOP from Spain, Crossword is coming to town (Germany), Dracula Tour Challenge (Romania), My Baby's Name (France), On the Wave of Love (France) and Queen of Style (Germany).
Of the six formats the Dracula one was the one with the richest story possibilities. I believe it didn’t win mainly since it was not really thought through to the end – there is a great backdrop, but the icing on the cake (and parts of the filling as well) just aren’t there yet. I’m convinced it will get made though, just need some more work. Bus Stop was a dating format based around a bus driving to different cities – definitely needs some work – while Queen of Style had “possibilities in any direction” (which is never a good thing to say in a pitch, as a potential buyer can think in a lot of directions and, like most people, dislikes to be confused, especially in a business meeting) which probably was it’s downfall in this competition.
My Baby’s Name had a complex game setup that I didn’t quite get – about guessing the name of an unborn child – and didn’t feel quite thought through either. As Colin Jarvis said, he thinks it may be better as just a part of another show. Crossword is coming to town was about painting a giant crossword on a town square and have a team try to solve it, with the help of the town’s population. It was a good public service-minded idea, and rightfully won the creator, Uwe Stanz, the Entertainment Masterclass scholarship. Nice one!
The winner then, was a French format called “On the wave of love” from NeweN. Seniors have a right to love too! So they are put on a cruiser with five suitors each, and one is eliminated in every harbor. Tricky things pop up as well – Mystery Suitors for instance, and the fact that the crew on the ship are sexy little young things (male and female) that can try to woo the seniors as well. Now, I don’t know if I would watch it, but as the jury also obviously saw, it does have potential. So, congratulations!
The last word
More tomorrow, but as a conclusion, and having been banging on about the powers of transmedia storytelling (and blogging for ReedMIDEM today on the possibilities of transmedia formats) I will say that I’m not surprised there are no transmedia formats on display. Not surprised, but I would have liked to be surprised by there being some. Perhaps ours are featured next year ;).
Until tomorrow!
Friday, April 01, 2011
TransMIP 2011 - a first look
Tomorrow sees the kick-off for a week of MIPness in Cannes, France. Leading out are two quite different events: MIPDocs is focused on documentaries, and is an established part of the MIPTV setup, where producers and buyers sell and buy a multitude of documentaries over the course of two days. I am not registered for MIPDoc, so even though I would be utterly surprised if not a large part of the documentaries featured could (and perhaps should) have a developed transmedia side to them, I will not be able to comment in detail.
MIPFormat, on the other hand, is merely a year old and already branching out over two days, not one as was the case last year. The format business is reportedly worth upwards of 3 billion euros now, which makes formats a viable part of any discussion around the media industry. Transmedia formats are still few and far between, but this is something I convinced will change in the near future. One featured session is the Fresh Talent Pitch, where a number of chosen formats are pitched to the attending crowd. Amongst the finalists are formats such as Dracula Tour Challenge, which simply feels made to be transmediated. From the description of the format:
There are a number of interesting talks during MIPFormats, many who have some connection to transmedia, be it about rights and disputes or creative workshops. But we have to wait until Monday and MIPTV before transmedia is really on the agenda.
At a talk called ”Transmedia Storytelling: How to Achieve Creative Excellence?” Jesse Cleverly from Connected TV moderates a panel with, amongst others, Nuno Bernardo (beActive), Tracy Robertson (Hoodlum) and Christopher Sandberg (Company P) in a session that will ”talk through their strategic thinking, their creative development philosophies, and their multidisciplinary production processes.” I can see many ways this panel could go, but I dearly hope, from an admittedly personal POV, that it will go in-depth on development and design matters.
Hot on the heels of that panel will be a screening of the four finalists of the Fremantle/RTL Content 360 category ”Interactive & Cross-Media Digital Entertainment Formats”. I have no idea what to expect from this, but one can always dream of a quartet of beautifully crafted transmedia formats that take your breath away, right?
There’s a slew of other interesting talks and panels as well, of course – like ”Monetising Content on New Platforms” or ”Multiplatform Engagement Through Apps” or why not “Connecting to Tomorrow's Audiences”. All of these have the potential to not only touch on transmedia but go a lot deeper into that sphere (which should be normal, as that would help keep content and story world in line etc etc). At the very least I expect to get a lot of interesting notions and hints that I can take back to my drawing board after MIP.
There is also the MIPCC, the Connected Creativity, happening at the same time as the ”regular” MIPTV. Here I’m hoping to hear more about mobile, apps and their ties in to the television industry. A highlight will be Gavin McGarrys wrap-up session on ”Building Cross-Media Strategies” on Thursday.
So, be warned, there will be a lot of tweets coming from MIPTV in the coming week. If you decide to unfollow precisely because of these tweets, do refollow back in a weeks time, ok? ☺
MIPFormat, on the other hand, is merely a year old and already branching out over two days, not one as was the case last year. The format business is reportedly worth upwards of 3 billion euros now, which makes formats a viable part of any discussion around the media industry. Transmedia formats are still few and far between, but this is something I convinced will change in the near future. One featured session is the Fresh Talent Pitch, where a number of chosen formats are pitched to the attending crowd. Amongst the finalists are formats such as Dracula Tour Challenge, which simply feels made to be transmediated. From the description of the format:
«Dracula Tour Challenge» is an adventure competition show in which foreign participants are brought to Transylvania to confront the myth of Dracula and the evil spirits that lurk in this land. The purpose of the show is two-fold. One, to create an entertaining, frightening and thrilling competition for viewers. And two, to provide a unique history of vampires, Dracula and other mythical monsters that originated in this extraordinary area.Now, what storylines could not be spun from this story world? We’ll see what happens with the format.
There are a number of interesting talks during MIPFormats, many who have some connection to transmedia, be it about rights and disputes or creative workshops. But we have to wait until Monday and MIPTV before transmedia is really on the agenda.
At a talk called ”Transmedia Storytelling: How to Achieve Creative Excellence?” Jesse Cleverly from Connected TV moderates a panel with, amongst others, Nuno Bernardo (beActive), Tracy Robertson (Hoodlum) and Christopher Sandberg (Company P) in a session that will ”talk through their strategic thinking, their creative development philosophies, and their multidisciplinary production processes.” I can see many ways this panel could go, but I dearly hope, from an admittedly personal POV, that it will go in-depth on development and design matters.
Hot on the heels of that panel will be a screening of the four finalists of the Fremantle/RTL Content 360 category ”Interactive & Cross-Media Digital Entertainment Formats”. I have no idea what to expect from this, but one can always dream of a quartet of beautifully crafted transmedia formats that take your breath away, right?
There’s a slew of other interesting talks and panels as well, of course – like ”Monetising Content on New Platforms” or ”Multiplatform Engagement Through Apps” or why not “Connecting to Tomorrow's Audiences”. All of these have the potential to not only touch on transmedia but go a lot deeper into that sphere (which should be normal, as that would help keep content and story world in line etc etc). At the very least I expect to get a lot of interesting notions and hints that I can take back to my drawing board after MIP.
There is also the MIPCC, the Connected Creativity, happening at the same time as the ”regular” MIPTV. Here I’m hoping to hear more about mobile, apps and their ties in to the television industry. A highlight will be Gavin McGarrys wrap-up session on ”Building Cross-Media Strategies” on Thursday.
So, be warned, there will be a lot of tweets coming from MIPTV in the coming week. If you decide to unfollow precisely because of these tweets, do refollow back in a weeks time, ok? ☺
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Transmedia – it’s kind of everything
This weekend has been about recouperating from SXSWi, physically as well as mentally. Time zones are still playing havoc with my sleeping patterns, but slowly but surely things are settling into place again. Which is good, as there is much to be done.
In hindsight, SXSWi took the field of transmedia at least a couple of steps forward. I read this well written article in The Guardian, by Oliver Burkeman, on takings from this year’s SXSW festival, and one thing in particular resonates strongly with transmedia today, as I see it. Burkeman writes:
That’s what transmedia is evolving into as well, in my opinion. No longer is it good enough to know one field well, like television, or film, or online portals, or how to write a good story, although all these are still important. It’s just that it’s not enough anymore. When writing a story, you need to have a notion of the possibilities that story can give to an online entry into your world, or as an ARG, or as a graphic novel. It's like a CEO of a trucking company; today he needs to know the basics about SEO as well, to keep himself in business. Or the florist who needs to get savvy in the ways of Facebook, just to pick up on all weddings being planned.
When in pre-production for your tv series, you need to have an understanding for how the interaction with viewers can take place on Twitter, Facebook and so on. Most people – great people at what they do – really do not have that inkling yet. This again leads to examples of bulky, unwieldy transmedia that does not connect logically and seamlessly, as it has been assembled from the same set of pieces but with everyone involved looking at their own blueprint that they themselves have drawn up, without talking to each other overly much.
TAG
Here is where I think the Transmedia Artists Guild has made a timely entrance onto the transmedia arena. Because we have to learn, each and everyone of us. And the best way to learn is by doing, and talking to people who have been there, done that and got a number of t-shirts. Whether it’s about best practises or how to engage an audience, about how to connect an ARG in the best way or how to use characters Twitter accounts for best effect, I see the TAG forums as a great place to interact with other creators and developers and get their invaluable insights. If you haven’t yet, do sign up – it’s a place to talk and a place to find other people to discuss with that you do not first have to spend 30 minutes explaining the concept ”transmedia” to.
See you there!
In hindsight, SXSWi took the field of transmedia at least a couple of steps forward. I read this well written article in The Guardian, by Oliver Burkeman, on takings from this year’s SXSW festival, and one thing in particular resonates strongly with transmedia today, as I see it. Burkeman writes:
” It was the end of day two of South by Southwest Interactive, the world's highest-profile gathering of geeks and the venture capitalists who love them, and I'd been pursuing a policy of asking those I met, perhaps a little too aggressively, what it was exactly that they did. What is "user experience", really? What the hell is "the gamification of healthcare"? Or "geofencing"? Or "design thinking"? Or "open source government"? What is "content strategy"? No, I mean, like, specifically?The many requirements
The content strategist across the table took a sip of his orange-coloured cocktail. He looked slightly exasperated. "Well, from one perspective, I guess," he said, "it's kind of everything."
That’s what transmedia is evolving into as well, in my opinion. No longer is it good enough to know one field well, like television, or film, or online portals, or how to write a good story, although all these are still important. It’s just that it’s not enough anymore. When writing a story, you need to have a notion of the possibilities that story can give to an online entry into your world, or as an ARG, or as a graphic novel. It's like a CEO of a trucking company; today he needs to know the basics about SEO as well, to keep himself in business. Or the florist who needs to get savvy in the ways of Facebook, just to pick up on all weddings being planned.
