Zen Films

Transmedia Round-Up

Having been blogging at Culture Hacker for the past few months my site here is looking a little empty :)

As much for my own benefit as anyone's, here's a list of those posts:

• Moving filmmakers to a transmedia business model
• Collaborative Transmedia Storytelling
• Transmedia Notation
• Crowdsourcing for Indies

Merry Christmas everyone!

Transmedia in Pictures

While writing an upcoming article for Indie Slate magazine on Transmedia I came up with this infographic that illustrates the difference between the typical..well..let's say "Hollywood franchise" that leaves us all disappointed when we consume all the media and a transmedia project in which each media should be satisfying in its own right but consuming all the media delivers that "wow!" factor.

Parasites: Exciting New Writing Talent Joins The Team

I'm delighted to welcome superb writing talent to the Parasites team in the form of Shad Clark. Not only does Shad have a number of optioned sci-fi and horror scripts under his belt but he's also contract writer at EA Games, developing narratives for The Sims and working most recently with Spore.

Shad is a wonderful guy and his involvement really strengthens the project.

As the integration between script, game and live events thickens... stay tuned for more announcements :)

Parasites Graphic Novel: Episode One (Dead Girl)

In working through my ideas for the feature film and webseries, I created this first installment of a graphic novel. Although the character Simon Newbry might make an appearance, the feature film isn't about him. Hence the graphic novel allows further exploration of what it's like being a "King" in the world of Parasites.
Parasites Graphic Novel

Publishing content for the Kindle

With the launch of the Kindle DX and a new cut of London Voodoo, I thought I’d re-publish (for the Kindle) the anthology we put together for the movie’s original UK release. And here it is:

SIDE BAR: Kindle for iPhone
Note that if you don't have a Kindle, there is a Kindle iPhone app which works really well and you can sample some of the book for free.
Download the app and sign in. Then, when on Amazon, push the content to the phone. 

Note too that you can listen free to Stepping Offby Mike Davis read by Doug "Hellraiser" Bradley by clicking here for the MP3 or here for the podcast in iTunes.

Continuing....

Ought to be straight-forward right? Well.. kinda but still took a bit of searching for information and trial & error.  FYI I had my original document in Word 2007. So here’s my insight. 

1. Go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform at  http://dtp.amazon.com

2. Create an account
3. Now you’ll see a screen like the picture below. It’s a three-stage process

4. Stage One: Enter the book details and upload the cover art

5. Stage Two: This is the trial and error part..

In Word 2007, go to Save As.. Other Formats.. and select Web Page. There are other web-formatting options but Web Page is the one I used most successfully.

Open the newly-created webpage – which is your book in HTML format – either in a web-editing program (I used Dreamweaver) or a basic text editor – you’re going to need to edit bits of code.

Each book section was marked with the code 

<div class=SectionX> 

where “X” was the section number E.g. <div class=Section2>. 
Replace these lines with the Amazon custom tag 

<mbp:section> 

The other custom tag you may need is the one that forces a page break 

<mbp:pagebreak />

Upload the HTML file and preview it using Amazon’s preview tool. 

I found that there were too many blank lines. Well after all the anthology had been formatted for a different page size. That means deleting this code: 

<p class=MsoBodyText><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> 

Then, the headers had too much space on the paragraph formatting. 

If you go to a header you’ll notice something like this: 

<h1><a name="_Toc151988948"><span lang=EN-GB>Stepping Off</span></a><span
lang=EN-GB> </span></h1>

The <h1> code is the heading format. You’ll need to search the start of the file in the style section to find where this defined. My file had this: 

h1
{mso-style-update:auto;
mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin-top:24.0pt;
margin-right:0cm;
margin-bottom:18.0pt;
margin-left:0cm;
page-break-before:always;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:1;
font-size:14.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";
mso-font-kerning:0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
font-weight:bold;
mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;}

I went in and changed the margin-top to 12.0pt.

6. And that's the hard part over. Now you set a price, enter your tax and bank details so they know how to pay you and that's it.

