Excited.

This is the first time I’m able to share some of the thinking behind my upcoming story project We Dream of Nothing.

Depending where you look or who you speak to, transmedia gets championed, misunderstood, knocked, supported, defined and re-undefined. What I want to add to the conversation though in these next few posts, is a look at some of the practical and creative things in the pipeline, focussing particularly on what can only be explored because of the interactive, multiplatform nature of this story: A story which flows the Audience through multiple physical and virtual spaces in order to complete it.

Some of the paragraphs are specific to the shape of WDON, some I think are more general things, but unique to transmedia.

Apologies if some bits sound vague, I want to throw some ideas out without spoilers attached. All thoughts welcomed.

First among the upcoming assumptions in this post is that the reader values story first, but is also interested in new/additional/different ways to speak to/with an Audience.

We Dream of Nothing is an original, science fiction fantasy story that connects two characters at opposite ends of the universe. The story is hidden inside the female lead’s dream research website. From there the Audience can explore the story through 28 episodes – combinations of video, comics, audio, collaboration, data swapping, and, well… all sorts of other fun things to see and do.

Playfulness & Exploration are Integrally Optional.

There is a scale in my mind as to what an Audience member can get out of the WDON Story Experience. Sit back and spectate with an occasional cheer, or get deeper into the story and deeper into yourself.

Being able to shape a story that has different weights of interaction is a way to tell one story to many types of audience. You have your subtexts, layers and inferences that people will and won’t ‘get’ – as per any story medium, but also you can also write/design for time rich and time poor, for audiences who are fans of a particular single medium to draw them in to the bigger picture and Without losing focus of the story, you can also promote specific content to, for example comic blogs, radio play fan forums, AR enthusiasts, book clubs etc.

So if your specific content is delivered in a way that a specific audience member (initially) prefers to be entertained and it stands alone with a great hook that tempts exploration through the other mediums – you have made yourself a transmedia convert – huzzah!

From the writing, design and production side I get to be playful with the language and mechanics of all the mediums the internet. I like this A LOT, so benefit from continual motivation boosts throughout design, production and delivery. Knowing the work will exist, change and grow, is satisfying in a way that writing a screenplay and hoping it will one day exist without being messed up by the production and distribution process – is not.

Futures that change the past.

Mostly, WDON is structured sequential step by sequential step, but some of the episodes are, what I can only describe without showing you as –  Interactive Areas. These allow, for example, the global content of episode 14, to be fed by the individuals actions in episode 19. Each Audience member’s journey is naturally linear, but I am hoping conversation around the fluid content in some of the episodes leaves nice gaps for the Audience to play with and talk about outside the confines of the main website.

I’m sure there is something interesting there beyond just playing with foreshadowing so I’m going to look at it a bit closer.

Dispersal and Clarity

Although some of my favourite projects are made like this, I can’t yet bring myself to design a story that exists entirely scattered and relies on people to piece it together. My mind just doesn’t work like that. Maybe I don’t have enough faith in people? The structure I have gone for is that although story elements are dispersed, most of WDON is also contextualised through one website. This gives advantages described further below but also provides an element of security to a wider audience who are not used, or prepared to go hunting (though I have left room so they still can).

Values of Scarcity.

The front face of the story is at the homepage of a website, but the full on interactive beastie is only accessible when a password is entered in the search box. You could equate this to a secret film screening without being weighed down by the practicalities of continuous rent or having to get everyone there on one night only.

Sp a pressure you can remove working this way is the reliance on ‘launch’ and opening weekends. To a degree the product exists continually and you can launch it every weekend in a new blog, magazine or newspaper review. Although relative to the audience member, newness is still sought by big-media-press of course. You can negate this a little by offering something unique to each niche-media-press or online community you approach – discounts on the ticket price, bonus points for already being in a community that is thematically linked to your story, or something tangible.

This to me is a kind of evergreen scarcity using the language of the internet. For example the use of the secret password can’t dilute beyond its optimum point where everyone knows what the password is (without it being posted by the story itself). I can tease new people in with rewards as I see patterns in the audience that point to new niche places. On the flipside I do freak out sometimes that no-one will ever ‘get-in’ but it is one of the ideas I think will work well and I’m determined to try it out.

