I've been out shooting footage for LowLifes using my Sony HDR-XR500 - all handheld, in bright sunlight and night time.
I have to say I love the camera. It's very easy to use, easy to switch from auto to manual focus (which is the thing I do most often) and so quick to pop out the memory card and transfer the rushes to the computer.The picture quality is really nice.
The one thing that's a pain in the neck is the AVCHD files because although they're nice and small, that file compression plays havoc with Premiere and After Effects. It "works" but it's slow and troublesome. It's been acceptable for friend's wedding videos and my travelogs but now I'm doing proper work I needed a better solution.
(c) Use cineform to convert all .m2ts files into .avi
(d) I'd already started editing in Premiere with the native AVCHD files so I had to replace them with the .avi files. Use TexRep to do a search and replace and swap ".m2ts" for "avi" - works perfectly!
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 :)
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.
I managed to catch a glimpse of Mongoliad in operation last night at Dorkbot in SF.
I have to say it was more impressive than I'd hoped and I think it's going to be very big. Not only the storyworld but also the publishing platform that underlies it (which goes by the name PULP).
Rather than me waffle on, check out this presentation from the evening and then head over to Facebook group :)
The photos are from SF App Show - I took them from the Mongoliad Facebook page.
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.
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):
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!
This will be part of the presentation I hope to be giving this weekend at the Sacramento Film Festival.
A volcanic ash cloud has kept me prisoner in the UK for the past 2 weeks when I'd only popped home for a stag weekend!
Undeterred, if all goes well I should be making my presentation remotely on the Spoilrr Ustream channel... which I've embedded below :) If you click the widget you should be able to chat live and follow on Twitter.
It's quite apparent from many cross-platform, transmedia and ARG discussions that managing all the usernames, passwords, digital assets, dates and time for a multitude of sites quickly becomes an exercise in wrangling technology - starting with a spreadsheet and expanding across whiteboards and post-its.
I've been wrestling with this problem for sometime now and I'd now like to solicit help from all the knowledgeable folks out there who have or would like to have a storytelling tool that worked across platforms and relieved a lot of headaches - allowing them to focus on the storytelling.
Please checkout www.transmediastoryteller.com for a look at what I've been developing. We're about ready now to roll out over the summer and what I really like to do is focus on delivering the most popular features first. Please join the forum to request your top five features, email or Tweet me - I'll take the feedback in whatever format you'd like to deliver it ;)
Ps. I've got a better name for the service lined up but right now this kind says what it does on the tin.
There seems
to have been a lot of Twitter and email activity recently about how to actually
go about developing a transmedia project so I thought I’d share my approach to
a project I’m producing right now.
This is a work in progress so this is only part 1!
Background
& Objectives
I have a suspicion that
many readers and viewers – I’ll collectively call them the audience – aren’t as
demanding... or as knowledgeable... or as willing... to consume stories as much as the
technology will allow. Hence, with so many platforms and so many things that
can be done I wanted to scale everything back to do something very simple.
I want to
reach as wide an audience as possible.
Step 1 - Keep
it Simple.
I started
with a high concept: One story, three perspectives – each point of view told
across a different media. That’s hopefully easy to understand, right? Hmm.. time will tell :)
Step 2 –
What’s the Business Model?
I wanted to
employ the CwF+RtB model so that I could give away all the digital content for
free but still get paid.
I'm also assuming the audience
is fickle. Make it easy for them to consume and buy with minimal effort in a
way that they decide. When I have their fleeting attention, maximize the benefit to both of us.
Step 3 –
Story Synopsis
A decorated San
Francisco homicide detective, Larry Hayes, wakes up in a gutter in the
Tenderloin after coming round from a drug-induced coma. His radio beeps – there’s
been a murder two blocks away. How long has he been out? Could he have done it?
His story
is told in text in a novella.
Hayes’ wife
is fighting for custody of their 12 year old daughter and has hired a private
detective to dig the dirty on Hayes to use against him in court.
The wife’s
story is told on her blog.
The private
detective’s story is told across a series of videos (webisodes).
At this
point lots of ideas start jumping off – a MySpace page for the daughter, webcam
clips for the wife’s blog, a web page for the private detective, a Google map
with murder victims on it etc. BUT I want to keep it simple and cheap. Each
media adds another layer of time and energy. I can always come back and develop
these later or – better still – they’re sandpits for the audience to play in.
Step 4a - Mesh
the Story with the Business Model
To meet my
requirement that the audience be able to consume the story as easy and as convenient
as possible, I wanted each media to be stand alone without requiring the
audience to jump from media to media. I wanted someone to be able to buy the
book to read on a journey and not worry that they didn’t have an Internet
connection to watch the videos, for example.
It’s not a
requirement for the audience to consume all media – only that they enjoy whichever one they have right now. Now, given all the attention we’re giving to the fact that there are three
media and that they represent three perspectives on the same story, if someone
enjoys the novella I think it’s likely they’ll watch the webisodes and
vice verse.
So, there
are no particular calls-to-action within each media except the plot points and
the twists and turns of a great story which I think will motivate people to get
a different perspective on events – who’s telling the truth?
All the
media will be free to read and watch online. It will be released episodically –
possibly two episodes a week (Tues and Thurs) maybe weekly... But from the first episode we’ll
be selling the whole story so you don’t have to wait.
I believe that
reading a book (or Kindle) or watching a DVD on the TV is still very popular
and often more convenient than doing the same online. I’m hoping that audiences
are going to pay for that.
The picture above shows the “media browser” I’ve developed to make it easy to consume the
media, easy to connect with us the creators and for the audience to connect
with each other.
It should also work well with the iPad ;)
The default configuration is for the shop to be displayed in
the right panel. The shop has a range of
purchase options from $5 to $50,000 – each intended to pique the interest of
different members of our audience. If you check the video I explain more.
Step 4c –
Possible tie-ins?
So that’s
pretty much where we are right now. We have our own financing to deliver the
project but I’ve started to reach out (although very early days) to anyone that
might be interested in sponsoring the project . I know the subject matter isn’t very family
orientated but it’ll be no worse than CSI or The Wire. To that end, I created a
very short video to help pitch to possible sponsors. If you’re reading this and
you’re interested in sponsoring, please get in touch ;) – DM me on Twitter.
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