Zen Films

Transmedia Activism and Lowlifes Part 4

I thought it was about time I gave an update on the Lowlifes project. Here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

So… the novella is finished! (fanfare please). I had three draft copies printed using QOOP to check the look and feel and to have something physical to give away to potential partners.

The writer, Simon Wood, is now finishing up the webisode scripts and then I’ll go out to shoot them during August. 

The webisodes will all be voiced by an actor playing the role of private detective Lauren Ortega (30s, American woman of Mexican parents). Any actor interested in auditioning for the role – which is voice-over only at this time – should be resident in the San Francisco Bay Area and should upload an audition piece to the LowLifes Facebook page.  It’ll be a non-union paid gig and probably 1 to 2 days work at a mutually convenient time during late August-September.

The big step forward for the project is that we’re now working in partnership with the charity Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco (www.cohsf.org).  As part of the collaboration there will now be a formal transmedia activism component added to the core three-platform entertainment.

For an excellent primer and “how to” on transmedia activism, please visit this site. What I’m presenting here is not quite as it’s prescribed by the site’s authors (Lina Srivastava and Vicki Callahan) but I have borrowed a good deal of inspiration from them.

The project now looks like this:

• The core three-platform entertainment of novella, webisodes and blog with calls-to-action to visit the fictional website of a story character who helps homeless people
•  A fictional character website (more below) with various fictional but supposedly ”real life” content and  calls-to-action to visit the real world CoHSF site
• A campaign landing page at CoHSF that receives visitors from the fictional website
• Paid media advertising (various)
• Social media promotion
• Some local-level guerilla marketing.

I’ll also be advising CoHSF on a much needed social media and website make-over to better capture support and donations.

There has been some talk of an ARG but it depends if my Transmedia Storyteller platform is up and running in time because without it there’ll be too much work for the resources we have.

Bridging Fiction and Fact

A fictional website will be created for a story character called Joseph “Holy Joe” Rawlings who pays homeless people to report to him UFO sightings. Working with non-actors who have been helped by CoHSF, we shall create several fake “promotional videos” and video testimonies for the Holy Joe site. The people in the videos will improvise their experiences of working for Holy Joe around a loose story outline and combine it with their real-world experiences of fighting homelessness. Links on the site will ask viewers to find out more about the people in the videos.  This will take them to a special landing page at the CoHSF site where the same non-actors will explain what’s going on and why your money is needed for the charity.

We have some quite detailed ideas for what will be in these videos on both sites but I’m being a little vague at this time until we get a little further into the project ;)

And in summary…

Here’s the presentation I gave to the charity explaining Lowlifes and how transmedia activism can work for them. I’m totally indebted to the kindness and foresight of the charity directors for allowing us this chance to work together and fight homelessness in San Francisco.

If there are other homeless charities in the USA or indeed around the world feel free to get in touch with me because I have several ideas for how we might roll out the concept to help others beyond SF.

Transmedia Activism And LowLifes

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Transmedia Entertainment Marketing

Here's a presentation I created for a local client that wants to use transmedia for the benefit of their clients. It's goal is to explain the power of transmedia in engaging consumers in a storyworld and how it's different to product placement and branded entertainment. 

Specifically I use an ARG (alternative reality game) to illustrate how it can work with an integrated marketing communications plan.

I had to hold off making the document public but now it's out! I'd be interested to hear thoughts from anyone working in this area. Hope it doesn't horrify anyone :)

Transmedia & Marketing

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Jawbone.tv

Delighted to have been interviewed by Jawbone.tv 

It's principally about the how transmedia is shaping up but there's also news about the social, interactive, multi-platform tool I'm developing for folks seeking to deliver transmedia experiences.

 

Transmedia Story Development

 
 

Here's something I created to further explain how we're developing the transmedia project, Lowlifes.This is Part 3. Click these links to find Part 1 and Part 2.

Transmedia Story Development

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Transmedia: Platform Selection

 
 

Downloadable Content

• The full article as a PDF and it's also available on Scribd
• Excel spreadsheet tool for ranking platforms

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PART 2 of 2

The first part of this article is at Culture Hacker - it's here.

How do I motivate audiences to cross platforms?

Having decided your objectives, how do you motivate audiences to jump platform?