Hack Proof, Copy Proof, but Oh So Shareable

There are 28 episodes in the first part of WDON. Sometimes a video, sometimes audio, sometimes comics or interactive mini sites.  Because the context of the curated content IS the story and the way the Audience member interacts with and shares the curated context IS The experience – there is nothing to copy. The story is available optimised for every device and requires connectivity. It would be completely pointless to take the story to a DVD or a torrent or anywhere else but its home, because it just wouldn’t make sense.

I cant think of anything but native transmedia that lets you shape or protect entertainment this way.

Ticket Prices.

I’ve thought about this a lot and have decided that after the first few free episodes, there will be a ticket price on the Story Experience. Here’s why.

1. Some of the services I’m using will cost me money per ‘user’. I don’t have a sponsor and can’t pay out for the inevitable millions who will flock to the site. So everyone must pay their way and I must make sure the experience is worth more than it costs in cash.

2. Charging provides something for me to ‘offer’, namely a discount. The full ticket price will be on the site, but I have laid out ways that early project supporters can get discounted and free access to the story.

3. This really is particular to the design of WDON I think, but with regards to rights, I am producing a lot of the content myself (for season 1) but also contextualising content that stands up in its own right that I have asked others to produce. i.e I am charging for the story. If I do this then it means core creative contributors can benefit in a measurable way –  on this in the next post.

Ultimately I think, if original, indie/published, interactive, multiplatform, transmedia stuff is to stick around it just has to have a ticket price. So I will be charging people for my project, trusting to reviews, testimonials and word of mouth to convince good people it is worth the buy. It will cost more than an app, but less than a hardback I think. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Flexible Future Opportunities

With stats and feedback you can quickly, very quickly, see who your audience is and then make informed decisions with regards to just about every future direction. React, ignore, push, pull, dance – whatever.

As WDON is the first part of a three part story, how the Audience reacts to part one will inform how I shape parts two and three. Creating a fluid framework that is not detrimental to the story  is surely something you can only do with multiplatform / transmedia methods (this is why it needs to be story first and not screenplay or novel first). The info gathered will help me decide wether to stick to a web centric approach, push for broadcast or movie conclusions, bundle the whole thing in an app or what exact combinations of all of the above do people want.

Market research as you go – however large or small the numbers are they will be a real start to building an audience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. To come in part 2! Rights and Accreditation, Nativeness, Literalness, Motivations and Familiarity in Disguise.

Thanks for coming this far!

We Dream of Nothing is an interactive story, hidden in a website which trawls social networks for dream conversations. Once inside, the audience uncovers the mystery of Dawn Greyson, Silas Street and ‘The Absence’ – a fractal monster that destroys any life it touches.

Your own actions, memories and dreams form an essential part of the story fabric that brings you, the participants, together with each other, with the creators and with the characters.

What Do You Need Then?

I’m making a pitch video to show some of the ways people might stumble across the project. What I need from you is…

A 20 second webcam video clip, played out as if as if you are about to make your first social media post of the day.

What’s My Motivation?

Its early. You’ve had a dream that for some reason you feel is worth throwing into the internet. This is your first online action of the day. Maybe you’re sat in bed, maybe you’re having your corn flakes or your first coffee at the office – whatever you like!

Not that kind of motivation – I mean What do I get In Return?!

Sorry – I misunderstood. You get my sincere thanks and free entry to the story experience when it goes live. You will each get a unique, one off access code getting you the whole thing for free and you will also get to be in there first. =)

No Examples?

I was going to show an example, but I really want to see what random stuff you send in – be playful :)

Any Guidelines?

In daylight please (it’s supposed to be ‘morning’ you see…)
It will be most convincing if you do it when you actually have just woken up.
Not more than 30 seconds of your awesomeness is required.
Wear glasses? A social media site in the reflection would be great!
A background that isn’t a blank wall is more interesting. Messy? Even better! 

What Happens to these Clips?

I’ll condense the clips into a 5 second quickfire sequence at the start of the pitch video and also make them into a video wall later in the edit. I’ll be using it on the Indiegogo crowdfunding page and anywhere else I can see to promote the project. I am hoping to get about 20 – so spread the word, strangers are very welcome but they need to understand how the footage will be used.

