Jeff Gomez Interview: Transmedia's Brand New Story Worlds Are Coming

Jeff Gomez Several weeks ago the Producers Guild of America officially sanctioned the credit “Transmedia Producer”, the first time they had ever added a new credit in the Guild’s history. The move was widely celebrated by the transmedia community but still brought up a great deal of debate, one of the issues being whether this would have more benefit for huge Hollywood-backed brands vs. independent transmedia producers creating original IP.

With the announcement of a partnership between Starlight Runner Entertainment, a leading creator, producer, and consultant on a number of highly successful transmedia franchises, and Curious Pictures, an award-winning diversified production and entertainment company that produces animation, live-action, video games, commercials and digital media content, it seems a step in the right direction for creators hoping to create original worlds. Starlight Runner and Curious Pictures initially will package and produce four transmedia projects with an option to extend the partnership after that. The first two projects starting immediately include the original properties Dinodozers (the story of dinosaurs who are fitted with mechanical construction parts in order to do good deeds) and Shadow Angels (about a teen with mysterious powers and a dark past who is chosen to become the guardian of a civilization of strange beings hidden below the streets of New York City), one from each company’s IP library.

Starlight Runner EntertainmentTubefilter had a chance to talk via e-mail with CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Jeff Gomez. Gomez was instrumental in getting the Transmedia Producer credit sanctioned and is an extremely vocal supporter and advocate for the transmedia community.

Tubefilter: How did this partnership between Starlight Runner Entertainment and Curious Pictures come about?

Jeff Gomez: Starlight Runner and Curious Pictures have had a long, friendly relationship. A number of years ago, we loaned out our Creative Director Chrysoula Artemis to Curious for a several year assignment as “Color Key Commando” on Codename: Kids Next Door, which had a great run on Cartoon Network.

We often tried to find bigger ways to work together, but it wasn’t until Jan Korbelin took the reigns at Curious that we were able to do that. Jan seemed to have brought out the best in his team, allowing people like Lewis Kofsky and Dominie Mahl to do some radical thinking about the future of entertainment and animation. When Lewis started talking about multi-platform approaches to intellectual property development, I knew we could start having a great conversation.

The bottom line is, our teams met and we realized there was an enormous number of ways that we could compliment one another, and Jan and I clicked.

Tubefilter: How is the progress on both Dinodozers and Shadow Angels? When can we expect to start seeing various media out of both?

Curious PicturesJG: Both properties had a bit of development to them coming into the discussion. We’ve chosen to focus on Dinodozers, because I’ve been personally busy with Hollywood studio work and my team, led by Fabian Nicieza, can act in a supportive position with world development and transmedia development around the Curious property. That isn’t to say I’m not going to be involved. When I was a kid I was convinced I was a dinosaur in human disguise, after all. Maybe I still am…

Tubefilter: These projects seem aimed at a younger audience, in your experience, how do younger audiences respond to transmedia experiences as opposed to older audiences?

JG: Dinodozers is preschool, but Shadow Angels is darker, more Goth, aimed at the young adult crowd. The story’s very special to me. I love it that Curious is going with such a range of properties. In any event, one of the most powerful brands in all of pop culture in the past decade has been Pokemon. That’s about as immersive and transmedia as you can get.

Young people right now are receiving information, particularly narrative in ways no human has ever gotten it before. They’re being challenged, and the wonderful thing is that they’re rising to it. The mistake adults are making is in underestimating their capacity or coddling them instead of adjusting the way that kids are told stories and are educated to maximize this new potential. The Starlight Runner/Curious Pictures is symbolic of how these approaches are going to change and catch up with the way kids want and need to experience story.

Tubefitler: Has anyone at either Starlight Runner or Curious Pictures applied and/or received the Transmedia Producer credit from the PGA yet?

JB: The Producers Guild of America doesn’t hand out producers credits. They recommend how producers might be credited in movies and new media, and it’s up to studios, agents and lawyers and such to decide to whom such credits will apply and what the compensation for it will be. However, there are already many very forward-thinking studios and companies that see the credit as an asset.

