Alice Born Digital: How Transmedia Storytelling Becomes a Billion Dollar Business

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Kate Pullinger, Chris Joseph, and Ian Harper are the creators of Inanimate Alice, a multimedia interactive fiction that follows the story of a girl who we first encounter at age 8 searching for her father in China. As the story progresses, Alice travels the world with her parents, goes to high school and joins a game design company after university as an animator and game designer. The backbone of the story is 'her relationship with her digital friend, Brad', which sounds tantalizing.

The project has educational aims to to act as a literacy stimulus and to introduce a 10-14 audience to digital literacy, and digital tools for storyboarding, animation, and game design. To date, students have created 'next episodes' that can be found here: http://aliceandfriends.wikispaces.com/

So far, 4 episodes are online with another 6 episodes to follow. What really interests me is the intention to build both story and interactive complexity with each episode as Ian Harper describes here:

'...we envisioned each episode becoming more interactive and complex than the one before, thus reflecting Alice’s character growth and her developing skills as an animator and computer game designer.

To date, we have completed and made available four episodes online. The first five episodes of the series use manipulated still images to form the backdrop. With episodes six and seven we will shift gears, upping the tempo with digital video to achieve a racier, grittier feel. For the final episodes we will shift formats again, this time using a 3-D game engine as we delve ever deeper into Alice’s extraordinary world.'

There's a short interview with Kate Pullinger on the Bookish Dilettante blog here:

http://bit.ly/64DlZM

Evolutionary Entertainment: A 5-stage Development Process for Transmedia Projects « Culture Hacker

By robert pratten, April 21st, 2010

The key to creating a great transmedia project is to see it as a living, breathing, evolving entity. Even though my preference is always to plan rather than wing it, trying to find all the pieces of the puzzle from the start can be exhausting, demoralizing and may later prove to be misplaced. Right now all media and entertainment experiences are built on shifting sands: better not to be locked in to one particular set of ideas if you don’t have to be.

The figure below expands on the transmedia business model to incorporate the idea of “evolutionary entertainment” – that is, entertainment that evolves. It evolves with time, technology, audience preferences, financing and your story. Adopting this approach will keep you open to new opportunities.

Evolutionary Approach to Transmedia Entertainment

Not only do I suggest that the “live” transmedia project evolves but also that it’s possible to use this evolutionary approach to development.

Five Stage Development Process

I’ve identified five key elements to a transmedia project:

  • The story
  • The audience
  • The (technical/media) platforms
  • The business model
  • The execution

The goal is to get all five working in harmony together – supporting and reinforcing each other.

Rather than try to tackle all five considerations in a single swoop, allow your ideas to evolve through multiple iterations – start with a small concept, run it through the all the stages and see what comes out. Now start again, this time taking the outputs from each stage and feeding them into the other stages.

Developing the project in this way makes the process manageable and ensures you think carefully about what you plan to do.

5-Stage Transmedia Development Process

Each of the five stages warrants its own blog post but for now I’ll stick to explaining the process. Also, I know that ideas can come from many angles but I’m going to assume here it starts with an idea for a story.

Stage 1: Story

Start with the story basics: characters, plot, premise, theme, genre and location.

Stage 2: Audience

Who does this story appeal to? Try to identify as many audience segments as you can ranging from fans of this genre to those who will agree with the premise; those who will identify with the themes, characters, genre etc.

Now iterate back to the Story. What might you add to the story to increase its appeal to these audiences?

(There’s an excellent post related to identifying your audience at Dennis Peter’s blog)

Stage 3: Platforms

By “platforms” I mean the combination of media plus technology. So YouTube and iTunes would be two different platforms even if they can both deliver video. A printed book and The Kindle would be two different platforms. A cinema, a living room and an outdoor public are all different platforms.

Almost any technology, medium and place can be used to convey your story but think about your audience again – what’s their lifestyle? Where and how do they hang out? If you’ve got a story appealing to single-parent families is it likely they’re going to attend live events? Maybe if it’s during the day and they can bring their babies but most likely not in the evenings – they have problems with babysisters, cash and free time. Which platforms will appeal to this audience?

Think of your project as a lifestyle choice: it needs to slip into your audience’ lives with the minimum amount of friction.

Now iterate back to the story. What might you do with the story to have it play out better across these platforms?

Stage 4: Business Model

How are you going to pay for this project? You have three main choices:

  • Free
  • Premium (only available for sale)
  • Freemium (mix of free and paid).

Look at the platforms you’ve chosen for your audience – which of them supports free and which supports paid? Look again at your audience – what do they buy and what don’t they buy? Do you platforms and audience support your business model?

Consider the CwF+RtB=$$ equation – which parts of your content can be pirated (shown in the diagram below as “infinite” availability to all) and which parts are “scarce” (not easily or can’t be copied). What content can be easily copied but some audience members might pay on a platform that offers convenience and immediacy (for more on this see Ross Pruden’s excellent blog).