Okay, I’m up for it, How do I get the files to you?

Any format is fine.
Under 10meg can be emailed to hislordship@poburke.com
If over 10MB, lets exchange a dropbox link
or use a free service like www.sendspace.com

Thanks so much for your help!

Paul

@poburke

The lovely folk from @DigitalksChelt invited me to give a 15 minute overview of transmedia in their September meetup and I repost it in blog from here for those interested(!)

#digitalkschelt is my local geekup and organised by @lizziefenwick @emilyevelina @intranetfuture @solutionmania @jealousdesign & @jkale

The room was made up of digital professionals – but no-one who was familiar with the word, with the ‘transmedia’ word.

So that meant I had to offer a definition. Problematic at first because I want quite a lot out of my transmedia, but it ended up being a good way to bookend the talk. In between I gave some examples of cool story stuff and some familiar transmedia ARG projects.

I began by with a general definition of my own and referenced google to find others

I mumble on that Story is appreciated differently depending on where your head is. Fiction writers, journalists, documentary makers, franchisers and people have taken the above input and produced different outputs.

Draws breath: Although each of these things are interesting they are not what we are talking about. You will however, sometimes see transmedia cited where you see these words…

Convergence is about stuff going into one box, transmedia is the opposite of that – moving you from one physical or virtual place to another. This causes problems of friction, but also offers opportunities in the ‘gaps’….

Dual Screening is tweeting while watching the X Factor. That’s just anything now. If you hear transmedia being used with that behaviour that’s, well, bollocks.

Multiplatform – debatable, but for this talk I used it to reference the difference between transmedia and just having the same content duplicated on/in different platforms. Also a quick touch on transmedia franchising as another topic for another time.

Interactive – I save that for the end of the talk. It is gonna be my smartarse punchline.
Did you scroll down?
Cheat.

I also mention Eddie Izzard (despite being Awesome) is not directly connected.

(sorry – lost where I got the pic from)

Then at last I get to talk about some projects. I say what I like about them and how when you combine some of the cool things they do you can make some very groovy stuf. I’ve linked to the projects instead of the screengrabs here so you can get more detail.

Characters

Jack The Twitter by Marcus H Brown
http://www.slideshare.net/ColonelKaiser/character-design-in-the-digital-age

Builds online character and gives him life with full profiles in various social sites. And he stalks you if you are lucky. Check out the slideshow – its my new favourite.

The Malcolm Tucker App
Alison Fielding @alysonf – writer. Henry Cooke @prehensile – developer.
Love how the device is complicit with the story. Forgot to say how important the close working relationship between the writer and the developer is with all this stuff.
Get an angry fictional character shouting at you.

Extending the Story

Marketing campaign for Game of Thrones from Campfire NYC. Gives away food from the world and sends mystery packages to bloggers, one of whom, J C Hutchins (who you should check out) did an unboxing video.

Recent Non-Fiction Example

The Code. BBC and Six to Start. Treasure hunts and clue solving with an IRL prize.

Novel Experiences

Cathy’s Book. Sean Stewart, Jordan Weisman, Cathy Brigg

Two Blue Wolves & Nightwork – Sparrow Hall

Big ARGS

And when you put these ideas together you can get stuff like this

I point out the real guy, totally in character talking to a real reporter about his real-fictional experience.

Next I talk about Tim Kring as a guy who wants to change the world and that he managed to get money to make real things happen from a made up story.

The End

To close up I mutter about the original intentions of transmedia and how its is being ‘claimed’ in different ways, and that what it ‘is’ is an ongoing discussion, and a great place to find and make cool story stuff.

Finally – my ‘point’.

I come back to Interactive. I say interactive is click, do, next, open… – all along a predetermined structure. I say that the best transmedia is not ‘just’ interactive, but actually unfinished without the audience.

A few links for other ways in.

