by Ana Vasile, published on 21.06.2011

Glee is a TV series that was aired for the first time by Fox in 2009: a musical comedy about the life of a group of talented teenagers, looking for celebrity. Using a multi-platform system, punctuated by the intelligent use of storytelling and music, the series draws a committed audience.

Dispositif

TV: two seasons of the series aired by Fox, with 42-minute episodes

Events: Glee Live tour in 2010 and 2011 in the US and Canada

Videogames: two karaoke style videogames for the Wii and Nintendo

iPhone, iPad and iTouch Application: a karaoke application produced by Smule

Internet: official website, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Hulu

Musical editions: five compilations “Glee: The music” volume 1 to 5 and two special editions: “Glee: The Music Presents The Warblers” and “Glee: The Music, The Power Of Madonna”, edited by Columbia Records.

In our case study about the music industry, we tried to highlight the advantages that this economy could draw from transmedia principles. One of the reasons of Glee’s dazzling success is, among others things, the original use of music as an integral part of the narrative construction.

This series has become a pop culture sensation. Criticized by parents and adored by its young adult audience, its universe is defined as inventive and full of energy.

In 2010 the show received a Golden Globe award for Best Comedy or Musical TV Series. It also received two EMMYawards: one for best actress and another for best director.

For the final episode of the second season, on May 24^th 2011, Glee had an audience of 12 million spectators! The anecdote is that Fox had programmed the third season even before the end of the first one in 2010.

If we go by transmedia’s definition, the different supports that work together in the multiplatform system must each bring new and complementary perspectives to the universe and the story. As we’ll see later, the different bricks of the Glee system don’t particularly enrich the main narrative, but rather represent different entry points into the musical universe of the series.

Narrative arcs punctuated by music

Glee is a very special series, especially through its narrative construction. A main narrative arc presents the evolution of a group of wild teenagers who is trying, with the help of a few professors, to become famous with their college choir.

The music represents an original way of enriching the narration: strong emotional moments are told through song, the music highlights the key moments of the story. For example, a mystery is played out in a song in one episode, in another, the resolution is revealed through a music video.

The characters interpret hundreds of familiar tunes with talent. Simon Pulman, transmedia producer and creator of the blog Transmythology.com, pointed out, in his analysis of the series, this enrichment of classic audiovisual narration with musical storytelling.

An approach that brings a third layer of signification for the audience of Glee is the internalization of the music interpreted by the key characters of the series.

Ryan Murphy, the series’ creator, declared that the music is an integral part of the script’s development: “Each episode has a main theme, just after writing the story, I’ll choose the songs that will help me move ahead”.

The songs chosen already have an established success. For example, the first season used covers of different genres: Country (Carrie Underwoodwith her hit “Last Name”), Hip-hop (“Gold Digger” by Kanye West), Pop (“Take a Bow” by Rihanna), show tunes (“Maybe This Time” from Cabaret) and rock classics (Queen’s “Somebody to Love”).

The creators take musical storytelling further by inventing mash-ups (a mix of several songs): the best sales of the Glee 2010 season were mash-ups between the Bon Jovi song “It’s my life” and Usher’s “Confessions Part II”, and the one between Beyonce’s song “Halo” and “Walking on Sunshine” from Katrina and the Waves.

Glee excels in music sales

Since May 2010, more than 4 million Glee songs have been downloaded on the Internet. The first CD edited under this brand entered directly in the 4^th position of Billboard’s Top 200. The second volume began in third position. Both albums received the “Gold” certification from theAmerican Music Industry Association for selling more than 500 000 units each.

Online communication

With a multi generational target, this series manages to touch college students, captivated by the choir’s adventures, but also their parents, drawn in by the musical references of their youth.

The online communication strategy is targeted to the main audience: young people between 13 and 25 years old. On the Internet, Glee is everywhere: on their official website, on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Hulu…

The official website seems targeted at teenagers, with videogames, quizzes, behind the scenes and bonuses (an application that gives advice to organize a Glee party at home, a virtual photo booth), catch up episodes and VOD are available only in the US.

A little over 14 million fans have liked the  Facebook page of the series where they can enter contests, respond to polls or watch videos from the series. Each character has his own Facebook and Twitter profile. For example the character of Rachel Berry communicates every day with her 479 759 Facebook fans and 152 767 Twitter fans by telling them anecdotes about her daily life.

Youtube and Hulu are used as content distribution platforms while the forums created by fans circulate information on behind the scenes gossip and organize contests, sponsored by Fox.

The iPhone application

Built by Smule for iPhone, iPad and iTouch, Glee Karaoke plays on the spectators’ thirst for celebrity. Everyone can become a star and enter the Glee musical universe.

The players have to sing to move ahead in the circuit through missions. The application promises to slightly adjust the voice of the player to give them the illusion that they’re a pop star and go up in the daily tops.

It’s a real music epidemic that is taking over the planet: with Glee Gobe, players can share their songs with their friends on Facebook, Twitter or through email. You can find more information about the application here.

A similar type of game is offered on the Wii. Two versions of Glee Karaoke Revolution have been distributed. Even though these videogames don’t bring much evolution from a narrative point of view, they represent other entry points into the series’ musical storytelling. The games have the advantage of being a good way of getting players to have fun being the stars, while integrating themselves fully into the universe of the series.

A participation culture

It’s not at all surprising that many wikis and forums have been created by fans on the Internet and it’s quite interesting to see how Fox manages this growing community. This group has its own name: they’re the Gleeks. A badge that gives them a feeling of belonging to a community with a strong identity.

Performe with Glee

Consumers are encouraged by Fox to create content. Gleeks record themselves singing, replay their favorite scenes from the series and organize flashmobs and events under the Glee name (for example the London Gleeks Club ).

Partnership with Chevrolet

Glee’s online communication becomes a source of revenue through its partnership with the Chevrolet brand: an online game mixes the DNA of the brand and of the series. The partnership goes further: during the series’ second season launch, the car brand was present on the red carpet alongside the actors. A presence that can be felt as intrusive since the brand can’t justify its role in the narration. It’s not product placement as much as sponsorship. For the music video filmed with Glee for the Superbowl 2011, the brand integrates the shoot of the commercial into the story of the series.

Glee: transmedia or not?

At first glance, the elements of Glee’s multi-platform system seem to be simple derived products: none of them really enriches the evolution of the series’ narrative. But by pushing the reflection further, this system holds some of the characteristics that we could assimilate to transmedia mechanics, like the circulation of audiences or the implementation of a participation culture.

Transmedia purists will never accept these derived products as extensions of a transmedia universe without their narrative value but Simon Pullman andAnne Laroque qualify Glee as such for its creative use of musical storytelling.

Pieces of the story told through songs go beyond the TV screen and take on meaning. They are listened to, covered, reinterpreted by hundreds of fans, until they become a sort of unifying element for this community of Gleeks.

Although I have no doubt that music can carry feelings and become an integral part of a story, I find it difficult to accept that that these extensions, which are devoid of narrative value, such as the redistribution of a music video on several platforms, can truly be enriching factors of a narrative universe, allowing for a transmedia qualification. What about you? How do you see Glee’s multi-platform system? You can give your opinion here or in the comments on   our Facebook page.

by Julien Aubert, published on 14.06.2011

The Cross Video Days are a series of conferences bringing together 30 international experts, but they’re also a market for cross and transmedia projects. Julien Aubert, the founder of the blog faismoijouer.com and of the production company Bigger Than Fiction, asked the director of a transmedia project entitled “Panzer Chocolate” to answer 3 questions to.

Can you explain the ARG aspect of your transmedia project? Can you describe its main mechanics?

Our “Kidnapped” project is an ARG. It’s based on a detective adventure series composed of 14 episodes of 3 to 5 minutes each, distributed on smartphones and tablets (for example iPhone, iPad, Android).

The story is transmedia and its architecture is very ARG inspired since it’s told on several media: 1 offline/online game, 3 keys to open things, 3 web pages, 4 clues, 5 different technologies, 6 Universities, 7 murders and 7 towns. The story is transmitted through 11 coded messages, 12 little wooden characters, 14 short episodes, 101 telephone numbers, 101 treasures and 115 GPS points…all this in 20 days.

In “Kidnapped”, the protagonist (Lucia) only has 20 days to find a treasure hidden by her best friend (Elena), who was kidnapped by an extremist group, who doesn’t want her research to fall into the public domain. The adventure is a quest for this hidden treasure, an adventure in the Lara Croft style but with a detective mystery tone, consequences are murders and multiple clues.  But Lucia isn’t alone in this treasure hunt since the audience will be able to participate and contribute to her search. The mystery is supported by a popular game in our country, Geocaching (treasure hunt with a dowsing rod).

Each episode concludes with a short coded message that the participant has to decode in order to be able to watch the next chapter of the story.

Finally, there’s already a first experience to try online before starting our ARG. Go to this page (in Spanish) to enter our universe.

Why did you choose to do an ARG in your project? What are your references?

Since I was a child and still today, I enjoy role-playing games on paper. Even though I haven’t practiced them much, I’ve always been fascinated by life-size role-playing games, massive online multi-player role-playing games and ARGs.

When we started working on Panzer Chocolate, we had followed projects created in the US and Northern Europe, for example The Truth About Marika and The Art of the Heist. We had noticed that, in general, ARGs work very well with horror, detective and adventure stories. So it was a “must” for us to develop one.

We also saw an opportunity in Spain, where this type of entertainment is still very confidential. Being a “new generation” production company, we wanted to position ourselves on this market.

For which reasons are ARGs not more popular in your country? How do you plan to reach a wide audience?

First, I don’t think that we have as many professionals, producers and brands promoting ARGs with the players in our country, as there are in other countries. This could be a question of culture, or maybe our teenagers play too much football? (laugh) I’ve met a few foreign ARG developers, they’ve played and are still playing many life-size role-playing games for example, which give them a hands-on experience that they can then use in their development. I’m not sure that these games are too developed in Spain.

Secondly, I think that Spanish producers, advertizing agencies and brand managers are more conservative than in other countries. They probably don’t know how to monetize or analyze the real impact of a campaign including an ARG, which is often costly. The consequence is that the country doesn’t yet have success stories and their case studies, necessary to take the risks involved in developing ARGs.

We are one of the first Spanish production companies that focuses mostly on the development of transmedia projects. We plan on taking ARGs to a wide audience, integrating them in each of our productions, and communicating about our innovative and interactive ideas to agencies and brands.

Among the 23 projects selected, we would like to draw your attention on 3 projects with an ARG aspect:

Crimeface² – Union City Shakedown, Bellyfeel, www.crimeface.net

Hémophages, Haut et Court, www.hautetcourt.com

Panzer Chocolate, Filmutea, www.panzerchocolate.com

This article was initially published on www.faismoijouer.com

by Vanessa Meheut , published on 9.06.2011

Vanessa Méheut, analyst with Orange San Francisco. Her areas of interests include traditional and online video, transmedia distribution and marketing, and new ad formats. We gladly share with you her point of view on a “community created show” as she defines Bar Karma.

TV show creator Will Wright is not your traditional TV creator. First he is based in San Francisco, the temple of new technologies and not in LA. Second his background is in gaming: he is the creator of the Sims. So it makes sense that the TV show he co created with producer Albie Hecht, is not your traditional TV show.

Sci fi show Bar Karma is, to my knowledge, the most advanced example of a community created show that made it to the air.  Mr Wright’s background in gaming makes him a proponent of interactive experiences. His point of view on Bar Karma is that community produced TV will create a higher level of emotional engagement and involvement for co-producers in the crowd than any professionally written show ever will.

Bar Karma relies on the wisdom of the crowds but a great part of the work is still done by professionals. The concept is to make it possible for anyone to come up with an idea for the show, from a “one liner” to a complete story-board. They can also volunteer their own creations (music, paintings) to be included in the show.

The community also votes on the suggested ideas, to determine the most popular plots which will then shape where the story is going. But professionals check which suggestions are actually feasible before they are submitted to the vote, and once plots are selected, a traditional production process starts with professionals. There is a few weeks delay between the moment a story is chosen and when it actually airs on Current TV, the TV network that bought Bar Karma.

The TV show premiered on February 11^th 2011 and its first season was made of 12 episodes of 22mins which aired on Fridays at 10pm until season finale on April 29^th. Carrying a strong Twilight Zone feel, the show is about an internet mogul who wakes up one day and walks into an unusual bar where a 20,000 year old bartender informs him that the bar is one of his proceeds for a poker game he won and that he is now in charge of helping the Bar Karma team accomplish its mission.

Outside of space and time, the Bar Karma is a place where lost souls at a karmic crossroads find themselves. Each episode features a new guest of the bar who will need the help of the bar team (a 20,000 year bartender and the on staff waitress) to reflect on their lives, the consequences of their actions and eventually make life altering decisions.

The whole concept of crowd-sourced entertainment is not new and has been tried before. But Will Wright used his background in programming to bring to the table a tool to manage this whole crowd-sourcing process.

The program, called Story Maker, is online and those willing to participate in the story making can sign up on this website and start using the software. A dedicated iOs app for audience participation was also released on the Apple app store. There are no official numbers as to the number of participants for Bar Karma and comments from Mr. Wright at the recent TV of Tomorrow conference in San Francisco suggest it is rather small.

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The show has 5,000 fans on Facebook and the official Bar Karma page indicates that tens of thousands of ideas were studied for the show. It is possible that crowd-sourced entertainment is the type of experiment that probably follows the Pareto principle (20% of the people create 80% of the value.) Mr. Wright indicated before airing that the first episode would credit 30+ volunteer contributions in addition to the show’s professional crew.

As far as distribution is concerned, it looks like Bar Karma has not yet been made available for transmedia platforms: some video clips are available on Hulu and YouTube but full episodes are not available on the traditional web/mobile platforms (Hulu, Amazon VOD, iTunes, YouTube,…) or on Current TV properties, most likely because licensing issues have not been sorted out.

There are a lot of challenges to the concept of crowd-sourcing entertainment:

1/ Hollywood is run by unions and the Writers Guild, which protects the interests of its writers members, will have its says in whether communities becoming authors are entitled to compensation: an interesting concept should not become a way to write shows on the cheap and destabilizing writing talents,

2/ There is no question not all talent is in Hollywood, but there is also no question that not everyone can have a good idea for a TV show plot. Outsourcing the process of filtering out the good from the bad can be a dangerous decision. Other experiments in crowd-sourced entertainment sometimes involved professionals making the calls after reading through hundreds of suggestions to find one diamond worth polishing (eg: William Shatner’s web series The Zenoids). Which raises the question whether such a process (finding a needle in a haystack) can be efficient?

3/ While crowds can be very creative, TV shows have a show runner because stories need to follow a vision, something which is better achieved through one or two individuals guiding a crew of writers than by the hands of an invisible community. Fans of TV shows have strong opinions about developments happening and shows, and don’t hesitate to address the writers with their suggestions, but they still expect writers to have a master plan (think ABC’s Lost). Not to mention the fact that most TV viewers like the passivity of the TV experience and are not looking for a lean forward approach, which means few would actually have the high level of emotion engagement sought by Mr. Wright.

Down the line, and like every TV show, the viability of Bar Karma will be determined on the basis of its ratings, which hopefully will be linked to its quality. Current TV, which premiered in the US in 2005 as an alternative to news channels like MSNBC, CNN and Fox News, is available in 60M households in the US, has a very small viewership which enables it to take this kind of creative risks. Crowd-sourced entertainment is not a mass market and it might never be: numbers in terms of TV ratings have not been made available by Current TV (the network usually carry a rather small 23,000 viewership average in prime time), the show has not been picked for a second season yet. But it can be a brand maker and an interesting differentiator for smaller TV networks. And it is an intellectually challenging concept.

More information about Bar Karma and Current TV can be found on a recent article from the NY Times dated February 2011 and an interview of show creator Will Wright.

by Ana Vasile, published on 7.06.2011

StoryWorld Conference + Expo is the first major gathering of content creators, platform providers, and entertainment industry leaders dedicated to exploring new business models and working together across media boundaries. The event takes place in San Francisco from October 31 to November 2.

StoryWorld Conference aims to help attendees develop new revenue streams and add depth to their narrative. Through seminars and workshops, this event strives to help at the understanding of cross-media partnerships and transmedia-friendly story development, while providing the ideal setting for establishing new partnerships.

The event promises to help attendees:

• Discover the best ways to partner with complementary media and increase the value of your intellectual content
• Make deals and connect with potential partners at structured networking events
• Learn best practices from global transmedia front-runners
• Hear case studies from successful media companies already profiting from a transmedia approach

This brand-new event is making waves throughout the entertainment community with speakers like Lance Weiler, Jeff Gomez, Robert Pratten and Christy Dena.

Here you can find more information about the event. Hope to see you there!

by Manon Perroud et Mathilde Prat , published on 31.05.2011

Al Jazeera English, the international information channel of the Al Jazeera group, was created in 2006 as a similar concept to CNN International and BBC World. The channel’s editorial policy is to be a forerunner in terms of innovations for information technologies and intends to use this advantage to compete against other international media providers.

With its new program The Stream, launched on May 2^nd of last year on television, and before that on their website, the channel has again demonstrated its avant-guard character by bringing the experience of social media to a TV audience.

After the events of the “Arab Spring” and the scandal of Wikileaks, social media have become a keystone of political mobilization, making a place for themselves in mass media, including television.

The concept of The Stream rests on the participation of audiences through the Web. It’s composed of a daily TV show presented by two American journalists: Derrick Ashong and Ahmed Shihab-eldin, in 3x30min sequences (5 days out of 7 at 10h30, 16h30 and 21h30) and a website gathering all non-professional information, which integrates all main social media (Twitter, Facebook, Ustream, Skype). The goal is to treat information from a “civilian-journalistic” perspective.

In fact, The Stream gives everyone the possibility of producing content, giving their opinion, sharing their feelings and their experiences about the daily news. The internet users can react on their site, their Facebook page or their Twitter account .

It’s a remediation process of traditional media: instead of having TV feeding content to the Web, the Web is feeding content to the TV show.

During the broadcast of the TV show, a Storify, retracing the key points of the theme discussed, is published on the website. It consolidates the tweets, photos and Facebook comments that allowed to illustrate the subject on set.