Discovering Cool Films and What’s Wrong with Movie Recommendation Systems

The biggest problem for an indie film is discovery. That is, having the audience/consumer know that you even exist!

Sure it’s a good move to build an audience early – before shooting – but after the film has been released and the initial buzz dies away it’s very difficult to maintain momentum. After all, if you have engaged an audience before the movie release, part of the thrill for the film fan is being first in the know; maybe influencing the project development in some way. With the movie out, there’s only so much evangelizing the core audience will do before they go off to find new projects.

Although the Internet and digital media has allowed many opportunities to get your work out there, just “getting it out there” doesn’t mean anyone’s searching for it and among those who are, will they find it?

Discovering new media

There are many ways people discover new books, music or films and there’s a good overview of the different systems here. I looked back at the media I’ve bought over the past month and it’s possible to see a combination of discovery methods at work from reviews to technology-assisted finds to friend recommendations. Here’s a quick summary:

• Gray’s Anatomy (book of essays by John Gray) and Nudge (audiobook, reviewed here) – discovered by my listening to the excellent podcast (radio show) Start The Week by Andrew Marr

• Tech Noir (book) – browsing book section of Forbidden Planet, London.

• Altered Carbon (audio book) – downloaded from iTunes. I actively looked for something outside the most popular titles. The synopsis read like something I might like and it had great reviews.

• The Inbetweeners (TV series) – recommended by two friends. It is hilarious. I’d guess that only a friend could have recommended this because you’d have to know about my social references and sense of humor. I’m not sure what movies or TV series in my collection would have given a clue to this… I love Gavin and Stacey, maybe that’s a clue? I doubt it though.

• The Baader Meinhof Complex (film) - good review on the Mark Kermode podcast and the kind of movie I like (political/historical/thriller)

• Let The Right One In (film) – a friend mailed the DVD from Sweden. It was also subsequently and independently recommended to me by a friend.

• Screamers (film) – recommended by Jinni (discussed more below).

• Death Cab for Cutie (music) – recommended by Pandora after I said I liked The Kooks. I’ve since bought all their back catalogue and these are now possibly one of my favourite bands in recent times; so great recommendation

• Matchbook Twenty (music) – I heard a tune in a store and used Shazam to tell me what it was. I bought the album

Looking at the above list, quite a lot of my recommendations come from friends and "curators" or what might be called "trusted sources" - many more than I would have thought actually. So while I'm about to criticize movie recommenders, don't forget the power of the social network (word of mouth) and PR.

So what’s the problem with movie recommendation systems?

Although many rave about Netflix because “there’s so much choice”, most members still continue to choose from the top ten. In fact, at a presentation by NetFlix, their man told the audience that people on all-you-can-eat subscription plans, members will watch what’s new, then the “classics”/cult films and then finally search further afield to more obscure titles. On the subscription plan, there’s no cost to trialing something new but that indie film is still at the mercy of the recommendation system. Netflix says it wants customers to find hidden movies because customers who can’t find anything to watch cancel their subscriptions. In fact, Netflix launched a competition to find a better recommendation algorithm than its current one, Cinematch. There’s an excellent article on the competition here at the New York Times.

The problem (for indie producers) is that most movie recommendation systems work on the basis of trying to match your likes and dislikes with another person (with the same or similar likes) and then assuming that if you both have the same tastes on films it knows you‘ve seen, you may also like films your doppelganger has seen but you haven’t. In the jargon this is called collaborative filtering. MovieLens works this way and Amazon works in a similar way with its “people who bought that also bought this”. This sounds like a reasonable approach but it means someone – anyone? - has to watch and/or rate your indie film for it to be discovered by others. Further, the more people that watch and rate your movie, the better chance of discovery you have. … and there’s the problem. Even with “so much choice” available, online markets are making blockbusters bigger and indie titles weaker. In fact, online recommenders are killing the niche.

Why?:

• because collaborative filters work better with more data… and where’s the most data? With the blockbusters

• even though there’s little or no overhead in selling “the long tail” it’s still in the online store’s interest to sell the most popular title.. the blockbuster

• fashions & fads and opinions on what’s cool and what’s not are being exchanged faster and wider than in the off-line world and this is actually contributing to an apparent homogenisation of taste… again, tending towards those blockbusters.

For an indication of how perilous life is going to become for the indie film business, look as usual to the music business. In an MCPS-PRS (UK music industry representing artists) study of one download site, from 13 million available tracks, 0.4% represented 80% of the revenue! This is corroborated by other studies by Nielson.

That says to me that you shouldn’t rely on technology to get discovered – especially not collaborative filtering. What we need is the film equivalent to Pandora where content is broken down to “genomes” that enables a much finer tuning and isn’t biased towards viewing figures. One such system I’ve been using is Jinni which claims to be just that. I have to say it’s pretty good. But there’s still the problem that adding a film to the database requires a human to classify or code the movie into all its genes. A solution would be to allow producers to add metadata for their films that did this codifying or to automate it – using an AI program to scan through the film and code it (probably a long way off).

If we can’t rely on technology alone, we’re left with friends (social networks) and “curators”. Curators are respected sources/reviewers: you find a film critic that likes the films you like and then trust their judgment. The problem here is that with more and more films to review, getting a well-known or respected film critic to review your film is very tough and usually impossible without a theatrical release. It’s slightly easier in the horror genre I’ve found to get reviewed because many reviewers are fans of the genre and like to find and discover new material. But even with a review, when someone is sat in their armchair ready to watch a movie, will they really go searching for reviews? No. They’ll find the film first and then check the reviews.

So what’s the bottom line for indie producers?

Don’t believe the bullshit about the long tail and how great it is for indies. With all the DVD stores closing or tending towards selling only the top tens, it’s harder than ever to get discovered.

So, if you’re going to spend advertising dollars, do it to get into a top ten. The higher you can get placed, the more likely you are to get recommended – the system is stacked in favour of the best selling titles and you need to be there. Although there are many sites that will create your DVD for you, few people will buy direct from your site - most prefering to buy for Amazon and iTunes. They're trusted and buyers already have their purchasing details stored there (credit card, shipping address etc.). So that’s where you need to be and you need to work on your sales ranking.

Social media (twitter, widgets, youtube etc.) can definitely help but social media can only work for you if there’s something social about your media. Widgets and trailers are only going to be shared and embedded if it enhances the embedder’s/sharer’s credibility – there’s got to be kudos in sharing your widget.

Don’t be a guilty pleasure and don’t be lame. Recognize that owning or recommending your movie says something about the buyer/recommender – and that “something” has to have value in that person’s social network (cool, funny, concerned). A “guilty pleasure” is a film that someone likes but is afraid to come out and say it because they know (or think they know) what popular opinion is! Helen and I love the film Armageddon but I rarely mention it in my social circles ;) You’ve got to be the film people are afraid to recommend.

Get reviewed. I’ve sent out DVD screeners to most people who ask and I’ve been active in finding cool sites that look like the sort of place our audience hangs out. The reviews help with the film’s discovery but they also give a potential buyer clues about whether they’ll like the movie or not.

Make it easy to be recommended. Provide easy URLs for your film so that if someone does want to recommend your film, it’s easy for them.

Nudge book review and insight into downloads.

I don't very often do book reviews but I can really recommend this one. Its full title is "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness".

I want to point out upfront that I bought the audio version of the book so I didn't actually read it, I listened to it. And I bought my version from iTunes which was far cheaper (by about $10) than Audible or Amazon.

I found this book fascinating and entertaining. The first part of the book describes all the ways in which humans are fallible and how we often don't behave rationally in the way that economists would like to model our behavior. That is, our decisions and conclusions are often sub-optimal because of all kinds of bias, lazy thinking, social norms/coercion, emotions and more. It's incredibly thought-provoking and insightful and packed with tons of examples to illustrate the points.