Facebook.
Transmedia for Good Network.
Transmediology

Web
transmediastoryteller.com’s free book
yousuckattransmedia.com
Deus Ex Machinatio
#transmedia

IRL
Transmedia Meetup Cardiff / London
Everwake event 30th Sept & Streetgames day after
Power to the Pixel

After something more specific?
@poburke
hislordship@poburke.com

So that’s it. Job done, surface barely scratched.

They cheer and give me a standing ovation. Angels appear and lift me to the heavens.

Thanks @digitalkschelt

Take a look at the Immersive Writing Lab, 20th – 21st August 2011. It looks to me like the first UK event of its kind, priced reasonably enough for writers to attend. I really want to go but can’t make the dates. The speakers look great, including Julian McCrea who, as well as being the event organiser is already time-served in multiplatform entertainment and heads his London based company Portal Entertainment

I’m telling you right now that if you are a writer and you are interested in this stuff, you are unlikely to get a better introduction from better people. Book yourself in NOW – the price is ridiculous.

Here below, a quick email interview with Julian

I know a hardcore of writers who think this multi-platform / interactive / transmedia / collaborative / social lark is somewhere between ‘overrated’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’. If I bundle them up on train and get them there what kind of things will they hear to turn them around?

The event is about developing and widening the creative palette of writers of tomorrow. At it’s heart, a story still needs to be told to an audience – we are not here to change the way storytelling is – that is impossible. All that has changed is that the number of platforms in which you tell that story to the audience.

A great post on people misunderstanding a story and the ways you tell it is this one by Mike Jones:

So to this point we have designed the event as a starting point for writers – there is an event on the Saturday acting more as a widening of the palette; the Sunday is a creative workshop designed with BBC Writers Room. We are also launching a competition that the winner will get 6k development to make their storyworld.

If we want to create the stories of the digital age, we need to give the writers the opportunity to write them and make them. This is what this event is trying to do.

Can you say a bit more about the competition – and do people have to attend the event to enter?

Nope they don’t. The event will help them start on that journey – we are really focusing on story at the event and in the competition entries, so the event will help that.

We will be running the competition for around three months and running through each section of a storyworld and providing feedback. Let’s be honest, it is not easy to come up with a compelling storyworld. So we are trying to give all the help we can. At the end Sarah Clay, the Multiplatform Exec Producer will give direct feedback for the top 5.

A lot of these events are priced for agencies and broadcaster. Its always a major decision to attend, especially if coming form outside London. I see you’re addressing that…

I think I have answered this above, but this event is for writers. Without good writing, we will only ever be polishing a turd, excuse my french. However you see at the moment the universities, the transmedia snakes, and producers selling markets are not developing the writers – this event, the forthcoming competition and masterclasses will change that.

So I suggest you get yourself there. Speaking are…

Matt Locke
J C Hutchins
Marcus Brown
David Varela
Paul Ashton
Julian McCrea
Paul Rissen

So last week I was contracted as Workshop Coordinator for Cyfle in Cardiff and their multiplatform training course – ‘Digital Delta’. Focus of my role – “Find great speakers”…

Its a 6-month part time course written in order to create 8 digital professionals & 8 multiplatform writers for the creative industries in the UK

There are two strands to the scheme – a Digital Professional strand (where the trainees will learn the creative production skills needed to create multiplatform content – from creating the idea to final delivery, alongside work on Social Media / Mobile / Gaming and so on),

The other strand is a Multiplatform Writing strand. Here the trainees will develop core writing skills & learn to write creative content for a myriad of different platforms – Web / Social Media / Mobile / Gaming …

The majority of the work is done online but with 12, 2-Day Masterclasses led by industry experts, and a Transmedia Week in September.

Rhys Miles Thomas runs the course and my main role is to source awesome speakers who can wax enthusiastically about their projects and share their knowledge with the students. So far, running a mixture of UK based ‘in person’ sessions and Skype-ins from overseas experts is working well – giving the students great perspective on this wonderful creative world.

So come on – are you someone who could spend a couple of hours in a workshop with 16 smart creative people? Got expertise in any of these areas? Happy to be paid to share your experience?