When in pre-production for your tv series, you need to have an understanding for how the interaction with viewers can take place on Twitter, Facebook and so on. Most people – great people at what they do – really do not have that inkling yet. This again leads to examples of bulky, unwieldy transmedia that does not connect logically and seamlessly, as it has been assembled from the same set of pieces but with everyone involved looking at their own blueprint that they themselves have drawn up, without talking to each other overly much.
TAG
Here is where I think the Transmedia Artists Guild has made a timely entrance onto the transmedia arena. Because we have to learn, each and everyone of us. And the best way to learn is by doing, and talking to people who have been there, done that and got a number of t-shirts. Whether it’s about best practises or how to engage an audience, about how to connect an ARG in the best way or how to use characters Twitter accounts for best effect, I see the TAG forums as a great place to interact with other creators and developers and get their invaluable insights. If you haven’t yet, do sign up – it’s a place to talk and a place to find other people to discuss with that you do not first have to spend 30 minutes explaining the concept ”transmedia” to.
See you there!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
SXSW Round Up Day Five
My own participation in the SXSW line up this last day of SXSWi was cut short by a forced visit to St Davids Hospital in Austin. As a side not, let me just take this opportunity to accolade the medial service provided; all involved were extremely professional, kind and efficient. Wait to get in was 15 minutes tops. Kudos! On the other hand, waiting 2h for a taxi was slightly irritating; in the end a collague got a cab down at the Convention Centre in one minute flat and came up to get me.
So, even though being in Austin, this last day I had the opportunity to follow SXSW in the way most people actually do, those not attending that is; by trying to follow the right persons, read the right blogs and figuring out the essential hashtags.
ARGs tell your story
Adrian Hon from sixtostart held an – apparently – well attendend talk on ”Project 314: Putting the Game back into ARG”, which was about looking at ARGs as stand-alone experiences, can it work or not? As said in the description of the talk – ”we found that there are enormous advantages in creating an ARG that's attached to an online game; for one, you can avoid the irritating friction that always occurs when switching between media; for another, the ARG feels completely natural.”
So, ARGs promise to transform the world of entertainment and storytelling, but often end up not really delivering. They’ve been overhyped and oversold and are now in a state of disillusionment – on the other hand, that means the only way is up! One great way of scaling ARGs is to automate them – example is www.smokescreengame.com - but this comes at the expense of the ‘magic’ of the story. And, which must be remembered, every extra action a participant needs to do in order to advance the story is an opportunity to just say "screw it, I'm giving up".
Adrian advocates, and I’m with him on this, not making ARGs so hard to play. The charm of ARGs isn't in the hoax - it's in the experience. Knowing how long a book is doesn't spoil the experience of the book. If you’re wondering how to make an ARG - steal success strategies from other types of games to improve the ARG experience.
All in all good advice. ARGs are a brilliant way to engage people, but just as Andrea Phillips talked about in her Hoax or Transmedia talk, with some of the examples she showed us, hoaxing might feel tantalizing and fun, but most of the time it’s seriously counterproductive. Trust your story and the way you’ve built your experience, let the people get immersed, and there will be no need to try to fool them. Above quotes were a condensed version of the #project314 hashtag.
The Transmedia backlash
Now, a big trend this year was the transmedia backlash which was very apparent during these days at SXSW. From @feliciaday stating being really tired of transmedia, to @jaybushman jokingly suggesting that he’d submit a panel to SXSW next year about everyone who hates the term transmedia, the term has gotten some severe beating from a number of sources – including @kevmoss, putting up this page on “Should I Feel Embarrased to Use the Phrase Transmedia?” for people to slug it out around the term.
In my opinion this is a very natural backlash. I second @glecharles who tweeted “Interesting to see the #transmedia backlash building. That's good; it's the step that comes before awareness and proper adoption. Go!”
It is also a question of so many people having to come around to the term, from developers and designers to marketing people and producers – it is quite natural that the term gets thrown around a lot and a bit battered in the process. I had a discussion with @geoffreylong over Twitter (before phone batteries and wifi connections let us up) and I totally agree with him – “Abandoning #transmedia because the buzz is wearing off is like abandoning the Internet after the dotcom collapse.” There is no need to abandon anything yet, but I can see where Geoffrey is coming from, as he is anxious not to abandon terminology that can help us build a standard for creating transmedia, a standard similar to “close-up”, “POV” etc in regular film-making. On the other hand I would argue that much of that terminology is moving away from technically-based and into more experience-based terminology.
All in all, we’re getting there – and I still think it’s nice that we do not have a definite definition of Transmedia yet. It’s more interesting like this ☺
Conclusion
I will conclude by saying that SXSWi is a blast. It’s also exactly what you make of it – at any given point, dozens of people are talking about interesting things, just go listen… or chat to the guy next to you; he might be the online traffic analytic from Canada that your project has sorely been missing, or the venture capitalist that is looking for exactly a project like yours. Almost guaranteed though, he or she is a nice and friendly person whom you can have an interesting discussions with. And yeah, find the right parties via Twitter, Yobongo or any other app you’re using, and try not to bust up your foot ☺
I’ll add some links to this post as soon as I am somewhere where the wifi connection is a bit better. Here's a link to Guardian UKs look at the tech presented this year. This is Fast Company's list of the most innovative companies in 2011. More links coming in the near future. Thank you SXSWi, and goodbye! Hope to see you next year!
So, even though being in Austin, this last day I had the opportunity to follow SXSW in the way most people actually do, those not attending that is; by trying to follow the right persons, read the right blogs and figuring out the essential hashtags.
ARGs tell your story
Adrian Hon from sixtostart held an – apparently – well attendend talk on ”Project 314: Putting the Game back into ARG”, which was about looking at ARGs as stand-alone experiences, can it work or not? As said in the description of the talk – ”we found that there are enormous advantages in creating an ARG that's attached to an online game; for one, you can avoid the irritating friction that always occurs when switching between media; for another, the ARG feels completely natural.”
So, ARGs promise to transform the world of entertainment and storytelling, but often end up not really delivering. They’ve been overhyped and oversold and are now in a state of disillusionment – on the other hand, that means the only way is up! One great way of scaling ARGs is to automate them – example is www.smokescreengame.com - but this comes at the expense of the ‘magic’ of the story. And, which must be remembered, every extra action a participant needs to do in order to advance the story is an opportunity to just say "screw it, I'm giving up".
Adrian advocates, and I’m with him on this, not making ARGs so hard to play. The charm of ARGs isn't in the hoax - it's in the experience. Knowing how long a book is doesn't spoil the experience of the book. If you’re wondering how to make an ARG - steal success strategies from other types of games to improve the ARG experience.
All in all good advice. ARGs are a brilliant way to engage people, but just as Andrea Phillips talked about in her Hoax or Transmedia talk, with some of the examples she showed us, hoaxing might feel tantalizing and fun, but most of the time it’s seriously counterproductive. Trust your story and the way you’ve built your experience, let the people get immersed, and there will be no need to try to fool them. Above quotes were a condensed version of the #project314 hashtag.
The Transmedia backlash
Now, a big trend this year was the transmedia backlash which was very apparent during these days at SXSW. From @feliciaday stating being really tired of transmedia, to @jaybushman jokingly suggesting that he’d submit a panel to SXSW next year about everyone who hates the term transmedia, the term has gotten some severe beating from a number of sources – including @kevmoss, putting up this page on “Should I Feel Embarrased to Use the Phrase Transmedia?” for people to slug it out around the term.
In my opinion this is a very natural backlash. I second @glecharles who tweeted “Interesting to see the #transmedia backlash building. That's good; it's the step that comes before awareness and proper adoption. Go!”
It is also a question of so many people having to come around to the term, from developers and designers to marketing people and producers – it is quite natural that the term gets thrown around a lot and a bit battered in the process. I had a discussion with @geoffreylong over Twitter (before phone batteries and wifi connections let us up) and I totally agree with him – “Abandoning #transmedia because the buzz is wearing off is like abandoning the Internet after the dotcom collapse.” There is no need to abandon anything yet, but I can see where Geoffrey is coming from, as he is anxious not to abandon terminology that can help us build a standard for creating transmedia, a standard similar to “close-up”, “POV” etc in regular film-making. On the other hand I would argue that much of that terminology is moving away from technically-based and into more experience-based terminology.
All in all, we’re getting there – and I still think it’s nice that we do not have a definite definition of Transmedia yet. It’s more interesting like this ☺
Conclusion
I will conclude by saying that SXSWi is a blast. It’s also exactly what you make of it – at any given point, dozens of people are talking about interesting things, just go listen… or chat to the guy next to you; he might be the online traffic analytic from Canada that your project has sorely been missing, or the venture capitalist that is looking for exactly a project like yours. Almost guaranteed though, he or she is a nice and friendly person whom you can have an interesting discussions with. And yeah, find the right parties via Twitter, Yobongo or any other app you’re using, and try not to bust up your foot ☺
I’ll add some links to this post as soon as I am somewhere where the wifi connection is a bit better. Here's a link to Guardian UKs look at the tech presented this year. This is Fast Company's list of the most innovative companies in 2011. More links coming in the near future. Thank you SXSWi, and goodbye! Hope to see you next year!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
SXSW Round-Up Day Four
This Monday started out on a personally slightly unpleasant note, as I apparently had managed to get some sort of inflammation going in my foot. Basically, it hurt like hell with every step I tried to take. But, well, staying at the hotel didn’t really feel like an option, so after a prolonged an unsuccessful search for a crutch or a walking stick (and a visit to the First Aid centre at ACC – ”what’s your status sir? Do you have an insurance?”) I just decided to hobble along (but discounting sessions at Sheraton or even the Hilton, as I really didn’t feel like walking a lot.
15 minutes of transmedia blast
So, first session was a short and intensive one, as Anthea Foyer held a talk on Transmedia – Formula for Success at the Future15 track of the SXSW (which is basically everyone talking getting 15 minutes to talk on their subject). Now, hats off to Anthea for this session, which from my point of view was the most condensed and to-the-point one so far.
So, as Anthea did put it, there are five aspects to creating a transmedia property:
A fast and furious take on transmedia, and perhaps the best 15 minutes I spent in Austin this first time I was here. I sincerely do like when people who have done something can come and talk about their experiences and their conclusions from that. Thank you Anthea.