Digital content can have a nice layout and a URL to prompt action but what about a  live street theatre performance – how do you get audiences to cross platform from the street to, say, go online? Possible solutions with this example might be:

·         flyers with your URL on it (potentially lacks social/real time web)

·         flyers with QR code and Twitter #tag

·         merch/pins (badges)/bookmarks and other give-away with QR code or #tag

·         performers wearing a t-shirt with a QR code or #tag

·         the performers verbally encourage the audience to go online (e.g. shout at them!)

These suggestions answer the mechanics of “how” and assumes that the live audience has mobile phones (so make sure the online landing page is small-screen friendly). But they don’t address “why?”

Motivating the online involvement in this example ought to stress the urgency or immediacy of the situation – don’t let the crowd disperse and hope they’ll connect later: integrate the online component into the performance. Now you’re incentivizing cross-platform activity with the promise of online participation in the live show.

If this isn’t possible or appropriate, you need to consider other incentives ranging from blatant bribery with gifts or prizes to simply the promise of satisfying the audience’s curiosity about what happens next or explaining what on earth the performance is all about.

Figure 3 illustrates a way to think about what you might need to do to motivate audiences to cross or combine platforms. The diagram shows the audience being acted on by two opposing forces: the incentive to migrate (positive force) and the disincentive to migrate represented by “friction” (negative force). By friction I mean anything that makes crossing platforms a pain: increased cost, additional keystrokes, diverted attention, low bandwidth and so on.

Figure 4 and Figure 5 illustrate the consequences when the opposing forces are of different magnitudes.

Figure 3 Incentive Vs Friction: Motivating the Audience to Cross Platforms

Figure 4 When Incentive > Friction Audience Crosses Platform

Figure 5 When Incentive < Friction Audience Doesn't Cross Platform

 In the example of the street performance, the live activity creates attention and a call-to-action gets them online - but what now? Sell them a DVD? Get them to join a social network or mailing list? It’s going to depend on where you are in the project and I’ll address this in the next step.

4. Platform Timing

Unless you have unlimited resources it’s likely you’ll have to prioritize how platforms are released and to do that it will be helpful to define your objectives. Set your objectives with reference to your business model and resources.

Table 5 and Table 6 provide examples of roll-out strategies dependent on different business models. Note that the steps can and may need to be combined or they may overlap. There’s no hard and fast rule – the purpose of the approach is get you thinking logically and covering the bases.

Table 5 Example Platform Release Strategy 1

 

Table 6 Example Platform Release Strategy 2

 

Until now very little has been said about the story. It hasn’t been ignored – it’s been there as a touchstone throughout these five stages – but now is time to see what we might need to do given our platform preferences.

 

5. Changing the story

Think of the story has having two components:

·         “the story”  - the whole world that’s created with all the characters stretching out in chronological order

·         “the experience” – how the storyworld is revealed to the audience (timing and platforms).

Note that the story might be much larger than the project you’re working on now.

Our objective throughout this process is to have the story and the experience of the story integrated with the business model.  Although you started with the story in mind, platform selection has rightly focused on the experience. Now is the time to sanity check the experience and see if there’s any missing story, story that now needs adapting or story + experience that can be improved.

For example, now you have a roll-out strategy for your platforms (the experience), iterate back through the story and looking for these types of opportunities (in no particular order and please add more of your own):

·         Twists

·         Surprises

·         Cliff hangers

·         Inciting incidents

·         Reunions

·         Breakups

·         Conflict

·         Discovery

·         Exposition

·         Reversals

·         Suspense

·         Threats

·         Complications

·         Conclusions

Transmedia and the Independent Filmmaker (Sacramento Film Festival)

 
 
Here's the presentation I was due to give to the Sacramento Film Festival. Unfortunately I was in the UK at the time of the volcanic ash cloud nonsense and became stranded on England's south coast!

Sorry about the sound quality - it's poor because I'm speaking into a webcam from a hotel room! 

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You can download the presentation from SlideShare or download the audio below.

  

Download the MP3 file here.

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
• Transmedia as a Tool for Audience Building
• Collaborative Transmedia Storytelling
• Transmedia Notation
• Crowdsourcing for Indies

Merry Christmas everyone!