On TV, the daily show

Each of the three shows, each day, takes up the theme of a hot new topic that’s already discussed on the web: “The Stories”. The debate is launched and we witness 30 minutes of interaction between presenters and internet users interacting live. The show is built under our eyes directly from the broadcasting studio, which is also the newsroom. The screens are omnipresent on the set, each presenter, playing his role as a moderator, has his computer and the Twitter flow projected on a giant wall. There can also sometimes be Skype interviews.

On the Web

The Stream website is hosted on the Al Jazeera English website and offers the possibility of watching previous shows, accessing different information flows for each theme with Storify (updated when the news require it) and displays the different sources (videos on YouTube, comments on Facebook, Tweets…). This presence centralizes discussions and also encourages interactions between the different followers.

With the recurrent innovations in social media and the Web in general, we can imagine that The Stream will develop and gain new tools, exponentially increasing its presence on social networks. Since the concept of the show is based on Web participation, The Stream will have to be able to follow technological evolutions and renew itself if necessary.

Analysis

With its original concept for The Stream, Al Jazeera English is giving its big competitors CNN and BBC a run for their money, by offering a real international civilian journalistic show. They give a real legitimacy to all these information sources that escape traditional media circuits, criticized by the latter but increasingly favored by audiences that have lost their trust in mass media: too expensive, too institutionalized, too politic, too corrupted…

By defining themselves as a social media with information sources coming from the web, The Stream doesn’t pay for the content it broadcasts. This gives the website the advantage of not being scattered with advertising like most information media, be it free or not. Video contents are posted for free on The Stream’s website, making the show innovative as an entirely free information source, not sponsored by advertizing. Once more, this is only possible thanks to the Web and the information goldmine that it represents, as well as audience participation through social networks, that bring The Stream to life, both on TV and on the Web.

By allowing audiences to be real content producers, which they can edit thanks to their daily communication tools, The Stream is different from a classic talk show through the freedom and flexibility of its editorial line. Each show is unpredictable, just like the audiences’ reactions.

However, isn’t there a limit to this participative element? Indeed, how can one be sure of the information delivered through these channels? The main problem with web-based information is the identification of the source’s legitimacy.

But since The Stream gives voice to everyday people who don’t have this legitimacy in the world of media and information, one can wonder which sources will be privileged and debated on the set? Is it really a place where everyone can express their feelings and their experiences?

Moreover, giving voice to “everyone” also implies some abuses. Insults, lies, unconstructive criticism, identity theft, release of secret information, must also be taken into account in this type of relations between the show and its audience. The role of the journalists is therefore very important, they are the community managers that animate this community of civilian journalists, and that choose to talk about a tweet over another, or which video to publish.

Under the guise of a free radio system, encouraging freedom of speech by everyone and for everyone, The Stream is still managed by journalists that embody the identity of the show and of the channel throughout the world.

The Stream’s team will also have to create a system to sort the different content and direct its editors towards the subjects that they’re tackling in order to avoid flow saturation.

The Stream offers an opportunity to break from the traditional pattern of bringing television into people’s houses: here, people are easily allowed to bring their contribution to television with the tools that they use on a daily basis. At the same time, the editorial policy of the channel and its reputation are embodied by the journalists and the choices they make during the live program.

Since its creation (early May), The Stream has already built a community of 2971 fans on Facebook and 4391 followers on Twitter, we can therefore talk about a success for this “participative” show. It has already allowed Al Jazeera to recruit new, younger, more international and more “connected” audiences.

With this concept that rests mostly on the democratization of media and the democratization of the Arab world, as it’s undergoing a sweeping revolution, we have the right to believe that television channels will increasingly give voice to their audiences through social networks, and therefore open the way for Social TV.

About the authors

Manon Perroud and Mathilde Prat have both followed studies specialized in audiovisual production. Convinced that media convergence will open new opportunities for the creation of multi-media content, they have recently joined Julien Aubert at Bigger than fiction, to counsel companies who want to set up transmedia strategies.

@mannonperroud, @Mathildmedia

@BggrThnFctn

by Ana Vasile, published on 26.05.2011

The Young and Independent Producer’s Day is an event that proposes a market for the young producers and for the decision-makers from the audiovisual field searching for innovating programs, through a speed – business meeting. The event strives to offer a 360° overview: a thoroughly conceived diversity with a transmedia approach of the content. The first edition of this event will be held on Tuesday 31^st May at Porte d’Aubervilliers, France.

All formats for all screens

The declared objective of the event is to discover emergent talents and to valorise the content diversity.  Laurence Lascary, the head of DACP, the YIPD organising company, told us that “the audiovisual innovation rests in its market’s democratization, which will allow the emergence of new companies and a widening of the content proposals accessible to a larger audience.”

Convinced that the independents producers can propose “programs that are better fitted to meet the audience’s needs, in a better degree than the “patrimonial” ones, Lascary emphasize the fact that « the producer’s job rests the same (to join human and financial resources in the service of creativity) but the young producers innovate through their capacity to propose alternative content, by making use of their international influences, by proposing content accordant to the contemporary society, a high quality content, able to meet the audience’s request. “

The selection of young producers was made in May. About 30 enterprises will present more than 200 programs, in a development or production state. Between all these projects, the organisers will present “about fifteen transmedia programs. Essentially short formats, developed for web and television broadcast.”

While the inscriptions as independent producer are already closed, you still have the opportunity to attend the event as participants, by making a demand of accreditation on the event’s website.

The decision-makers attending the YIPD issued form a wide range of audiovisual entities, from TV channels or distributors to professional associations: TF1, Arte, France 2, France 3, Canal+, Lagardère Active, Coyote, Endemol, TVFI, Planète Nolimit, CapaTV, Film&picture, Bellianne, QG Distribution, 3A Télésud, Touscoprod.

Event’s schedule:

The event’s schedule is structured in two parts: during the morning the event offers access to three roundtables on audiovisual hot topics organized with the help of Ina SUP, while the afternoon is reserved for the business meetings and programs’ pitching.

The YIPD is organized with the help of its partners: The Regional d’Ile-de-France Council, Ina SUP, MpowA, le MediaClub and the Aubervilliers town.

More information is available on the event’s main website, on the Facebook page, on the Vimeo channel or on the Twitter account.

by Ana Vasile, published on 24.05.2011

ARTE and Power to the Pixel organize a pitch for multiplatform projects. For the second year in a row, the Arte Pixel Pitch will choose the winner of a £6000 amount at the Pixel market: on 12 & 13 October at Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum in London

Power to the Pixel will select up to 25 international transmedia/cross-media projects to be presented to potential financiers, international investors, commission members, technologies enterprises, web portals and media specialized entities.

The projects can engage in using different formats: cinema, television, web, mobile, interactive content, edition, live events or games. They must be submitted to Power to the Pixel (market@powertothepixel.com) before the 29^th July 2011 (18.00 BST).

The producers submitting their projects must have a strong cinema, or audiovisual, or interactive media experience. Only 25 proposals will be selected and only 8 finalists will be eligible for the Arte Pixel Pitch prize.

The producers selected will present their projects in front of a hand-picked roundtable jury made up of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media & entertainment companies.

Here you can find more information about the pitch. Good luck to all of the participants!

by Ana Vasile, published on 19.05.2011

Undead End is an independent multiplatform project that chose the radio as its primarily media. A rather unusual choice that raises a question already asked by one of our readers:  “Why is the radio so rarely considered when constructing a transmedia mechanism?”

A radio multiplatform drama

Undead End is a zombies-story, created by Nate Goldman, presents itself as an interactive and immersive experience. The author declared himself inspired by Orson Welles, when he decided to erase the borders between fiction and reality.

The plot, mainly told through news broadcasts, focalizes on the evolution of a research laboratory specialized on human body studies that start an epidemic with a zombies’ virus.

The multiplatform mechanism:

• · The radio : the narrative media
• · Internet through viral videos, designated websites and a blog
• · Events (street theatre and a zombie march)
• · The mobile : a safety phone number to cal if infected with the “zombie’s virus”
• · Outdoor : posters with advices of how to avoid catching the infection
• · A game : a “zombie hunt” in augmenter reality

The operation that started in 2010 was concentrated on the Boston University’s campus and broadcasted on the WTBU radio. For the first episode, the audience settled at 2 000 listeners, but the following one gathered the double, more than 4 000. Undead End was broadcasted as well by WZBC Boston radio, two months after its first broadcast.

If its plot is not that innovative, Undead End has the great quality of proving that we can still tell stories through the radio!

The radio told stories, once…

Before the TV’s democratization, the evening was the best moment to listen to the radio, all the family gathered in front of it. It was a cultural shared moment. This media’s function was more than just informational; the radio told stories, created and broadcasted dramatized narrations.

The most obvious example is “The War of the Worlds” an Orson Welles radio adaptation of the SF novel, broadcasted in 1938 by CBS. This radio drama created panic for thousands of Americans, convinced that the fictional narrative was true and that the Martians are attacking the United States. The theorists blamed the program’s authenticity, even though CBS stated the fictional quality of its program: the actors took the role of reporters and told the fictional events as real news.

Radio evolutions and transmedia projections

The radios has for sure evolved, nowadays it is listened for its informational function or just as a musical background. The TV democratization has changed the consumer’s habits and evidently the usage of this media.

The study l’Année Radio 2009-2010, shows that the radio gathers in France more than 42,3 millions listeners aged of 13 years and more that listen to the radio more than  2.54 hours per day. The superior sociologic and professional categories are the highest radio consumers: more than 9 of 10 persons from this category listen to the radio daily.

A study driven by Ipsos shows that the morning remains the white collars’ radio rendezvous. The radio penetration on this group of consumers is, at least in France, 26, 7% between 7.45 and 8 o’clock.

In the construction of a transmedia strategy, the radio could become a way to create daily meeting points with some well defined audiences. Keeping in mind the programs proposed by the radio stations nowadays, we have to face a question: can we still can develop fictional narrations like in the old times, like Orson Welles. The debate is still open and we invite you to join it on our commentaries section or on Transmedia Lab’s Facebook page.

by Ana Vasile, published on 17.05.2011

Acknowledging its massive success, The Matrix is often cited as a reference example of transmedia. We invite you to go deeper into The Matrix’s universe and to take a closer look at its construction.

Even if the narrative arch of all three films directed by Wachowski brothers is linear, the global Matrix story world is enriched with each piece forming its multiplatform mechanism:

• The film’s trilogy : « The Matrix », « Matrix Reloaded » and « Matrix Revolutions »
• A series of animated shorts : « Animatrix »
• Two video games : « Enter the Matrix » and « The Matrix : Path of Neo »
• A MMORPG game: « The Matrix Online »
• An anthological graphic novel: « The Art of the Matrix »
• A series of comics : « The Matrix Comics »

Synopsis

Neo, the main character of the Matrix trilogy, is a young computer scientist contacted by a group of hackers. These characters make him discover that his real world is actually a virtual world created to keep the humans under control. From now on, Neo starts an epic battle against the system’s administrators.

The Animatrix : a series of animated shorts

The Animatrix, released in June 2003, is a series of 9 animated short films set in the world of The Matrix. The creators of The Matrix Trilogy collaborated on each one of them to varying degrees. Four of the stories were written by the Wachowski Brothers, with the other five written by the directors themselves. Each short adds depth to the Matrix Trilogy, from backstory on characters and events from the movies, to introducing new characters from the sequels.

Four of the films were released completely free-of-charge on the Internet in the months leading up to the release of film The Matrix Reloaded. They remain freely available, and you can still download them. A fifth film (Final Flight of the Osiris) was as well shown in theatres to allow viewers to enter the Reloaded setup before its release. All 9 animes were available as well on a single DVD, creating a double path of distribution: online and in stores.

The Matrix Comics : a univers extended as well as Comics

The Matrix Comics is a collection of short comic book stories set in the fictional universe of The Matrix.

Originally released on The Matrix official website, most of the stories were published in two volumes printed in 2003 and 2004 by the Wachowski Brothers’ company Burlyman Entertainment. Quite interesting to note that the printed edition brought to light three more stories never released online.

The comics’ editor was Spencer Lamm. The Wachowski Brothers wrote one script “Bits and Pieces of Information”, narration that was later related to The Animatrix short animated film “The Second Renaissance“.

Les jeux vidéo : how to become The One…

Enter the Matrix is a third person action game launched in 2003. Developed by Shiny Entertainment, the game was written by Andy and Larry Wachowski. The player can pick his character (Niobe, Logos’ captain or Ghost, his lieutenant) appearing as secondary characters in the trilogy. This game was vividly critiqued by the press and the cybernauts for its technical mediocrity.

The game is graphically outdated and its game action is quite mediocre. One of the reasons invoked was the time pressure, knowing that the game was meant to be released between the last two movies.

From a narrative point of view, the game allows certain clarifications on the relation between its characters and retraces the Matrix Reloaded story, from a different point of view:  that of the Logos’ team (Niobe, Ghost and Sparks). Only these secondary characters are playable: the game was conceived as a narrative extension of the global story world, that’s why it shows very few recreations of scenes in the film trilogy

The Matrix Online is the second game released in 2005 and picks up the storyline from where Revolutions ends. Conceived as an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) it will support thousands of simultaneous players and it’s said to feature cutting-edge graphics and real-time martial arts combat.

The game’s storyline focuses on the outcome of Neo’s truce made in Revolutions, emphasizing the war between human factions, some that support Neo and some that support the Matrix.

The Matrix: Path of Neo is the third video game based on the Matrix series and the second developed by Shiny Entertainment. Players control the character Neo, participating in scenes from the films. Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, the game was released in 2005 in North America. The game proposes a unique point of view: Neo’s with additional missions that extend the storyline of the films. Nevertheless, the game retraces the trilogy’s narrative.

This time around, it received good critiques: from a technological point of view as well as narrative.  The press proclaimed that the game had one of the best uses of a license they’d seen in quite some time. It’s the first game all about Neo.

The anthology « The Art of the Matrix »

The Art of the Matrix is a huge storyboard book. The book does not bring any new narratives to the franchise but instead it’s telling the creators’ story: how they managed to convince Warner Bros to produce the movie and the full-version of Matrix storyboards. Designated to hardcore fans and to graphic professionals, the book

More than 20 books were published using the Matrix name, but they bring nothing new to the story world. Most of them are essays that discuss the ideas presented in the movie or the philosophical and religious symbolism in the movie.

Conclusion

In the Matrix franchise, it’s more than important to take notice of the implication of the Wachowski brothers in the development of almost the entire transmedia mechanism. They become the gatekeepers of their universe’s coherence by creating bridges between the narratives of each of their works.  That seems the way to make sure that the extensions are more than just spin-offs.

By creating some storytelling juxtapositions between Medias, the universe gets richer; the emerging audience is rewarded with a deeper experience.

For example, in the short « The Final flight of the Osiris » one of the secondary characters tries to send a letter to Nebuchadnezzar’s team. In the game « Enter the Matrix » the first mission is to pick up the exact same letter from the post bureau. In the end, the movie « Matrix Reloaded » brings up a wink to this story: the characters are discussing the last « message of Osiris », as in the letter we all been chasing through the storytelling universe.

You can also read the article by David Peyron highlighting the concept of cultural convergence introduced by Heny Jenkins, which refers to the universe of The Matrix transmedia.

If you do think of other examples of storytelling juxtapositions, share them with us, in the comment section or on our Facebook page.

by Ana Vasile et Olivier Godest , published on 12.05.2011

Faced with the evolution of uses and new media consumption habits, the music industry has to face similar problems to those seen in the audiovisual industry: unstable audiences, growing competition and pirating. However, new economic models and multiplatform projects are emerging: Jay Z, Gorillaz or Nine Inch Nails for example, are reinforcing their relationships with their audiences through storytelling.

New distribution models

The authors of record labels are faced with one main problem these days: the decreasing sales of material media (CD, DVD), which is directly linked to the digital explosion.

Even though it’s often brought up as producers’ number one fear, music only represents 2,9% of illegal downloads, as shown in this Ars Technica study. While most big producers are concentrating their efforts on fighting pirating with entities like the BPI in the UK, the Hadopi law in France or the RIAA in the US, new music development actors and economic development models are changing the playing field.

For example Spotify is a free music access provider that had 10 000 000 users last year with a service financed by advertizing. Since May 1st, Spotify’s policy has changed under pressure from record labels.

New Spotify Users will still be able to enjoy free service as it is offered now for the next 6 months. Afterwards, all the users of the free service will be able to listen to a song a maximum of 5 times, after this limit, the user will have to buy the song.

The number of listening hours will also be limited to 10 hours a month, a 50% decrease from last year. Spotify had to change its free policy under pressure from record producers who were denouncing an economic model that caused them losses. For example, Lemonde.fr criticized streaming based models by analyzing the distribution of money that comes from them and highlighting the fact that they hurt independent labels and artists.

On the other hand, a million subscribers are already paying 9,99 Euros per month for the premium service, without advertizing and available on mobiles. In a similar way, Last.fr, iTunes or Amazon have also been surfing the digital music wave for the past few years. Apple owns the leading music distributions platform with iTunes.

These examples show that, faced with the digital explosion, the music world is confronted with the need to make its distribution platforms and economic models evolve. The evolution of the global context also requires a change in the way they sell music. Artists’ marketing operations are also evolving, with storytelling elements bringing an added value to the cultural offer.

A reason to buy

Gerd Leonhard, communication and media consultant, compared music with bottled water. Water is available almost for free from the tap, but the bottled water market sells more than 89 billion liters of water each year, throughout the world. Leonhard highlights the omnipresence of music. Internet users can get it for free and more and more record houses want to attract the consumer’s limited attention.

The economic monopoly held for many years by classic producers and distributors is broken, mostly because of new business models based on digital access. Here is the question Leonhard asks himself: why pay for bottled water when it’s available for free from the tap? The solution suggested by the author is engagement, conversation, attraction and community. We’re not only selling music but rather an experience…

Robert Pratten, founder of “Transmedia Storyteller” and Transmedia consultant, touched upon the same theme during his presentation about the application of transmedia concepts to the world of music. Could storytelling give an additional reason to buy to Internet users, to generations who maybe, have never bought a CD?