The future of television
I then - mostly because of said hurting foot - remained seated in ballroom E to hear more Future 15 talks. Richard Bullwinkle, Chief Evangelist of Rovi, talked about the Connected TV and about how the television is not a PC, however much you would like to make it into one. In fact, Rovi has pulled data from boxes in a lot of houses, showing that 86% of viewers have no idea what they are going to watch when they start watching television. Bullwinkle's point was then, naturally, that no matter if you didn't know, your box should know what you would want to watch and suggest those things to you (where I'm more inclined to think that it would be nice to open the box and immediately choose between two options - the "I handle this myself" option and the "OK then let's see what you'd suggest for me" option). Bullwinkle's take on it is to have a second screen be your navigator - your smartphone, tablet - and use that for better interface, personalized ads etc. Well, I don't know about ads - I'd much rather have it as one entry into a transmedia project, use it for storytelling... Fine, if a brand can fit into that without messing things up, why not? But story first.
A little while later, Utku Can from Mint Digital delivered an interesting quarter of an hour on TV vs the Web back channel. Now this is one trend being discussed at several sessions here, about The Hills and their backchannel, about the Twitter streams around the Oscars etc. And yes, TV is social, and the social has moved from the sofa to the web, just as @utku pointed out. Fact is that 52% of all people use the Internet while watching TV (and a staggering 77% in the age group 18-24). With chatter being inherently competitive, and much content lending itself beautifully to chatter, this will just grow and grow - so design for that, design for split attention! But recognize that the viewer will choose how to watch.
@feliciaday and @garyvee
The keynote with Felicia Day was a bit interesting; she is an entrepreneur and she's good at what she's doing. Basically what she said was "Do your own thing, find your audience, let them advocate you, have great content, don't sell out". All good advice.
Rounded off the day by hobbling into Gary Vaynerchuck's session on brands. The man is a maniac to be sure, but a lot of the things he says makes sense - brands have got to become humanized; less like that friend who calls you all the time to tell you stuff you don't really want to hear, but more like the friend YOU call when you want to talk to someone or needs to ask advice. Give first, worry later should be a motto. And yeah, like many others I've encountered during these days, @garyvee is a big believer in context. To quote: "if Content is King the Context is God. I'm obsessed with context." This holds true for transmedia stories as well; don't forget the context. And keep it real, true - authentic, not necessarily realistic.
...and an un-cooperative foot
All in all a pretty packed day, not to mention meeting such a lot of awesome people, also at some parties later on... Yesterday evening I ended the post thus:
(at this point I’m going to have to stop for the moment, as foot is killing me. Hospital next I think, which sucks majorly… I’ll be back with the rest later, bummed to (probably) miss the last day)
And to update - yeah, the foot was x-rayed, nothing broken, muscles and soft tissue getting an inflammation going basically. So, on crutches and following the last day over Twitter at the hotel, unfortunately. I'll blog about that tomorrow, I think :). And yeah, thanks everyone who've expressed their concerns and offered help - you're all brilliant. My foot says hi.
15 minutes of transmedia blast
So, first session was a short and intensive one, as Anthea Foyer held a talk on Transmedia – Formula for Success at the Future15 track of the SXSW (which is basically everyone talking getting 15 minutes to talk on their subject). Now, hats off to Anthea for this session, which from my point of view was the most condensed and to-the-point one so far.
So, as Anthea did put it, there are five aspects to creating a transmedia property:
• provide your audience with new and exciting ways to participate with your content (as an example, their own Time Tremors)
* create multiple points of entry, maximize audience exposure and uptake. And yeah, it really doesn't matter if the audience understands what transmedia is; it is enough if they are comfortable with the platforms used
* drive content and audience through a number of interconnected platforms and channels. An example would be Cisco's The Hunt
* create a momentum of audience participation that is both sustainable and far reaching. There might be audiences you had no idea of, but your audience will find them. And yeah, gone are the days of forcing the consumer to consume what you want them to. Just remember, be agile - let people come in and tell their stories.
* make sure you create meaningful content and a great story. When you're in the story, you don't care about platforms or tools as you're immersed.
A fast and furious take on transmedia, and perhaps the best 15 minutes I spent in Austin this first time I was here. I sincerely do like when people who have done something can come and talk about their experiences and their conclusions from that. Thank you Anthea.
The future of television
I then - mostly because of said hurting foot - remained seated in ballroom E to hear more Future 15 talks. Richard Bullwinkle, Chief Evangelist of Rovi, talked about the Connected TV and about how the television is not a PC, however much you would like to make it into one. In fact, Rovi has pulled data from boxes in a lot of houses, showing that 86% of viewers have no idea what they are going to watch when they start watching television. Bullwinkle's point was then, naturally, that no matter if you didn't know, your box should know what you would want to watch and suggest those things to you (where I'm more inclined to think that it would be nice to open the box and immediately choose between two options - the "I handle this myself" option and the "OK then let's see what you'd suggest for me" option). Bullwinkle's take on it is to have a second screen be your navigator - your smartphone, tablet - and use that for better interface, personalized ads etc. Well, I don't know about ads - I'd much rather have it as one entry into a transmedia project, use it for storytelling... Fine, if a brand can fit into that without messing things up, why not? But story first.
A little while later, Utku Can from Mint Digital delivered an interesting quarter of an hour on TV vs the Web back channel. Now this is one trend being discussed at several sessions here, about The Hills and their backchannel, about the Twitter streams around the Oscars etc. And yes, TV is social, and the social has moved from the sofa to the web, just as @utku pointed out. Fact is that 52% of all people use the Internet while watching TV (and a staggering 77% in the age group 18-24). With chatter being inherently competitive, and much content lending itself beautifully to chatter, this will just grow and grow - so design for that, design for split attention! But recognize that the viewer will choose how to watch.
@feliciaday and @garyvee
The keynote with Felicia Day was a bit interesting; she is an entrepreneur and she's good at what she's doing. Basically what she said was "Do your own thing, find your audience, let them advocate you, have great content, don't sell out". All good advice.
Rounded off the day by hobbling into Gary Vaynerchuck's session on brands. The man is a maniac to be sure, but a lot of the things he says makes sense - brands have got to become humanized; less like that friend who calls you all the time to tell you stuff you don't really want to hear, but more like the friend YOU call when you want to talk to someone or needs to ask advice. Give first, worry later should be a motto. And yeah, like many others I've encountered during these days, @garyvee is a big believer in context. To quote: "if Content is King the Context is God. I'm obsessed with context." This holds true for transmedia stories as well; don't forget the context. And keep it real, true - authentic, not necessarily realistic.
...and an un-cooperative foot
All in all a pretty packed day, not to mention meeting such a lot of awesome people, also at some parties later on... Yesterday evening I ended the post thus:
(at this point I’m going to have to stop for the moment, as foot is killing me. Hospital next I think, which sucks majorly… I’ll be back with the rest later, bummed to (probably) miss the last day)
And to update - yeah, the foot was x-rayed, nothing broken, muscles and soft tissue getting an inflammation going basically. So, on crutches and following the last day over Twitter at the hotel, unfortunately. I'll blog about that tomorrow, I think :). And yeah, thanks everyone who've expressed their concerns and offered help - you're all brilliant. My foot says hi.
Monday, March 14, 2011
SXSW Day Three Round-Up
So, Sunday, and a bunch of geeks – actually a pretty huge bunch of geeks – were grumbling about hangovers and daylight saving time. But, alas, there was nothing more to it but up and into the fray again (and yeah, SXSW gets a bit funnier if you participate in the #SXStarWars game as well – look the hashtag up, some real gems in there. Unless you’re a Trekkie of course…).
Today there were going to be a number of transmedia panels which I was looking forward to as our fully packed shuttle bus was hurtling down the Interstate 35 towards downtown. I’m not sure but I think there were even more people at the ACC today than yesterday; the badges are really taking over town (or at least a couple of blocks).
Creative leadership - pretty handy
No transmedia in the morning though, so Sarah B Nelsons talk on Creative Leadership was the first panel to go to. That ballroom – C, as it happens – was also packed. Guess everyone needs to know either how to be a good leader or how to know if their leader is not a good creative one.
Sarah had some really good points throughout her talk. I really like when people are talking about stuff they know, when they know it from experience from having been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt. Nothing like banging your heads against walls in order to gain some real knowledge about what works and what not, and how to deal with the stuff that doesn’t work. Sarah was also good at explaining this process and her experiences, which made this a good talk. For example, one of the hardest things about being a creative leader is setting the team off in the right direction from the beginning. To do that, one needs to kick off by asking people what they want to do within the project, not just about schedules, workflows and suchlike. Do that by goign through everyone’s goals, everyone’s fears and everyone’s expectations with regards to the project. And what every creative leader apparently should do, is get familiar with facilitation training. There was a lot more, slides are up at http://bit.ly/fRDExS so please go and have a look if creative leadership interests you. You could also look up the #creativeminds hashtag, there are bound to be some tweets still on that feed.
Transmedia in the house
Andrea Phillips held a good talk on Hoax or Transmedia, talking about something that we (and many others I’m sure) are wrestling with when developing transmedia content – to hoax or not to hoax? And if hoaxing, how? What pitfalls are there? There are better ways of doing it – LonelyGirl15 was first a public figure on YouTube and only afterwards a one-to-one phenomenon – and worse ways of doing it – Martin Agget was one-on-one to begin with, which made revealing the hoax to be much more negatively received.
Rabbit holes are also dangerous things. It’s very OK to send a scent box signed by HBO to get key people to talk about the upcoming (yay!) series Game of Thrones. It’s something completely different to send people anonymous, vaguely threatening letters as part of a stirring-up-some-interest campaign. That’s what not-so-nice people do, and you don’t want to be associated with them!
On Twitter we were simultaneously discussing possible Rules of Transmedia Engagement. I think the bottom rule should be “Don’t Be Mean”, or something along that line, or perhaps "Do Unto Others...". Also, as Andrea pointed out, one must always take into account the Risk of Harm with a project – if I design it like THIS, how will it affect the people playing or watching, bystanders, bypassers and so on? Also – do not mistake “realistic” for “authentic”. A world can be authentic, well made and compelling, and making people want to join that world, without it being at all realistic (probably “Pandora” as an example?).
The checklist Andrea came up with was pretty straightforward. 1) is this so realistic that people will be fooled? 2) what about people who see only one piece? 3) what potential ham could it cause and 4) can it get me sued? I will be sure to follow that list in the future.