Offering Audiences Reasons to Buy

Now iterate back to the story but this time think about the timing of the story delivery. By this I mean how will the story be released to the audience on the platforms you’ve identified- a free book chapter a week over 12 weeks simultaneous with a paid Kindle version? A free feature film followed by a paid comic book?

How can you develop your story and platforms to better suit the business model?

Stage 5: Execution

Finally look at the resources you have. If you’re an indie you’ll likely have more time than cash – how can you use that to your advantage? How much cash do you actually need to get going on the Transmedia Business Model? What favors can you pull in?

To answer these questions, consider this equation: outcome = probability x impact. It’s usually used to measure risk – how likely are bad things to happen and if they do happen, what’s their impact. But you can use it to make informed choices about the steps you take to implement your project.

For example, you may feel that a feature film has the highest impact – on your career and/or your audience – but what’s the probability of getting it made? Only you can answer that because you know what resources you have available (money, crew, kit etc). If the probability is low – because, say, you need to get a studio to green light the project – then you might think it better to do something with a higher probability of success even if there’s potentially lower impact.

Ultimately you’ll likely have a range of things to implement – a “portfolio of opportunities” – that get you started with some quick wins and lay the foundations of longer term, higher impact successes.

Now iterate through the five stages again and keep honing and refining.

As I said at the start, don’t feel you need all the answers from the get-go. After a few passes through the five stages, start thinking about implementation and give it a go. Then, in the light of that early experience go back to the development process and evolve.

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Posted in audience-building cross-media marketing social media storytelling transmedia

robert pratten is an award-winning feature film director, writer & producer that has been fighting the need to return to his marketing consultancy roots since Internet piracy stole his livelihood. Robert has advised international telecoms operators and vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, Lucent, Telia and Telmex and now divides his time between filmmaking and advising media tech start-ups and producers. Fortunate he enjoys both. He writes a popular blog on movie production, marketing and distribution at www.zenfilms.com

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Great strategy overview for Transmedia development! thanks Robert!

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: Hollywood Goes "Transmedia"

Hollywood Goes "Transmedia"

I'm catching up on Henry Jenkins' post on the PGA's announcement of the Transmedia Producer credit. The passage that catches my interest is the following as I completely agree:

"From the beginning, transmedia has been a site of experimentation, innovation, and exploration at the heart of the mainstream media. Many of us have seen the signs of transmedia practices emerging from some time -- mostly taking shape around forms of marketing because that's how such projects could get funded, mostly reflecting the logic of a more integrated media industry with strong economic imperatives for creating entertainment experiences across platforms. Yet, the phrase "transmedia" (and its various counterparts) have created a space where aesthetic and cultural concerns can re-enter the discussion. If media artists are going to be pushed to extend their offerings across platforms, shouldn't they be thinking about how these practices can be exploited to create richer aesthetic experiences, to support the creativity and engagement of fans, to deepen the meaningfulness of the stories and performances they are staging?"

Blood: The Last Vampire - disrupting transmedia with glee & gore

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Because I’ve been hooked on horror films ever since watching Nosferatu at the much too young age of 7 (how did that happen?), I decided to watch Blood: the Last Vampire the other night and I LOVED IT! And I stumbled on a great ‘transmedia’ storyworld. In brief, the chiroptera demon slayer, Saya has inherited the task of slaying ‘blood suckers’ and is out to revenge the torturous death of her father by the most powerful demon, Onigen.

 The project was initiated by Production I.G’s president Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and the story began with the seed image of a girl in a sailor suit wielding a samurai sword submitted by two film students, Kenji Jamiyama, who went on to write the script for the 2000 anime film Blood: the Last Vampire, and Junichi Fujisaku, director of the anime series, Blood +. The anime film was directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo, previously key animator for Katsushiro Otomo’s Akira. Saya’s story continued in a single volume manga sequel titled Blood: the Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts, which was published in North America in 2005.  Three Japanese ‘light novel’ adaptations aimed for high school fans followed (not quite sure what that means on the gore scale as it’s pretty high across the board), and then a two-volume PS2 game extended the action. 

 The anime film is set in 1966 primarily on the American Yokota Air Base with Saya acting for a secret seemingly American organization hunting down demons. The trailer for the first anime film is a gorgeous rendering of what later opens the live action film

 

The single Manga takes place in 2002 with Saya, now amnesiac, searching for demons in a high school with further details of the mythology emerging as we learn of Saya’s twin, Maya, and the backstory of the attempts to create human/demon hybrids in the 19th century.