Pratten compares the music industry with the fragrance industry: “We don’t sell perfumed water, but dreams.” According to him, music has to reinvent itself an added value to regain economic value.

One of the envisioned solutions is to “place the artist in a position of social catalyst in direct connection with the communities, to give them a reason to spend their money.” Instinctively, we can’t help thinking of Lady Gaga, who managed to create a real universe around her character… “Success requires more than a large community, it’s also based on credibility, authenticity, a relationship with the artist” Pratten concludes. He suggests building a narrative universe for an artist’s entire career and a narrative arc for each album and each song.

This can seem obvious but fans will be more likely to want to extend an experience that has moved them. The musical universe in which they’re immersed consolidates the feeling of belonging to a community that shares the same values as them. An idea exploited by the web-documentary “Ma tribu c’est ma vie” (“My tribe is my life”), in which eight internet users explain how music and Internet have transformed their interpersonal relations and contributed to forging their identity.

The creation of a global narrative universe is built, in large part, on the artist’s or the band’s personality, which can be a way of reinforcing the engagement of an audience already more or less seduced by its music. The more passionate fans are rewarded with stronger elements of affinity with the artists that they like, with the right tools, they might even become faithful ambassadors. The more massive ones will appreciate a coherent story that gives them elements of important reference points. Some artists like Gorillaz, JayZ or the rock band Nine Inch Nails, have already started doing this…

The pioneers of transmedia music

Universes inspired by their music, their lives or their characters are elements of value added for the products that they sell: a new album, concert tickets or a book…

The Gorillaz alter egos: characters that live in multimedia

Gorillaz is a virtual British band whose main creators are Damon Albarn (the singer of Blur and The Good, the Bad and the Queen) and Jamie Hewlett (the illustrator of Tank Girl). The members of Gorillaz are represented like characters of a comic book.

For each music video, they build a story around their easily identifiable characters, each of them representing a member of the band.

“Journey to Plastic Beach” is a 15 minute cartoon that represents the journey of Murdoc (the tall one on the right) to Plastic island, where the character conceives the latest Gorillaz album: “Plastic Beach”. The story continues with his efforts to find all the alter egos of the group’s members and his incredible adventure to find the lost spirit of the Gorillaz.

To organize the promo of their world tour, a treasure hunt was organized on the Internet. It’s goal? To find the 12 characters of the Gorillaz universe on the net. Those who finished the quest won an exclusive mix and were automatically entered into a contest to win a surfboard designed by Jamie, one of the members of the band.

On the Internet there are two official sites: the .fr, which is the classic marketing promo site, and the .com, which is a site where you can travel through the Gorillaz universe (especially Plastic Beach at the moment) in the form of an interactive game.

On this Gorillaz website, you can also play a dozen mini games, watch videos, listen to a “pirate radio”, have access to all of the group’s albums. Their facebook page now has 3,5 million fans.

Decoded by Jay-Z

In 2010, Jay-Z published his memoir, a conglomeration of music and references to his culture. To promote this launch, the New York agency Droga5 set up a multimedia campaign and a treasure hunt on Internet and in the real world.

Spiegel&Grau, Jay-Z’s editor, signed a partnership with search engine Bing. The dedicated page, created by the search engine, became the starting point of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). Internet users were invited to find the 320 pages of Jay-Z’s memoir, hidden in Las Vegas, New York, Hollywood and even in the UK.

Each hiding place was a reference to his book, a key location in the artist’s life. Helped by Bing maps, the clues were given by Jay-Z on his Twitter and Facebook page, the internet users joined this treasure hunt.

Those who managed to decode all the clues were selected for a draw. The prize for the winner was a lifetime access to all of Jay-Z’s concerts.

To increase the interest of the players, the organizers played on the Internet users’ ego: the first one to find a hiding place could “announce” his discovery on the campaign’s website with his name. This way, other players could see the name of those who discovered each page.

Pages were hidden on advertising boards, in hamburger wrappings, at the bottom of a swimming pool, in music or jewelry stores, in his favorite bar, on the punching bag of a gym, or on the back of the T-shirts of café waiters.

In four weeks, the players managed to find all the pages; as a reward, they received books signed by Jay-Z or, through a draw, another prize: a trip to Las Vegas for a New Year’s concert by Jay-Z and Coldplay.

The promotional campaign was financed by Bing and not by the editor. Bing’s Marketing Director refused to release the campaign’s budget but told the New York Times that “important costs are associated with this project”.

However, the results were positive! In November 2010, during the campaign, Bing experienced the most important market share of American traffic since its creation: 11,8%.

Nine Inch Nails: a long-term relationship

The “Year Zero” ARG

In 2007, the band Nine Inch Nails (NIN) created an ARG for the launch of their new album “Year Zero”, thanks to the agency 42 Entertainment.

This treasure hunt took place in an alternate reality, clues were given through texts on NIN T-shirts, singles of the new album left on USB keys, everything hidden in the toilets of concert venues, on websites or through secret phone numbers. All these elements helped players move ahead in the dark story of Year Zero: a world ravaged by an infinite war and an environmental catastrophe.

The goal of the project was to immerse fans in an experienced linked to the universe of the album.

The leader of the band, Trent Reznor, qualified this experience as a “new type of entertainment”. According to him, the combined effect of entertainment, word of mouth and engagement of the audience, made this ARG the perfect tool to promote this album. For more information on their transmedia experience see the case study of the agency 42 Entertainement here.

The NIN iPhone application

To stay in touch with its audience and reward their loyalty, NIN made a partnership with Tap Tap Revenge in 2008, this iPhone game tests players rhythm in a similar way to “Guitar Hero”.

The band created their own version of the game for 4,99$, everyone could test their rhythm on 13 NIN songs. Furthermore, those who managed to exceed a given score could win places to NIN concerts or the big prize: “a Les Paul guitar signed by Trent Reznor.”

The ticket race

Still in 2008, NIN found another way to federate its community.

For the inhabitants of Los Angeles, Trent Reznor had hidden concert tickets in parks, under rocks, in ditches… Each hiding place was announced on the band’s Google Earth feed. Here, you can read the post of a blogger who tells the story of his ticket race.

Conclusion

These examples show that storytelling can help artists offer parallel experiences anchored in their musical universes. Nine Inch Nails and Jay-Z managed to engage their communities in sincere ways with an uninterrupted communication like Pratten suggested.

These two operations are similar in the games’ mechanics but with different approaches. While Jay-Z built a multimedia platform around his life and his character (through his autobiography and its ARG), the rock band built its narrative universe around music, with a particular atmosphere. Gorillaz uses another technical approach by developing virtual characters that evolve with each new album.

If the music industry can learn from the audiovisual one to build narrative universes around its products to better engage its fans, the audiovisual industry could also learn from the music industry to build events around its “classic” contents.

We’ve only explored three examples here but the list of artists that developed a transmedia storytelling universe is much longer, we can think of Michael Jackson or Daft Punk for example. If you also have examples of artist that deserve a place on the list of Transmedia music pioneers, don’t hesitate to share it in the comments or on the Transmedia Lab Facebook page.

by Ana Vasile, published on 10.05.2011

Tomorrow is a big day for transmedia in France.  The three days intense training TIMM, as in Transmedia International Masterclass Marseille, will be held in Marseille, France. An opportunity to listen and work with the best Transmedia specialists in the world.

Attendees will learn about Transmedia issues, and, more specifically, will understand how Games: social games, alternate reality games and pervasive games will influence Transmedia creation content, technology, business models, and delivery issues.

While morning sessions will be devoted to lectures, the workshops and hands on activities will take place in the afternoon. The first day will be designated to Storytelling, with speakers like Christy Dena from Universe Creation 101 or Eric Viennot, the creator of the « total fiction » game concept and co-creator of the Lexis Numérique studio.  Here you can find detailed information about each day’s program and about all the speakers.

The second day will be all about production, conducted by speakers like Joaquin Alvarado, from American Public Media or Monique De Haas from Dondersteen.net. The last day will focus on technology with the interventions of speakers like Jean-François Rodriguez, VP of Transmedia & Social Media in Orange Group or Boyd Multerer from Microsoft.

The content of each afternoon workshop will be organized in accordance with the speakers of the day and will include hands-on activities, group discussion, analysis and critiques. In addition to these analysis-and-revision exercises, attendees will gain further practical experience working with these models through brief collaborative design projects, brainstorming sessions, critical analysis and discussion.

TIMM is organized by the French university CNAM, the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and NX Publishing. It will take place from May 11 to 13, at Palais du Phare in Marseille, south of France.

It’s quite astonishing, but the registrations are still opened here. For those of you attending this event, feel free to comment here or on our Facebook page and let us know how it went!

by Ana Vasile, published on 5.05.2011

Spangas is a daily TV series that shows the life of 10 teenagers from a realistic and funny point of view on their everyday-life problems. Produced by a group of producers from Nederland, with Johan Nijenhuis among them, Spangas is a transmedia native project.

By targeting the 9 to 15 age-group, this program is addressing an instinctively tech- savvy target, well at ease with multiplatform universes. An opportunity well used by the Spangas producers.

Spangas’s transmedia mechanism:

• TV series: a 12 minutes daily episode
• Internet: a forum, character’s profiles, diaries and video testimonials + live chat
• A film, SpangaS Op Survival, aired in 2009
• Magazine that shows the backstage of the series and offers advices on how to better “survive” the teenage
• Books, centered on the life of one Spangas character
• A theater play tour in Nederland

You might be surprised by the fact that the producer didn’t choose to create an iPhone app, especially with this king of target.  The mobile media was ignored because the celphones are forbidden in Dutch schools: a nice proof that the transmedia mechanism was well adapted to its audience.

Written like a soap opera, but filmed in a real high school, each season shows an entire school year through 180 episodes throughout 7 months. With quite a record, more than 50% market share at the end of each season, the 4^th season runs on the Dutch TV channel NRCV. At present, the producers are filming the 5^th season.

An interesting point to the Spangas conception is the way they imagines the audience’s circulation between platforms: TV and Internet. At the end of each TV episode, one of the characters speaks directly to audience by sharing his feelings on what just happened on the show he redirects the viewers to the website, a touching and direct way to assure the flow between platforms.

The web was imagined as an integrated part of the project. The Spangas website has a forum and each character keeps his profile and diary updated. On their profiles the cybernauts can directly relate to the characters and ask questions. The website is enriched with characters’ testimonials videos where they comment the show narrative and ask for advice. Now and then, the producers organize a virtual meeting with the characters via the live-chat function available on their website. Spangas also proposes on the web extras like touring videos, interviews or the making of.

This program is even able to integrate on the website the UGC (user generated content): photos and videos posted on the website. By using the forum and the pools, the series creators are always checking the mood of their audience. For example, Charley one of the series character would want to cheat an exam, the cybernauts are being asked their opinions on the matter.

The cybernauts reactions are integrated in the series’ narrative by using the pools’ results. Through an intense and scheduled communication, Spangas is forming a strong and lasting relationship with the online community. To give you an idea of the success of this approach: Spangas website is the most visited kids’ website in Nederland with 24% of visitors spending there more than 15 minutes.

Spangas aired for the first time in 2007 and gathered already 770 episodes, each with a 12 minutes length. Over the years, the program eight prizes in Europe: comme par exemple Best on shifted tv in 2010, Cinekid-Kinderkast Audience Award in 2010 or Cinekid Media Award in 2009. The series was already exported in Switzerland, to the SF channel, and in Germany on SuperRTL.

You can find a complementary article in French on Backstory website and in English on Transmythology.

by Olivier Godest, published on 3.05.2011

For several months now, we’ve been analyzing transmedia works and projects, reflecting on methodologies to write them, giving our point of view on some of them and trying to define criteria to understand why a work is transmedia or not.

Now, the Producer’s Guild in the US and the CNC in France, have drawn up guidelines to know if your project can be called “TRANSMEDIA” at least as far as getting financial support is concerned.

But despite these criteria, it’s not always easy to know how to classify your project in the jungle of multi-media works that exists today.

Let’s go back to the start. How do we define a transmedia work based on the studies of a certain Henry Jenkins ?

“As opposed to cross-media (or pluri-media) which spreads a core content across complementary media, transmedia articulates an original narrative universe on different media. This universe is carried by different media (TV, Internet, Mobile, Radio, Print, Tablet, etc), which bring new and complementary perspectives on the universe of the story, depending on their technological capacity. The different elements that compose this universe can be explored and understood independently of each other: we talk about multiple entry points into the story.”

However, I’m often faced with works that approach these criteria, but don’t always include them totally.

On the other hand, Dr Christy Dena references two types of transmedia works (I invite you to read her much more detailed analysis here):

- either a collection of several stories told in mono-media in a given universe (ex: franchises)

- or a collection of media telling one story (ex: an entertainment program that takes place on tv and on the web simultaneously)

There are then two types of transmedia narrations:

- those that start from a pre-existing content (she talks about an “expansion” of the universe)

- and those that are conceived according to the criteria of a transmedia work from the beginning

This approach seems to me to be the most accurate for the present market. My analysis on the perception of transmedia works today is therefore based on these criteria and is divided into three parts:

1°) One story told on several media

Let’s take the example of “Cathy’s book”. This young people’s novel tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of a young teenager. The book is her diary, which she left for her sister.

On the cover of the book, an intriguing detail: a phone number…

At the back of the book, the author invites readers to resolve a series of mysteries to find Cathy. In order to do this, she explains that you can use the phone numbers, but you are also pointed towards the web to do your research. The goal: to move ahead in the resolution of the investigation and find Cathy.

This book also includes an envelope containing clues: photos, business cards, newspaper articles…

Can this be considered a transmedia work?

The question deserves to be asked. At first glance, there isn’t a complete independence between the different media… (see definition: “The different elements that compose this universe can be explored and understood independently of each other: we talk about multiple entry points into the story”)

The mobile and web are extensions of the book medium. These media allow us to delve deeper into the story, to participate, but they don’t bring a new point of view of the main story (then again…this notion is also a subject of debates).

There is also an iPhone application serving as another entry point into the story.

And on the web, multiple sites and forums on which amateur detectives can exchange tips.

From there on, how can we qualify this work? An alternate reality game, an ARG? A digital book?

From my point of view, it’s transmedia, whether or not the different media are independent… This example is ONE illustration of a type of multi-media storytelling. It shows one universe spread out on several media, a good measure of interactivity and audience participation at different levels of involvement.

In the same category, we could talk about our french example : Detective Avenue

2°) Transmedia transformation and franchises

These are the most common examples since they are, first and foremost, based on minimal risk taking.

It’s the story of a producer and a broadcaster, who bring a TV series to the screen, let’s take Dexter for example. We’ve already done a full article on it. It all started with a book. The first season of the show is based on this book. At this point, we’re closer to adaptation, cross-media.

But with the growing success of the series, the story between our producer and our broadcaster goes to the next step.

Why not take over other media while the “Dexter” brand is successful? Once the trust is established, it’s much easier to find the financial means to spread a universe on several media. Other media are then developed in parallel with the series: web series, games, marketing operations, smartphone application, etc.

The goal is to fill the fans’ waiting time between two seasons in order not to loose a community that is so hard to build. But also, if possible, to generate business. And the master in that domain is obviously George Lucas.

This is the same logic that was exploited by this great name of filmmaking with Star Wars. Yes, there are a lot of derived products (that don’t bring anything new to the story), but there are also books, video games, an animated series, etc, that bring new perspectives on the universe. Why? Because at the start, there is a successful film, a trilogy, a brand! Minimal risk taking and presumably, a very interesting return.

The transmedia universe is deployed in the second step, it’s only the extension of a work that was originally mono-media.

Another example that we’ve explored recently: Tron and transmedia

Here, we touch upon two points brought up by Chrity Dena: “a collection of stories that are told in mono-media” and “writing based on expansive universes”

3°) “Pure” transmedia works

They’re the hardest to find in France today… Still too often in the project stages, they are narrative universes that meet all the criteria of the basic definition quoted above.

A global media strategy is set up from the conception stage, in order to create the links between each medium in the most harmonious way possible. It’s a narrative universe deployed on several media, not a unique story, which is an important difference from the first point. The difference is tiny but it exists.

One of the best examples to illustrate this strategy is “The Blair Witch Project” that I’ve recently written about.

We could also talk about the numerous ARGs that were a great inspiration for these mechanisms.

A good example is that of the HBO campaign for the launch of the True Blood series. Here, the marketing budget was used to extend the universe of the story before the TV broadcast…and the result in terms of audience circulation was excellent.

Conclusion

From my point of view, there are two possible perceptions of transmedia works today:
- the reality of the market and the concrete experiences that are offered, which aren’t perfect but at least they exist
- “pure” transmedia projects such as we imagine them (with all the criteria that we know), but that still have trouble blooming (especially in France).

The total independence of media is probably one of the most questionable points in the qualification criteria of a transmedia project. Often, the main medium takes the lead in the global universe, which makes it an almost unavoidable step to get through the first layer, since the other entry points rarely have the same narrative intensity. From then on, can we really talk about a true independence of the media from one another?

Furthermore, in some works, several media are available to the spect’actor to resolve an investigation or simply to move ahead in the story, such as the example of Cathy’s book and Detective Avenue. Here, each medium is not really a new entry point into the story, but rather an additional communication vector to progress in the investigation or enrich the story of the main medium. From there on, should we say that it’s not transmedia? I don’t think so.

The perception and differentiation of all these innovative projects is a real source of inspiration for international creation, but, as is the case for many works of art, it’s not always easy to fit them into boxes (and that’s a good thing!).

I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this topic!

by Ana Vasile, published on 28.04.2011

This multiplatform project proposes a new point of view on the Chernobyl catastrophe. 25 years after, « La Zone » ravished by the radiations is uncovering itself through its inhabitants’ stories, gathered by two journalists through their journeys spread throughout ten years.

Directed by Guillaume Herbaut and Bruno Masi and produced by Agat Films & Cie and lemonde.fr, “La Zone” unfolds its story through a web documentary (broadcasted on the Le Monde newspaper’s website), an interactive installation at the Parisian art gallery  Gaîté Lyrique and a book edited by Naïve, on the 25 anniversary of  Chernobyl catastrophe.