Examples of storytelling
Moving forward, the Unexpected Non-Fiction Storytelling session featured @zefrank, Tommy Pallotta, Hugues Sweney and Caspar Sonnen. It was actually all about showcasing. Pallottas project Collapsus is quite intricate. He also showcased (premiered, actually) unSpeak, which is basically tackling hard questions through voice over and footage taken from YouTube. UnSpeak is opening up to the public in the near future, aiming at letting them mix stuff up as well and tell the stories of UnSpeak in their own way.
National Film Board of Canada showed their stuff, like the Pine Point documentary which is simply a beautiful piece of art. The prize of the bunch though goes to @zefrank, for several innovative ideas that he presented, like http://youknowI.ly and http://star.me , all craving user interaction. The difference between @zefrank and the others at the panel were, IMHO; that the others made content for the audience, whereas Ze Frank made content with the audience. Great quote to close that session, from Le Frank: If people would just pay attention to the narrative of their possible funding, they’d be a lot more successful.
#tmtm (or, can you make money from transmedia)
Alex Chapman and James Kay, coming from the legal angle, held a talk on Transmedia Transmonetisation. Can you make money out of it, basically. Ideas have value, but not until we have something produced can we lock down elements and key points and minimize the risk of someone else stealing it. There were a number of comments on Twitter on some of the issues. @Fflic ‘s summed up a lot of it: #tmtm session at #SXSW. Lawyers always assume that rights = cash and control. Sorry, Context is king. (to which I added “Content” – great content and great context belong together and feed off each other.)
The TAG Team
Finally, at the Transmedia Artists Guild session, everyone got together in a heap in the middle of the room (or at least moved themselves and/or their chair a bit closer). @vpisteve and @jaybushman did the most of the talking to begin with. The guild will not compete with unions – it wants to talk about transmedia, perhaps do some lobbying for the new forms of media and so on.
To begin with there were obviously many different opinions and suggestions and questions, which is understandable. TAG has put up a website, where you can register and go to the forum’s to discuss transmedia and what it actually is and/or look for a job or post a project of your own. It’s accessible at http://www.transmediaartists.com. There was even, after a while, some love for TAG from a union official in attendance.
Now, much of the talk was almost US only, but the challenges of developing and producing transmedia are universal. I sincerely hope TAG will succeed, because like Steve said: "A success for one of us is a success for all of us, as it helps establish working practices and genre”. Looking forward to linking up the transmedia that is being done in Europe with TAG at some point in time.
That long day was then continued within the framework of transmedia at the Driskill. Now, some parties later and a blog post later, I am seriously ready to hit the sack (and yes, I’ll sort out the links tomorrow for the post; do not have the energy right now).
Some extras
PS. Heard a lot of good stuff about Barbara Vance's talk and Frank Rose's Tron session - unfortunately they were overlapping. A Wired article by Frank on Tron is up here and a VERY comprehensive post about Vance's talk is up here.
Today there were going to be a number of transmedia panels which I was looking forward to as our fully packed shuttle bus was hurtling down the Interstate 35 towards downtown. I’m not sure but I think there were even more people at the ACC today than yesterday; the badges are really taking over town (or at least a couple of blocks).
Creative leadership - pretty handy
No transmedia in the morning though, so Sarah B Nelsons talk on Creative Leadership was the first panel to go to. That ballroom – C, as it happens – was also packed. Guess everyone needs to know either how to be a good leader or how to know if their leader is not a good creative one.
Sarah had some really good points throughout her talk. I really like when people are talking about stuff they know, when they know it from experience from having been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt. Nothing like banging your heads against walls in order to gain some real knowledge about what works and what not, and how to deal with the stuff that doesn’t work. Sarah was also good at explaining this process and her experiences, which made this a good talk. For example, one of the hardest things about being a creative leader is setting the team off in the right direction from the beginning. To do that, one needs to kick off by asking people what they want to do within the project, not just about schedules, workflows and suchlike. Do that by goign through everyone’s goals, everyone’s fears and everyone’s expectations with regards to the project. And what every creative leader apparently should do, is get familiar with facilitation training. There was a lot more, slides are up at http://bit.ly/fRDExS so please go and have a look if creative leadership interests you. You could also look up the #creativeminds hashtag, there are bound to be some tweets still on that feed.
Transmedia in the house
Andrea Phillips held a good talk on Hoax or Transmedia, talking about something that we (and many others I’m sure) are wrestling with when developing transmedia content – to hoax or not to hoax? And if hoaxing, how? What pitfalls are there? There are better ways of doing it – LonelyGirl15 was first a public figure on YouTube and only afterwards a one-to-one phenomenon – and worse ways of doing it – Martin Agget was one-on-one to begin with, which made revealing the hoax to be much more negatively received.
Rabbit holes are also dangerous things. It’s very OK to send a scent box signed by HBO to get key people to talk about the upcoming (yay!) series Game of Thrones. It’s something completely different to send people anonymous, vaguely threatening letters as part of a stirring-up-some-interest campaign. That’s what not-so-nice people do, and you don’t want to be associated with them!
On Twitter we were simultaneously discussing possible Rules of Transmedia Engagement. I think the bottom rule should be “Don’t Be Mean”, or something along that line, or perhaps "Do Unto Others...". Also, as Andrea pointed out, one must always take into account the Risk of Harm with a project – if I design it like THIS, how will it affect the people playing or watching, bystanders, bypassers and so on? Also – do not mistake “realistic” for “authentic”. A world can be authentic, well made and compelling, and making people want to join that world, without it being at all realistic (probably “Pandora” as an example?).
The checklist Andrea came up with was pretty straightforward. 1) is this so realistic that people will be fooled? 2) what about people who see only one piece? 3) what potential ham could it cause and 4) can it get me sued? I will be sure to follow that list in the future.
Examples of storytelling
Moving forward, the Unexpected Non-Fiction Storytelling session featured @zefrank, Tommy Pallotta, Hugues Sweney and Caspar Sonnen. It was actually all about showcasing. Pallottas project Collapsus is quite intricate. He also showcased (premiered, actually) unSpeak, which is basically tackling hard questions through voice over and footage taken from YouTube. UnSpeak is opening up to the public in the near future, aiming at letting them mix stuff up as well and tell the stories of UnSpeak in their own way.
National Film Board of Canada showed their stuff, like the Pine Point documentary which is simply a beautiful piece of art. The prize of the bunch though goes to @zefrank, for several innovative ideas that he presented, like http://youknowI.ly and http://star.me , all craving user interaction. The difference between @zefrank and the others at the panel were, IMHO; that the others made content for the audience, whereas Ze Frank made content with the audience. Great quote to close that session, from Le Frank: If people would just pay attention to the narrative of their possible funding, they’d be a lot more successful.
#tmtm (or, can you make money from transmedia)
Alex Chapman and James Kay, coming from the legal angle, held a talk on Transmedia Transmonetisation. Can you make money out of it, basically. Ideas have value, but not until we have something produced can we lock down elements and key points and minimize the risk of someone else stealing it. There were a number of comments on Twitter on some of the issues. @Fflic ‘s summed up a lot of it: #tmtm session at #SXSW. Lawyers always assume that rights = cash and control. Sorry, Context is king. (to which I added “Content” – great content and great context belong together and feed off each other.)
The TAG Team
Finally, at the Transmedia Artists Guild session, everyone got together in a heap in the middle of the room (or at least moved themselves and/or their chair a bit closer). @vpisteve and @jaybushman did the most of the talking to begin with. The guild will not compete with unions – it wants to talk about transmedia, perhaps do some lobbying for the new forms of media and so on.
To begin with there were obviously many different opinions and suggestions and questions, which is understandable. TAG has put up a website, where you can register and go to the forum’s to discuss transmedia and what it actually is and/or look for a job or post a project of your own. It’s accessible at http://www.transmediaartists.com. There was even, after a while, some love for TAG from a union official in attendance.
Now, much of the talk was almost US only, but the challenges of developing and producing transmedia are universal. I sincerely hope TAG will succeed, because like Steve said: "A success for one of us is a success for all of us, as it helps establish working practices and genre”. Looking forward to linking up the transmedia that is being done in Europe with TAG at some point in time.
That long day was then continued within the framework of transmedia at the Driskill. Now, some parties later and a blog post later, I am seriously ready to hit the sack (and yes, I’ll sort out the links tomorrow for the post; do not have the energy right now).
Some extras
PS. Heard a lot of good stuff about Barbara Vance's talk and Frank Rose's Tron session - unfortunately they were overlapping. A Wired article by Frank on Tron is up here and a VERY comprehensive post about Vance's talk is up here.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
SXSW Day Two Roundup
Second day of SXSW was pretty packed. It wasn’t actually until today, with most attendees present and a full day of talks that it dawned on me just how big this thing is – at any given moment there are 30-40 odd talks going on, and it’s just impossible to go to everything that sounds interesting, especially as the events are spread out over ten different venues all over Austin. The shuttles don’t help much either, as the traffic makes it a quicker option to go on foot.
That said, it is possible to catch interesting sessions. The only issue then being that if you, like I found myself at a couple of occations today, are at a not-so-interesting panel, the option of going to another is not really a viable one, as you probably won’t get there before it’s over. Today also made me take note of Robert Prattens excellent advice – at a place like this, take the opportunity to go to talks that are a bit off from what you regularly do, as the ones that are about what you do can be a bit to basic.
The first session I attended was entitled ”The Last Broadcast: Entertainment is Social – What’s Next?” and featured Brian Johnson, Marcelino Ford-Livene (as moderator), Dr Jeffrey Cole, John Marcom and Gary Wheelhouse. I should perhaps have read the description a bit more thoroughly, it being about how our nowadays connected devices are changing into personalized entertainment platforms. And that was basically what the talk was about. Brian came in with some good points, for instance that the change in television as a media – it becoming more social, more connected, more online - is coming not because it is a marketing trend and not because the industry has decided so, it is happening because people want it to happen. Just at with most other things in society.
Other than that, the panel was pretty dire fare, never venturing far from the field of ”wow, people want to tweet about a show” kind of thing. Summing it up pretty nicely was a question from the audience, a man trying to build a social media strategy for his broadcaster, and asking the panel to help him with some advice as many producers were of the opinion that opening up to the public is a disaster waiting to happen – what should he do? Answer from the panel? ”Yes, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I would not be opening up.”. In my opinion, in a connected world where authenticity, openness and a feeling of ”real” is the currency you trade in (other than the quality of your content, naturally), such an approach is not only outdated, it’s outright counterproductive. To be fair, Brian was of another opinion - "do open up, explain the context and social norms will prevail".