The Practicalities of Producing & Delivering Multiplatform

Writing & Designing for Mobile, Apps for TVs and Tablets

Monetising Multiplatform

Social Gaming

Pervasive Gaming

Transmedia Storytelling

Social Media & Transmedia Activism

Something else fabulous that’s related to multiplatform

You are? GREAT! Drop me a line hislordship.at.poburke.com – and lets get you talking.

A short but true story for Fathers Day.

I was going through some old photos the other week when I came across a snap of my very first design job: At the age of 14 I was commissioned by my dad to signwrite his van.

Mum and Dad have an upholstery business and at the time Dad was driving between Leeds and Bradford every day, up to Sunderland on a regular basis and made local house calls most evenings. A lot of people saw him driving around.

My original memories of the job were…

I started the sign and got bored.

Dad nagged me to do it, the sod.

It took me ages to get it perfect.

I look back with pride that my awesome work was driving around the country.

At the instant of seeing the old photo and with the perspective of now being a dad myself, my jaw dropped as reality quickly rewrote…

I started the sign and got bored

Dad encouraged me to finish the job

It took me ages to get all the paint on so the words were actually readable.

The end result was not quite as good as it was in my head…

My Masterpiece.

I especially like how the G flows into the red/pink wave :-/

I was astounded at how different the photo was to my memory of a masterpiece. I thought at the time it was a more professional job than on any other vehicle in the land.

Now you might say “That’s not bad for a 14 year old”, but would you drive around with these 4 bits of plywood bolted to your company vehicle?

I look back with pride though still, but now of how my awesome dad was driving around the country with a sign that – to put it mildly – in no way reflected the quality of his business. But if you knew the story, it did show his quality of person.

So thank you for the faith, encouragement and this particular selfless act that fueled me to pursue my creative dreams with confidence.

Thank you for this inspirational lesson in fatherhood I only came to understand twenty years later.

Thank you for asking me to do your van again last year.

I’ve been trying to work out how much to ‘give away’ to tease folk into my story and wondering how many fans I’ll kill off with a paywall: I actually agree with paywalls in principle. If a creative/s have gone to a lot of time and effort to make something independently they gotta get paid. You can argue that people that don’t pay aren’t your real fans / Audience anyway, but perhaps there’s a way to glean some green without forcing folk to pay quite so much – or to pay in a more designed way so that they actually want to contribute…

Here’s an example of how I think it could work. Prices are plucked out of the air, (though I would be interested to know of any ‘successful’ $£values…) just to ease this explanation.

So in this particular story about an Oak Tree that doesn’t want to shed its leaves this year, the Audience watches, reads, plays (etc) so far but then:

PAYWALL CHALLENGE

Provide an image of an Oak Tree to continue.
Or pay £5 for immediate access to Part 2.

1. Provide it in a mega easy way – like grabbing it off a search engine.
   Price for part 2 is now £4.00
2. Provide a quick snap with a mobile:
   Price for part 2 is now £3.00
3. Provide a photograph of a Drawing.
   Price for part 2 is now £2.00
4. Any of the above plus 5 Story Sign-Ups via your personal referral URL
   Price for part 2 is now FREE

The idea is that the more effort the Audience member puts in, the more they are rewarded. In the example above the pictures would then also be used to form something that adds to the story experience.

The reason I like it is that apart form the signups push, all the other tasks provide a ‘valuable’ experience opportunity for the individual – and I’m sure there are ways to work it with groups of friends too.

I’m in the middle of working this in to We Dream of Nothing, so would love any thoughts or references to anything similar.

Cheers.

The_Truth_About_Marika
Doll Play
The Conspiracy for Good

Although I feel I have a lot of skill bases covered via my eclectic background, the live event ‘stuff’ is not something I have had opportune or, to be honest, motivation to investigate. About 18 months ago though I changed from being a happy opt in loner to a lets-meet-people person. In a tech world of individual isolation, connecting myself to real people and facilitating connections for others forms a large part of my professional life and story design agenda. Hence my attendance.

Now I’m a man for story and for the ownership of the story to also belong to the reader beyond the point of interpretation of the material. Day one raised the question though of experience design versus story design and it took me a while to unpack all the issues raised in the workshop.

Firstly – is there a difference? In Q&A Christopher cited (off the top of his head & not in any Grand context) Love as an example.