“We have discovered the abandoned villages from the forbidden zone : that infinite space similar to The Reunion Island, surrounded by barbed wire and punctuated by graveyards where the corpses of contaminated cars pile up. During ten years, we went back to this region, magnetized by its stakes : the incarnation at a big scale of a  disintegrating world, with no point of reference flowing with the instinct, inhabited by fear of extermination, eaten by his own social and economical decay.” witnessed the authors.

A web documentary

A multimedia installation

A book

The book co-edited by Naïve and Gaîté Lyrique is mixing Guillaume Herbaut’s pictures with Bruno Masi’s texts and covers all the five trips that allowed these two journalists to create their documentary, from October 2009 until November 2010. Following two stories with different rhythms, this book is inviting the reader to submerge to the zone’s everyday life. Available starting with the 26^th April at Gaîté Lyrique (Paris)

A complementary article is available on WebTelevisionObserver website.

by Deni Susic, published on 26.04.2011

After “The search engines” and “3D relief”, the 4^th meeting of the Ina SUP professionals focused on the subject of transmedia in TV production. Jean-Yves Lemoine, a specialist of media convergence, and Didier Giraud, coordinator of the Ina seminars, led the debate.

Context

The multiplication of media platforms has led to an individualization of audiovisual content consumption. Audiences have also become internet users, immersed in a digital flux of continuous information. Uses have evolved: these internet users have also become multi-taskers. They want emotion and proximity. They want to feel, participate, create and communicate. For these reasons, audiovisual production has to invent transmedia formats, to capture the attention of these super-solicited audiences.

First part speakers: “How does Transmedia mobilize competencies?”

Jean-Claude Mocik – Head of the directing department of Ina SUP
Bruno Masi - Head of the journalism department of Ina SUP
Eric Viennot – Director of Lexis Numérique and creator of « In Memoriam »
Mathieu Leblanc et de Mathieu Salomé – Producers – Aomys

An author tells a story, a transmedia author creates an experience

The ability of a transmedia author to target an audience and determine the platforms to reach them are the characteristics that differentiate him from a traditional author.

In terms of writing, the notion of “participation” and using the right media are an integral part of the development of a transmedia project. Ideally, these approaches are included from the conception stage (more efficient).

In the US, transmedia authors are called “Story Architects”. They’re “Supermen” who script a universe on several media. Their job consists of isolating the narrative elements and transmitting them while creating emotion. They know how to work in teams, accept the expertise brought in by new participants and understand the specificity of each medium. These profiles are relatively rare in France.

In the journalistic domain, it’s possible to find a certain resemblance between the “Shiva Journalist” and the “Story Architect”. Bruno Masi, Director of the journalism department of Ina SUP, relates the birth of the “Shiva Journalist” to the emergence of new technologies, and he warns us about the economic overexploitation of this new type of journalist: the “Shiva Journalist” is a DOP, cameraman, sound engineer, editor, graphic designer, community manager, all at the same time. This can be considered like a danger for the profession.

The influence of video games

“Video Games have become the pop art of the 21^st Century”

It’s difficult to contradict Eric Viennot, the creator of the game “In Memoriam”, when he announces this in the introduction of his intervention.

With his company Léxis Numérique, Eric Viennot is developing concepts of “total fiction”. According to him ARGs are too complicated to play and remain, for the most part, promotional works or simple derived products.

A total fiction is an experience that blurs the boundary between reality and fiction. It allows players to follow a mystery in a non-linear way, to get involved, to modify the course of its story and become the hero. This experience exists on its own. The platforms that build it are independent.

On the contrary, in ARGs, the player is really guided: accompaniment, engagement and reward processes are created. For example, In Memoriam: Julie’s character was an investigator who sent emails as soon as a player took too long to solve a mystery.

These markers, as Eric Viennot calls them, allow the game’s editor to “track” the player’s progress. According to him, these mechanisms specific to videogames seem essential in a transmedia project.

Furthermore, the development of a “total fiction” is very different from that of a traditional fiction. On his latest project, Eric Viennot dedicated an entire year to documentation – accumulating the themes touched upon in the game – with the idea of establishing a coherence between places and characters.

Whatever his cultural knowledge might be, he says, an author/conceiver is never protected from players that might be better than him. After that, the tools and mechanisms of the game are set up. Finally, he establishes the different levels of the story – the possible itineraries of the player – and creates the project bible.

“The Gameplay and the story have to be conceived and weaved simultaneously”

Is transmedia the business of an author or of a conceiver? Opinions diverge. Will an author be able to create an interaction with his audience? Will a conceiver know how to bring to life and make his characters coherent? What we learn from In Memoriam, is that it’s perfectly possible for a conceiver from the world of video games to create immersive transmedia experiences. However, it’s important to note that the development time of such projects are much longer than traditional linear fictions.

A need for training, collaboration and models

Jean-Claude Mocik, director of the directing department of the Ina SUP, summarized, in a few sentences, the need to establish transmedia specifications for audiovisual professionals :

“There’s a real need for training, reflection and exchanges between audiovisual professionals. Traditional authors will have to profoundly review their approach to their profession.”

Indeed, it’s very complicated for a single author to elaborate a transmedia experience without surrounding himself with a multidisciplinary team to support its creation and distribution. In order for this team to work, it has to come together around a project. Mathieu, producer of Aomys, considers that the climate is favorable to share knowledge between professions and competencies: “There is a real opening in the field of audiovisual production for the convergence of classic and new competencies. In terms of writing, a synchronicity of forms and professions is necessary.”

In France, however, transmedia projects remain relatively few and difficult to finance. References are beginning to appear but there are still very few models. Mathieu Leblanc concludes: “Before, we had to create prototypes for cars, today, we have to create prototypes for circuits.”

Second part speakers: “How technology is impacting the financing of programs?”

Véronique Marino, Digital business development consultant – Espace in.fusion and director of the Interactive Media program of the INIS (Québec)
Valérie Bourgoin – Director of the Video Game and Digital Creation department – CNC
Jérémy Pouilloux – Producer – La Générale de Production

Towards a communal taxonomy

There exists an understanding and language problem between “classic” audiovisual producers and producers from the web. Few players from the world of the web and interactivity are integrated in traditional production companies. Furthermore, audiovisual production doesn’t really understand the production delays of web creation. It’s incapable of challenging the quotes made by professionals in that field. The audiovisual producer doesn’t really know how to estimate the cost of an interactive component. This will require a redefinition of human resources inside production companies and the creation of a common dictionary.

Transmedia is an artistic and financial challenge

As new uses lead us to new forms of content, the financing of a transmedia work remains a real challenge. A transmedia producer will have to fight. Finding the funds to finance a transmedia project is difficult. Jéremy Pouilloux, producer with La Générale de Production, comments: “Transmedia is a loosing production economy compared to traditional productions.”

According to him, it would be too easy to blame it all on the pre-financing crisis. Distributors, even if they are touched, still remain major and dominant actors in the financing of works, transmedia or others. The CNC production and development funds have managed to create a momentum. Furthermore, the opening of the support account is very good news for the producers of new media works.

The CNC also allows, within certain criteria, the input of a brand.

Brand-content, the relationship between a brand and a producer, a brand and a content, can be envisioned, but is confronted with many challenges. When a project is natively transmedia, it’s difficult to integrate it into advertising calendars. In terms of “timing”, in most case studies, the CNC has realized that the associations between producers and brands doesn’t work, because of the constraints established by the public establishment. Brands want a large distribution of the project first and foremost while the CNC is in a logic of helping creation.

Under the impulse of social media, post-financing, especially in the form of micro-payments, is a possibility for producers. It’s possible to sell certain contents, like applications and mini-games, through these means. Detective Avenue, for example, sells a package of SMS cues for 3€ on its internet site.

The Canadian Example

In 2007, Telefilm Canada created a new media fund, the CMF-FMC, destined for non-television content (multimedia, games, etc). This fund has a good track record since the organism has acquired a real know-how in the field of non-linear production.

Last year, a federal decision was taken that sent a real shock wave through Canadian TV producers. From now on, they have to subject themselves to the web game, meaning that they must develop an interactive component in order to be eligible for pre-financing.

The NFB has also stopped its distributing activity. From now on, the organism only finances artistic residencies. Despite that, they are successfully fulfilling their role, by offering very creative contents.

In terms of brand-content, more and more brands are participating in content production. To go back to the author-artist issue, it’s important that the latter question his role in this case. An artist has to understand that he’s not doing things for himself but for others.

There is one more real difference between Canada and France. Whether it’s in development or in production, a project’s ability to generate audience is key. The FMC asks producers to make the necessary efforts to find a minimum return on investment.

About the author : Deni Susic

Graduate of an Audiovisual Production MBA at the Superior School of Management, Deni worked for the production companies Few Interactive and Karé Productions. Soon, he became interested in the possibilities offered to the traditional audiovisual content by the evolving new screens and the social-medias. Since April 2011, he developed an international community of “story architects” as well as a discussion and exchange portal for the transmedia actors: Mediactivists.com.

by Ana Vasile, published on 21.04.2011

Collapsus is a brand-new multiplatform project produced by the Dutch company SubmarineChannel. Under the direction of Tommy Pallotta, this experience combines interactivity, animation and fiction with documentary footage. Collapsus offers a peak into the near future and imagines how the imminent energy crisis affects a group of ten young people, who appear to be caught up in a conspiracy.

Nominated at the EMMY Digital Awards and winner of SXSW Interactive Awards in the Film category, Collapsus is designed around the documentary Energy Risk, at the demand of Dutch broadcaster VPRO. The goal was to attract a different and younger audience than traditional documentary viewers. Presented as a transmedia project, Collapsus is deployed though only two media, TV and web. On the last media, Collapsus is proposing to the cybernauts an interactive experience through different content on each platform. On the TV, the audience can simply watch the classic documentary Energy Risk.

The director presents his project like a “pioneering approach that blends real documentary footage with mini-games and movie fragments, inviting you to choose your own perspective as the story unfolds. Interact and make decisions to avoid further blackouts; get a broader perspective by listening to the experts; or observe the consequences for everyday people through the fictional story”

On the project’s main website, the players are required, through an interactive game, to make decisions that leave their mark on a global scale. Collapsus is reiterating the codes “of serious gaming” by developing through a game an important issue in an informative and educational goal. The cybernaut is learning to judge the gravity of national governments’ decisions on theirs energetic politics by trying to put an end to a virtual energetic catastrophe.

The story starts in 2012 and takes the cybernaut in crucial moments in time, until 2025. The audiences will virtually visit a series of locations such as London, the Ukraine, Teheran and Colorado. Live action footage combined with animation will unfold the current political situation – as well the characters’ course of destiny.

The experience is guided by one of the characters vlog posts of Vera and her friends as they attempt to figure out not only their personal problems, but also what is happening in their collapsing world – and what they can do to create a livable future world.

Collapsus can be seen as an experimentation of transmedia power, as producer Bruno Felix says, “We always try to approach complex issues in appealing and engaging ways. It was very interesting to produce a transmedia project because it is an emerging genre that is still in development and experimentation is still possible”.

If we base ourselves on the Producers Guild of America criteria, Collapsus can’t be an ad litteram transmedia concept (as stated in this Wikipedia article) the experience unfolds his story only on two media, the TV and the Internet. Nevertheless, Collapsus seems a very interesting experience because of its double targeting strategy for a documentary: the young audience is involved through the interactive online platform and the mass audience through TV exposure. Its success could give some ideas to the audiovisual producers, by proving that using a certain dose of interactivity and “serious gaming” can be of interest in enlarging the frontiers of the storytelling universe.

by Olivier Godest, published on 19.04.2011

This year, the TF1 Unit for Youth Programs is launching “TFOU Pitch”, a call for projects open to any kind of writing and to new talents and partners, whether they’re producers, authors or web agencies…

Concept

To conceive and coproduce an original transmedia event game: with at least three media support like television, Internet and another support of your choice (live event, card collecting, boxes, mobiles, tablets…). The different media don’t just have to be linked but to be organized as a true virtuous circle. Each media will have its own role in the transmedia program and enrich the others.

Goal

TF1 through its TFOU Pitch, wishes to create:

-          A unifying transmedia program adapted to the TFOU program, aimed for children 6 to 10 years old.

-          Conceive a fun project: simple, efficient, developing loyalty and mostly CRAZY!

Registration deadline is June 4^th 2011

by Olivier Godest, published on 14.04.2011

The Media Faculty is proposing the training “How to create and produce transmedia” from the 26^th to the 28^th April 2011. The declared objective is to bring answers to all your questions about the new storytelling forms, through the interventions of specialised professionals.

The audiovisual field is boiling with new developing technologies and broadcasting platforms (the linear TV, on-demand TV (VOD), the web, the mobile, the tablet).

Obviously, more and more issues find themselves needing answers, like how to create and produce content for these new media, how to encourage the participation in transmedia stories without forgetting their possibilities and stakes, as well as the financials and juridical issues raised by transmedia projects.

This training can be entirely paid (by your OPCA or AFDAS and by the AGEFICE for company directors and freelancers), if several named criteria are met (for more information call The Media Faculty).

Here, you can find more detailed information about this training and all the speakers involved.

Inscriptions and complementary information available by email at formation@mediaclub.fr and by phone at 01.43.55.00.40 (Floriane).

by Ana Vasile, published on 12.04.2011

Tribeca Film Institute, a New York based nonprofit organization, opened a special fund for non-fiction, multiplatform projects.  The organization position itself as a funding provider for filmmakers and a promoter of film.

The TFI New Media Fund is specifically oriented towards projects that go beyond traditional screens, integrating video with content across media platforms, from video games and mobile apps to social networks and interactive websites.

This initiative emphasizes the importance of innovation through storytelling, as the fund members said “We’re looking for projects that activate audiences around issues of contemporary social justice and equality around the world and demonstrate the power of cross-platform storytelling and dynamic audience engagement.”

Projects

The projects eligible for submission must present a non-fiction story focused around issues of contemporary social justice and equality, by including an integrated cross-platform or interactive component designed to engage and activate audiences in imaginative ways.

The fund welcomes documentary, hybrid/scripted, animation and other innovative storytelling approaches. TFI New Media Fund creators highlight that “We will only accept projects that are in an advanced development stage and beyond,” in order to be accepted the author must submit at least 7 minutes of footage and demonstrate that the “Fund will have a meaningful impact on the completion of your project”.

While students’ projects are not accepted, first time filmmakers are encouraged to submit their work in order to obtain the funding offered. They only need to demonstrate the innovation brought by their project and how it engages audiences in new ways. The video component can be feature-length or short and can be designed specifically for a new media platform – for example a web series.

Even if the organization is based in New York, producers and filmmakers from all over the world can submit their creations. The project needs to be relevant for the American public and at least subtitled in English.

Funding

While there are no entry fees, only four to eight projects will be each receiving between $50,000 and $100,000 in funding.

Entry Deadlines

The submission deadline is May 25th, 2011

Here you can find more detailed information on the fund and here you can submit your work.

by Ana Vasile, published on 7.04.2011

Global adventure allows participants to join or oppose a super villains’ army. The battle takes place through an Alternate Reality Game that started on 12 March 2011. Dominic de Haas, an independent developer/producer and this ARG’s creator explained the game’s mechanism for Transmedia Lab’s readers.

Participants are required to locate the virtual Villain Training Program and complete missions at different locations around the world. This training will guide them on their path to become masked villains and aiding the mysterious T.S., the evil mastermind in need of allies. The participants to the ARG can also oppose the villain. A top secret movement is somewhere out there to support them in this war.

The game concerns a global alternate reality experience that will play out in the real world as well as over the internet through social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The story includes online and offline elements and will deliver some of its content to the participants’ “doorsteps” by means of phone calls or e-mails. There are also mysterious phone numbers to be found and called.

The back-story will be told through a digital graphic novel whose pages can be unlocked by the participants during the experience. Optionally players will receive SMS text messages at later stages of the game. Also, players will directly affect parts of the story line, in the game as well as in the graphic novel. For example, by completing the second mission, the players allowed the villain to gain entry to a database where he finds a lethal virus. Would the players have failed this mission, there would not have been a lethal virus and the villain would have to find other alternatives (through other missions).

Dominic explains that “The game also requests the players to become actively involved in the game, virtually and in real life. For example, one of the missions has had the players add super villain masks to their photos. Another mission requested players to launch blogs on which they describe their journey into villainy.”

A game of ‘chess’ is proposed  in which players will have to claim locations on earth by going there and taking photos in which they hold up a piece of paper with a drawn logo and therefore ‘claiming’ that location for one of the game’s ‘camps/sides.’ If the Super Villain selects a city that no player can claim, players will then have to use their networks to find people willing to go there.

At a later stage in the game, players will have to use their networks to collect game artifacts and fulfill missions in different locations in the real world. For the moment, the cities targeted by the Super Villain are kept as a great secret, but the game master whispered us : think New York, London, Berlin and even Paris… for once, France was not forgotten!

“This experience will introduce participants to a villain they will actually be able to interact with. The premise is for the players to find out whether they would rather join or oppose the villain and do they have what it takes to do so?” Dominic concludes.

Some known cybernauts, like Jane Doh from argn.com, received a personalized invitation from the Super Villain himself to join his troupes. The recruits already started gathering on the Unfiction forum, but Dominic, the game master, says anyone can join the adventure on the game’s launching site: http://www.sotanaht.com.

What about you, dear readers, would you rather join or fight the Masked Super Villain?

by Ana Vasile et Olivier Godest , published on 5.04.2011

At the crossroads of a police series and a detective game “Detective Avenue” begins on April 4th 2011. The winner of the 2010 Orange Creation Workshops, this is a natively transmedia project on tv, web and mobile. The producers (Alain Degove and Laurent Guérin from Murmures Productions) and the Orange teams in charge of Games and Transmedia (Jean-François Rodriguez, Morgan Bouchet, Mickael Ivorra) tell us about the construction and implementation of this multiplatform experience, which should get people talking.