My partner Mark Pensavalle and I will be listed as Transmedia Producers on an upcoming project with a very well known game developer and publisher, which we will announce soon. That’s tremendously exciting, because I think it will be a first from a contractual standpoint for the credit. It’s only a matter of time before a major Hollywood studio puts one on a film.

Tubefilter: Anything else you’d like to share you think would interest our readers or fans of transmedia in general? What will excite us most about these projects?

JG: The most exciting thing about Dinodozers and Shadow Angels as transmedia projects is that they exist! One of the initial criticisms of the Transmedia Producer credit is that it was devised in support of highly commercial franchises from the Hollywood studio system; that it was about extending something that already existed so that it makes another boatload of money.

That’s great and all to me, that pays my rent, but guess what?

Independent Transmedia Producers like Starlight Runner and Curious Pictures are going to create brand new story worlds and vast narratives that are designed from scratch to use each medium like well-played instruments in a tight rock and roll band…and the sound is gonna be awesome.

Post to Twitter

Post to Yahoo Buzz

Post to Digg

Post to Facebook

Post to StumbleUpon

Related News:

  1. Producers Guild Officially Sanctions ‘Transmedia Producer’ Credit

Tribeca fest looks to shake up indie distrib'n

Tribeca fest looks to shake up indie distrib'n

Event testing waters on online streaming video, VOD

By Gregg Goldstein

April 20, 2010, 09:16 PM ET

NEW YORK -- With Wednesday night's world premiere of DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek Forever After," the Tribeca Film Festival is not only raising the curtain on its ninth edition, it's setting out to try and redefine how indie films are distributed.

Under the leadership of Tribeca Enterprises' new chief creative officer, Geoff Gilmore, the Sundance veteran, and TFF executive director Nancy Schafer, the festival will open its doors to a wider online audience with a new initiative, Tribeca Film Festival Virtual. The program will offer as many as 5,000 passholders (at $45 per pass) the chance to view eight of the festival's features plus shorts, panels and other streaming video online for a week.

Although Sundance and SXSW have ventured into these waters, TFFV's effort will be the most extensive test to date on whether online video streaming can help or hurt a film's quest to find commercial distribution.

Simultaneously, the organization's new distribution arm, Tribeca Film, will offer a dozen first-run features, at $6-$8 per rental, via cable and satellite VOD.

Both throw significant curveballs into the conventional acquisition scene. Tribeca Film (with hefty marketing backing from TFF sponsor American Express) has selected seven films from the current fest, effectively taking them off the market before the fest begins. The Virtual program will be streaming eight features from TFF's 50-plus available titles to computers worldwide before distributors have a chance to snap them up.

Festival programmers insist they went about their job without worrying whether individual titles would be available for either TFFV or Tribeca Film. "We were all adamant about keeping the selection processes very church and state," Schafer said. "We never knew how many titles were going to coincide until we locked all 12 films on the VOD platform."

Competitors who also deal in VOD distribution, including IFC chief Jonathan Sehring, don't appear concerned about Tribeca entering the arena. Because most of the fest's initial batch of titles have been on the market for months and available to others, no one is arguing that Tribeca enjoys an unfair advantage.

But the Virtual program is a trickier experiment. Several hundred passes were purchased on the first day they went on sale, and if Tribeca hits its goal of 5,000, the eight features might not be viewed as "virgin titles" by other distributors, Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen noted.

As for the larger sales prospects at Tribeca, "There are a few movies worth serious consideration, and while there may not be many on the surface that everyone's really excited about, there could be some surprises," Cohen said. "But I don't think anyone's dying to buy movies right now."

The sales market is beginning with some wind in its sails: In the past few days, HBO purchased domestic TV rights to "My Trip to Al-Qaeda," IFC bought U.S. rights to "Heartbreaker," Magnolia took North American rights to "Freakonomics," Verve Pictures nabbed U.K. rights to "The Arbor" and Gravitas Ventures acquired North American VOD rights to Variance Films' "The Lottery."

