A Future for Transmedia

In an article over at GamaSutra the other day the author, Leigh Alexander, asked the very legitimate question ”where’s this glorious transmedia future?”, referring to his view that the gaming industry is leading the social media revolution, and televison and film are slow to catch up.

The 2012 Super Bowl had 17,5 million social
media imprints on one day. That's a lot.

He has a point. (On the other hand, looking at the 17,2 million social media imprints the Grammys generated during one day, and the 17,5 million the Superbowl generated a week earlier, television does make an impact in the social sphere (although not harnessed to any greater degree, more’s the shame)). Transmedia is not ”there” yet, wherever we envisage ”there” to be. We have experimental projects, we have big-budget marketing campaigns, we have art projects, we have crowdfunded projects and any mix between these. Very few of these will have a significant impact on other transmedia projects, as all new projects need to be handled from the ground up as unique challenges.

To the man (or woman) on the street, the term ”transmedia” means nothing. What means something is great stories. What means something is funny and/or interesting and/or exciting and/or engaging interaction with characters as well as peers around content and connected to content. What means something is the feeling that ”I matter in this context”, that someone is listening, that something is created for me, that I can participate if I choose to and I’m welcome to. What means something is to achieve that willful suspension of disbelief, with regards to the story being told as well as to the different media it’s told on. What means something is have different pieces of the content puzzle available on different platforms that I have easy access to. What means something is to have the feeling of discovery and the tools to share this discovery with my friends.

All this can be ”transmedia”, and the development, design, production and distribution (and marketing) of all this is made easier and better by using transmedia storytelling methods. Still, ”transmedia” in itself will mean nothing to the people taking part of the story. I will never sell something to a broad audience with the "transmedia" tag only - perhaps to acquisition people or sponsors, but never an audience - I can only do that with great content.

Lucas JW Johnson had a post yesterday over at Silverstring Media where he talked about transmedia not being a ”thing” itself, but rather could be viewed as an aspiring artform. Or, as Lucas put it: ”Transmedia is a way of thought, a way of conceptualizing storytelling and experience in a way that is not limited to a single form or medium, and at its best takes full advantage of that tack.”

What we have is a situation where we’re still looking at people in silos looking at each other, expecting something to happen. It won’t, not by just looking. Every project is a different one, and I’m increasingly starting to believe that any “best practices” that we will come up with, with regards to transmedia, will be pretty broad in shape. Definite definitions of best practices will be as rare as definite definitions of transmedia itself.

On the other hand, I’m increasingly of the opinion that this is nothing essential. As little as the term “transmedia” means to the man on the street, as little will it mean to all of us creating it in the future. Dennis Crow writes in the comments to the GamaSutra article that “ If a brand new IP could have a movie to tell the story, a game to immerse the player into the world, and a TV show to produce additional episodic content, then it truly could connect with a huge audience in a way that hasn't been done before.”

This is where we will end up. It’s just – as always – taking a bit longer than everyone hoped for.

Transmedia for Companies

This post I’ll keep short and to the point. It’s my thoughts about how companies can benefit from utilizing transmedia storytelling; not only when it comes to marketing a product or a service, but also when it comes to the company itself.

There are many companies that think about transmedia and use transmedia storytelling to break through into the consciousness of the masses – Audi’s "Art of the Heist" comes to mind – and do so successfully. There are others who look to transmedia storytelling to help them accomplish other things, such as Cisco, with their salesperson-targeting "The Hunt" campaign. There are yet others, often with pretty impressive muscle, who think deeply about new forms of storytelling and new ways to grown nearer to customers. Coca Cola’s ”2020” vision is a prime example.

But the use of transmedia storytelling methods doesn’t have to stop there. Neither does it have to be companies the size of Audi, Coca Cola or Cisco who look to transmedia to help them evolve. Transmedia storytelling methods can be of tremendous use to anyone in any field.

An example: a colleague pointed me in the direction of Black Milk Clothing. It’s a good design brand with interesting creations, yet what makes me remember them is the story on their About page. In short, it’s a brilliant read about how Black Milk came to be, the story of the man behind it and his passion from years back, about not giving up and about succeeding through brilliance and perseverence.

This, in effect, goes beyond mere branding. It is the mythology, the story world of Black Milk Clothing. With this mythology as a foundation, if they decide to connect to their customers on a deeper level they have a wealth of entry points to work with and choose from. Do a competition about who can design the best re-design of the first creations of the creator. Create an app which is a replica of the stands where he tried to sell his first creations, where customers can trade second-hand items of the brand… these opportunities, and many more, spring from the mythology sketchily written on one web page.

It doesn’t end there though. Black Milk’s mythology gives the company something to point to to any future employee – ”this is where we come from, this is who we are!” – or collaborators. It’s their gene pool, basically.  It’s a true story (I assume), but as with all mythologies, it could be embellished, as long as the different new parts do not conflict with the earlier core parts.

This then is something that can be accomplished by just about any company. White books and Rules of the Company and such documents are all well and good, but they seldom tell much of the core of the company, the stories it’s built on, the future it might hold. It's also much too common to merely look ahead, when looking back from time to time can help with directions, ideas and future entry points.

Tell your company’s story. Not just with words, but also with deeds. No one tells a rulebook onwards. A good story, now that’s another thing.