The AVAdventure showcase panel was a step in a totally other direction. 1693 Productions have launched AVAdventure, which is a tailorable solution to engage different-sized groups of people into what could be likned to an ARG or a flash mob. Is can be an interactive live play, played out over a day, or something shorter. It can be about education, promotion, music, basically whatever. People download an audiofile to their iPods and then, at a given moment, simultaneously press play and follow the instructions that they are given. Accompanied by actors and a script, they can play out almost everything, from the Declaration of Codependence to a music video.
It was an interesting talk, to be sure. In stark contrast to the previous session, these people were extremely used to losing most control over things that happened - for instance, if one of 100 participants had started their iPods 30 seconds early, that person was sure to be doing stuff that got everyone else going "what?", but in a good way. It still turned out very well and people had a great time. They’re only now thinking about sponsors etc. I think their way of doing things would have strong ties to transmedia, should one start to explore them.
At the keynote of the day (with a ridiculously long line to get in, almost the whole length of the Austin Convention Centre) Seth Priebatch of SCVNGR fame talked some interesting things about gaming. If the 2000s was the decade of social – connections, if you will – then the 2010s will be the decade of games, or influence, in that case. In the 2000s, Facebook built the layer of social on top of the world, now it’s time to build the layer of gaming.
As an example – the problem with schools is that the engagement is broken. The solution? Introduce status and levels. If school is a game, then grades is a games mechanic. But it’s a flawed one, as it allows some people lose. Instead, look at D&D and introduce experience points and level up. It works to change the rules; at Princeton, no one is supervising the tests. The Code of Honor that students sign also say that complicity is as much crime as the original offence. The result is that fewer and fewer people cheat. You can also use the power of leveling up in this context.
As Seth said, Location Based Services are not commonplace yet. But to get them more commonplace, go more loosely location based, not tightly; it can be enough that people say they are going to be somewhere, not that they actually are somewhere, for instance. A game that people played out in the audience also showed the powers of decentralized leadership paired with a a joint goal and and a countdown. The Game Layer think is interesting, and I believe future projects must take this into consideration.
Finally, on the panel on transmedia, Daniel Lorenzetti, R. Eric Lieb, Louie Provost and Christian Raymond were talking transmedia.
The players on stage were pretty experienced producers and what-not. That said, I don’t think the talk really lived up to the subject of the talk. The panel mostly talked about transmedia from a movie/film/Hollywood perspective. Not much talk of other forms of transmedia, not much advice in the way of how to create transmedia other than hooking it to some other content. All in all, a not too impressive panel. But some gems were to be found, like the fact that transmedia elements can prop up the project where the film Is not-so-good, but the accompanying game might be the best ever. That will keep people attached to your brand. All in all, you have the same customers.
All in all, a hectic day and a day that showed the wisdom of leaving a panel if you’re not impressed and go find something else. After the day we attended meetups and parties, which was nice. Now, however, totally knackered. Will now sleep, to be fresh and back tomorrow!
That said, it is possible to catch interesting sessions. The only issue then being that if you, like I found myself at a couple of occations today, are at a not-so-interesting panel, the option of going to another is not really a viable one, as you probably won’t get there before it’s over. Today also made me take note of Robert Prattens excellent advice – at a place like this, take the opportunity to go to talks that are a bit off from what you regularly do, as the ones that are about what you do can be a bit to basic.
The first session I attended was entitled ”The Last Broadcast: Entertainment is Social – What’s Next?” and featured Brian Johnson, Marcelino Ford-Livene (as moderator), Dr Jeffrey Cole, John Marcom and Gary Wheelhouse. I should perhaps have read the description a bit more thoroughly, it being about how our nowadays connected devices are changing into personalized entertainment platforms. And that was basically what the talk was about. Brian came in with some good points, for instance that the change in television as a media – it becoming more social, more connected, more online - is coming not because it is a marketing trend and not because the industry has decided so, it is happening because people want it to happen. Just at with most other things in society.
Other than that, the panel was pretty dire fare, never venturing far from the field of ”wow, people want to tweet about a show” kind of thing. Summing it up pretty nicely was a question from the audience, a man trying to build a social media strategy for his broadcaster, and asking the panel to help him with some advice as many producers were of the opinion that opening up to the public is a disaster waiting to happen – what should he do? Answer from the panel? ”Yes, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I would not be opening up.”. In my opinion, in a connected world where authenticity, openness and a feeling of ”real” is the currency you trade in (other than the quality of your content, naturally), such an approach is not only outdated, it’s outright counterproductive. To be fair, Brian was of another opinion - "do open up, explain the context and social norms will prevail".
The AVAdventure showcase panel was a step in a totally other direction. 1693 Productions have launched AVAdventure, which is a tailorable solution to engage different-sized groups of people into what could be likned to an ARG or a flash mob. Is can be an interactive live play, played out over a day, or something shorter. It can be about education, promotion, music, basically whatever. People download an audiofile to their iPods and then, at a given moment, simultaneously press play and follow the instructions that they are given. Accompanied by actors and a script, they can play out almost everything, from the Declaration of Codependence to a music video.
It was an interesting talk, to be sure. In stark contrast to the previous session, these people were extremely used to losing most control over things that happened - for instance, if one of 100 participants had started their iPods 30 seconds early, that person was sure to be doing stuff that got everyone else going "what?", but in a good way. It still turned out very well and people had a great time. They’re only now thinking about sponsors etc. I think their way of doing things would have strong ties to transmedia, should one start to explore them.
At the keynote of the day (with a ridiculously long line to get in, almost the whole length of the Austin Convention Centre) Seth Priebatch of SCVNGR fame talked some interesting things about gaming. If the 2000s was the decade of social – connections, if you will – then the 2010s will be the decade of games, or influence, in that case. In the 2000s, Facebook built the layer of social on top of the world, now it’s time to build the layer of gaming.
As an example – the problem with schools is that the engagement is broken. The solution? Introduce status and levels. If school is a game, then grades is a games mechanic. But it’s a flawed one, as it allows some people lose. Instead, look at D&D and introduce experience points and level up. It works to change the rules; at Princeton, no one is supervising the tests. The Code of Honor that students sign also say that complicity is as much crime as the original offence. The result is that fewer and fewer people cheat. You can also use the power of leveling up in this context.
As Seth said, Location Based Services are not commonplace yet. But to get them more commonplace, go more loosely location based, not tightly; it can be enough that people say they are going to be somewhere, not that they actually are somewhere, for instance. A game that people played out in the audience also showed the powers of decentralized leadership paired with a a joint goal and and a countdown. The Game Layer think is interesting, and I believe future projects must take this into consideration.
Finally, on the panel on transmedia, Daniel Lorenzetti, R. Eric Lieb, Louie Provost and Christian Raymond were talking transmedia.
The players on stage were pretty experienced producers and what-not. That said, I don’t think the talk really lived up to the subject of the talk. The panel mostly talked about transmedia from a movie/film/Hollywood perspective. Not much talk of other forms of transmedia, not much advice in the way of how to create transmedia other than hooking it to some other content. All in all, a not too impressive panel. But some gems were to be found, like the fact that transmedia elements can prop up the project where the film Is not-so-good, but the accompanying game might be the best ever. That will keep people attached to your brand. All in all, you have the same customers.
All in all, a hectic day and a day that showed the wisdom of leaving a panel if you’re not impressed and go find something else. After the day we attended meetups and parties, which was nice. Now, however, totally knackered. Will now sleep, to be fresh and back tomorrow!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
SXSWi Day One wrapup
As the first day of first SXSWi is behind me, I thought I’d take the time to sum up a bit about the experiences.
Overall, SXSWi is a nice conference. Nice in every aspect of the word; the organizers are nice – friendly, welcoming, there when you need them, saying the right things at the right time (like the fact that you can help Japan and their earthquake/tsunami victims here). The venues are nice – granted, it’s hard to make a conference centre nice, but they’re trying. Above all, the people are nice. People I’ve spoken to in queues, people I’ve talked to next to me at seminars, just about everyone is nice and happy to be at SXSWi. Which all summed up makes for an über-nice experience, so far.
At the back of the 330 pages thick SXSWi book is a wordcloud derived from the 1000+ strong programming sessions. It’s no surprise that ”social”, ”web”, ”media” and ”meet” are the largest words in the cloud – slightly more surprising is that words like ”cloud”, ”app” and ”APIs” are barely visible. But yes, social web and media, and meeting the people who are doing this, seems to be what SXSWi is about – this year at least.
The two sessions I attended were the fireside interview with Tim O'Reilly conducted by Jason Calacanis. It was a good interview – although Jason had a pretty easy time, as Tim was pretty good at speaking about the things he was passionate about. Some gems that came out of that discussion were for example talks about brands; as Tim sees it (and I agree fully), brands that connect in the right way with their targeted audience can give them the feeling of being in on something unique, something special. ”Being in the club” was the phrase Tim used. He went on explaining how a great idea is great, but it must be able to pull a load of train carriages behind it. Furthermore, it must go where a lot of people want to go, to fill up the carriages. Must be inclusive.
Tim O’Reilly categorized himself as being best at ”recognizing patterns”. This allowed him to think of ads online, of Web 2.0, etc. This is something that can be summed up as pattern recognition = having good notions of what is happening + have a core set of strong beliefs, loosely held + meet a lot of interesting, passionate people + make sure one pays attention to what they have to say.
At the ”The New Frontier of Social Gaming” with Brian Reynolds of Zynga, we started off with a look at social media. Facebook to the notion of being social to a new level – now you could be social efficiently. It doesn’t necessarily mean deep social interactivity, but Facebook is good at light social touches, which is where social games come in.
There was a lot of talk around the subject, but the key elements were that if you want ot make a social game, concentrate on helping people socialize more efficiently. Take something everyone can play, a pretty game, simple and featuring a universal aspiration. Finally, provide tools for people to express themselves. One unique element is that no matter what time of the day you play the game, other people logging in at 3pm are playing the same games as the people playing seven hours later. Now, games should be fun. FUN, according to Brian Reynolds of Zynga, is being provided with a series of interesting choices, where he or she can learn and recognize different pattern and provide surprise and delight to the ones experiencing it. So how do you make a fun app? Prototype it, revise it, show it to friends. Revise it. Review it. If it’s still not fun and ready, try to evolve it further. Put more choices. Make these choices matter more or build a story with surprise, suspense and/or humor. Hide patterns in your content that the audince can find them along the way. Add some kind of social like connection, and / or build a story where I – the audience - is the hero. Basically a lot of stuff that goes for transmedia development as well; if your content doesn’t feel good enough or fun enough, perhaps try one of the methods above? And if you’re not already testing your content on a bunch of people and revising accordingly, start doing so now!
In the evening was an informal transmedia meetup, attendend by a host of peole, such as Scott Walker and Sheri Candler. I enjoyed the conversations, and above all the feeling that transmedia people everywhere are struggling with the same things – sustainability, a measure of understanding from the client’s part, acceptance and a want to immerse from the part of the public…. Still, these are just obstacles to overcome. Looking forward to a lot more discussion at the formal meetup, on Sunday.
Overall, SXSWi is a nice conference. Nice in every aspect of the word; the organizers are nice – friendly, welcoming, there when you need them, saying the right things at the right time (like the fact that you can help Japan and their earthquake/tsunami victims here). The venues are nice – granted, it’s hard to make a conference centre nice, but they’re trying. Above all, the people are nice. People I’ve spoken to in queues, people I’ve talked to next to me at seminars, just about everyone is nice and happy to be at SXSWi. Which all summed up makes for an über-nice experience, so far.
At the back of the 330 pages thick SXSWi book is a wordcloud derived from the 1000+ strong programming sessions. It’s no surprise that ”social”, ”web”, ”media” and ”meet” are the largest words in the cloud – slightly more surprising is that words like ”cloud”, ”app” and ”APIs” are barely visible. But yes, social web and media, and meeting the people who are doing this, seems to be what SXSWi is about – this year at least.
The two sessions I attended were the fireside interview with Tim O'Reilly conducted by Jason Calacanis. It was a good interview – although Jason had a pretty easy time, as Tim was pretty good at speaking about the things he was passionate about. Some gems that came out of that discussion were for example talks about brands; as Tim sees it (and I agree fully), brands that connect in the right way with their targeted audience can give them the feeling of being in on something unique, something special. ”Being in the club” was the phrase Tim used. He went on explaining how a great idea is great, but it must be able to pull a load of train carriages behind it. Furthermore, it must go where a lot of people want to go, to fill up the carriages. Must be inclusive.
Tim O’Reilly categorized himself as being best at ”recognizing patterns”. This allowed him to think of ads online, of Web 2.0, etc. This is something that can be summed up as pattern recognition = having good notions of what is happening + have a core set of strong beliefs, loosely held + meet a lot of interesting, passionate people + make sure one pays attention to what they have to say.
At the ”The New Frontier of Social Gaming” with Brian Reynolds of Zynga, we started off with a look at social media. Facebook to the notion of being social to a new level – now you could be social efficiently. It doesn’t necessarily mean deep social interactivity, but Facebook is good at light social touches, which is where social games come in.
There was a lot of talk around the subject, but the key elements were that if you want ot make a social game, concentrate on helping people socialize more efficiently. Take something everyone can play, a pretty game, simple and featuring a universal aspiration. Finally, provide tools for people to express themselves. One unique element is that no matter what time of the day you play the game, other people logging in at 3pm are playing the same games as the people playing seven hours later. Now, games should be fun. FUN, according to Brian Reynolds of Zynga, is being provided with a series of interesting choices, where he or she can learn and recognize different pattern and provide surprise and delight to the ones experiencing it. So how do you make a fun app? Prototype it, revise it, show it to friends. Revise it. Review it. If it’s still not fun and ready, try to evolve it further. Put more choices. Make these choices matter more or build a story with surprise, suspense and/or humor. Hide patterns in your content that the audince can find them along the way. Add some kind of social like connection, and / or build a story where I – the audience - is the hero. Basically a lot of stuff that goes for transmedia development as well; if your content doesn’t feel good enough or fun enough, perhaps try one of the methods above? And if you’re not already testing your content on a bunch of people and revising accordingly, start doing so now!
In the evening was an informal transmedia meetup, attendend by a host of peole, such as Scott Walker and Sheri Candler. I enjoyed the conversations, and above all the feeling that transmedia people everywhere are struggling with the same things – sustainability, a measure of understanding from the client’s part, acceptance and a want to immerse from the part of the public…. Still, these are just obstacles to overcome. Looking forward to a lot more discussion at the formal meetup, on Sunday.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Transmedia Rising - comments
The JWT report of transmedia as a trend – Transmedia Rising, downloadable here – is a good read and shows pretty well where we are right now, in the world of transmedia (which evolves at a dizzying pace, but then again, what doesn’t). The report does have branding and revenue as core elements in the report; on the other hand, no transmedia project can expect longevity without a sound business model at its core.
I did have some thoughts on a couple of the topics discussed in the post: creating the flow and digital natives. We say transmedia but in my mind we really need to think sansmedia; there is very little we can create or come up with within the borders of a project (short of true telepathy or something suchlike) that there is not a viable technical solution for, or one that can be invented. This is not to say that we should not look at platforms or tools while developing and writing, as these many times can work as inspirational material and enablers, rather than obstacles. But to start a project with the assumption that ”this will be a television, web portal and iPhone app-project” and let that assumption define the story, story world and transmedia experience, that’s just plain wrong. The digital natives experience their content without thinking about platforms or codes used, they just do it. So must our content, our stories, do. Furthermore, it really is not enough to come up with new ways to tell stories and technical solutions for it, if we do not find new ways to empower the audience and let them have their way with the content - but in a way that we as creators can still be OK with.
Coming, as I am, from the world of television (television formats to be precise), this is a process and a way of developing and producing that absolutely MUST be viewed with positive goggles on. It is far to easy to look at ones’ television documentary or drama and simply give up on getting to grips with the challenges of a many-faceted story world with multiple intertwining stories; it is equally far too easy to look at such a project from a traditional marketers’ point of view and simply long to go back to selling those 30 second ad spots for the sitcom you represent.
The reality is, of course, that this is true if one lets it be. I would suggest quite the opposite; that such a project would give a producer a multitude of ideas, that can get an audience to engage deeper and truer in a story and a story world, it can give the producer and the developer invaluable contacts to their core audience, it can lengthen the life span of the content many times over… it is building an exoskeleton of pure titanium on a hitherto lovely but limited story, enabling it to punch through the traditional storytelling walls and invite an audience to follow.
For the marketer the benefits are even clearer. As the story gain more aspects, more details, more spaces to occupy, so will the marketer gain more possibilities to connect to a brand, to reach customers, to advocate the content and thereby the associated brand(s).
To quote JWT’s report:
Now, substitute “marketers” for “storytellers”, “marketing model” for “storytelling model” and “brand community” for “narrative superstructure” and it is very obvious that these are two sides of the same coin.
The JWT report is a good sign that transmedia thinking and development is getting into more and more people’s minds in a good way. I for one am looking forward to what 2011 brings - a year that has already started magnificently.
I did have some thoughts on a couple of the topics discussed in the post: creating the flow and digital natives. We say transmedia but in my mind we really need to think sansmedia; there is very little we can create or come up with within the borders of a project (short of true telepathy or something suchlike) that there is not a viable technical solution for, or one that can be invented. This is not to say that we should not look at platforms or tools while developing and writing, as these many times can work as inspirational material and enablers, rather than obstacles. But to start a project with the assumption that ”this will be a television, web portal and iPhone app-project” and let that assumption define the story, story world and transmedia experience, that’s just plain wrong. The digital natives experience their content without thinking about platforms or codes used, they just do it. So must our content, our stories, do. Furthermore, it really is not enough to come up with new ways to tell stories and technical solutions for it, if we do not find new ways to empower the audience and let them have their way with the content - but in a way that we as creators can still be OK with.
Coming, as I am, from the world of television (television formats to be precise), this is a process and a way of developing and producing that absolutely MUST be viewed with positive goggles on. It is far to easy to look at ones’ television documentary or drama and simply give up on getting to grips with the challenges of a many-faceted story world with multiple intertwining stories; it is equally far too easy to look at such a project from a traditional marketers’ point of view and simply long to go back to selling those 30 second ad spots for the sitcom you represent.
The reality is, of course, that this is true if one lets it be. I would suggest quite the opposite; that such a project would give a producer a multitude of ideas, that can get an audience to engage deeper and truer in a story and a story world, it can give the producer and the developer invaluable contacts to their core audience, it can lengthen the life span of the content many times over… it is building an exoskeleton of pure titanium on a hitherto lovely but limited story, enabling it to punch through the traditional storytelling walls and invite an audience to follow.
For the marketer the benefits are even clearer. As the story gain more aspects, more details, more spaces to occupy, so will the marketer gain more possibilities to connect to a brand, to reach customers, to advocate the content and thereby the associated brand(s).
To quote JWT’s report:
For marketers, this is an evolution of the integrated marketing model: Rather than a consistency across multiple touchpoints, the goal is for different channels to communicate different things (within the overarching strategy), with an emphasis on putting the brand community at the center.
Now, substitute “marketers” for “storytellers”, “marketing model” for “storytelling model” and “brand community” for “narrative superstructure” and it is very obvious that these are two sides of the same coin.
The JWT report is a good sign that transmedia thinking and development is getting into more and more people’s minds in a good way. I for one am looking forward to what 2011 brings - a year that has already started magnificently.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
SXSWi 2011
These are hectic times, with projects upon projects going (almost) too well, leaving me with scant time to delve into things to the extent that I would want. I and a colleague are, however, leaving for SXSWi tomorrow, which will be mighty interesting.
It's great to see that SXSWi features a number of talks on transmedia this year - and a lot of other talks that tie into transmedia, from a storytelling, a technical or a funding angle. To check out my schedule, have a look here (I used Harvest as my tool of choice, just worked best for me) (and yeah, erm... all those parties I have checked, I'm not going to ALL of them. I think.)
If you're there, hope to bump into you, if you're not, I'll write a comprehensive resume afterwards!
It's great to see that SXSWi features a number of talks on transmedia this year - and a lot of other talks that tie into transmedia, from a storytelling, a technical or a funding angle. To check out my schedule, have a look here (I used Harvest as my tool of choice, just worked best for me) (and yeah, erm... all those parties I have checked, I'm not going to ALL of them. I think.)
If you're there, hope to bump into you, if you're not, I'll write a comprehensive resume afterwards!
Monday, February 28, 2011
What Motivates a Transmedia Audience
This must be one of the things that creators of just about anything wonder about the most – will people, my intended audience, feel motivated enough to partake of what I have to offer? Will they participate like I would want them to participate? Will they stick around? Will they advocate my content to their friends? Or will they just turn their back and go do something else that they think is better?
This goes for blockbuster movies, for television series, for indie graphic novels and yes, for transmedia projects as well. To try to get to grips with this challenge, big-enough companies do target group research, polls etc, while smaller producers and creators poll their friends and family but mostly trust their gut feeling.
I struggle with this as well, naturally. I am in the quite luxurious position of having access to a laboratory and researchers focused on media and user experience, with whom we at the format development department work closely to get to know as much as possible about the experiences people derive from what we have to offer. Granted, many times the bulk of work goes to getting the testing itself focused to such a degree that it actually helps us in the development work. But as we work on it, we refine it and become better, naturally.
Something I’ll be bringing to the development work, and to the testing, is something I just saw. This very interesting video from RSA.org, featuring a talk by Dan Pink, is about what motivates people in the workplace. Do have a look, it’s (as all RSA-videos are) very good indeed. Basically what is said is that research shows that motivating people to work better with more money as the sole reward works fine as long as we’re talking only about manual labor. As soon as we go into any kind of task that would call for creative work, the people who received more money worked worse and failed more often. On the other hand, ventures like Wikipedia, Linux and Apache show that people – highly educated, motivated people at that – will work and give of their knowledge and skill, for free. So, what is the reward? Autonomy, mastery and purpose, according to Dan Pink.
We’re big on doing stuff that we want to do ourselves, not things that someone tells us to do. We’re also big on the feeling of mastering something, knowing that we know this thing and we are competent in precisely this regard. Finally, we’re big on having a purpose; of knowing that today is a step along the way towards a goal, whatever that might be – from ”making the world a better place” to ”teaching people”, for instance.
This was the workplace, mind you. I am quite convinced that this goes for a transmedia project as well, where you would want people to interact, to participate, to become a part of your story world. To put it into the categories of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, if you want the audience to immerse, engage and participate:
- You must not guide them too much, or the feeling of autonomy will be lost. It's a tricky task, to leave enough openness for everyone to find something "new", and to be able to make their own way through your story and your world, and make their own stuff there; too much and you have no control (which might be what you desire), too little and you will have obedient people following your instructions (if there are any people left for you to instruct, that is)
- You must not make mysterious content that no one will ever master, or they will never get the feeling of being competent in your story world. Instead, perhaps, leave areas where audience members can become masters; masters of what they themselves have created within the ramifications of your story, or masters at guiding other audience members in understanding the intricate fabric of the story and the world.
- Finally, you must not build a story where the participation of the audience has no meaning for anything, where their actions or lack of actions has no impact and it simply does not matter what they do or not. Neither can you build a story world that has no purpose in itself, or there will be no reason for anyone to engage in it.
I’ll take these thoughts into my development work. I’ll let you know how it plays out!
This goes for blockbuster movies, for television series, for indie graphic novels and yes, for transmedia projects as well. To try to get to grips with this challenge, big-enough companies do target group research, polls etc, while smaller producers and creators poll their friends and family but mostly trust their gut feeling.
I struggle with this as well, naturally. I am in the quite luxurious position of having access to a laboratory and researchers focused on media and user experience, with whom we at the format development department work closely to get to know as much as possible about the experiences people derive from what we have to offer. Granted, many times the bulk of work goes to getting the testing itself focused to such a degree that it actually helps us in the development work. But as we work on it, we refine it and become better, naturally.
Something I’ll be bringing to the development work, and to the testing, is something I just saw. This very interesting video from RSA.org, featuring a talk by Dan Pink, is about what motivates people in the workplace. Do have a look, it’s (as all RSA-videos are) very good indeed. Basically what is said is that research shows that motivating people to work better with more money as the sole reward works fine as long as we’re talking only about manual labor. As soon as we go into any kind of task that would call for creative work, the people who received more money worked worse and failed more often. On the other hand, ventures like Wikipedia, Linux and Apache show that people – highly educated, motivated people at that – will work and give of their knowledge and skill, for free. So, what is the reward? Autonomy, mastery and purpose, according to Dan Pink.
We’re big on doing stuff that we want to do ourselves, not things that someone tells us to do. We’re also big on the feeling of mastering something, knowing that we know this thing and we are competent in precisely this regard. Finally, we’re big on having a purpose; of knowing that today is a step along the way towards a goal, whatever that might be – from ”making the world a better place” to ”teaching people”, for instance.
This was the workplace, mind you. I am quite convinced that this goes for a transmedia project as well, where you would want people to interact, to participate, to become a part of your story world. To put it into the categories of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, if you want the audience to immerse, engage and participate:
- You must not guide them too much, or the feeling of autonomy will be lost. It's a tricky task, to leave enough openness for everyone to find something "new", and to be able to make their own way through your story and your world, and make their own stuff there; too much and you have no control (which might be what you desire), too little and you will have obedient people following your instructions (if there are any people left for you to instruct, that is)
- You must not make mysterious content that no one will ever master, or they will never get the feeling of being competent in your story world. Instead, perhaps, leave areas where audience members can become masters; masters of what they themselves have created within the ramifications of your story, or masters at guiding other audience members in understanding the intricate fabric of the story and the world.
- Finally, you must not build a story where the participation of the audience has no meaning for anything, where their actions or lack of actions has no impact and it simply does not matter what they do or not. Neither can you build a story world that has no purpose in itself, or there will be no reason for anyone to engage in it.
I’ll take these thoughts into my development work. I’ll let you know how it plays out!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tools for Transmedia part 6 - HistoryPin
Short post due to winter holidays...
This, HistoryPin, is a service that was launched in mid-2010 (which makes it ANCIENT, no? ☺) . I saw it back then, in May, and promptly forgot about it until @storytellin tweeted about the service today. Looking at the description of the service, I think HistoryPin is a tool that could be used for quite intriguing aspects of transmedia storytelling. Say that you are building any sort of scenario, and want to build on the history of the world you’re creating – by using HistoryPin you can a) get an excellent feeling for different places and views, what it felt like, back in the days, or alternatively you can plant your own photos, allegedly from that time and age.
You could even plant clues in these pictures, clues that can lead to other content elsewhere or give deeper understanding about some scenario in one of your storytracks.
The only obstacle might be HistoryPin itself, since I have no idea whether they would agree to hosting ”fake” pictures; on the other hand, deals can surely be made, and the pictures available for a certain time only, for instance.
This, HistoryPin, is a service that was launched in mid-2010 (which makes it ANCIENT, no? ☺) . I saw it back then, in May, and promptly forgot about it until @storytellin tweeted about the service today. Looking at the description of the service, I think HistoryPin is a tool that could be used for quite intriguing aspects of transmedia storytelling. Say that you are building any sort of scenario, and want to build on the history of the world you’re creating – by using HistoryPin you can a) get an excellent feeling for different places and views, what it felt like, back in the days, or alternatively you can plant your own photos, allegedly from that time and age.
You could even plant clues in these pictures, clues that can lead to other content elsewhere or give deeper understanding about some scenario in one of your storytracks.
The only obstacle might be HistoryPin itself, since I have no idea whether they would agree to hosting ”fake” pictures; on the other hand, deals can surely be made, and the pictures available for a certain time only, for instance.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tools for Transmedia part 5
There are constantly opening up new services and software that could be used in a transmedia setting, and I will admit it is hard to keep up. So a big thanks to Scott Walker for pointing me in the direction of two more of these, this time focusing on enhancing geolocating possibilities, Voxora and Geoloqi.
Voxora
This is a service that on the surface is basic, yet does something no one has done before (at least to my knowledge). Voxora ties in with your Foursquare account and lets you leave a message tied to the location you are in, a voice message that you can listen to yourself and that others can listen to as well, by calling a certain number.
Now, I have not been able to try this out, so I might be missing something. I think it would be a wonderful tool for just about anyone doing transmedia stuff; this could be used, for example, to leave voice messages for people at certain locations, messages that tie in with some sort of ARG or other – could potentially be quite powerful stuff.
It could also be tied to a viewing of a movie at a cinema, for instance; at the end of Avatar, if there would’ve been a number there to call, where Jake would have told me 30 seconds more of how life on Pandora went on after the humans had left, I would’ve called that number immediately. Basically, Voxora has potential to be of very good use for transmedia content developers.
Geoloqi
This is a somewhat similar service, but handier for a developer of transmedia. Through the interface – a world map with a simple interface – you can drop Geonotes just about anywhere (like dropping a geonote on the grocery store before leaving the house, which means you won’t have to bring a shopping list). Through the website you can also drop notes for other users – just know the username of the user and you can decide where on the map you want to leave a geo note for them. This note will then pop up when they go past that place.
Now, the ways to use this service in the realms of Transmedia are numerous. The only hitch being that at the moment you would need for people to sign up, and in some way, shape or form tell you their user name on the service, for you to be able to create these geo notes for them.
On the other hand, once you have their usernames, you just have to plant clues, information, greetings, reminders or conversation out there, in their geologically logical places. If you’re shooting a documentary, you could concievably have messages ready for different places that were seen in the documentary, places of interest, and have these messages communicated to people who are dedicated followers of the subject or of the documentary itself.
These were just a couple of examples, and more Tools for Transmedia are sure to spring up. In the meantime, does anyone have any experience of using the examples above? I’d be happy to hear more.
Voxora
This is a service that on the surface is basic, yet does something no one has done before (at least to my knowledge). Voxora ties in with your Foursquare account and lets you leave a message tied to the location you are in, a voice message that you can listen to yourself and that others can listen to as well, by calling a certain number.
Now, I have not been able to try this out, so I might be missing something. I think it would be a wonderful tool for just about anyone doing transmedia stuff; this could be used, for example, to leave voice messages for people at certain locations, messages that tie in with some sort of ARG or other – could potentially be quite powerful stuff.
It could also be tied to a viewing of a movie at a cinema, for instance; at the end of Avatar, if there would’ve been a number there to call, where Jake would have told me 30 seconds more of how life on Pandora went on after the humans had left, I would’ve called that number immediately. Basically, Voxora has potential to be of very good use for transmedia content developers.
Geoloqi
This is a somewhat similar service, but handier for a developer of transmedia. Through the interface – a world map with a simple interface – you can drop Geonotes just about anywhere (like dropping a geonote on the grocery store before leaving the house, which means you won’t have to bring a shopping list). Through the website you can also drop notes for other users – just know the username of the user and you can decide where on the map you want to leave a geo note for them. This note will then pop up when they go past that place.
Now, the ways to use this service in the realms of Transmedia are numerous. The only hitch being that at the moment you would need for people to sign up, and in some way, shape or form tell you their user name on the service, for you to be able to create these geo notes for them.
On the other hand, once you have their usernames, you just have to plant clues, information, greetings, reminders or conversation out there, in their geologically logical places. If you’re shooting a documentary, you could concievably have messages ready for different places that were seen in the documentary, places of interest, and have these messages communicated to people who are dedicated followers of the subject or of the documentary itself.
These were just a couple of examples, and more Tools for Transmedia are sure to spring up. In the meantime, does anyone have any experience of using the examples above? I’d be happy to hear more.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Three Facets of Transmedia
There has been an interesting discussion going on over at the Storyworld group on LinkedIn, about transmedia; what should be constituted as transmedia and what should be filed under ”flimsy cross media marketing”, to quote, and what should be taken into consideration when transmediating content. Deriving from that, I felt the need to expand on a couple of points, regarding the three different facets of a transmedia project:
The telling of a story
Transmedia storytelling is, at its core, simply that. By spreading out over different media and by creating a greater whole, we move deeper into the realms of transmedia. What it is, is basically the art and technique of telling a story, or rather multiple stories, connected directly or indirectly inside a larger story world and/or narrative superstructure and/or mythology.
As we all know, this can be done in many ways; through characters in blogs, through exciting and engaging television drama series, through sms, Twitter, Facebook, apps… The key is create the stories and the world, and use the platforms that comes naturally to the different parts of the story
Engaging an audience
The second facet is also crucial, that of embracing the audience and bringing them into the story/stories, to sandboxes or cheese-holes or perhaps even to less structured, more open areas in the structure of the stories and the story world.
This, of course, as many have discussed, profoundly changes the notion of an audience. Your audience is your audience, but at the same time they are your co-creators, investing themselves in your story and inevitably bringing change with them. It is then up to you, the creator, to choose just how much change you want. But generally, the more people invest, the closer they will feel to your content. Best case scenario, you not only have an audience and a horde of co-creators, you also have advocates that bring your stories to people in a fashion you yourself never could.
Financing your creations
The third facet is that of building sustainable financial structures, which have to be re-developed for each case, just as the stories and the worlds are re-developed for each new project. Transmedia projects have so many variables in play, that they inevitably become different from each other – more different than, say, television series or feature films. This leads to the creators needing to re-think the financing for every project; for sure there is a measure of recycling financing models from previous transmedia projects, but there will always be new possibilities in the context of a new project. This – sustainable financial structures – can take many shapes; from brands financing the lot to crowd sourced funding via IndieGoGo or a similar service.
Win-win-win
I firmly believe that to transmediate content opens up a whole lot of new possibilities to turn a project into a win-win-win situation, where you as a content creator win since you can tell more stories to more people in more ways, and get more and better (as in more fitting with your project) money in when you can play with a number of platforms and a number of stories. The brands or financiers win since you can target their message better, and since there is room for more financiers to partake - tv, online, books, mobile - the cost is less per participant with more bang for the buck as the end result. Finally the audience wins, as you have more money to make better content and make it available on more platforms to be even easier to obtain, engage and participate with and advocate for the audience.
The telling of a story
Transmedia storytelling is, at its core, simply that. By spreading out over different media and by creating a greater whole, we move deeper into the realms of transmedia. What it is, is basically the art and technique of telling a story, or rather multiple stories, connected directly or indirectly inside a larger story world and/or narrative superstructure and/or mythology.
As we all know, this can be done in many ways; through characters in blogs, through exciting and engaging television drama series, through sms, Twitter, Facebook, apps… The key is create the stories and the world, and use the platforms that comes naturally to the different parts of the story
Engaging an audience
The second facet is also crucial, that of embracing the audience and bringing them into the story/stories, to sandboxes or cheese-holes or perhaps even to less structured, more open areas in the structure of the stories and the story world.
This, of course, as many have discussed, profoundly changes the notion of an audience. Your audience is your audience, but at the same time they are your co-creators, investing themselves in your story and inevitably bringing change with them. It is then up to you, the creator, to choose just how much change you want. But generally, the more people invest, the closer they will feel to your content. Best case scenario, you not only have an audience and a horde of co-creators, you also have advocates that bring your stories to people in a fashion you yourself never could.
Financing your creations
The third facet is that of building sustainable financial structures, which have to be re-developed for each case, just as the stories and the worlds are re-developed for each new project. Transmedia projects have so many variables in play, that they inevitably become different from each other – more different than, say, television series or feature films. This leads to the creators needing to re-think the financing for every project; for sure there is a measure of recycling financing models from previous transmedia projects, but there will always be new possibilities in the context of a new project. This – sustainable financial structures – can take many shapes; from brands financing the lot to crowd sourced funding via IndieGoGo or a similar service.
Win-win-win
I firmly believe that to transmediate content opens up a whole lot of new possibilities to turn a project into a win-win-win situation, where you as a content creator win since you can tell more stories to more people in more ways, and get more and better (as in more fitting with your project) money in when you can play with a number of platforms and a number of stories. The brands or financiers win since you can target their message better, and since there is room for more financiers to partake - tv, online, books, mobile - the cost is less per participant with more bang for the buck as the end result. Finally the audience wins, as you have more money to make better content and make it available on more platforms to be even easier to obtain, engage and participate with and advocate for the audience.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Phantom - a Theoretical Transmedia Case Study
Yesterday, in a post about developing existing properties towards becoming transmedia properties, I warned everyone to leave The Phantom be, ’cause he was mine to develop. A jest, naturally, but today it actually got me thinking a bit. See, today, the 17th of February, marks the 75th anniversary for the iconic comic hero, who saw the light of day on this very day in 1936. I found an old Phantom magazine from when I was a kid and had a look; lo and behold, the foundation for a solid transmedia setting is there already!
Below is what could be called a Case Study of a Theoretical Transmedia Development (or CSTTD) (happy there were two ”T”:s in that abbreviation, or this post would’ve featured in some quite different google searches) of the existing property The Phantom.
The Phantom has always, for some reason, been most popular not in it’s country of origin, USA, but rather in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Lee Falk, who created The Phantom, rewrote a lot of the background story at the same time as the actual first strips were being publised in 1936, building an intricate setting which almost could be part of the real world as a framework for the story.
The story of the Phantom
The Phantom is, as we all know, over 400 years old. Back then an ancestor was on a ship that was overtaken by Singh-pirates. Wounded, he managed to flee, was found by the pygmés (the ”bandars”) and woved never to rest until he was avenged. He created the mask and the costume, and after his death, left it all to his son, who left it to his, and so on, until today.
Do observe that we’re already talking ”distant mountains” here. Singh-pirates? Bandars? The Skull Cave? A lot of things to explore and dive deeper into.
Over the years – and the strips – the world of The Phantom grew bigger and bigger; a number of tribes appeared, a country (Bengali or Bangalla) where the Skull Cave and surroundings were situated, the Jungle Patrol overseeing justice in the wilderness, the island Eden, where all animals live in peace… strange going ons like The Little People and the slave trading nations in the north… freely mixing 18th or 19th century traditions and legends with the technologies of today, Falk and his co-creators created a rich world and a rich mythology – sometimes with different parts at odds with each other, but most often not – which would be just right for a transmedia developer.
The Phantom goes Transmedia
The Phantom has tried to revive itself – from the movie in 1996 to different features and fan clubs – but obviously not looked at their property from a transmedia angle. Some suggestions I would look at, were I to develop said property:
And of course, there are a multitude of stories, that have only been briefly touched upon in the magazine or the strips, enough to create a whole Phantom shadow world as a shadow of the real world.
I’ll stop here, but I think you get the point. You will be able to go transmedia with almost any project. But some are simply just already made for it. And once again – hands off The Phantom! ☺
Below is what could be called a Case Study of a Theoretical Transmedia Development (or CSTTD) (happy there were two ”T”:s in that abbreviation, or this post would’ve featured in some quite different google searches) of the existing property The Phantom.The Phantom has always, for some reason, been most popular not in it’s country of origin, USA, but rather in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Lee Falk, who created The Phantom, rewrote a lot of the background story at the same time as the actual first strips were being publised in 1936, building an intricate setting which almost could be part of the real world as a framework for the story.
The story of the Phantom
The Phantom is, as we all know, over 400 years old. Back then an ancestor was on a ship that was overtaken by Singh-pirates. Wounded, he managed to flee, was found by the pygmés (the ”bandars”) and woved never to rest until he was avenged. He created the mask and the costume, and after his death, left it all to his son, who left it to his, and so on, until today.
Do observe that we’re already talking ”distant mountains” here. Singh-pirates? Bandars? The Skull Cave? A lot of things to explore and dive deeper into.
Over the years – and the strips – the world of The Phantom grew bigger and bigger; a number of tribes appeared, a country (Bengali or Bangalla) where the Skull Cave and surroundings were situated, the Jungle Patrol overseeing justice in the wilderness, the island Eden, where all animals live in peace… strange going ons like The Little People and the slave trading nations in the north… freely mixing 18th or 19th century traditions and legends with the technologies of today, Falk and his co-creators created a rich world and a rich mythology – sometimes with different parts at odds with each other, but most often not – which would be just right for a transmedia developer.The Phantom goes Transmedia
The Phantom has tried to revive itself – from the movie in 1996 to different features and fan clubs – but obviously not looked at their property from a transmedia angle. Some suggestions I would look at, were I to develop said property:
- What are all the different storylines that need to be collected? Can they be benchmarked against each other and either be removed from the canon of The Phantom or embraced, included and communicated to everyone associated with the brand? This goes hand in hand with….
- Re-writing the mythology, starting from the storylines that have been spared, to get as much flesh on the bones as possible and evaluating the efforts made already – how does it all fit together.
- Which of the canonical storylines are at home in the real world, i.e. which can, as a casual impulse, use for instance the Internet to perform a task. Myself, I’d like to work on the Jungle Patrol and how the Patrol was created in greater detail, opening up their web presence to today’s readers, adding twitter accounts, a continuous Help The Patrol online mystery game etc, and see what other stories can be derived from the Jungle Patrol without directly involving the Phantom.
- How can a storyline (or more than one) be translated to an ARG or suchlike, and where and how can such an ARG take place? The Phantom has bases all over the world and has been on adventures everywhere, which should lend any ARG-developing team a helping hand.
And of course, there are a multitude of stories, that have only been briefly touched upon in the magazine or the strips, enough to create a whole Phantom shadow world as a shadow of the real world.
I’ll stop here, but I think you get the point. You will be able to go transmedia with almost any project. But some are simply just already made for it. And once again – hands off The Phantom! ☺
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