The common denominator is that distributors, rather than eyeing a traditional theatrical release, see value in the revenue streams from VOD, TV or home video. "We've been noticing a trend of newer distributors with slightly different releasing patterns, like Tribeca Film for that matter," Schafer said. "Last year, there was this black cloud -- people were saying, 'Who's going to buy films?' -- but this year, things seem to be picking up."

Some of the fest's more commercial prospects include the ensemble teen comedy "Beware the Gonzo," the Midnight hermaphrodite entry "Spork" (also viewable in the Virtual program), the Kim Cattrall vehicle "Meet Monica Velour" and the romantic drama "Monogamy," starring Chris Messina and Rashida Jones.

As TFF co-founder Robert De Niro noted Tuesday, the fest also is continuing its traditionally strong lineup of docs. De Niro's favorites touch on such subjects as Down syndrome ("Monica & David"), Rwandan genocide ("Earth Made of Glass"), polygamy ("Sons of Perdition") and the war on terror ("My Trip to Al-Qaeda").

Then there's what's arguably the most anticipated project on tap: Alex Gibney's work-in-progress untitled Eliot Spitzer film, one of six Cinetic Media titles up for sale here. A portrait of the disgraced New York governor, it's guaranteed a media spotlight.

Tribeca Film Festival Virtual will be live streaming 8 features, shorts, panels for a week....

Zoomorama - Tech Crunch Web Trends

Tech Crunch posted Information Architects' 4th Web Trend Map recently and it is awesome. I'm posting the image on zoomorama because the detail is worth deciphering.

"This is likely going to spread like wildfire, and it isn’t even finished yet: Information Architects has released the final beta for the fourth iteration of its awesome Web Trends Map series. This is a great visualization of current Internet trends, and how companies and individuals fit into it.

The picture that’s embedded above doesn’t do it justice in any way, so be sure to check out the full-sized image hosted on Flickr. Update: better yet, head over to Zoomorama.

The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by iA Inc. It maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue with map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the characters of each.

Oh, and in case you like it and you want to buy a printed version, they’re only making and selling 1,000 of them, so be quick."

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/06/great-visualization-web-trends-map-4-final-b...

Iron Sky :: Official Movie Site - CROWDFUNDING! An idea worth thinking about

Media_httpwwwironskyn_lydqw

I posted the trailer for Iron Sky a while back but am giving it some more bump following a great post by Johnny & Angus yesterday with some great deets on how the film got started & how it is being financed through 'crowdfunding' - a strategy worth watching:

"When we spoke to Finnish director Timo Vuorensola about where the idea came from – that 1% of inspiration – we were a little surprised (we really shouldn’t have been):

“The idea was born in a sauna, as most great ideas from Finland are. We were there, talking about our movie that was currently in production [Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning], and came to the question of what to do after that. Jarmo Puskala, one of the scriptwriters, suggested an idea that had been brewing in his head for quite some time already – it was a wicked story about Nazis from the Moon. The idea sounded crazy enough for us to be interested on it, but also quite massive. So we didn't think about that too much until later after [Star Wreck] was finished, and the question of "what's next" popped up again. ”

As Producer Janos Honkonen pointed out to us: “Whereas the previous movie was made with a shoelace budget, Iron Sky actually does have some money behind it – to be exact, the budget is a bit over 5.5million Euros, which comes from foundations, investors and also from the fans: crowdfunding is something we are very interested in.”

Crowdfunding. What a lovely word, and an interesting concept. Off the back of Star Wreck, the team set up an independent film community called Wreckamovie – a “web platform designed to harness the power of passionate Internet communities for creating short films, documentaries, music videos, Internet flicks, full length features, mobile films and more”.

source: Johnny & Angus - http://bit.ly/c0INQW