Ten Advice for Transmedia Storytellers

Disclosure – the following post is based on a brilliant list about creative photography that Chase Jarvis put up in October, which in turn was inspired by a post by Guy Kawasaki entitled ”What I learned from Steve Jobs”. What I’ve done is port the ten points Chase made to the field of transmedia, as I think they are all pretty crucial points for any creative industry – not least transmedia.

Experts aren’t the answer

Well, at least not all of the time. No one will hold you by the hand and guide you to stardom, infusing you with sublime knowledge and making you a shed-hot transmedia creator. By all means, do hear the experts out; many of them have been there and done that. But there’s no need to blindly heed their advice; it’s you who’re creating your stuff, not they. One good example is the row this week over the so-called ”Transmedia Manifest”, a manifesto which IMHO would make for limited transmedia development, if it was a guide that had to be followed.

Clients cannot tell you what they need

This is true in many creative fields; none more so than transmedia. Nevermind that many clients don’t even have viable social media strategies in place yet; dumping transmedia storytelling methods in their lap and expecting them to make the correct calls all through the development and production process is to be inviting a major headache. Your clients hire you to provide them with something. Do listen to them – it’s their money and their property – but in the end, it’s you who have been hired to create kick-ass transmedia content. And if you’re good enough to have been hired, you’re probably good enough to do the job.

Don’t aim for ”better”, aim for ”different”

(here I’ll just quote Chase straight off, as his point is brilliantly made)

"It’s funny how related “better” and “different” are. If you aim for ‘better’ that usually means you’re walking in the footsteps of someone else. There will often be someone better than you, someone making those footsteps you’re following… But if you target being different–thinking in new ways, creating new things–then you are blazing your own trail. And in blazing your own trail, making your own footprints, you are far more likely to find yourself being ‘better’ without even trying. Better becomes easy because it’s really just different. You can’t stand out from the crowd by just being better. You have to be different."

Big challenges create the best work

Strive to get challenges that push you to your limits. That’s the only way to become better at what you are doing. If, for some reason, you don’t get such challenges, the only solution is to give yourself such challenges. Implement new platforms, try out new ways of telling your stories, work on character creation if that’s something you feel you are lacking in, and so on. You want to be on the edge. It's the best place to discover something new.

The aestethics matter

Chase makes his point with regards to photography, but the same goes for transmedia storytelling. You need to work on your understanding of storytelling, of platform implementation, of graphics, of producing video content, of interacting with an audience in a logical and engaging manner, of handling social media challenges, of composing music, basically everything that is needed in the development and production of transmedia content. It is crucial to know why one method or one solution is superior to another; not only to explain to clients, but to yourself and your development and production partners as well.

Strive for simplicity

I touched upon this in a previous post – the NOT of transmedia – and Scott Walker talks about the same thing in a post fromlast year regarding the ”gutter”. It’s as much about what you choose NOT to do as about what you actually DO. Just because you can do something, does not mean you actually should. Simple is beautiful.

Fail fast and learn

There is no point in trying to avoid failure at all cost. If you want to be different, if you want to be great, if you want to push your limits, you will fail from time to time. What matters is that you learn from your mistakes and are able to implement the lessons learned in the future. This goes for design and development of content as well as for business and distribution plans, and so on. If you do something and it works, do more of it. If you do something and it doesn’t work, stop doing it. Re-design. Do something else. To quote Einstein on the definition of ”insanity”: ”to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.”

Know the difference between price and value

You might be tempted to go cheap to get assignments and deals in place. This might get you those assignments, but it’ll be devastating in the long run. You create valuable content, valuable strategies, and you should price yourself accordingly. Also, value comes in many forms – not least in the transmedia field. The value you create will get you the price that you deserve.

If you want to be the best, work with the best

This is simple but true. If you feel you are at the top of your game, you want to partner with people and companies who are top-notch as well. This is of extreme importance when it comes to transmedia, as partnerships are a crucial part of almost any endeavour, to get all parts developed in sync and produced and distributed accordingly. Ideally, to become better at what you are doing, you’d work with people who are better than yourself. Only people who aren’t THAT good seek to work with people less gifted than themselves; in that way they get to shine in comparison. Don’t belong to that group of people.

Create, and create more

It’s all good to sit around and contemplate different projects, ideas, terms and philosophies. But this will get you nowhere if you do not implement this in real projects that have a real, tangible output. Whenever you can create, create. Maybe it won’t be the perfect thing, but it’s the best way to learn and move to new levels of competence. Strive to get your stuff out there.

With that, I will now go create. See you on the battlefield.

The NOT of Transmedia

Late yesterday evening, as I sat writing on a transmedia mystery/horror novel I like to keep at hand as my own personal pet project – a combination of jet lag and a full moon helps no end when you want to work nights, see – I had a small revelation.

I had written a couple of pages and felt pretty good about myself, so I started looking over the mindmap of all extensions from and to the novel and from and to the story world the novel is based in (and trust me, as with all transmedia projects, these are legio) and a pattern suddenly emerged before me. It had a big fat headline as well, that pattern – a headline that said ”NOT!”.

You see, as I gazed at the arrows and the dots and the squares and the texts, I realized that transmedia is as much about what you decide NOT to use, as what you eventually end up actually USING. As was stated at the Storyworld conference – all stories can be developed in a transmedia direction; not nearly all need or deserve it.