“If you were to try and communicate love you could
a) write a boy meets girl story or
b) give someone the experience of a hug.”

I like a good story, but I like good hug too. My immediate objection was that you can’t have an experience without some kind of story, but then there is the choice of approach.

As creators/designers/providers/enablers/offerers we are tasked to provide a context for transmedia experiences. A story centric approach to transmedia can create context/s based on theme or narrative drive. A game focused approach can set up a ‘free-play-space’ as a framework for participants. Much of day 2 was looking at Live Action Role Play (LARP) and open play-spaces such as http://www.eveonline.com or the collaborative transmedia world of www.runesofgallidon.com.

After leaving the two day workshop I couldn’t stop bugging myself with an escalating thought that game driven transmedia is more experience led and therefore *gulp* more valuable than a story centric approach – not just different, but actually fundamentally ‘better’. It felt a more powerful approach than using a story, which however well written and shaped does not fully belong to the participant. In an open game, players really do own their story and their journey. They become the author to a much larger extent than anything with a predetermined arc.

But power isn’t everything. My ideas, world views and brain are different to yours just as yours are from mine – and there is real value in that knowledge differential; I want to hear what your brain has to say and see what it can do when working with other brains that know different from mine.

Traditional storytelling can impart brain contents for reflection. Transmedia storytelling can share brain contents for conversation. Focusing on opening play-spaces though allows you to create gaps: Gaps for reflection, community, action, participation and general ‘opportunity’. IMMENSELY valuable.

But there are restrictions too. The necessary perimeter for the play-space protects it from outside influences. Doesn’t that restrict growth and hamper breadth of experience? I acknowledge that spaces can be designed to evolve, but what I’m getting at is that people in a pure Rugby play-space could conceivably develop a sub-space of Football/Soccer, but are unlikely to discover Buddhism or Fine Wine.

The thing that was really bugging me though was that I couldn’t decide why it should matter. A transmedia project is obviously going to be a mixture of those things so why the fuss?

So I convinced myself to stop bugging me for a while and eventually my subconscious said this:

Pure Story design offers context guided experiences.

Pure Game design offers context contained experiences..

Defining these extremes felt mostly like thought play at first, but suddenly I found it practically useful to REALLY separate the elements this way. They can dance across each other and overlap – and that’s where the fun is, but I think each beat of a transmedia project belongs to either one or the other when ultimately reduced.

As each beat sits and moves in its element container the spaces left in the overall design fill up with the audience’s experiences. They increase the volume of each element in turn furthering the reach of a project. I hope.

It turns out the reason all this was bugging me was that it was connected to the unsatisfactory parts of my current project. The parts which had no clear state were the parts that did not work for either the story or the participation. They had incomplete beats of each element. Once I was able to re-shape using those definitions the whole project became easier to move around and describe.

This feels like its working for me so far. Will be interesting to see it applied when a project is running as well as when it is being structured.

Thanks for your valuable time, I would of course love to hear thoughts on this.

sparrowhall Sparrow Hall
@poburke @simon_staffans @simonpulman @EmmyTheBeth Where should #transmedia be plugged into college curriculum to see greatest impact?

Rather than post five sequential tweets to fit this in: If I ran a college course that taught any subject I might say something like this on day one…

Idealist Alert

You are all from different places, you all know and can do different things, you all know different people outside of this room, but you all share that you are here to learn about [subject]. Learn about each other, combine your skills and produce your work transmedially for vastly increased depth of knowledge, understanding, wealth, entertainment and satisfaction.

or

Flippancy Warning

You’ve got guns, I’ve got horses, lets join forces.

Point being – do it as default from the day you start and it will increase the volume of people working in a global culture of collaboration, shared knowledge, interactivity, feedback and conversation. I think Teachers only need know a transmedia simple definition to get started and students will take it from there….

?

Why post it? Well I’m all about transparency you see…

I did a few tweets about 8 hours apart on the first day to make an effort for it to show up in global timelines. I included the twitter IDs of people who I’d had conversations with in recent weeks on connected topics. No other promotion.

I’m assuming the bounce rate is high because people didn’t go to other pages and not that they actually left instantly!

Anyone else care to share?