Synopsis

Detective Avenue invites internet users to participate in an investigation let by Gaëlle, the heroine of the webseries. Her sister was found dead in her apartment and the perpetrator seems to be someone from her building. Gaëlle therefore moves in among them to lead her investigation and discover the truth. A sort of interactive online « Cluedo » interactif et online…

Transmedia system

The internet user/player is at the heart of the project. For 5 weeks, he’ll be able to view 58 episodes of 1 to 3 minutes. Located on the official site, these episodes are aired daily and will unlock clues and mini-games aimed at developing internet user participation and commitment to help Gaëlle solve the mystery : text messages, iPhone application, emails, interactive voice server will all be used.

Additional clues to progress in the investigation will be available via text messages (3€ for 8 texts) or on social networks. The free iPhone application will allow people to find out even more about the suspects by offering additional video content and clues to find in real life, thanks to a geo-localization game around Orange shops.

Each challenge won by the player will be rewarded through a point system. At the end of the first round of the series, on May 10th 2011, the three players with the best scores will be rewarded with a gift (LG Infinia 55 inches 3D TV, Sony VAIO computer, Canon camera).

Detective Avenue will also be very present on social networks (Dailymotion, Youtube, Twitter…) like Facebook. One of the channels of Orange TV will be dedicated to the airing and promotion of the series.

Additional information on the website Web Television Observer

A real evolution for the world of production

Writing and developing a transmedia program requires many changes to classic production models.

New production competencies must be acquired and the teams surrounding the producer must also evolve, as explained by Laurent Guérin: “The Detective Avenue production crew is composed of 20 people, including actors, for a period of 3 weeks. The transmedia team is composed of 20 people for a period of one year. Game designer, experience designer, project leader, technical director, graphic designer, photographer, ergonomist, creative writer, developer, webmaster, beta tester, community manager, etc. It’s like putting an orchestra to work, piece by piece, with the right scores”

The writing is also different from the usual linear codes, Alain Degove (Murmures Productions) explains: “We’re at the very beginning of narratives where we don’t show everything onscreen in a linear way. It’s a way of writing that requires an enormous amount of creativity and a real global vision from authors, producers and the director, while making sure to avoid useless distractions that could lose the audience”

Audience participation is one of the key elements of Detective Avenue. The Orange transmedia teams participated in implementing this strategy, inspired, among other things, by models from the world of videogames : for Mickael Ivorra (Orange Transmedia department) “Transmedia experiences can pick and choose elements of inspiration in the rules, mechanisms and know how of the gaming world. “Casual” games and social games often have simple but fun accessibility models”… Morgan Bouchet adds “We’ve noticed that games have an increasing presence in traditional media and even in consumers’ daily lives(gamification)”

New business models and new technologies

The participation of Orange on such a project is justified by the group’s know how in terms of distribution, entertainment and multi-screen games, but also of telecoms and technologies. The use of technologies and networks to enrich the narration of a fiction program is not yet very democratic, it’s a real research and development experience taking place through transmedia experiences like this one, as explained by Morgan Bouchet (Transmedia and Social Media VP): “We’re working with our France Telecom/Orange R&D teams to develop the tools and applications necessary to accompany producers, TV channels, distributors or authors in these new types of narratives and interactions, allowing them to create a simplified, coherent and innovative presence on the new screens that surround us”

But is mixing storytelling, telecom tools, applications, networks and platforms accessible to any producer ? For Jean-François Rodriquez “Let’s remember that telecom tools are also the audience’s entertainment tools, transmedia is a natural extension of literature, cinema and television, which any producer and distributor should implement in order to develop “attention” and “commitment” in a connected and multitasking generation”

Another notable characteristic : Detective Avenue was conceived as an exportable (and therefore resalable) ready to use, transmedia system. Laurent Guérin explains: “Detective Avenue is built around a game engine whose vocation is to be able to welcome new projects and therefore start making scale savings on production costs”

For those who want to dive right in and concretely discover this transmedia project, go to www.detective-avenue.com and the series’ Facebook page.

by Ana Vasile et Olivier Godest , published on 31.03.2011

In December 2010, Showtime announced that a new season of the series Dexter will start shooting in spring 2011 (the sixth one). Since we have some early day fans in our team, we couldn’t resist telling you a little more about this series, which is presently beating audience records in the US. Here’s an analysis of this phenomenon that obviously found an echo in transmedia.

Origin of Dexter’s universe

Before the TV series, we can find the origin of Dexter’s universe in Jeff Lindsay’s books.

In 2004, the author published “Darkly dreaming Dexter”, the book where Dexter Morgan was created. A brilliant scientist working for the Miami Police Department as a forensic expert, specialized in blood projections.

But this likeable character has a dark side! He’s also a very peculiar serial killer: he has a very strict moral code and a unique vision of justice. Dexter only kills other killers that have escaped the legal system. Traumatized by childhood events, he says he’s incapable of feeling any emotion, except during criminal acts. In the end, it’s the character’s moral and psychological contradictions that make the series interesting.

The first book sets up the context (locations, characters, origins) of the first season, we’re therefore not surprised to see that Jeff Lindsay participated in writing several episodes. The rest of the series is an original story without links to the other books of the same author. The series and the books therefore quickly diverge into different and complementary stories.

Today, it’s one of the most watched series on Showtime. With an audience peak of 2,5 million viewers during the broadcast of the last episode of the fifth season.

Dexter goes viral in the UK

The FX channel set up a viral campaign to promote the launch of Dexter’s second season. The campaign was called “The Dexter Hit List” and its goal was to promote the series by building up fan interest.

The video application developed by the digital marketing agency Ralph & Co allowed internet users to send a personalized recording of a press conference and a text message from Dexter: “Hi. I’m coming to the UK sooner than expected. Dexter”

This text message was followed by an email with the personalized press conference. The surprise was in the content: London police identified the recipient as the potential target of a crime, referring to Dexter as “The Bay Harbor Butcher” as the press nicknamed him in the TV series.

The jokesters could record their own questions and witness reports to influence the content of the video. They could also choose the questions that the journalists would ask the police officer during the press conference. The recipient of the video could see his name written on a list in blood on the letters shown by the police as proof: “You Are Next”

This was relayed by a print, TV and press campaign. The campaign created such a buzz in London that Scotland Yard police received terrified calls to denounce the criminal. Yet another example of how hard it is to create efficient borders between fiction and reality.

But the results were there: for the first episode of season 2 on FX, 348 000 people were tuned in, one of the channel’s best audiences!

The blood fountains

Showtime and Pop2Life, an American marketing agency, created a street marketing event in the US to attract the audience’s

attention for the launch of the series’ second season. Twelve American cities got red public fountains.

The fountains became the “scenes of the crime”, surrounded by yellow tape marked with Dexter’s name.

Mobile crews in white coats were distributing promotional objects and free DVDs on the street. You can see pictures of all the cities touched by this epidemic, here.

Dexter on the front page

For the third season, Showtime launched an ad campaign spoofing the covers of different mainstream American magazines. Dexter is already nicknamed “America’s favorite serial killer”, he graced the covers of Wired, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, US Weekly and Rolling Stone, among others.

Creative Commons : Adam Crowe

Some magazines, such as Rolling Stone, had articles of six to eight pages about the new season.

To increase the impact of this campaign, the producers set up “Dexter news-stands” with fake magazines and promotional products.

Early Cuts : : the Dexter web series

Dexter’s fourth season marked the launch of its spin-off: “Dexter: Early Cuts”, an animated web-series positioned as the prequel to the series, aired on the Showtime website in 2009. To maintain the coherence with Dexter’s universe, the main character Michael C. Hall dubbed the voice of his character.

Produced by KTV Media International, the web episodes were directed by Bullseye Art, a web animation collective. The directors worked with illustrators such as Kyle Baker, Ty Templeton, Andrés Vera Martinez and Devin Lawson. The story for animation purists is that the episodes were animated in 2.5D style, meaning that two dimensional illustrations were animated in a three dimensional space.

The narrative of the web-series takes place during the chase of the serial killer of three victims mentioned in the sixth episode of the first season, “Return to Sender”. Each victim’s story is divided into two minute chapters.

“Dexter: Early Cuts” aims to give a better understanding of the character’s complex reasoning and reveal the development of his sociopath behavior, progressively unveiled under the guardianship of this adoptive father Harry. Early Cuts explores Dexter’s beginnings and technical progression.

Early Cuts : Dark Echo, a second season on the web

This second season of the web-series Early Cuts came out in October 2010 during the San Diego Comic-Con. Written by Tim Schlattmann, the TV series’ co-producer, and illustrated by two artists with different graphic universes, Bill Sienkiewicz and David Mack, the story of this web-series begins just after Harry’s death, Dexter’s adoptive father.

Structured in six chapters: “Early Cuts: Dark Echo” presents a young Dexter at the medical school where he studies anatomy. He’s confronted to a killer who’s copying him but without respecting his “code” to only target murderers. It’s the first time that Dexter is confronted to ethical doubts.

Dexter Interactive Investigation : a real online investigation!

And a real success! Online since late 2010, this interactive video module directly implemented on Youtube, allows people to play detective, taking on Dexter’s role. For those who don’t know it yet, it’s really worth a detour!

Mini online and mobile games

Dexter Body Bag Toss is based on the same principle as the game Yeti Sport. If you’ve practiced your penguin throwing skills in the last few years, you’ll understand what I mean.

In this mini Flash game, Dexter is on his boat and your goal is to throw a garbage bag containing the pieces of his last victim as far as possible. The interest and gameplay is quite limited. But the fact that it’s based on a pre existing game model must have considerably diminished development costs.

The game Where’s Dexter is much more fun. After the Yeti game, you must have already played “Where’s Charlie?” The idea is similar, you must find Dexter in the middle of a crowd (since he always tries to be as discreet as possible and can easily find his prey). Available on Youtube, you must click directly in the video when you’ve spotted him to go to the next level.

The Blood Spatter Analysis game will teach you to identify which weapons were used for a crime as well as Dexter.

On IPhone (4,99€) and iPad (5,99€) you can take Dexter’s role in a 3D game. On your smartphone, you can also play a little game for free, where you have to put pieces of a photo of Dexter back into the right order (not revolutionary…) or, for 0,79€, you can take a little quiz about the series. Another application for fans, Dexter Insider Plus, is a database of the series, available for 2,39€.

The Hunter Prey : the Dexter ARG

Social Networks

The Twitter account @SHO_Dexter, has no less than 105 000 followers, with frequently updated statuses allowing fans to follow all the series’ news.

Street marketing in Madrid

For the launch of season 4 in Spain, a street marketing campaign was set up in Madrid. It might be in bad taste, but nonetheless efficient. Discover it on video, the images speak for themselves…

For fans looking for extra information

An official Wiki of series fans is available on DexterWiki

You can also discover the box containing all of Dexter’s victims blood samples, with complete information about each one.

If you know of other elements of Dexter’s transmedia system, don’t hesitate to share them with us in the comments!

by Aurélien Gaucherand et Cyril Huet , published on 29.03.2011

Digital marketing aims to create an emotional connection between the image of a brand and its targets. A strong trend in 2011 to reach this goal, is the development of branded content, a brand produces content destined for an audience sharing a certain type of affinities or passions.

In order to go beyond a simple buzz, this content has to be articulated around a narrative story (storytelling), developing audience loyalty to a program over the longer term. The concept of a web-series is an answer to this challenge.

While writing such a web series on the theme of snow sports, we imagined a system using social gaming to transform a passive audience into one of active participants.

This Social Reality Game (SRG) is played online, it allows its participants to have an influence on the script and the product content, almost live.

Why use a Social Reality Game ? The goal is to recruit, develop loyalty and transform the passive audience into contributors and therefore ambassadors of the program.

1) Make the content dynamic

The production of branded video content is a big investment for brands and automatically generate strong expectations for the visibility incurred. No matter what the quality of a video of a series is, using the Internet as a simple broadcasting channel is a mistake, because Internet is not a broadcast media but a place of interactivity. The concept of Social Reality Game allows us to bring content to life.

2) Stimulate the participative creation

If the term “social media” is often used inappropriately, it takes on its true meaning when the community of users has a real impact on the media produced. The Social Reality Game’s (SRG) final editorial purpose is the creation of a social media – a participative media, where a part of the audience participates in the creative process of content production.

3) Valuing the users

Games mean prizes. The encouragement to participate is presented to users as a challenge where there will be finalists and winners. Of course, prizes are planned to reward the most active contributors. However, it’s through an editorial animation highlighting the contributing players, that the users will feel valued and want to become ambassadors of the project: the image of the project is now part of their personal image.

Social Reality Game in a few lines

The call: at the end of each episode, the actors of the web-series send out a call for script propositions for the following episodes. The suggestion: the users can make their propositions by publishing a comment under the video.

The recommendation (sharing): for the propositions to make it to the shortlist of scripts that get passed on to the production team, it has to be evaluated by a system of votes by other members of the community. The system of votes retained is the Facebook “like”, allowing the propagation of this proposition on the social network. The user who makes this proposition will naturally share it on his Facebook profile, calling his network of friends to vote for him.

Evaluation: each user can vote for several actions that he wants to see enacted.

Shortlist: at the end of the script submission period, a list of scripts is passed on to the production team, who decides the ones that will appear in the next episode of the web-series. An alternative consists of integrating two propositions, one chosen by the production team and the other one being the “public vote”.

Winners (those whose script was chosen) aren’t notified. The only way to know which actions were chosen is to view the next episode, during which the actors thank the winners, among other things. This active participation to the content of a media is already, in itself, a prize. The brand can also offer products to the winners: an original way of promoting its products with its new ambassadors.

Benefits of the Social Reality Game

Recruit ambassadors Speed up recommendation, Develop audience loyalty

Published by united-spirit.com The United Spirit Agency is producing an interactive web series project. Two professional free riders take a three months tour around the world, guided by the cybernauts immersed into a “social reality game”. This is the chance to strengthen the relations between your brand and a young audience, thanks to these authentic ambassadors. Discover the project presentation video here and contact us for more information: http://www.united-spirit.fr/contact

by Ana Vasile, published on 24.03.2011

Cross Video Days, organized by MobilEvents, is positioned as a B2B gathering place for media professional, working in the video market on all formats and all platforms. On the 15 and the 16^th June, the Medias, the brands and the producers will get together around multiplatform projects in order to propose new formats of programs.

Crossmedia and Transmedia call for entries

This is the first year when Cross Video Days is organizing a market allowing the cross/transmedia projects’ creators to meet potential financers and buyers. The inscriptions have started and no charge is demanded. You can freely propose your project here before the 26^th April 2011, you may be selected to present it to media professionals and you have the opportunity to find financial partners that would eventually produce/diffuse your project.

20 cross/transmedia projects (web documentaries, web fiction, WebTV, web series, ARG, transmedia…) will be chosen and presented to 10 European buyers specialized in one of the following fields: producers, diffusers, FAI, TV, mobile operators).

The shortlisted projects’ advantages:
- 200 one-to-one meetings will take place at the Stade de France’s private loges

- All shortlisted projects will be pitched in the conference room in front of 300 professionals

Early in May, a widely known professional jury will choose the 20 shortlisted projects: 10 in a developing stage and searching for financing and 10 already finished and searching for broadcasting partners. The jury will pay special attention to the project’s creativity and viability

Conferences:

Once more, the Cross Video Days will gather the most important actors of cross and transmedia market. Forty international experts are invited to debate: what innovations or which business model?

Networking:
The Cross Video Days are as well an opportunity to extend your network or to develop your project. Breakfasts and cocktails are proposed on the 15^th June starting from 7PM where all the participants are invited.  This is the occasion to meet in a friendly way the market’s decision-makers.

You can sign in for Cross Video Days starting from now and take advantage of the Early Bird price (200 €) until 30 April (after you can purchase your ticket for 300€) More info here: www.crossvideodays.com

by Sam Howey Nunn , published on 22.03.2011

As the acclaimed course Transmedia Next returns to London 12- 14 April, they’re once more inviting participation from a range of industry bodies and professions. Run by world-renowned transmedia producers Lance Weiler and Anita Ondine, Transmedia Next gathers film, broadcasting, arts and marketing talent from across Europe.

The course gathers a group of experienced media professionals with highly diversified skillsets; all of whom need to know each other, form new networks, and establish a framework for making their stories and businesses more transmedia- ready. Last year the range of professionals included directors, producers, marketing executives and brand agencies.

As transmedia fast gains mainstream recognition in the film, broadcast, arts and marketing industries, new revenue streams and production strategies are on offer to those in the know.  Transmedia Next has been created to meet the challenges facing experienced media professionals and place them at the centre of the transmedia movement.

Anita Ondine and Lance Weiler perform key roles as Instructors over the three days, alongside Inga Von Staden, media architect, coach and educator, and Jonathan Marshall, leading strategist in the field of interactive television.  Both Anita and Lance are globally- recognised thought- leaders in the transmedia movement.

The curriculum is a carefully designed mix of theory, hands-on exercises and best practice methodologies, all focused on giving participants the tools to immediately go out and build transmedia programmes.

Tickets cost £850 GBP/ €950 EURO for the full 3 days. They’re encouraging early registration as due to the hands-on nature of the course there are limited tickets which are selling fast.  Tickets can be bought at www.transmedianext.com/buy-tickets/

You can find more information on the website: www.transmedianext.com. Contact Sam Howey Nunn on sam@transmedianext.com or 0207 558 8589 to ask any questions or put yourself on the Transmedia Next mailing list.

Sam Howey Nunn

Event Producer: Transmedia Next

e: sam@transmedianext.com

m: 07877 948 021

skype: transmedia_next

by Ana Vasile et Olivier Godest , published on 17.03.2011

Lance Weiler is known as a transmedia “story architect”: more than a story, with this new type of narrator, viewers get immersed into an abounding world, a true multiplatform universe.

Acknowledged as a pioneer because of the way he makes and distributes his work, WIRED magazine named him “One of twenty-five people helping to re-invent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood” the author returns at Sundance with a short in the “New Frontier” section.

Pandemic 1.0 is a fictional story on a virus that took the festival by storm. This universe unfolds itself through film, mobile, online, print and live events during 120 hours. Lance Weiler answered our questions on Pandemic 1.0, the transmedia experience he created for Sundance Festival.