 Originally described as a 3 part multi-media project, the storyworld was then extended in a 50-episode anime series that ran between Jan. 2005 & Sept. 2006 in Japan. What’s particularly interesting about this series is that the need for logical unity across storylines seems not to be a primary concern, as the stories on different platforms often offer contradictory information as to the origin of Saya and her nature, as she is variously a vampire or a human-vampire hybrid, of unknown age or with a possible fixed childhood.

 A PS2 game in two volumes was released in and set in 2000 teams Saya with a teenage boy fighting demons in Tokyo:

 The opening of the video game is here: 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyf0XfXXAU&feature=related

 And numerous fight scenes are online:

 

 And for hard-core fans a 50-episode anime series, directed by Junichi Fujisaku, takes us into an alternate universe where Saya, now amnesiac and appearing as a normal schoolgirl, begins a new sequence of confrontations when she encounters a chiroptera and encouraged by Haji (ok, he kisses her), she fights & kills that demon and then continues on.... The anime series is only loosely connected to the anime feature.

 

 Bill Kong, producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Dragons, (amongst other memorable films) led the development of the live action film film which was released in 2009. And yes, while some of the CGI can be a bit hokey (though only relatively speaking), there is more than one gorgeous fight scene including one in a forest that stands it’s ground against the extraordinary forest fight sequence in Crouching Dragon.

 

 What’s fascinating about this expanding story world is the unimportance of logical narrative coherence. Perhaps this is partially due to the fantasy/horror frame as having leapt into one improbable world, why should future iterations be consistent? As transmedia now seems to be gaining an established definition with the PGA credit, perhaps this alternate model should be kept in mind before we see too many strict definitions being enforced. In the end, if the fans love the world and the protagonist, and the individual iterations have coherence and quality, who’s going to fight this other innovative model?

Fucking Hell at the 53rd Venice Biennale - the Chapman brothers' Nazi nightmare diaorama

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I don't think one ever needs to justify a trip to Venice, but WOW do I want to go now - the current Venice Biennale, themed Making Worlds looks like a must see - the Chapman brothers' Fucking Hell, an intricate Nazi nightmare diorama series looks amazing.

The extraordinary dense pic above and an overview of the Making Worlds exhibitions can be found here:

Carlos Scolari & Hugo Pardo Kuklinski have a post with great pics here:

An article from 2008 gives a very detailed description of the installation at White Cube:

Critic Mark Kermode posted an interview with the Chapman brothers after touring the installation in Liverpool in 2007.

The Clock Without A Face - Dave Eggers launches ARG treasure hunt with children's board book

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Dave Eggers has launched what appears to be an ARG with a children' board book created by Eli Horowitz, Mac Barnett, and Scott Teplin. Now I haven't seen the physical book itself yet (it's billed as a five-sided book), but I'll be on the hunt today. (Does any one really need to argue for the continued life of the physical book? not me!)

The McSweeney's store offers this teaser description below and most importantly the answer to the first FAQ, 'Is there buried treasure?' is YES!: 

The Clock Without a Face

Gus Twintig 

 

We’ve buried 12 emerald-studded numbers—each handmade and one of a kind—in 12 holes across the United States. These treasures will belong to whoever digs them up first. The question: Where to dig? The only path to the answer: Solve the riddles of The Clock Without a Face!

THE BOOK
The call comes in from the shadowy Ternky Tower: 13 robberies, one on each floor, all the way up to the penthouse, where obnoxious importer Bevel Ternky has been relieved of the numbers garlanding the legendary Emerald Khroniker, his priceless, ancient clock. Readers must conduct their own investigations, scouring detailed illustrations for hidden clues and knotty puzzles. All your answers can be found within this book: whodunit and how . . . and where the real numbers are buried now.

THE NUMBERS 
Twelve—and only twelve—emerald-bedecked integers sleep somewhere in this nation’s soil. If you can find them, they’re yours to keep—and only this book can tell you where they are. So read the story carefully, and examine the illustrations closely. The race is on! 


source here:  http://bit.ly/9QIleK


gracias Dawn Buie! great find!

The Artverstiser - Improve Reality!

Ok all my artist friends - this AR project is bloody brilliant! The Artvertiser repurposes street ads as a new platform for exhibiting art. The project terms itself as 'Improved Reality' offering 'Product Replacement' - I hope this project materializes really really soon!

Video of The Artvertiser in Transmediale, Berlin 2010 here:

While the device is still a bit big (relatively speaking), I love the guerrilla potential of this project:

"While offering itself as a new platform for public art, The Artvertiser seeks to highlight the contradiction of Public Space in the context of what can and cannot be written on the surface of our cities. 

By leveraging the internet as a redistribution mechanism, The Artvertiser supposes that an urban site dense with proprietary imagery can be re-purposed as an exhibition space for art and archived as such in turn. Similarly, on-site exhibitions can be held whereby pedestrians are invited to use the looking device to view an exhibition on the buildings around them." 

Another video from a year ago demos the idea in Madrid: