Liz Hover of the NSI interviewed me last week mostly about Ruby Skye P.I. The podcast of that interview is online and you can listen to it right here.
There are lots more great interviews to listen to on the site. I’m going to check out the one with Christy Dena, of the new site You Suck at Transmedia and someone who’s been talking transmedia for a while now. I also want to hear the interview with Kieran Masterton of OpenIndie, the independent film distribution site.
If you’re interested in transmedia-in-the-making (and if you’re not, what’s wrong with you?), you should definitely check out the production blog by the gang at GopherX. With the support of the Independent Production Fund, they are producing a whole new series of Tights & Fights, this time with a very cool transmedia angle. The blog is a chance to follow them through the whole process. So go grab an RSS feed and settle down to watch the magic happen.
And while you’re there, ask them when they’re releasing Job Review With A Vampire!
Hot hot news from the transmedia world: Christy Dena has launched a new transmedia focused website called You Suck At Transmedia. What are you still hanging around here for? Go take a look!
There is so much to do. No time for sleeping. I’m at my desk till late and back at it early, swilling coffee. It’s 10:30 and I just brewed a second pot… all right, not brewed, french pressed with organic beans from The Green Grind. Mmmm. I’ve been thinking of putting a logo on my site that says powered by The Green Grind. I digress.
Yesterday, as you may have noticed, we posted a casting breakdown. Submissions are pouring in. I have to stop myself from looking at photos and resumes. I have other things to do and a time set aside for that in the company of Kerry and Kelly. We’ve distributed the casting call in a variety of ways. Because we’re looking for some teens, we’ve posted the call at some acting camps and schools and passed it on to the acting teachers we know. We’ve also posted on sites dedicated to casting and good old Craig’s list. And we’ve pumped the link out to our own social media networks. Between us, we have some serious reach in that department, verifiable by the bit.ly stats and the incoming traffic on the site.
I’m psyched to see how we can build a community for Ruby Skye PI using social media tools, given that individual members of the team are starting out with know how and cred. I’m not just talking about Karen Walton here, who is clearly a genius in the social media space. One member of our team I haven’t mentioned yet is Dorice Tepley. Dorice has awesome social media skills to contribute to the project.
Building out our social media strategy is part of tomorrow’s agenda but we know that creating assets for the web and providing a deep experience for our fans is an essential element. We plan to offer a deep “backstage” experience, meaning that we’ll pull back the curtain and give you access to lots of the action behind the scenes. To that end, we’ll be inviting different people to help document our production especially when we’re shooting. Mark Montefiore, who all of us adore, has agreed to come do some documentary shooting during production and we’ll share his footage with you as we go along. I’m so excited by this idea!
All right, gotta refill the coffee and start in on the to do list which involves getting the REAL website jump started. Can’t wait!
Mashable has a cool piece by Hank Wasiak on how social media is changing advertising. I love this graphic.
Marketing has traditionally focused on the four “Ps”: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social media has morphed into the fifth, and possibly most important “P”: People. A people strategy is at the center of today’s dynamic and fluid social marketing mix. John Janitsch of Duct Tape Marketing has another take on the four Ps, and has turned them into four Cs for the social age: Content, Context, Connection and Community.
A people strategy is much broader, deeper and more profound than consumer targeting. It involves listening to and engaging with everyone who can touch or influence current and potential customers at all stages of brand interaction. Jeff Pulver is a savvy guy who has had his finger on the pulse of this dynamic for some time. “The social media revolution is less about “we the people” and more about “me the people,” Pulver said.
Ah, people. How did we forget them for so long?
We’re rolling and… is it a ball or is it a rock? Whatever it is, it is picking up speed!
The fabulous Kelly Harms is on board to direct. He has got a positive energy that I love, a spark in his eye and a quick smile. We are very sympatico on the story and our approach to it. The collaboration couldn’t feel more natural.
We had a tremendous story meeting yesterday and the notes from Kerry, Karen and Kelly (the K Collective) were fantastic. I can’t wait to dive back into the script.
From here on, the project will be called Ruby Skye P.I. We changed it from Eye to Eye With Ruby Skye right around the time I started setting up social media accounts. When I realized what an endless handle that would be on Twitter, I consulted the team and bought a new a URL. In fact, if you type in any of these URLs:
you should get to our temp website. I’m starting to fill that in slowly between other activities and late at night. Our Twitter account is live and lightly active. Accounts on other social sites are set up and awaiting attention.
We’ve been passing a casting breakdown back and forth this morning. I hope it’ll go out later today or tomorrow. I’ll post it here too. There are also lots of volunteer positions available on our crew, production staff and social media team. Let us know if you’d like to help.
Cal asks:
What I’m curious about is if/how you are going to script/employ other forms of media and interface around the main plot line and if so, are you building it in at this stage. In other words, is the format actually going to revise how you tell your story? Or will it be closer to a number of short episodes of a single series? Are you planning to tell some parts of the story with clips and then augment it with text or some other material? It seems to me you could tell a much more efficient story by leaving out all those scenes where detectives regroup over details and just jump to new and interesting scenes which further character plot and theme, sort of like voice over does in traditional noir films. Also, are you planning to let the user have any control over the story telling? Will there be any way they are able to adjust how the story is told or unfolds? If so, is this altering your traditional writing process? Curious minds need to know about this interesting stuff.
Good questions… but no. I’m not leaving out the good stuff. This isn’t that project.
Ruby Skye is a linear video series — one long story told in twelve episodes. The audience will not be able to alter the plot or the presentation of the story although they can interact with Ruby on her blog. This will be quite traditional in many respects.
Which is not to say that there aren’t exciting and novel elements to both the storytelling and the project as a whole.We’re trying to build a transmedia franchise from the ground up. Even as we blast toward production on the web series, we’re actively pitching and planning other elements one of which will be an interactive mystery for mobile platforms. That will include more of the elements Cal mentions and will give the audience the opportunity to search for clues, determine which trail to follow next and generally participate in the investigation of the mystery.
There are a number of reasons for taking a more traditional approach with the web series itself. One is that innovation and making money don’t always go hand in hand and we really want to develop a strong business model for this that generates some revenue for our team and our highly valued investors (have I thanked the IPF today?). If we do something experimental or cutting edge, it becomes difficult for sponsors and other partners to understand what we are doing and find value in it.
Also, interactive fiction tends to work more like a stage play than a television series, in that it has to be experienced live. That is, we’d release an episode and the community would interact and help determine the next step. But if you started watching a week later, then you’d still be able to watch that first episode, but you’d miss the interaction around it. Stand alone traditional video has a better replay factor and can be more easily distributed to other platforms than a narrative that involves significant audience interaction.
Then there are the budgetary considerations around interactive fiction. I have a number of project concepts that do involve the audience as a collaborator, where they can have significant impact on the story. In those cases, you have to keep a writing staff on for a long run and have the facilities to shoot new material every week. The only way to be truly responsive to an audience in your storytelling is to write on the fly. I haven’t been able to finance that… yet. But I have the budget, the team and the concept if anyone out there has the money.
But back to Ruby Skye, along with drafting the scripts, I’ve been sketching out plans for the web site. It will have tons to do on it and lots of cool ways to interact with the characters, the story and the franchise.
On today’s agenda: big production meeting when we’ll start to lay down a schedule and a critical path for the entire web series; a meeting with a potential director; another writing session; a get together with the Tights and Fights team to celebrate our mutual good fortune and figure out ways to collaborate.