How would you pitch Pandemic story for Transmedia Lab readers ? What are the media involved in the narrative?

A Pandemic has broken out at one of the largest film festivals in the world. People are starting to exhibit strange nocturnal behaviors and things are slipping into chaos. Together those online must work with people on the ground in Park City to stop the spread of the Pandemic. They have 120 hours to stop it and in the process save as many people as they can. The storyworld experience that I designed was intended to enable those not at the festival to be there.

So people online could collaborate with people in the real world to accomplish the overall goal and the story was told via film, mobile, online, social gaming, data visualization, connected toys, hidden objects and real world experiences.

You’ve mentioned in one filmed interview “the collective storytelling”: did you build Pandemic 1.0 as a collective story? How would you describe the design work ?  How did you manage to keep things together, to keep the unfolding narration true and respect the franchise property across media ?

The design of Pandemic 1.0 took careful thought and planning. I wanted the storyworld to be expansive but at the same time design so each of the elements had a beginning, middle and end. It is important that a viewer / player can walk away with a whole emotional moment within the story. If I’m building compelling moments that emotional weight then I often find that it helps to establish the story bridges that I need to enable someone to move from one story element to the next. I look to design with layers of interactivity that allow a viewer / player to go as deep as they want. I work from a principal that I call the “bullet hole in glass” theory.

In the center where the bullet hole would be is my singular vision for the story but as the glass cracks out I leave room for the audience to participate. Similar to the way software is developed with alpha and beta releases I want the audience to test it, to break it so then I can see in real-time what is working and what is not. The experience at Sundance was a story R&D (research and development) effort. I’m utilizing transmedia to enrich the stories I want to tell by putting them out into the world and testing them. We wrote software that enabled us to time shift elements and unlock parts of the storytelling based on the audiences’ actual interaction with the story.

Where do Pandemic’s universe roots come from ? Do you see a link with Cinemart (The Rotterdam Festival) winner HIM ?

Pandemic was born out of HiM. The script for HiM came first and helped to establish the rules, feel, and look of the storyworld and then Pandemic was designed to take place at the beginning of the outbreak. Where is the script for HiM which is the feature film component of the world takes place ninety days into the outbreak. So we worked backwards which help us to inform the whole storyworld.

Engaging the audience is a key element of your storytelling practice: what levers did you use to engage the audience in Pandemic ?

I’ve found that if you place the stakes on the table meaning that the audience understands that they are working against a degree of odds that tends to be an amazing way to get them engaged. So in the case of the design for Pandemic 1.0 I worked a 120 hour time limit into the game design. It was a race against the clock which ended up getting the audience very excited to participate.

The other design element which provided to be an excellent engagement driver was releasing 50 Nexus S phones that we’re NFC enabled into the wild. They we’re placed in bio hazard bags and distributed with hand cranks to keep them charged. They were passed from person to person. Along the way people took photos and shot video - creating a whole real-time document of the festival. I’ve found that people like stories about people. So capturing that element was well received.

How would you qualify the outcome of Pandemic 1.0? What does this project bring you from a creative point of view ?

It was a major success for a number of reasons. It gave me a chance to explore the storyworld with a test audience which was quite large.  I was able to work with actors and develop some interesting ways to script and shoot within a live environment like Sundance. It’s interesting to note that while most filmmakers were at the festival in search of distribution I was using it as a testing ground for a storyworld. There is nothing better than playing with an actual group of players getting to do research and development in a real world environment. And as we gear up to take it to a major museum in New York City I’ll continue to refine the experience and test new methods and UX design.

Lance Weiler is one of the Lead Instructors and co-Founder of the Transmedia Next training programme being run in London, 12-14 April 2011. Attending Transmedia Next will give experienced media professionals the added knowledge to develop their transmedia projects using industry best practice tools and techniques. For more information, visit www.transmedianext.com.

Lance Weiler is one of the cofounders of the collaborative Workbook Projet and runs the Seize the Media team. Complementary information on this transmedia pioneer is available on his website.

by Olivier Godest, published on 15.03.2011

During our several conferences and courses, we had often spoken about the first episode of the   Clem series aired on TF1 in 2010. Actually, it showcases the success of a French fictional series that had the courage to approach a mechanism we could qualify as « transmedia ».

After a first successful trial, three new episodes will start on March 21^st. Caroline Maret, the Transmedia Content Development Executive at TF1’s French Fiction Direction, presents us the evolution of the series’ transmedia mechanism.

9,5 millions viewers and  2,5 millions cybernauts have already been conquered by Clem in 2010 and starting a few weeks ago, they can already discover what’s happening next to their favorite character, thanks’ to the new Clem blog, available on the official TF1.fr website. The audience could equally follow Clem on MyTF1, on the iPhone and iPad application as well as on Facebook, TF1 Vision and on their dedicated channel on WAT.tv. Finally, TF1 Publishing is proposing as well a short-novels book that should be published on March 23^rd and TF1 Vidéo is launching a full Clem DVD pack on the April 6^th.

Caroline, could you present the multi-screens mechanism you have designed for the next episodes?

We’ve just announced the airing of the second season of Clem (3x90min) starting from Monday 21 March at 20h45, but the story has already resumed since the 7^th February on  www.leblogdeclem.com and www.tf1.fr/clem.

For the second season, we developed Clem’s blog into a social media: Clem is inviting the other series’ characters (his high school friends and her little sister) to post their videos and comments to their everyday life (the new baby, choosing a godmother, the final exam, the holydays, the nights out, the new girlfriend of her baby’s father, and so on).

Each week is organized around a new plot and the cybernaut can interact by posting his comments, his “likes” or by answering weekly quizzes (“In your opinion, who would make the best godmother?” “Should we accept Lena on the blog?”, “After you, would Hicham be able to face Clem’s challenge?”).

In the same time, on TF1.fr weekly teasers illustrate the narrative plots happening on the blog just to help users create their own opinions (for instance “between Clem and Julien… there is Léna !” is the teaser that helped them choose if Lena should be accepted by Clem on the blog or not). We decided to host the blog on the TF1.fr website (and no longer on the overblog) in order to give it a better visibility and to grow the bouncing between the TV channel teasers and the web series.

The audience can equally follow Clem’s videos on all ours platforms (My TF1, TF1 IPhone and IPad applications, the dedicated channel on Wat.tv), they can exchange with us and the entire website fan community « fans de Clem » on Facebook and they have, as well, access on TF1 Vision at Clem’s 1^st season.

Starting from the 21^st March, the audience will be able to follow, during 3 weeks, the series on TV. Each broadcasting evening, the audience will be invited through a rebound (aired on the TV channel and redirecting viewers to the web), to discover an unseen sequence that’s extending the broadcasting experience. During the following week, the cybernaut can watch, free of charge, the entire episode as a rerun, and discover the next’s episode, just as well as other bonuses (deleted scenes, making of, interviews…). The user could easily access the other characters reactions on the aired plot and he can express his own comments on Clem’s blog and on Facebook.

The aired episodes will be equally available on download on TF1 Vision as well as 3 games (on Facebook, TF1.fr and Wat.tv) that will allow participants to win a Clem DVD pack  and the books signed by Lucie Lucas.

As a “connected web series”, is the second episode brining some innovations in comparison with the first episode?

The innovation of the second episode is essentially a new writing, directing and production point of view, more than a technological innovation. Excepting the digital development necessary for transforming Clem’s blog into a social platform and to host it on the TF1.fr website, which was in fact a real progress from the last year’s form, we have co-written, co-directed and co-produced (with Merlin Production and L’autre Prod) a web series lasting 10 weeks (6 weeks before broadcasting + 3 of air-time + 1 week after broadcasting). Each week brings a new narrative arch, new daily videos through 8 different characters (Clem, Alizée, Gladys, Hicham, Salomé, Lena, Julien, and off course the user’s comments).

Which are the different types of audience you wish to reach by each media?

As you have already seen, Clem is a multimedia program (broadcasted on all our platforms) but the transmedia writing of this precise example, Clem 2, it concerns only the TV broadcasting, Clem’s blog, TF1.fr and Facebook.

Clem is destined to reach all type of audiences, while the main core of our target is the woman responsible for household purchasing; the transmedia mechanism is mainly directed at 15-24 years old women.

Regarding the fan’s community, have you managed to keep the contact with the same users? How did you handle the relationship with them during the hiatus?

After the first season’s finale, Clem’s blog and the fan page on Facebook (that brought an average of 2000 supplementary fans each month during the hiatus) were active. We kept the contact with a core of fans that continued searching information on the next events on Clem and exchange around it (by the way, we reached an audience peak in September and January because the cybernauts were checking if the season 2 is launched). We stayed in contact with this core of fans by posting news (information on the production) and some videos (Lucie Lucas’ video answer to cybernauts’ questions asked on TF1&Vous, the cast’s best-whishes video).

On the 7^th February, we started the mechanism for the second season (announced in a press projection, accompanied by a press release regarding the transmedia mechanism, created on our platforms, and the activation of the social network).

To insure the natural flow of cybernauts from Clem’s blog to the new Clem’s social network on TF1.fr, we kept the name “blog de Clem” and we created an “URL automatic redirection” from www.leblogdeclem.com to the dedicated page on TF1.fr

The TF1 & Vous team (that manages the proximity operations) organized a B2C sneak-preview of the first episode of the second season in the TF1’s auditorium where we reserved some seats for our Facebook fans.

Was the community’s feedback integrated into the narrative development of the TV episode (for instance the fans’ choice of godmother)?

The success of the first season of Clem’s blog motivated us to integrate it in the second season’s broadcasting episodes (the blog is seen in most of the TV episodes, when Clem’s character is updating it). By contrast, the first season’s dispositive wasn’t conceived in order to give us the possibility to integrate the users’ reactions into the second season. Today, Clem’s social network allows a far better communication with the viewers, more oriented towards the content and thus giving us a far clearer image of what they’re expecting, hope, or love … on the program’s evolution. This has become a materiel that we keep on defining step by step and that we wish to explore in order to give the audience a global experience.

During the launching of the transmedia mechanism, the 7^th February, Laurent Storch, TF1’s Program Director declared: “Clem is the emblem of a new generation of French fiction. This series is showcasing a contemporary young woman. It seemed logical to propose her adventures adaptable on every type of channel, in order to converge towards the event that will take place, soon, on the TF1 air-time. This mechanism allows the French fiction audience to widen, a fact that could only make us happy»

And Olivier Abecassis, General Director at e-TF1 added: “After Clem’s success, and the web declinations for “Un Mari de trop”, TF1 is emerging into the media synergy through stories adapted to each media. We wish to give life to the Clem brand, beyond TV broadcasting and to offer our audience a global experience that starts a few weeks before the airing and that keeps on going after the last episode is aired, on different Medias”

That’s good news for the French fiction, in general! After these two interesting first tests (Clem’s first season and Un Mari de trop), the fact that TF1 insists on developing transmedia programs is a proof that the French audiovisual market is  evidently  in an evolution process. By adopting this multi-screens mechanism starting from the writing phase, the creation becomes very promising and it will be, as I hope, an inspiration for our writers, producers and channels.

by Olivier Godest, published on 10.03.2011

We often look for a reference project in terms of transmedia storytelling. It’s hard to find this rare gem that mixes different media, independently of one another; relying on participation and interaction; all of this with a limited budget and a success story.

It would seem that this reference could very well be a film that came out more than 10 years ago: The Blair Witch Project.

Cleverly mixing fiction and reality, the film’s crew had fun exploiting the specific qualities of each media to better immerse us into their universe.

Synopsis

On October 21st 1994, three cinema students disappear in a forest near Burkittsville in Maryland as they’re filming a documentary on the Blair Witch.

A year later, their video footage is discovered on the site of their disappearance…it’s the film projected to the audience: “The Blair Witch Project”.

But is this found video the re-transcription of a real documentary or a fiction ? Are these three students really dead ?

Format

Horror film – 86 minutes

Production

Haxan Films

Objective

Promoting the release of the film in theatres by playing on the ambiguity of the “real/fake documentary” to anchor the audience’s feeling of fear.

Chronology

January 25th 1999 : The film is presented for the first time during the Sundance film festival.

July 16th 1999: First theatrical release in the US (27 theatres)

A website is dedicated to the film also exists (it presents the “Blair Witch file” in a realistic way and purposefully plays on the ambiguity: “is it a film or a real documentary?”)

July 30th 1999: Amazing success of the film, particularly thanks to viral marketing developed on the Internet.

National release on the whole American territory (800 theaters in the second week, 1 100 in the third)

A marketing strategy at the heart of the system

The success of the “Blair Witch Project” heavily relies on the Internet site developed in parallel. The idea of this platform was to suggest that the film was the re-transcription of a real event. We are indeed talking about the “suggestion” and not a “lie”. At no time did the crew of the film say that it wasn’t a fiction…but they let the doubt float.

Eduardo Sanchez, the director of the film, had thought about this system beforehand, he imagined this site as the last link of the Blair Witch “experience”.

After its first presentation in January 1999, during the Sundance film festival, the film prepared its release in 27 theatres in the US. At that time, no poster, no advertisement, but a 15 000$ budget to create a website: www.blairwitch.com

The crew of the film then worked with Artisan Entertainment, a small distribution company. The marketing director, John Hegemen, didn’t have an advertizing budget so he decided to rework the Internet site created by the directors.

More and more spectators went to see the film, the directing style was surprising (over the shoulder, intimate camera, minimal image treatment, we really felt like we were discovering the “real” film of these three students). This original way of filming intrigued audiences, rumors began on the internet (a very efficient media for this, since the information that circulates there is not controlled): “Finally…is it really a fiction?”

Some said they could confirm that the images of the film were taken from real documents, the three students really did exist…collective imagination is often more powerful than we can imagine !

To find answers to these questions, one of the audience’s privileged destinations was, of course, the Blair Witch site, where they discovered a series of fake elements of proof echoing the film. Nothing was presented as real proof, but it fed the rumor.

Nice evolution ! We were not on a promotional website but truly in a continuation of the narrative universe. The website contained police reports, excerpts from one of the character’s diary or an interview of the mourning parents. Each week, new elements were added to the website. Expectations were stirred up, online discussions were going strong and the audience enjoyed working up their imagination.

The rumor increased! Those who didn’t see the film started hearing about it more and more, word of mouth started to spread. Two weeks later, the “Blair Witch” phenomenon had taken over the US, it came out on the whole territory.

The website of the film experienced audience peaks of up to 3 million connections a day and it registered more than 75million visits…

To wrap things up, the distribution company, Artisan, managed to sign a deal with the Science Fiction channel (The Sci Fi Channel) to help finance the “Curse of the Blair Witch”, another fake documentary. This one didn’t have dialogue or cost very much, it was created by the two directors from their location scouting footage. Airing the evening before the film’s release, this documentary beat all the channel’s audience records.

One of the first examples of Community Management applied to a movie

To find its audience, the film’s crew played on the illusion of reality. The directing style led us to believe that the three students really existed and they really created this “documentary”.

The website maximized that impression by showing annex documents, intended to reinforce a truncated version of the truth (the film was never “officially” presented like a real documentary).

The rumors created by this ambiguity started a word of mouth effect, feeding online discussions, communities started forming to find answers to these questions. The media chain took hold of the phenomenon, creating a powerful echo.

We also discovered the first steps of community management around the film’s release. The “Blair Witch” crew began by targeting the witchcraft community on the Internet. Its members appropriated themselves the concept, and didn’t hesitate to develop a network of online links leading to the official Internet website, today, we would talk about a very efficient natural referencing strategy.

A few punctual operations were also developed on American campuses, destined for students, through the exhibition of “found objects” or the distribution of flyers to find the three missing students.

Mixed reactions but the results are there

The reaction of the audience was mixed: some said it was genius, others denounced scandalous marketing. But the objective aspect of this article and hindsight allow for a less passionate analysis, overall, the “Blair Witch Project” was a real success.

Nobody is unanimous, but, in this age of Internet, wouldn’t the worst thing for a film be to create nothing but indifference? The” Blair Witch” crew made a real coup in the film industry (65 000$ production costs for 140 000$ box office revenue during the summer of 1999, a return on investment that had never been seen before).

The management of the online community was also a success (communities engaging in the promotion of the film, fans creating numerous sites to resolve the film’s mysteries).

More traditional media also participated in its success, relaying the “buzz” and rounding out a well thought out system by reaching a mass audience, led by a more targeted audience; success feeding success.

Conclusion

One of the answers to “where is the border that allows us to play between reality and fiction” is probably right here: interrogation and doubt are often much stronger than the answers that we can bring to them. And there lies the whole difficulty between hiding the truth, lying and playing on the ambiguity at stake.

In the case of a horror film like this one, the gratification for the audience also comes from this ambiguity that multiplies the feeling of fear (which is often the goal in this type of film) if spectators let themselves get carried away by the idea that all this “might be” true.

Nowadays, nobody is surprised by the idea of a website linked to the promotion of a Hollywood film, but the strategy of the “Blair Witch” crew is still ahead of many recent productions. Why ? Because Eduardo Sanchez and Artisan Distribution thought of the marketing system as a prolongation of the initial narrative: less intrusive, more impacting and mostly, more engaging for a thrill seeking audience.« We had created this whole mythology and I just kept massaging it and building more details into it. Really for us, it wasn’t about creating this whole new way of marketing films – people are on the web asking about this movie, how else are we going to get it to them ? » Eduardo Sanchez © BBC News

Today, a part of the Blair Witch crew has created a marketing agency called Campfire…I strongly suggest taking a look at their work if you don’t already know about it!

Audience satisfaction

The facts are there, the success of the film no longer has to be proven. We can conclude that the audience was rather satisfied by the Blair Witch experience; even if though there was also a lot of dissention (which is not always a bad thing), it remains a film that undoubtedly left its mark.

Creativity

The Blair Witch project has a lot of points in common with The Last Broadcast, a Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler project that came out in 1998. But we can also think of Cannibal Holocaust, shot in 1978. The format is also a fictional documentary. The marketing of the film was based on the real of fictional disappearance of the film’s journalists (back in the day, the director was even accused of having filmed real murder scenes).