If your project does need and deserve to have transmedia methods applied to them, it is very important to evaluate your project from the angle of ”what makes sense”. I.e., even though you’ve already registered the YouTube channel and you really want to produce them awesome webisodes and put them out there – if all your project needs is a blog, an automated e-mail response system and a novel, then that’s what your project should use.

The same goes for interaction with the audience. I know many who argue that an inherent trait of transmedia storytelling is the activating and incorporating of the audience, inviting them to take an active part in the storytelling. I would disagree, as I believe you can deliver fullfledged transmedia content without the audience doing much more than choosing what to consume on which platform. I.e., use UGC or user interaction when it makes sense, NOT when it doesn’t!

The list goes on, but I’m sure you get my point. Your transmedia project will be defined as much by what you did NOT utilize within the scope of it as by what you DID utilize.

Best of luck :)

Storyworld and the Real World - Five Thoughts

So, an almost overwhelming week at Storyworld in San Francisco is over, jet lag is slowly fading, the heaps of work await and it’s time to take stock of what was learned during the conference. From my POV, as a creator and developer of tv formats – multiplatform, cross media, transmedia ones – here are a couple of points:

The transmedia crowd is a fine one

I’ve been involved in enough startups of different kinds to know what it’s like; the feeling of unity, the stage that Michel Reilhac called the ”Rebel Stage” of ”Us vs Them” (that in all fairness is now giving way to the Pioneering Stage where we’ll see more acceptance of the movement, best practices being carved out, and a route set to finally enter the Business Stage). It’s a good stage to be in, no matter that everyone’s definition of ”transmedia” differs somewhat from everyone else’s. What I like the most, however, is that most people involved in transmedia readily acknowledge that we’re better off thinking about ”Us AND Them” from the outset, a realization that can take other types of movement ages to achieve. Not to mention the fact that all the people I met at Storyworld were quite brilliant in their own way and a genuine pleasure to meet and talk to.

 Non-fiction transmedia is on few radars

Most of the examples and most of the talks at the conference centered around transmedia based in fiction. Of the examples that were presented during the speed pitches at lunch on Monday and Tuesday, only Storm Surfers could be described as non-fiction – OTOH, the background story on that show was more fleshed out that most of the fictional ones. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy good fiction as much as anyone, both when it comes to creating and to consuming or experiencing. Still, I would have liked some more talks on and examples of non-fiction transmedia; documentaries, television formats, non-fiction art etc. Creating transmedia formats for television, for instance, is a process that brings with it a bunch of demands not encountered when dealing with transmedia fiction; the need to be able to repeat for season upon season, the need for financial sustainability, the need to find a background story to hook the transmediated content on…. Perhaps at SWC12?

 Howzabout the audience?

I was extremely thankful to many of the people on different panels – Liz Rosenthal for instance – for insisting that we do not forget the audience at any time. I totally agree; having worked in traditional media for 10-odd years, in radio for many of them and developing 50-odd shows during those years; keeping close tabs on your audience and involving them as often as possible is very much key. Acknowledging this, I would have thought it’d be interesting to invite someone representing the audience, or someone doing audience / UX research to the conference? Again, perhaps next year we’ll see a panel of two-three avid ARG-players/ transmedia audience members paired with one or two researchers in the field, that could talk on transmedia from ”the other side”? As I stated above, the transmedia crowd is a fabulous one, but we might be a bit environmentally damaged…

The art of getting lawyered up

The collective gloom that set in during the panel on the importance of getting lawyers in would have been funny if it hadn’t been such a serious subject. Now, the panel members might have been banging their own drum – I’ll not get into that debate – but the truth is, you can’t cover all your bases while producing and distributing transmedia content without legal advice. Still, there is absolutely no need to pay thousands of dollars to an established Hollywood lawyer, unless that is exactly what you need. I would argue that anyone doing transmedia projects – or any kind of creative work – would be better off starting out with a project that is not of uttermost importance to them, i.e. not the work of their lives, the one project that they burn utterly for. With a less important project, it is possible to make all the mistakes, take note of them and make a better effort the second time around. Simon Pulman wrote a good post on this matter, from a US point-of-view, but most of the points are viable for transmedia people in other territories as well.

 Network of networks

The meetup of meetups was interesting, as there are quite a few meetups happening in the name of transmedia around the world. I know there are a lot of efforts being made at the moment to get all these in touch – which many of them already are – and create new ones where there is a void to be filled. For my own part I’d be looking to help create a Transmedia Nordic meetup, as we have quite a few practicioners, researchers and students active in the field. On another level, I’d be looking to see if a Transmedia Europe meetup could be organized, perhaps as a annual event. And, naturally, people from other territories would be more than welcome. Perhaps in the context of some other happening, such as the Pixel Market or TedxTransmedia? Let’s talk, Liz, Nicoletta, Karine and everyone else who's interested!

All other thoughts I had, regarding development, distribution, partnerships etc, are things I’ll write about a bit later as I force my mind to put them into the right context. Will keep you all posted!

Thank you all who were involved. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you all. Looking forward to next year already! And, yes, thanks Alison, for pulling all of this together! Brilliant!

Guest post: Transmedia - Lessons learned

The following is a guest post by Lucas J.W. Johnson from Silverstring Media in Vancouver. It's about trying to launch a project, realizing when to pull the plug, and using the experience to try anew. It resonates with me and some of the stuff I've worked on over the years; key is to fail, and fail often - and learn from your mistakes. With that, I'll leave the floor to Lucas:



Azrael's Stop

Back in January, I decided I wanted to start a transmedia project, something that I could get out there and start building a following. By then the call to “stop talking and start doing” had already begun, and I was eager to do it. And I wanted something that would be easy to start up and easy to maintain while I worked on other projects. In February, the beginning of Azrael’s Stop was released on the world.

A few months later, I found that the project just wasn’t where I wanted it to be. It didn’t have much of a following, I’d found a lot of problems with how I’d set it up, and I was starting to feel like I was producing sub-par content just to have content. So I pulled the plug and Azrael’s Stop went on hiatus.

I knew that I wanted to bring it back, though. Once I figured out how to fix all the problems -- which might either involve a previously nonexistent budget, or a lot of work. But slowly I’ve been building up those resources and preparing for a return -- a return which is now happening, next week, on November 1st.

The process has been an interesting one, and I think makes for a good case study in planning and execution for transmedia or digital media properties.


The Plan

The original plan for Azrael’s Stop hinged on a few key ideas. I wanted it to be something I could (1) start quickly and (2) upkeep easily, with (3) little budget but (4) the potential to make money.

(1) and (2) led me to the idea of Twitter fiction. Daily self-contained stories that fit within a tweet. Each would be about the same characters over time so they built up a world, but would be self-contained enough that you could theoretically jump in any time. I could write 140 characters a day, and do it for free. Twitter would also make it easy to share, easy to measure followers, and free to use. I also felt it was important that I wasn’t asking a lot of my audience -- I wasn’t asking them to give me hours of their time, just about 20 words of reading a day. I also wasn’t asking for money up front.

This stream of fiction would then be augmented by occasional bonus content. This might be a full short story, or a piece of in-world music, or maybe a video or little game. These would add to the story but not be necessary to it, but would provide deeper engagement for those who wanted it. And I would sell them for, say, 99 cents a pop -- to pay for their production, and ideally make a little money.

It’s the typical indie transmedia business plan -- free first level to bring in an audience, with deeper engagement at a price. The theory was all there.

I came up with a cool story -- the setting is a bar called Azrael’s Stop, where people are mystically led when they’re ready to die. The bartender is a 17-year-old kid who’s seen a lot of death and is struggling to deal with it. the story is about him and the people who come to the Stop.

I figured I was set.


The Result

The promise of using social media as a way to distribute or promote content is the potential for it to go viral and reach a large audience, and that was something I was subconsciously counting on. Because for any of my plans to really work, I needed an audience -- the common statistic for freemium business models is that 1-20% of your audience will be willing to pay for things. To quote Jayne from Firefly, ten percent of nothing is, let me do the math here, nothing into nothing, carry the nothing...

I was counting on the adage “build it and they will come.” And frankly, that’s just not true. They still have to hear about it, and my first mistake was assuming that my available networks -- Facebook, Twitter, word of mouth -- would be enough to get the seed audience to let it take off. But beyond talking about it a bit, I did no real marketing or publicizing.

Mistake number two, as Dr. Christy Dena points out in her video “7 Things”, is that your peers are not necessarily your audience. They’re all working on their own stuff, and while they might offer an RT here or there, they’re less likely to be your huge fans -- the huge fans that will pay for content and spread your project far and wide.

But even were I to find some audience and get some eyes -- and I did, to some extent; I had about 50 followers on Twitter when I pulled the plug, which isn’t nobody (how many were bots? don’t know) -- there were underlying structural problems that actively worked against audience expansion and retention.

The first was a problem with the premise -- if I’m only providing tiny pieces of content so you don’t have to spend a lot of time with my project, then you’re not spending a lot of time with my project. You might read a piece in the fleeting stream of tweets and immediately forget about it. Even if you wanted more, there was precious little to engage you.

Pieces of fiction that short have other limitations -- no room to describe people, for instance. So it was very hard to visualize the storyworld.

Twitter itself became a barrier to entry -- individual tweets could get lost in the stream easily, and as much as we digital types might love it, a whole lot of people still don’t use it or understand it. “You just have to go to the profile page and scroll down!” fell on deaf ears. After two months, I finally added Facebook to deliver the same content, something I should have done from the start, but it never garnered that much interest either. It was too hard to figure out what was going on; it was too hard to care.

I made other mistakes. In an attempt to harvest an email list of fans, I made it so you’d have to sign up to access the archives on my blog, which was just creating a barrier to entry for people to check out the story. I tried running a contest to engage the audience and attract more fans, but that still requires an audience to start (I promised the top 10 entries a prize; I got five entries -- which, interestingly, hit the 10% of my followers rule). I gave away a song as the prize, which meant that the only people who might have been willing to pay for it already had it (“It’s creative commons, people will share and remix and it will spread!”). And by month four, I felt I was being too rushed, just trying to keep up with content no one was reading and monthly bonus content no one was paying for. The project was getting away from me. So I pulled the plug.


The Redo

But I wasn’t giving up. I needed time, I needed to figure a lot out and do a lot of work, but I knew I wanted to bring Azrael’s Stop back. But first I had to fix it.

Step 1: Twitter wasn’t good enough. I needed a dedicated blog/website with an RSS feed, and without the slightly-too-constraining 140 character limit; somewhere people could land and consume content and find out more. I also wanted to be as many places as possible -- to not be losing audience just because they’re not on Twitter. So I got a website designer to collaborate with and put up azraelsstop.com; the content will also be available daily on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, and monthly archives on a host of other sites like Wattpad and Scribd.

Step 2: I also needed enough content from the start to draw people in, something that would set up the world and story before being restricted to microfiction. So I wrote an introductory story, a prologue that introduced the characters and setting and hopefully make you care for them. I also collaborated with a couple of artists to have some more artwork associated with the project, to help bring it to life for the audience.

Step 3: Plan. Edit. Raise the quality of the project. Keeping it as something I could do quickly and easily must not stand in the way of quality.

Planning out the entirety of the rest of the project also allows me to know what’s coming when something might require extra production time. And it lets me say that the project will come to an end after one year -- I’m not asking my audience for some unspecified time commitment. And if it’s successful, I can still do spin-offs or future “seasons”. (The storyworld is certainly rich enough for it, as I’m planning to use it for future projects anyway.)

Step 4: Make it as easy as possible for the audience. Any time you put a tiny barrier in, you lose audience. The website will feature a little teaser video, an explanation of what the project is, and a breakdown of where to start -- either full archives where you can easily get all the available content, or a quick summary of the story so far so you can just jump right in if you want instead. I’m trying to make all information and content as easy to find and access as possible.

I’m also removing the paywall completely -- even the bonus content will be available to everyone for free. What does this mean for the business plan, though? Well, I’m a little less concerned about making money than experimenting with the form and finding an audience. But at the end of the project, I will create and (probably self-)publish a collection of all the content (with a bit extra), which I will then sell. An e-book, and album, and maybe some more stuff I have up my sleeve.

Step 5: Market. Get the project out there more. Get it in front of people. Talk it up in guest posts. ^_^


* * *


You can’t count on social media to do your work for you. You can’t rush into something and assume it will work.

Look at it from an audience perspective. Imagine all of your possible audience members. Build it for them.

Make a quality product, and spread it widely.

And always keep re-evaluating the project. Fix it if it’s broken. Who knows, maybe I’ll be back here in four months, with new lessons learned.

Azrael’s Stop will re-launch on November 1st at azraelsstop.com.

Disciplines merging in transmedia

One of the most interesting and at the same time most challenging aspects of transmedia is getting everything to gel flawlessly. It was pretty hard back in the days of interactive television (try telling an MHP programmer that the interactive set-top-box-game he was programming would need to a) look like the rest of the graphics on the show and feel like a natural part of the show, b) be confined to a certain part of the screen abd a certain size to accommodate for video feed on rest of the screen and c) take the show into consideration, not just work on its’ own…phew!) and it’s still a pretty daunting proposition.

It’s extremely important to identify which platforms make sense to use when developing a transmedia project. This in and of itself will give you some minor headaches. Why not use all of them? You really should build an app, or should you? It is a process that needs to be done, and done thoroughly. Will you be launcing and ARG of some kind? Will you have live events? Are you looking at drama webisodes, or do you need television or newspapers or even billboards to cut through to your audience? How about social media, e-mail and so on? The better you know your story (and your target audience!), the better you can choose platforms. The better and quicker you choose platforms, the easier you will have to find the right people to partner with, another crucial part of any transmedia project.

In a post called The Transmedia Manifest the so called High Flyers group, appointed by the Frankfurt Book Fair, took a look at how stories will be taught in the future. It’s a good manifest, encompassing most of the features that make transmedia methods so effective to use in a disrupted media landscape. The 11th thesis of the manifest reads:

Collaborative work
The story-universe is developed in collaboration by a versatile and interdisciplinary team, whose range of skills can meet the demands of experience-based storytelling.

In my book, all the other points of the manifest are dependant on this one. There will be no intriguing multiplatform story, if you can’t get the right people in to produce, program and create for the different platforms. There will be no ”taking advantage of the strenghts of a medium” if you or someone else your team does not fully understand and master the different media that are to be used.

Nick DeMartino wrote an interesting article the other day, looking at transmedia through the goggles of classic media scolar Marshall McLuhan. His pronouncement that ”the medium is the message” is one that media students all around the world have been indoctrinated with for decades, and in many a way it’s still an apt description of where we are today. That makes it even more crucial to create partnerships around the development of a transmedia project, to fully understand the media involved and thereby be able to convey the message, the story.

To wrap up this short post, I’ll readily acknowledge that things are not as bad as they were some 5-6 years ago, when my role as a creator and producer to a large extent meant acting as a translator between writers/directors and programmers. Today most writers and directors (at least those who have been working with multiplatform content development) understand the importance of knowing the possibilities and limitations of other media platforms outside their own main field of interest. Vice versa, most programmers can look at examples and best practices from previous campaigns and see how the tech and the software can bring about a much more engaging and immersive experience if integrated with the story from the beginning, taking into account all the demands and the possibilities the story and the mythology brings with them to the table.

And to finally conclude; if I could wish for one little thing, it’d be something like the collaborative film community at Wreckamovie, only for transmedia projects. Anyone?

Transmedia - 13 months and counting

Greatly inspired by Laura Flemings post "My Year In Transmedia" I realized it’s been over a year since my eyes were opened to transmedia storytelling as a way of developing and distributing stories. Since then I’ve happily embraced transmedia (as I define it (a definition that can be found at the end of this post, so as not to distract from the rest of the post)) in almost every project I’ve been working on. Looking back, I thought it’d be nice to do a wrap-up of sorts.

Background

Briefly about where I come from – I’ve worked in media since the late 80s, when I as a teenager started out in radio. Since then I’ve worked for newspapers, television and for over seven years as a radio show host, editor and producer. I’ve lost count of how many shows I’ve developed over the years, but 50 might be a fairly correct number. I’ve always preferred the immediate and quick nature of radio (not to mention the instant feedback and the interaction with the audience) compared to the more cumbersome nature of television, or the ”telling people what happened yesterday” nature of newspapers (although I love writing).

In 2005 I transferred to my current position as a format developer, originally for interactive television formats (an AFDESI Award nominated quiz show with set-top-box interactivity and live Java-powered mobile phone interactivity tied to the broadcast stream one of the first efforts) but quickly moved on to cross media formats (where our children’s language training game show ”The Space Trainees” was nominated for a Digital iEmmy in 2010). So, that’s where I was in 2010, when I applied for, and got accepted to, the Pixel Lab in Cardiff.

Transmedia – the first contact

I’d blogged some stuff about transmedia (or T-Media as I, for some reason, had called it at the time) but had never really gotten my mind around the concept in a way that made sense to me. The week in Cardiff changed all that. For the first time I understood how powerful a concerted effort over several media can be when trying to tell a story and engage an audience. While there were many brilliant tutors and experts attending – Steve Peters, Michel Reilhac, Christy Dena and so on – I remain deeply indebted to Jeff Gomez. His one hour long presentation, telling about ”the notion of distant mountains”, of mythologies, narrative superstructures and canon is what made my mind click into the right places, all at once.

THE PIXEL LAB 2010 - Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment - Creating Blockbuster Worlds & Transmedia Production

View more presentations from power to the pixel

Jeff's presentation (minus some "secret" slides)

I came back from Cardiff, mind ablaze with ideas and an urge to convey said ideas and concepts to my colleagues, to get everyone on the same page and develop what we’d been working on so far. Easier said than done, I can report in hindsight, but since then, as I said, I’ve integrated the transmedia mindset into almost all projects I’ve been involved in.

Transmedia everywhere

As I see it, almost every aspect of a professional life can be aided by approaching it from a transmedia point of view. Even such a thing as your company’s profile will benefit; traditionally, you are very much supposed to think about what your company is and what it represents, what are your key strengths and what are your strategies. But how to tell the story (or stories) of your company, that’s something that’s often neglected. By transmediating this process – by creating and documenting the mythology of your company, the stories of your personnel and your products, ny carefully thinking about the consumer’s entry points into your company, you can create a coherent whole, that everyone in your company can communicate to anyone outside of your company in the same way, keeping everything intact and keeping the image of your brand within the desired frames.

Building this kind of mythology can also help in unexpected ways when it comes to future strategies (”how does this future possibility fit into our mythology?”) and even product development (”what’s the story of the new product we are about to create?”). For instance, look at Apple’s three year old promotional videos for the first aluminium cased MacBooks – they ooze this kind of storytelling. Now, apply this over different media, using the exact media most applicable for the story you want to tell… you’re there.


Example: The story of the MacBook.

Thinking, developing and blogging

I had been blogging on and off for several years, but in October of last year I felt an urge to start documenting the aha!-moments and the thoughts arising from the development work I was doing. My first post was one aptly called ”Musings on transmedia development”, which I still think fits the bill 100%. Since then I’ve blogged from conferences and s eminars, from fair trades and academical get-togethers; always with transmedia at the forefront.

Funny thing was, whereever I looked, I could see transmedia possibilites. Jeff had talked about using transmedia to create a symphony of stories and narratives; in a post called ”Creating A Transmedia Symphony” I playfully took some online advice on how to create a musical symphony and put all the advice into a transmedia context. It actually worked a treat!

As always, there is a sizeable gap between thinking, talking and writing about something and actually doing and producing something. I was in the fortunate position of being able to do both, as we were working on transmedia development all through the last year, while I was also working on a project of my own (still under development ☺ ), and most of the conclusions I’ve come to, I been conveying via my blog, which at the same time functioned (and still do) as my development notebook, to which I can go back and check on previous thoughts and mirror them on current development issues.

The Network of Transmedia

As with many niche professions, transmedia people are still fairly few and far between. The power of social media and most predominantly Twitter has made it possible to discuss with and learn from some extremely brilliant minds in the field of transmedia. I’ve been most fortunate to be able to travel from Finland to meet some of these people in person, be it at the MIPs or at the Pixel Lab, at SXSW (where the discussion on the term ”transmedia” really took off (and one I won’t be trying to solve in this post thank you very much ☺)) and MPBS. There’s no point in me dropping names here; suffice to say that the network of transmedia professionals is a most generous and caring (not to mention funny, witty, intelligent and creative) bunch of people, one that makes it a joy to browse through the #transmedia Twitter feed every morning. It is also most encouraging to see how many transmedia projects are in development, getting funded on Kickstarter, getting the backing of major broadcasters, brands and studios…

The future

In the past few days I’ve received some notions that transmedia might be vaning. There are conference people debating on whether to include a panel on transmedia or not, there’s industry people fed up with the buzzword. More than a year on from my ”transmedia awakening”, I’m not the least worried. As I see it, the buzzword ”transmedia” might ultimately become redundant, as people (especially people who are supposed to pay for all of it) become fed up with a term that can span basically anything. The buzzword might disappear, but the practice of creating, developing and producing transmedia content, that's a practice that will just become more and more vital, interesting and necessary.


Transmedia: the art and practice of telling stories on multiple platforms. connected via a common story world and mythology, offering different entry points into the same and deepening an audience's engagement and immersion via interactivity and compelling content. This can be one story with different aspects spread over different media, or multiple stories, set in the same world or with the same characters involved. Simple as that.

Transmedia and multiplatform business

I am currently attending the Multiplatform Business School in Ronda, Spain, a five day workshop on, well, how to do business in an age of multiplatform content. It’s been some highly instructive five days, with something like 9-10 projects participants brought to the workshop being constructively criticized and developed further in a timely fashion. An NDA prevents me from going into these projects in any greater detail, but there could quite possibly be some really interesting projects appearing from this group in the coming year.

I usually keep my transmedia goggles as necessary, which it was, for the most part, this week. Looking at transmedia from the business angle is, for me, one of the most interesting ones. As I see it, unless you either have got the backing of a) a governmental fund for an educational transmedia project or one that helps the society in some way or b) a chunk of money from the marketing budget of a film or a tv series or a brand, you will want to be able to create something that can generate revenue in the future, revenue enough for you to be able to keep your transmedia project going, develop it further and/or have money to make the next project you want to do.

It’s basically just like any other business; you wouldn’t be manufacturing shoes unless you were pretty sure you can sell them for a profit. Likewise, I don’t think it makes sense to develop and produce an elaborate transmedia project unless you can see it generating enough revenue for it to be worth it for you (artistic efforts aside, as I can see that happening to an extent).

The five days here in Ronda have given me some thoughts on precisely this matter, some of which I though it prudent to share here (and perhaps initiate a discussion that will let everyone learn more regarding this area):

- Partnerships are important. I could probably rephrase that – partnerships are crucial (unless you’re a mega-huge company, which precious few of us are). When you’ve developed your transmedia idea or project to a level where you can clearly see how it would play out, and once you have material to show and a selling pitch and feel comfortable enough to talk about your project with possible partners, make a real effort to identify the right ones. You might want to partner with a marketing or media agency to find the right brands to work with, you might want to partner with a production company to gain more muscle behind your project, you might want to hook up with an app developer to create the app that is crucial for your project… the possibilities are many. You can find these through Google, through industry contacts and so on; the crucial thing would be to pinpoint WHAT you need and WHOM you’d want to partner with to do it (yeah, and IN WHAT ORDER). Basically: all the areas that you feel you do not master, consider a partner (and take these in the right order; you’re in a more advantageous position when you deal with a brand, for instance, if you have a strong distribution partner lined up already).

- The fragmented media world is a familiar concept for everyone. The challenges are many; how to stand out from the crowd and get noticed, how to keep the audience engaged and immersed, how to communicate in a way that does not clash with the tone and feel of the other parts of the project and so on. But to this comes the challenge on how to make money off of all of this. Getting sponsors in is a way (but make sure your value proposition is an attractive one when dealing with them or you won’t hook them), while other possible ways include app purchases, extra types of content accessible in exchange for FB credits… Something as simple as a Paypal button or perhaps even a Kickstarter campaign for some certain aspect of the project could also be effective. But still, all of these need to serve the needs of your story and your mythology, not just your wallet; consider carefully what will be the right solution for you.

- ”Transmedia” as a term is still – unsurprisingly – something that people, also the ones in the industry, have widely different views on. On every aspect for that matter – what it is, why it is, how it should be done, what the advantages are… So, my advice would be – do, by all means, name your project a transmedia one, but make sure your pitch and presentation is clear and without glitches. It’s just so much easier for buyers to say ”No” than ”Yes”, and ”transmedia” is a term that possibly can make people feel unsure about what they’re actually being pitched.

There was a helluva lot of other stuff as well – the importance of emotion in your project, the impact of mobile… Which I’ll be happy to write about a bit later.

The ”Why” of Transmedia

I’m thrilled to see a great many transmedia projects springing up all around the world, in different settings; from marketing campaigns for blockbusters and tv series to crowdsourced international mystery-stories, from web based crime fiction projects to socially engaged documentaries – the powers of transmedia storytelling are being grasped and acted upon my a steadily increasing number of practitioners. The like-button is firmly pressed for my part.

One thing I myself have found to be of great importance to keep in mind when developing stories and content for a transmedia project is the simple question ”why”? It might sound naive, but believe me, it can at times be a hard question to answer, at least in a way that would satisfy yourself, let alone anyone you would like to invest in your project.

A simple ”because I (or we) can” just does not cut it. That’s a sure-fire way of developing something that doesn’t fit together in the seamless and logical way that’s crucial for any transmedia project. There are just too many pitfalls along the way; there is no need to go digging them yourself.

”Because it’s cool” or "because it's what everyone is doing nowadays" are hardly better reasons. Yes, it will be cool, providing you get it right. Chances are you won’t, and it will not, therefore, be particularly cool. Yes, many others are doing it. This does not mean that you, necessarily, should be doing it as well.

If it’s a transmedia marketing campaign for a release of some kind, that makes it infinitely easier. It’s ”to raise awareness of this particular property” or ”to make people engage in the content and get more viewers in through word-of-mouth”. In this sense you know what you’re aiming for and your results are possible to observe, analyze and draw conclusions from.

Another reason, especially if we are talking about a transmedia campaign connected to an existing property (the new Pottermore instalment might be an example) can be ”to extend the storyworld and offer more content to an engaged audience”. This is a reason that probably could be adapted to most transmedia projects, and in that sense needs more clarification – is it ”to offer alternative or complementary stories set in the original storyworld”? Or is it ”to give the audience a playing field, a sandbox, intended for user generated content”? Is it something else?

It can also be ”to explain the background and the history of the main property in the story” or ”to expand on the mythology through new stories” or even ”to act as a behind-the-scenes view of the main property” (especially in the case of transmedia documentaries).

Whatever reason you have for developing transmedia content (and the answers to the ”why?” above are probably as many and as diverse as the number of transmedia projects in existence), ”Why?” remains a good question to ask, at any point of the development, production and execution phase.

PS. It was swiftly pointed out to me that one - perhaps one of the most central - reason for transmedia would be "to generate revenue" and in the long run "to increase the value of the IP". I will concur, although I will add that at the moment I think most of the transmedia projects we are seeing are pretty happy just to break even. Thanks Simon Pulman for pointing it out. DS

Transmedia, Time and Context

I’ve been totally bogged down with work the past few weeks. Sat in front of Final Cut Pro for most of the time, alternating with meetings and social media strategy planning... I can now confidently say that you can NEVER be too prepared to launch a new project. You can also NEVER be too ready to adapt to things that happen around you, that will influence the story you’re trying to tell. We’re up now, though, here, with the first installment. Working on the rest as we speak.

This in turn has led to me not being able to keep up with all the excellent posts on Twitter, all the new projects and seminars and meetups etc springing up all over the world. Will now try to make amends, not guaranteeing anything though!

Still, a couple of posts got my mind working overtime these past couple of days. Andrea Phillips wrote an excellent post on Time and Transmedia, highlighting the challenges facing anyone working in different time periods within a story, in a real world where viewers can start experiencing that story from just about any point possible. In the comments, Scott Walker pointed me to a post of his that I’d missed last year, on the challenges and possibilities of collaborative transmedia storytelling. Many good points, and with so many people moving into the field of transmedia from numerous different angles, these posts are simply required reading.

My point of view on these matters come from the field of creating a transmedia experience from scratch, without any previous brand or franchise to fall back on. It is an experience that is unfolding in real time, which at the same time will live and prosper drawing on the power of the long tail. In this context, context is, as we have found, crucial. There will be many people entering the story from many different angles, and the story might have unfolded to just about any point. As I see it, there are some points that need to be taken into consideration:

- The foundation needs to be solid. In order to attain this, you must have a grasp of the time line of the project, and a general notion of the story archs and the schedules involved. At the same time, you cannot lock everything into place (at least not with a project like ours, that is expected to run and run) or you will be stifled.

- The foundation needs to be communicated clearly and without any discrepancies. This goes for communicating outside the team producing the content as well as within the team. In this matter, the task of simplifying is crucial. Test and try and test again; if the story world and the basis for the stories you are about to create and tell people is blurry, press the ”sharpen” button immediately. This is not to say that everything needs to be told from the start – quite the contrary – but everyone involved, be it a viewer, a user, a programmer, a writer… everyone needs to see the same thing when they look at your story world and your story.

- Once this is achieved, you need to drop the reins, but give some clear options on how to interact, how to create within your world etc. This goes when it comes to letting an audience interact and create, but also when it comes to not locking down people on the project, but instead give them the right tools and the motivation to, themselves, create and interact within your project. It is nigh impossible to put all this on one person’s shoulders – much better (and much more true!) to give key people the mandate to interact with each other and with the audience, within the context of your story and story world. You’d be amazed at what springs up.

- Finally – don’t panic! With most projects you’ll be involved in that are of a more documentary type – like ours – there will be humans involved. Everyone will also know that there are humans involved. Everyone also knows that humans make mistakes. Mistakes can even be beneficial, as long as you handle them in a way that makes sense within the context of your story and your story world. In a life-affirming, warm story and world, you laugh it off and the audience laughs with you. In a dark and brooding and violent story arc, you behead someone on the team with a vicious snarl towards the audience, and the audience winces in terror but nods knowingly (and this is purely fictional then, of course. If you really behead someone on your team and refers to this post in your defense, I will not be held responsible).

All in all, there are soooo many aspects to think about. I won’t even go into the challenges of interacting with different brands and companies, all with their own strategies, or interacting with collaborators, also with their own strategies, as such instances are merely on a case-by-case basis. I will, however, report on findings along the way. And, yeah – comments are open.

Transmedia methods, when and where to use them...

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 :)

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??

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.

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!! ;)

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:

«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? ☺

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:

” 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 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."

The many requirements

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!

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.