I was only into the first chapter when I decided it was well worth the money and by the time I was half way through I thought it was one of the best books I've read... er.. listened to :)

So, given our human nature, the authors argue that care must be taken when organizing and offering choices and that public policy makers and businesses ought to "nudge" us in the right direction or at least take care not to nudge us in the wrong direction.

The second part of the book looks in detail at some pretty weighty issues such as opportunities to increase the supply of organs for transplants and improving environmentally responsible behavior. Even if examination of these issues doesn't float your boat, it's still worth buying for the first part of the book.

Music Downloads example

One of the many very interesting insights was a discussion about an experiment with music downloads. The experiment took 14,000 people and randomly signed them up to eight different "worlds" (think "online stores") in which everyone was free to download unknown songs from unknown bands. The results are interesting: songs were more likely to be downloaded the more popular they became (ok, you might expect that) but those popular songs were different across the worlds- people followed the herd and choices were heavily influenced by the first downloaders. In the control group - where nobody could see how many times a song had been downloaded - outcomes were very different. I haven't read the original study but I did find it here ;)

 

 

Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era

I'm very pleased to say that a book I made a contribution to is now on sale - with all the profits going to a breast cancer charity called Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The book has 100 short essays (400 words each) on social media by 100 different authors. Naturally I wrote my contribution on social media in the film world but a strength of the book will be insights that readers will gain by comparing activities outside their industries and thinking how they might be applied elsewhere.

Here's the book widget to buy a copy. Oddly the widget isn't sharable ;)

ORDER NOW!

CONNECT!

By The Project 100

Book Preview

Creating Social Media for Indie Film Marketing

The purpose of this post is to explain how to market your indie movie correctly and avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made. This is a practical piece but it helps to understand the reasoning behind my suggestions. I’ve spent a couple of years now investigating and experimenting with social media on my own movies and not always getting it right! Much of the research and exploration I’ve done has been inspired by Henry Jenkin’s whitepaper on spreadable media, from the Workbook Project and a mountain of social media presentations on SlideShare!

I’m going to assume that as indie filmmakers (a) you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on advertising campaigns (although more on this in a later post) and hence (b) that you want to use word-of-mouth to make people aware of the movie ahead of it being seen.

So here it is: You have to create marketing materials – social media – that make a contribution to a person’s (online) social life. Audiences don’t build their world around your movie or your marketing materials - they take your movie and media use it for their own (social) purposes. That means (borrowing from Jenkin’s paper) you have to create media that allows your audience to:

• express something about themselves or their community
• express a deeply held perception or view of the world
• determine who’s in and who’s out
• conduct some kind of social function – like sharing, referring, alerting, gossiping, debating (etc.)

The problem with the usual trailer and movie poster is they can only work in this way if you’ve got the kudos built into the project from the beginning – like a named cast or named director, maybe a popular franchise. Then those well-known elements all bring a message or meaning which fans use to express themselves. And, media built on these elements has a social worth as a gift or tribute.

For example, if I decorate my MySpace or Facebook page with a poster from Old Boy or La Haine, it’s communicating something about me – I’m using the poster not to promote the film but to signal the type of person that I am and the people I’m interested to meet. Similarly, if I forward the link to a trailer to a friend, I’m doing it to reinforce the friendship because I think this gesture or “gift” will be appreciated and they’ll think kindly towards me. It’s not really because I want to promote the film (unless I know the filmmakers of course), it's what the trailer is doing for me.

So, if you’ve got an indie film that nobody’s heard of, your trailer isn't punching at the same weight – your trailer and poster are not performing those necessary social functions in the same way or as effectively. Worse still, until there’s a body of opinion that says your film isn’t lame, whoever carries your colors is going out on a limb under the threat of ridicule from the community. Not everyone’s ready to do that.

What to do?
First, recognize that you’ve got a problem. Second, break down all the elements in your film that you do have – start with the cast, the crew, the genre, the premise and the subject matter. Maybe the special effects, stunts, car chases? Look for all the things in your film that can contribute to various people's (social) life and perform one or all of the roles above. Third and finally, think how you’re going to make it easy and convenient to facilitate all those functions – the sharing, the referring, the debating etc.

Don’t think about it as though you’re selling or promoting the movie: you’re trying to add value to someone’s life by giving them a piece of media that they can use for their purposes. If your media doesn’t do that then its spam.

So, for example, if you’ve got a great car chase or a great stunt, upload that clip to YouTube and find people interested in cars. It doesn’t matter that your film is a crime thriller or a horror and not really about cars at all, it’s got that chase and that clip can form the basis for social interaction – it’s a gift from you to the car community. Avoid at all costs spoiling the video with urls and logos – put that information in the description field. If it looks like an advert then it’ll spoil the value of the gift.

The media needn't be a clip or graphic, it could be an opinion piece, a comment on someone's blog, insider information (gossip) - any form of communication that adds value.

A point to note when uploading to YouTube (and other video sharing sites of course) is to give the video a title that reflects what’s in the clip, not the name of the movie. So in this case, it might be called “Car Chase on Wet Road” – it’s much more likely to be found by people looking for car chases. They’re not going to search for the name of your film because as yet nobody’s heard of it. You can actually see this at work with London Voodoo: a fan, without my knowledge or blessing, ripped the DVD and uploaded a collection of clips titled “Woman Possessed”. His video views far exceeded our “London Voodoo Trailer” because he tapped into the popular search term “possession” and into a subculture of people interested in possessed women.

Now, of course you’ll want a trailer and a poster but these are there to provide further information or increased involvement for anyone who wants to take their interest to the next level.

Please stay tuned for more in subsequent posts. I've started here with the assumption that your movie is already finished but I'd like to discuss how you might approach the project differently from the beginning now that you know this. And I'll discuss the media we created and why it worked and when it didn't.

Postmodern Horror

In my attempt this year to post more content that’s helpful to folk, I’m delighted to make available Dr. Dean Lockwood’s stolen lecture notes:) Dr. Lockwood is Senior Lecturer in Media Theory at the University of Lincoln.

I've got hold of these notes because he makes reference to MindFlesh and gives what I think is a pretty cool analysis – but more on this later.

The lecture notes discuss a popular horror topic which is how horror reflects or is influenced by the social and cultural changes of the time. I particularly like this paper because it discusses the growth of paranoid horror from what he describes as “secure horror” (I’ve reproduced his table below so you can easily see the difference).  References include The Thing  - one of my favourite movies - which is seen to be informed by the paranoia of the Vietnam war (nobody knows who’s friend or foe) .

There’s also an interesting discussion of Gothic horror in today’s world which I think provides some interesting tips for anyone writing a vampire novel or movie right now.

Secure Horror	Paranoid Horror
Successful human intervention	Failed human intervention
Effective expertise	Ineffective expertise
Authorities as legitimate	Authorities as unreliable
Sustainable order	Escalating disorder
‘External’ threats	‘Internal’ threats
Centre-periphery organisation	Victim groups organisation
Defined boundaries	Diffuse boundaries
Closed narratives	Open narratives

Oh yeah, here’s that MindFlesh write-up:

the central male protagonist obsessively surrenders to fantasy erotic visitations by an alluring succubus, sex with whom is violent, connoted as traumatic and abusive rather than innocently pleasurable. These episodes are related to guilty (and unreliable) memories of abuse at the hands of the protagonist’s mother (there is a strong resonance with Creed’s notions of the monstrous feminine) and it becomes clear that they are not purely fantasy, but have the ability to bleed through into the real physical world in various ways, including manifestations on the protagonist’s body. The film emphasizes the permeability of mind and body, fantasy and reality, focusing paranoiacally on the irruption of a more violent and indifferent universe and the material force of psychopathological (or demonic) impulses. In this film, it is as if the mind were itself become demonic.