The format had already existed, but it also inspired many films such as Rec or Cloverfield.

Ingenuity of the system

If we compare it with today’s means, the online strategy wasn’t very expanded. But it remains very clever. Development of the website for 15 000$ (very little for the time), more than 75 000 visits, a amazing result, especially for 1999. A community management strategy that was limited but precise, to create a base of ambassadors, who were the spearheads of the film’s promotion (referencing, link exchange, word of mouth, etc)

ROI (Return on Investment)

65 000$ production costs, 140 million $ box office revenue during the summer of 1999. Who can do better?

by Ana Vasile, published on 8.03.2011

Matthew Weiner spoke at “Forum des images” in Paris about the conception of Mad Men, in front of about a hundred of French fans. The film writer admitted it took him five years just to write the first episode. A few years later, the series becomes a phenomenon with an international fan’s community that keeps creating content starting from the Mad Men universe. But did the series producers know how to handle their fan’s creativity?

The series writing style is still classic and linear. The creator and the producer (AMC a small American network) seem not to be interested in the extremely rich transmedia potential of Mad Men universe.  We have already debated the « Sterling’s Gold » book here and the deception it caused amongst the fan’s community.

If the transmedia Grail is the fans’ engagement, extending on the web the life of fictional characters can be a solution to increase the viewers’ implication. For instance, CBS is extending « How I Met You’re Mother » with Barney’s blog and twitter account, CWTV is mixing reality and fiction through the « Gossip Girl » blog. In France, TF1 launched in 2010 the first « connected » fiction by using the social Medias to keep a constant contact between the fans and the star character of the series, we explained the mechanism here.

The Mad Men controversy on Twitter

Soon after the second season of Mad Men is aired, some fans created Twitter accounts for each of their favorite Mad Men characters and kept on tweeting under their identity for months. Most of their followers simply assumed that AMC was behind this operation. Thousands of fans followed the everyday life of @Peggy_Olson or @BettyDraper. In the end, these twitter account creators (that were actually just fans) never made any interpretation mistake and followed religiously the series’ story. Even more, they communicated with each other in order to give a better sense of authenticity to their practice.

AMC asked then Twitter to reveal the identity of these mysterious people managing the accounts, admitting that the accounts were not the producer’s initiative and that the company had no control on this extension of the characters.  Even more, this accounts’ creation was interpreted as a Copyright violation of the Mad Men brand owned by AMC.

Under the protection of the American digital Copyright law (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) the tweets were considered as unauthorized fan-fiction and qualified as Copyright violation. Henry Jenkins described as well the Mad Men Twitter choir as « fan fiction » but he emphasized the beneficial aspect of increasing the fans’ engagement.

From that point on, the Mad Men Twitter accounts are being suspended, an actions that brings up the bloggers’ and thousands of followers’ indignation. That obvious deception is heard through tweets and different articles. AMC decided to follow the advice of their web marketing agency, Deep Focus, and cancels the suspension demand for the « fake twitter », the fan-creators come back with a manifesto: We are Sterling Cooper and keep on playing the characters they have chosen, created and developed.

As an example of AMC’s bad management of this phenomenon, Michael Bissell, expert in Internet marketing and @Roger_Sterling on Twitter, confessed here that he was never contacted by the series’ creators and that all his efforts to bring to life Sterling’s character are driven by his pure adoration for the series.

The creator of @Peggy_Olson account wins in 2009 the Twitter Shorty Award for the best content producer, in only 140 characters. It’s quite astonishing to see that she won the advertising award even though, she started the account as a fan and she never had an official contract signed with AMC. It seems that AMC missed out on this opportunity to meet the fans, and they ignored how to make the best out of their fan’s content producing.
After studying this « Twitter-drama » I can’t stop myself from asking: do the producers have to allow fans to create and manage fictional characters’ accounts on social media?  Is this a danger for the narrative universe or is just an opportunity to increase the audience’s engagement?

by Ana Vasile, published on 3.03.2011

ABC, the exclusive Academy Awards broadcaster, registered an audience of almost one billion viewers worldwide. The 2011 Oscars brought a technological novelty in order to enhance the audience’s experience. ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created an unprecedented “three-screen” (TV, mobile and internet) mechanism that gives access to behind-the-scenes content.

All Access and 360 camera for the cybernaut

On Oscar.com, the Oscars’ official website, the cybernaut was invited to get into an event director’s shoes: « This red carpet event has a new director – you. » Multiples cameras with 360 perspective were installed all along the « red carpet », that’s how the user could glaze at his own rhythm at the actresses there and their gowns.

During the show, the cybernauts could pick their favorite angle between 15 cameras installed in the Kodak Theater, obtaining this way a continuous access to backstage and live-stream. ABC used the same mechanism to broadcast on the internet the highlights of Governor’s Ball. Oscar All Access is not conceived as a free service. The access is to this content costs $4.99.

Backstage Pass: iPhone and iPad app

The same content, with the exception of panoramic cameras, is available on iPhone and iPad app « Oscar Backstage » for $0.99. The app was available before the event and was frequently updated with videos and nominees information. During the show, the iUsershad the possibility to watch the red carpet events, the ceremony’s highlights, on scene moments as well as backstage content.

by Ana Vasile, published on 1.03.2011

Cannes will host, on the 4^th April, the International EMMY Awards, rewarding digital entertaining programs’ production and direction. The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences acknowledges the programs’ exceptional quality throughout three EMMY categories: Digital Program: Children & Young People, Digital Program: Fiction and Digital Program: Non-Fiction. Only the programs produced by companies based outside the United States entered into this competition.

More and more creative projects made by producers using new media are receiving recognition for their efforts at international festivals like the EMMY Awards.  After « The Truth about Marika, » the 2008 Digital EMMY Award winner, this year we discover listed between the nominees the multi-platform project « Conspiracy for Good. » The producer, Company P is counting its second nominalization at EMMY Awards, after winning in 2008 the International Interactive EMMY with « The Truth About Marika. »

The 6^th edition of the Digital EMMY Awards nominates, for the first time, two programs produced in Arabic countries. In the Digital Fiction category we find the transmedia project « Conspiracy for Good », that we already presented here, directly competing with a Lebanese project « Shankaboot » : an interactive web series produced by Batoota, a production company based in Beirut, and BBC World Service Trust, the BBC’s international development division  specialized in independent local medias based in Asia, Africa or Europe.

« Shankaboot », the first web series produced in Arabic, is already at its 4^th season. Three friends: a delivery boy, his best friend and a young aspiring-singer are being involved into Beirut’s social problems. The web series creators are using internet as the distribution platform and the social Medias as a constant contact with their audience. In order to give fans the chance to express themselves, the producers organized a series of workshops where they asked their young audience to create other videos as a response to the narrative universe of the web series. Even more, « Shankaboot’s » fans can now choose the next season’s topic.

« Tilki », a Turkish interactive program, produced by Zorzanaat Production is nominated as a premiere in the Digital Program: Children & Young People category. On the other hand, TV Globo from Brazil is confirming its status of quality program creator with two nominalizations: one in the Digital Fiction section with « The Voices of Araguaia » a participatory documentary on the Araguaia region in Rio, and in the Digital Non-Fiction section with the feature « Globo Amazonia: The Geoglyphs » focused on the discovery of a new geoglyphs site in Amazonia. The feature was broadcasted on Globo Amazonia, the informative on-line platform created by Globo.

The project, « The Voices of Araguaia » is broadcasted on this web-site and presents the Araguaia region throughout his habitants’ testimonials just to enhance the communication mechanism of “Araguaia“soap-opera, produced by Globo under the direction of Marcos Schechtman, the 2009 Grammy Awards winner with « India a love story ».

In order to choose the finalists, more than 600 television experts are selected every year by the Academy’s EMMY Committee. Is mandatory for the jury’s members to have at least five years of field experience in production, writing, directing, distribution or casting. The jury’s panel is widened to different nationalities, « for a better representation of international trends » according to the Academy’s members.

We send our best wishes to all of the nominees; who keep on showing us that the quality of a program is not directly linked to the television media. We will report after the 4^th April an update with the results.

Here you can find the complete nominees lists for each section.

by Sandra Albertolli et Dan Benzakein , published on 24.02.2011

After the recent launching of a new French blog focused on the new media and web trends, Sandra Albertolli and Dan Benzakein, the two creators of webtelevisionobserver.com, share with us their vision of transmedia, they talk about their blog and announce their previsions of 2011’s web trends.

1. You’ve just launched webtelevisonobserver.com. Can you briefly present it ?

It’s a news website where we showcase and explore original web contents. We focus on the notion of programming (not viral or one-off videos), content that has recurring features and attempts to build an audience over time. Like standard television shows, web programs can be categorized in three major sections: fiction (web series, interactive adventures), informative programs (web documentaries, magazines, news shows) and entertainment (talk shows, games, reality shows).

Faced with an overwhelming quantity of programs produced for the web, it’s obviously difficult to be exhaustive. We chose to focus on quality programs that make sense with their medium and are innovative in their relation with the audience.  On Web Television Observer, you’ll find a selection of original web programs and content websites from all over the world, interviews with entertainment insiders who are reinventing their trade (from writing to production, from distribution to marketing), and a few thoughts about how the web is redefining television.

2. Why did you launch this blog ? What are your goals ?

Over the past two years, we have witnessed an exponential growth in original web content and seen that online audiences crave for quality. Our goal is to showcase the development of an international market for these programs. We wanted to share some of  the best initiatives in web originals, an industry at the crossroads between television, cinema and video games.  We also wanted to provide some space for experts willing to share their experience, for a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities in this market.

Like every emerging market, it starts out pretty chaotic. Every key actor (creators, producers, distributors, advertising agencies/media and clients) expresses different needs: measuring the state of the offer and the public demand, finding new concepts, defining distribution strategies, establishing new business models or building partnerships. We made Web Television Observer and Web Television Database, our original web content database, to help the entertainment industry gain insights on this market.

3. Can you depict your vision of the transmedia and explain how will you develop this subject throughout your blog ?

Over the past months, transmedia has become a favorite buzzword across the web, at the risk of being often misinterpreted. Most of today’s multiple-media projects ring more like “cross-media”, “360”, franchises or spin-offs. Transmedia, in its literal sense (a narrative universe created for and delivered across several media), is still largely experimental, because it lacks practicioners, budgets and business models. An original transmedia creation can be a risky project, as its narrative complexity requires vision and a perfect knowledge of each medium. That might explain why Hollywood studios are more comfortable churning out spin-offs of popular franchises. Another point that is key to us in a transmedia project is its capacity to keep its promise of a richer experience for the viewers.

The most important media in a transmedia project may be the user, at the center of the whole experience.  It’s a paradigm that video games designers know well, even if they have been pretty quiet on the transmedia scene, with the exception of Eric Viennot, who since In Memoriam (2003) has been working on what he dubs “total fiction”. Let’s hope 2011 will give us the opportunity to see a transmedia project targeted to the wider audiences.

On Web Television Observer, we’ll try to approach the subject just as we would with any type of content… its formal quality, its capacity to entertain, to deliver, to engage the audience and make sense with each of the media used.

4. Which are, in your opinion, the main trends for 2011 regarding new storytelling writing, financing and distribution ?

The key trend in web content is the elevation of quality: production value and talent are now on par with television. The web is more and more popular with creators who usually work in film and television, who see it as a territory of artistic freedom and as a way to connect direclty with their audience.

In terms of writing, web content still mimics television’s proven hits: short fiction and reality shows. Not to mention the countless cooking shows (OD of the year, hands down). It’s disappointing, because there are opportunities for original contents – even niche – and audiences for shows ignored by the networks. The web also has its own cultures, languages and forms, that have started to reshape audiovisual creation. Storytelling techniques will continue to evolve with the web’s underlying technologies, themselves in perpetual update. If recent documentaries have extended the narrative possibilities offered by the web, interactivity hasn’t spread that much to fiction. Perhaps because, at times, the Internet user likes to be a couch potato, just like any other…

In terms of financing and business models, potential sources abound. Today’s answer lies in a mix of sources: advertising, sponsoring, product placement, sales of distribution and adaptation rights, private and public funds, subscription, donation, crowdfunding, VOD or DVD. The traditional entertainment industry is also facing direct competition from online pure players (AOL, Yahoo and YouTube), who intend to play a major role in the production and distribution of premium and original content.

Regarding distribution, there is an increasing trend in strategic distribution partnerships with different labels and platforms. Destination websites, too, are on the rise (hulu, Tudou) and each studio now has its own web studio (Sony’s Crackle or Disney’s Stage 9). Among other notable trends, more web programs are now crossing over to television (Web Therapy on Showtime, Mes Colocs on MCM).

It’s quite interesting to look at how some networks are steadily integrating the web into their television shows to boost user loyalty; perhaps most impressive is the way MTV feeds web content back into its live shows (Video Music Awards), a sign of how social tomorrow’s television will be: built on audience feedback, intertwined with social media. Another major player to watch in this rapidly-evolving market is YouTube, who has recently expanded to feature films, live events, series, and is slowly venturing into premium programming. However, this new take on television still needs to adapt to the specificity of the web : its complexity and very own sense of time and space.

______________________________________________________________

About Web Television Observer

Story Factory’s team:
Dan is a digital native involved in online environments since 1983. He has worked over 15 years in the entertainment industry (film, music, web), specializing in content design and distribution, as well as online communities. After 10 years as programmer of 4 major film festivals in France (Deauville, Avoriaz, Cognac, Gérardmer), Dan worked 5 years as an independent music producer, before founding extralab, an interactive agency with a focus on content & community building..

Prior to Story Factory, Sandra spent 3 years as head of advertising at Dailymotion (the leading European video sharing site), in charge of media sales, sponsorship and branded content. She has an extensive background in media (10 years at Carat TV and Carat Digital) and was a pioneer in working with creative & influential talent online (she founded Influence, the first French network of bloggers & online content creators, in 2004).

Twitter : twitter.com/wtvo

Facebook : http://on.fb.me/ggzRFt

by Olivier Godest, published on 23.02.2011

The workshop “Transmédia : juridical and economical ” invites you at his opening session on Monday 28th February, from 6 to 9PM, at Bibliothèque de l’Ordre des avocats, stair  A of the Palais de Justice, 4 boulevard du Palais, 75001 Paris.

This workshop is started by Francine Choay-Besançon, the director of FLF Media, a production company, co-hosted with Maître Christine Allan de Lavenne, advocate at the Paris Bar and organized with the help of The Association for the Development of Juridical Informatics (ADIJ).

The Cap Digital and Juriscom associations, the Gilles Vercken and NGO advocacy cabinets are as well partners of this initiative.

This workshop is a discussion and exchange platform on the different juridical and economical issues reveled by Transmedia. Its vocation is to identify the answers existent as well as identifying the necessary evolution.

Inscriptions at Miss Aurélia PORRET: aurelia.porret@hotmail.fr

The Transmedia Lab’s team will have the pleasure to be one the speakers of this workshop, with Nicolas Brunet’s and Olivier Godest’s participation on the following section : “Transmedia and economical issues”

Discover the manifestation’s schedule in the first workshop’s newsletter downloadable at http://adij-transmedia.fr

by Ana Vasile, published on 22.02.2011

Conceived and produced by Ankama, a French digital creative group already familiar with transmedia projects notably for Dofus and Wakfu, MaxiMini spreads through four chapters and four different media.

MaxiMini’s story is directly inspired from the Ankama’s comics’ universe, themselves issued from the Dofus MMORPG.

The two main characters are Remingtonand Maskemane, two opponent brothers. Remington’s character, designed by Adriàn, makes his first appearance on the 15^th December 2010, followed by Maskemane on the 15^th February 2011, a Zhifeng Xu aka XZF creation. Both are the main character in a comic distributed bimonthly for 3.50 €.

In MaxiMini these two characters fight together through different media: a comic published in the French DofusMag magazine, an online game and a cartoon soon to be aired on France 3. This little transmedia story will find its conclusions at the Ankama Convention #6, at Lille on the 5^th and 6^th March.

The adventure of our two heroes starts in a comic issued in the 20^th DofusMag. The Roublards, an imaginary nation living in the Dofus universe, is robbed of its five trophies (some magical weapons). That’s when Maskemane and Remington start a dangerous journey hoping to get back the weapons and find the guilty party.

The story unravels itself on the internet through an interactive comic and an online game. Saturday, the 26^th February, after the first episode of the second season of Wakfu is being aired, the MaxiMini story will continue with an eight minute cartoon.

To avoid losing the audience that missed out the first chapter, the producers created on the MaxiMini website a chaptered summary, useful for the cybernauts joining the adventure later on! The team in-charge with this project’s creation and production explains here their creation process and their inspiration sources.

by Ana Vasile, published on 17.02.2011

Sortane is a web series produced by NNProd and an alternate reality game (ARG) whose launching is planned for March 2011.

Synopsis: Remi takes part in an alternate reality game with his friends Melanie and Romain. But when game and reality get confused, their survival will depend on who is leading the game…

The starting point of the web series is Remi’s arrival in an abandoned park to finish his ARG, his goal: to find a girl who has disappeared. The narrative thread unravels over the course of nine episodes, written and directed to be watched chronologically.

It’s also where the ARG begins for Internet users who wish to participate in this adventure. The particularity of this game is the ambiguity between fiction and reality, since the internet user participates in the same ARG as the characters in the web series. If you want to participate, you can start here.

The editorial coherence of Sortane is insured through a collaboration between Charly Lemega and Vincent Sawicki, who shared the creation and production of the whole system.

While you wait for the first shows to come out, you can see the series’ trailer here.

by Ana Vasile, published on 14.02.2011

Trough our researches for our Case Study: Tron in transmedia we discovered a creative fan’s community very active in her effort to bring to life the Tron : Legacy universe.  Here’s our selection of most impressive fan’s art.

The Light Cycle does exist

A Florida based bike shop created a replica of the Tron : Legacy’s well-known cycle. It’s not just a mock-up to put on a shelf in your dining room; it is a real bike that you can legally drive. Parker, Brothers and Choppers have created just 10 prototype motorcycles and each one costs around 55.000 $. There are only four left, so if you want, it you’ll have to be quick!

A Tron : Legacy Segway

If you can’t offer yourself a LyghtCycle, there’s your second chance to roll in Tron style. A hardcore American fan just « Tron-ised » his Segway. If you suddenly want to do the same, you’ll find here a guide to « Tron-ise » your own.

A homemade costume

Some fans are so fascinated by Tron : Legacy’s costume design, that they decided to recreate them in real life. Here you’ll find instructions that explain in detail how to build a Tron helmet and here you’ll find inspiration and advice of how to create your own Quorra skin

Holliday in Tron-land

by Nicolas Bry, published on 13.02.2011

Last Thursday I attended the 6th Mobile Film Festival organized by passionate and friendly Bruno Smadja. The challenge is as follows: you have 1′ to shoot a motion picture using a mobile camera.

A selection of 50 “1′ movies” was then screened at l’Arlequin Theater. The results are absolutely amazing, and the 50′ went by in a flash. Moving from emotion to comedy, playing drama or serious topic, each of the 50 movies has its own identity, and the laureates are mirroring this great variety and talent.

Have a look at all mobile videos on the Mobile Film web site.

One thought about this is that the 1′ framework may help film makers to face the creative challenge: as we see in innovation, “narrowing the scope actually helps the innovation team“. It doesn’t prevent “ad lib” shooting as we saw with best screenplay “T’appuies là“, but helps to focus on the impact of the artistic creation.

“Mobile video” can be watched in a theater or a mobile, then it meets “video mobile” meaning watching video on your mobile.

Last trends about “video mobile” are phenomenal. Allot Communications Mobile Trends Report shows how video streaming drives mobile data usage (73% growth in 2010 S2) as “it remains the fastest growing application type, accounting for 37% of mobile bandwidth”. YouTube alone is accounting for 45 % of total video traffic, and 17% of mobile data bandwidth usage.

Will one day “mobile video” be a significant part of “video mobile”? That’s the best I can wish for them. Though mobile films are not restricted to be watched on mobile, their short format and rythm, and their sense of intimity fit very well with mobile usage. They would only need to be “geolocalized “and “reality augmented” in the future, to take full benefit of mobile media!

by Ana Vasile et Olivier Godest , published on 10.02.2011

Soon after the release of Tron: Legacy in France, we’ve tried to retrace the complicated construction of its transmedia promotional campaign. The film, which came out in December in the US, takes place in a rich universe with a real transmedia potential and a large community of fans.

The origin of the universe

We discovered the roots of the Tron phenomenon in 1982 with Steven Lisberger’s film and arcade game that were released at the same time. Unfortunately for him, this first film was a quasi-commercial flop, only appealing to a young male audience. Back then, the director explained to The New York Times that his film couldn’t be “digested” by the masses at that point in time. But this first film set up a universe, which first opened the way for about ten videogames exploiting this license, and the film became a visual and mythological reference for the fans of the videogame.

Production objectives for Tron : Legacy

Even if the Disney producers could count on the young players and on a pre-existing community, they had to draw in a wider audience to get a return on an investment of almost 350 million dollars for the development, production and marketing of Tron: Legacy. The goal was clear, Tron: Legacy wants to measure itself to other American super productions such as Avatar, to be come a referential franchise of its time (and of course, to be profitable).

This is why, for the last three years, the film’s producers have been busy creating interest among internet users in the Tron community with many teasers, previews, online bonuses and marketing tricks of all kinds.

A transmedia promotion

Tron: Legacy’s transmedia promotion is based on events, ARGs, partnerships with stars, media partnerships, applications for mobiles and tablets, videogames and other product placements.

There are several entry points to the universe, developed to reach a mainstream audience (who doesn’t know about the story or the existing universe of Tron). One example of this is appealing to the fan base of Daft Punk, who created the original soundtrack of the film.

Each element of the transmedia system is conceived to encourage an optimal circulation of the audience, the final goal being to encourage a wide audience to go see the movie.

Let’s note that we are not talking about cross-media here: the film’s producers created contents that are almost entirely independent from each other while belonging to a coherent narrative universe, that encourage participation and commitment depending on the different media systems described below.

Details of the transmedia system

The videogame

History repeats itself: like they did in 1982, Disney studios decided to launch the film with a videogame.

Tron: Evolution is conceived by Propaganda Games, a Canadian company affiliated with the Walt Disney group. The proximity between the film production and the company developing the videogame seemed like a good step to encourage editorial coherence, but we found the result ambivalent.

Chronologically, the game is distributed before the film as a promotional tool, a similar approach to Avatar and its game developed by Ubisoft. In an interesting logic, the storyline takes place in the backstories of the main narrative. This should normally be an efficient foretaste to discover another aspect of the story (the independence of the media is respected).

Unfortunately, the production of the game disappointed fans enormously, especially because of a gameplay lacking sophistication as well as editorial and graphic incoherencies.

You’ll find a more complete analysis of the game Tron: Evolution here and here. As you’ll see, it hardly gets above average ratings…

The Tron: Legacy ARG

Phase 1: Kevin Flynn is still alive!

July 2009: Several sites/blogs dedicated to film or to Tron fans received two videogame chips similar to those of 1982 and a USB key, containing hidden links to websites evoking the return of Kevin Flynn, the hero of Tron’s first opus (nobody really knows what happens to him at the end of the movie).

Phase 2: Tron Operation

An ARG begins, which will finish at the end of February 2010, the players are the first to discover the film’s trailer in the movie theatre, in Imax 3D.

It’s also the beginning of the second part of the ARG, the players go looking for Kevin Flynn! Websites are regularly updated, new sites appear, players discover online games, the first graphic elements hidden in the sites’ codes, flashcodes, and are invited to events linked to the story.

Phase 3: Tron at Comic Con

In July 2010, the Twitter account of Tron: Legacy is opened during San Diego’s Comic Con (one of the greatest American events for “geeks” that are fans of SF)

New fax/email elements or Flickr photos are added online and unveil new puzzles to resolve and access a new trailer exclusively.

Phase 4: The end of the game

On October 28^th 2010, Tron Night 2010 unveils 23 minutes of the film to the greatest fans and game participants.

New puzzles unveil even more of the story’s elements, especially backstories.

Of course, the ultimate reward was to win a ticket for the December 13^th 2010 sneak preview of the film, four days before its official release.

+ More info on the ARG here

Product placement and brand partnerships

Nokia

In the film, Sam Flynn uses the Nokia N8 to hack the software of the Encom company, his phone is a key element of the film that allows him to be connected to the Internet everywhere.

Adidas

Adidas created a  Tron Legacy collection targeting men and children. At the 2010 Comic-Con they launched a dedicated shoe, which will be followed with a Stan Smith II CF BL4 – Tron model.

Reebok

Reebok (owned by Adidas) also has a partnership with Disney, creating Tron version Pumps.

Coca Cola

The partnership between Coca Cola Zero and the film leads to an immersive iPhone game: “Live Cycle”. Using all the visual and audio codes of Tron: Legacy, the player has to trace virtual walls within reality. The goal will be to win points by inciting other players to break the walls that you’ve built. The game also gives access to additional film content, like the possibility of downloading screen savers and watching trailers.

Events

England – November 2010

For the world premiere, London was the playground of the Tron: Legacy virtual world for a whole week in November 2010. In a partnership with HP and ePrint, Disney producers brought the experience to the roof of the Queen Elisabeth Hall on the SouthBank. Light and sound projections attracted the interest of Londoners on a daily basis, two weeks before the projection of Tron: Legacy in Great Britain.

Fans could receive their own photos taken in front of the Flynn arcade on the spot, printed on HP e-All-in-One printers. A doorway to Flynn’s digital world was set up as well as a Light Cycle motorcycle.

Norway – December 2010

After the London projection, it’s the city of Oslo in Norway that welcomed the Tron: Legacy show. For 5 minutes, the windows of a building in Solli Plass lit up to the sound of the Derezzed music by Daft Punk.

France – January 2011

In Paris, a giant 400m2 screen with electroluminescent technology was set up at the Porte de Saint-Ouen. The screen was visible from the highway until the end of January. The giant screen used the same technology as the Adidas shoes presented at the Comic Con.

Partnership with the stars

The partnerships that Disney set up with the stars go beyond simple creative contracts. The most important one is, of course, the partnership with Daft Punk, who created the film’s whole soundtrack, even appearing as guest stars in the film. The partnership became a bridge to a wider audience for the film’s creators. A choice that was reinforced by the harmony between the graphic and audio universe created by the group and the film. In July 2010, the film’s producers released 6 songs (out of 24) online, a good way to create excitement!

The Black Eyed Peas also used a flying motorcycle in their latest tour, the film’s “Lightcycle”. Even their performance during the Super Bowl was a wink to the world of Tron. Rihanna, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga are also following the trend with outfits inspired by the film. Donatella Versace is showing a  Tron : Legacy special collection in Milano.

The emphasis on the Tron: Legacy costume as a new fashion trend is a way of attracting a female audience to the film.

Mobile and tablet applications

( Iphone and Ipad sources)

Three mobile applications (not a bad start!) were created around the universe of Tron: Legacy.

The first is entitled “Tron: Live Cycle”: developed with Coca Cola, as we mentioned above.

The second in entitled “Tron”: the free application allows players to play moonlight and tank games in 2D.

The third entitled “Tron: Legacy”: more elaborat and costing 0,79€, allows players to play moonlight games or to do “reconnaissance” flights in 3D.

For the tablet version (IPad), we have…3 more applications!

The first, “Tron: Legacy” is very similar to the paying Iphone app in a 3D version, with very few changes other than an adaptation to a larger screen.

The second, “Essential Guide to Tron”: is free, it explains, through a beautiful and rich interface, all the details of the universe. It also contains all the trailers. A real success.

The third, “Tron: Legacy, The Complete Story”: if you prefer to read a digital book telling you the story of the second Tron opus, it will cost you 6,99€.

Web partnerships in France

In partnership with Nokia, on MSN.fr, an editorial feature was created in the “Entertainment” section, presenting bonus content (video, behind the scenes footage, interview and anecdotes). In parallel, a game is organized on the Facebook page.

On skyrock.com, another partnership has been set up to create a Tron Skyblog with a Flash system, which includes a video layout that interacts with the film’s trailer.

Conclusion

Despite some faults, an enormous system has been set up, while maintaining a global coherence of the universe. Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list since the promotion campaign has been absolutely enormous. If you have other elements that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to do so!

Tron: Legacy has deployed an interesting strategy to address different targets and a large audience, but the risk is to scratch       the Tron mythology and alienate hardcore fans.

The transmedia promotion mechanism seems impressive but brings up a real question: by using mostly transmedia marketing rather than real transmedia storytelling, doesn’t the story end up getting crushed by the Hollywood machine? On opening weekend, Disney made 44 million dollars, placing Tron: Legacy on top of the American box-office. In comparison, Avatar made 77 million dollars in the same time frame. As we speak, Tron: Legacy has already brought in 372 million dollars from theatre tickets.

by Nicolas Bry, published on 4.02.2011

3 years ago, I posted a few thoughts about IPTV, echoing positive feedback from customers on our “TV on-demand” service: IPTV, the television of the 21st century! I spoke there about IPTV 2 radical diffentiators:

• IPTV establishes a unique and interactive link with households;
• IPTV is intrinsically linked to the Internet world.

As this analysis ended also with “Convergence with the Internet” chapter, one might say it was like the premises of what we call Smart TV since 2010.

Smart TV, in a similar way that we speak of Smart Phones, is bringing the Internet over TV through devices such as connected TV, latest generation set top boxes, and connected game consoles. Smart TV materializes with widgets overlaying Live TV or with on-demand service coming from the Internet such as Dailymotion, offered by triple-play carriers.

Deriving on preliminary Smart TV offerings, here’s my wish list about what should be my Smart TV.

1. Smart TV is still a TV, a better TV: it’s a playful entertainment centered device;
2. Smart TV is “all-in-one”, meaning it inludes all advanced TV services: Live TV, EPG, PVR, VoD, TV Replay, Media Centre, Blu-ray reader;
3. Smart TV builds experiences on-top-of TV, blending Internet with TV, drawing to me content coming from the digital world, related to what I’m watching: when watching a live game, I can access to goals from previous goals, have a look at the statistics, bet on bets player with other viewers, or replay last pass I have just missed. The same works for reality shows or kids universe, Smart TV is broadcaster friendly as it extends the viewer experience within the channel universe;
4. I don’t search my Smart TV for content: content is bubbling up to me, based on my viewer profile, and catching recommandations from my social network. The system knows me, it serves me the latest episode of the serie I’m a fan of, and pushes me The Event if I’ve declared to watch Fast Forward;
5. Smart TV accomodates collective and individual TV usage; when Live twitting, it’s my personal feed that is displayed if I want it on TV;
6. Smart TV creates connected experiences across devices: Smart Phone and Tablet become my TV companions; Tablet and Smart Phone are not only control device for TV, they are media devices in itself: they enable instant access anywhere, and supporting transmedia narratives and Live companioning; after having watched Mad Men, I get on mon Smart Phone the app to prepare cocktails the way Don does … or I access the premiere of Roger Sterling memories … or connect on Live Tweet to share views about episode currently aired. It’s another opportunity for the broadcast channels to recapture the interest of young people through the development of real time interaction around TV shows;
7. Smart TV offers interactive TV Apps and gaming, extending TV experience, moving playfully from monologue to dialogue and adressing multitaskers; it gives the opportunity to bring other players to the TV screen: online video, photo & music, social network services, casual gaming, information services, e-commerce, enhanced video search and access to relevant websites;
8. Smart TV opens the window  for full Web browsing with TV-adapted interaction;
9. Smart TV is more than ever emotional: it creates immersed experiences, leveraging on gesture motion control, 3D content, and 3D user interface;
10. Smart TV brings closer my friends and family through video call and communication services.

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, as first implementation of Smart TV in connected devices are not exactly in line  with my expectations: they are functionally limited, for example not TV enabled (Apple TV, Netflix, Vudu, Boxee), they are Internet centric, with no relation with current TV viewing (Yahoo! widgets), or they are bringing Internet habits on the TV through customer unfriendly experience (Google usability not included, Google TV: Welcome to Beta testing).

Recent Freebox Révolution seems a lot more promising: neverthesless it is still not very transmedia, TV and Web being two seperate world, not blended in an extensive experience as I believe they should be.

Other players might go the other way, bringing TV usage into the Internet world: when one sees how Zynga games have met massive succes through Facebook access, one can imagine the attractiveness of Facebook TV app in the future.

The potential to generate new revenue streams is huge: pay video services,  TV apps, interactive advertising mixing the impact of full screen TV ads and targeting & tracking of the Internet, e-commerce or should I say TV-commerce!

So no doubt that current Smart TV achievements will rapidly iterate and move to a completely TV-designed experience, giving simply and rapidly access to an infinite of content and services: to be successful, Smart TV will have to center aroud the viewer experience.

Now the bet are open: will Smart TV meet the same speed of adoption that its glorious previous Smart Phone cousin is currently experiencing? Hanging over the 75 millions iPhone sales in 3 years will be my last wish!

by Nicolas Brunet, published on 17.01.2011

Transmedia Lab decided to update the transmedia article on wikipedia. The purpose is clearly to facilitate the understanding of this new narrative mode and to promote a better knowledge of transmedia’s origins, personalities and actors in France and abroad. Do not hesitate and give us your point of view, your corrections and improvements. Or you can simply go to the wikipedia article and contribute!

This is our way of celebrating the first 10 years of wikipedia. This internet encyclopedia, a universal, multi-language and working on a wiki base platform it’s still precious!

On the other hand, this collaborative initiative is one of the main sources of inspiration for the transmedia concept: remember Lostpédia, dedicated to the Lost universe, or even Wookieepedia dedicated to Star Wars are two encyclopedias fueled by thousand of fans. That keeps allowing imergence and information on these two transmedia universes!

by Antoine Cayrol, published on 27.12.2010

Everything started in November 2009 when a reporter, a journalist for Point.fr whom I had first met 6 years previously at Paris’s Sorbonne University, visited us with a project for a transmedia documentary entitled “Paroles de conflits”.

“Paroles de conflits” is the tale of an unsuspecting French cyclist who strays into zones where war, bloody confrontation and interethnic violence has raged, sometimes months and sometimes years ago. These are places where, although still scarred by the experience, the inhabitants have been able to rekindle hope, even though the future often still remains uncertain and bleak.

It is the emotions of “real human beings” – some familiar, but most of them unknown people who have lived through the misery of war and conflict – that contribute to our understanding of History thanks to the subjective camera of an author who is both curious and without prejudice.

The aim? To present his journey and the events he has witnessed seen through different lenses which allow different interpretations and make it possible to view the content from different perspectives.

To do this, we intend to create a transmedia documentary which, at the end of the journey, will give rise to a documentary series of 8 episodes of 26 minutes each (one episode for each conflict-ravaged country he crosses), a Web documentary and an exhibition of photographs taken by the reporter.

Each of the media will be characterized by a different type of scripting and narrative. In the TV series, as is often the case in television documentaries, the viewers will be led “by the hand” by Raphaël. Using a framework that recurs throughout the various episodes, he will travel through the different countries and recount what he witnesses.

The Internet format will be interactive, vibrant, evolutive and will take full advantage of the unlimited resources offered by this medium: up-to-the-minute news from press agencies, photos published by the Internet community, Wikipedia articles revolving around an important date or key player… there is no end to the possibilities.

To further deepen the experience of each video episode, the latest resources available on the Web can then be synchronized, selected and overlaid to provide an additional real-time dimension which dovetails exactly with the content that is being viewed. This editorial use of selected external resources (as well as content created by our own production team: mixes etc.) will constantly give users a new, unique experience thanks to the relevant and evolving context.

At FatCat Films, we were won over by this project, which is simultaneously human and historical, at our very first meeting with the author.

We then spent 3 months redrafting and 2 months getting ready for his departure: finding partnerships for his bike, his GPS tracking system, all his equipment etc. Lafuma, Sierra Echo, Ecologieshop, Ortlieb and Cyfac all proved to be enthusiastic as soon as they learned about the project and did not hesitate to sponsor us.

At the production level, this project harboured one particular challenge.