I finally met Lucas in person at the Storyworld Conference. He is a lovely and intelligent young man with a lot of passion for his craft. Although we could tell this with his active postings at his company blog, Silverstring Media, he is even better in person. Now Lucas has generously offered to share some crucial lessons he has learned from his first major jump into creating a reactive story online here.

Before we delve into those lessons, some quick info about his background. Lucas had a job as a creative intern at an ad agency where he resides in Vancouver; he has done a bit of freelance PR writing; and was a trainee assistant director on a TV show in the summer of 2010. Some of his published short stories are “Flip City” in the Queer Wolf anthology, a more recent piece he’s “very proud of”, “Subtle Poison”, is in the anthology Speaking Out. His stageplay Life: A Play was performed as part of the Brave New Play Rites Reading Series at UBC in 2009, and his stage monologue Revelations is published at the Good Ear Review online.

Now to his lessons – I’ve included a bit of a dialogue between Lucas and I after each lesson too. Enjoy!

Seven Lessons
At the start of this year, I launched an experimental transmedia story called Azrael’s Stop. After a few months of lacklustre audience and a structure swamped in problems, I affirmed that yes, I do in fact suck at transmedia.

But as we all aspire to do, I have learned from the experience — and furthermore implemented that learning to attempt to repair Azrael’s Stop and re-launched it this November. In the spirit of You Suck At Transmedia, I’d like to share a few of the lessons I learned along the way — and hope you’ll join me in an ongoing self-evaluation of the project.

Lesson #1: Quality. Speed. Cost. Choose two.
Not a new lesson, but a problem I thought I could work around. (Spoiler: I couldn’t.) I designed Azrael’s Stop to be something I could produce quickly and cheaply and get out into the world — the story is told through daily serialized microfiction, tweet-sized bits of story that build over time. I figured I could pump out a bunch of these quickly and easily without actually losing too much quality of writing.

The quality I was losing, though, was in the overall project, not the writing — I didn’t have time to really plan, I didn’t have strong design elements, I honestly didn’t think through all the possible ways people would come at the project and problems they would face. But I thought I could work on the quality later, after I got things going.

But once I had started, I was just trying to keep up with the content along with whatever else I was working on. In the end, I did catch up on the quality side — after I had pulled the plug, gone on hiatus, and went back to the drawing board to fix it. Thus sacrificing speed. Lesson learned.

CD: “Choose two” – hehe, I like that. I’m also working on a project that can be produced cheaply and quicker than say a feature film, but I’m finding that I can’t have speed without cost. If I could pay people to do things, then production would move faster and we could do more things!

LJ: I would love to be able to pay the people who have worked with me on this — and besides just wanting to compensate them for what they’ve done, it would also help solidify the relationship and contractualize deadlines more effectively, not to mention allow them (and me) to focus on this project rather than do it in our spare time. You definitely can’t have it all.

Lesson #2: It’s never as easy as you think it will be.
Daily tweets. How hard could that be? I can write 140 characters a day, no problem. Though I also wanted to have some bonus content, monthly extras that maybe I could make money on, things like longer short stories and music and audio plays and interactive fiction games and comics. And suddenly there was a lot more work involved. Those things required a lot more time and effort, and collaboration with friends who, by the way, had their own deadlines to deal with as well. Not to mention the fact that producing a project like this isn’t just about making the content. Once you’ve made the content, you still have to promote it. Write it up. Sell it. Not to mention maintaining it, fixing problems as they come up. Plan for more work than you assume. And give yourself the time to do it right.

CD: Ooo yeah. The trailer for my project took much longer than planned, due to some
unexpected factors. But what I remind myself over and over again is that projects are
always like that. They always blow out time-wise (especially in experimental projects)
because of unforeseen events. In the end, it isn’t about knowing everything that can go
wrong, it is how you deal with the stuff that does. It is kind of a world-view that I find not
everyone shares…and so one of the things I’m working on at the moment is how to
facilitate that kind of culture. Any ideas?

LJ: I think a big part of it is having the right team — a team that is motivated and interested in the project and wants it to succeed as much as you. And then furthermore being as clear as possible in communicating expectations with the team as far as how to deal with problems and perhaps whose responsibility it may be. Not always easy conversations to have, though.

Lesson #3: Have a plan.
Nothing worse than launching without any real idea where you’re going. You’re just asking for a host of problems to crop up out of the blue. You don’t need everything fleshed out, but have an outline for the whole project — and that includes where it’s ending. Both you and your audience should know how much time they’re expecting to devote to your story. A plan lets you know when something big is coming, so you can devote enough time to it, so you can prepare properly and make sure everyone on your team is on the same page and committed. A plan will also give you a better sense of your whole project, so you can hopefully see where there are problems in your structure, or opportunities to do cooler things. I went into the project with it being very open-ended, and as a result, it quickly got away from me and was in some ways aimless. This time, I know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Not everything is written — but everything is planned.

CD: Yeah, nice. It sounds like you really jumped into the deep end! Even your experience is in the extreme in that you started without an outline, I’ve also found there are certain things that help when you’re knee-deep in the “live” madness. As a writer and designer, you have lots of information in your head and perhaps in shared documents. But some decisions just really need to happen quickly (or you at least want them to). This is where I’ve found having some basic “essence elements” on hand helps. If I know what the theme or message of my project is, that informs/constrains my decisions. If I know what
my character wants and what they need (as two competing drives), then I can usually act in their voice fairly easily. Lucas, what sort of stuff do you do for planning now?

LJ: I now have a full bible for the project, at about 13,000 words, which nails down exactly those thematic elements as well as the look and feel of the project. It also has complete character descriptions, personalities, and the arcs the characters go through, so I know where it’s all going. Separately, I’ve also created a rough outline of the entire year-long story that incorporates all those character journeys, and I have a good idea of what I want my bonus content to be each month so I can plan ahead and find collaborators where necessary.

Lesson #4: Set the stage.
Your audience has to know what they’re getting into from the very start — both from a structural point of view (How much time are you asking them to commit? What’s the duration of the experience? Are you asking for interaction? UGC? Or just passive consumption?) and a story point of view (set up the main characters, the setting, the conflict; give the audience something to care about).

Structurally, if they don’t know what they’re getting into, they won’t trust you, and they won’t be happy when you ask more of them than they assumed. Story-wise, they just won’t care and won’t give you the benefit of the doubt for long enough to pull them in. Hook them early.

CD: Yeah, totally agree. I remember one of the big lessons hypertext fiction writers learnt: that a big difference between a book and an online narrative is the reader knows how big the book is and where they are in it. Motivation to act is closely linked to urgency at times and so people need to know when to act. I recognising that with my current project being a very different way to experience the web, and with players coming with different expectations, I need to make it clear what it is about and what they will do. So my next milestone is to create a playable trailer. I also recall a quote from Andra Sheffer, when she said if you don’t hook your online audience within the first 10 seconds you’re dead. Heavy stuff, but good to keep in mind. As indies, we have to address craft, art and publicity!

LJ: Not easy at the best of times. That design of the user experience is so vital — and thus my next lesson!

Lesson #5: Everything is a barrier to entry.
There are millions of things on the internet that people will entertain themselves with. And watching a cat video is so much easier than registering for your site so they can scroll backwards through some tweets to understand what’s going on.

At some point, some barriers to entry are ok — if you’re looking for player interaction, that’s a barrier to entry, but it might be a necessary one for the structure of your project. A paywall is certainly a barrier to entry, but again could be necessary at some point! But just be aware what is a barrier and that every one will lose you some audience members.

That includes necessary site registration. It includes just moving from one medium to another. It includes forms of media people aren’t familiar with — like interactive fiction. It even includes using Twitter, as I discovered — there are still a lot of people who aren’t on Twitter, don’t understand Twitter, and frankly don’t want to understand Twitter.

Barriers to entry also include things that stop people from getting involved in the middle of a project. Make sure it’s easy for people to get caught up on the story and jump in. Make sure if people miss a week because they were on vacation, they’re going to be able to get back in.

CD: Yeah, I like the term “friction points”. They are a major design consideration in transmedia projects, or just any highly dispersed projects. Easy to enter is one thing, but also there is the power of a good content. I read a study that found people who followed a particular topic (entertainment gossip), went everywhere and anywhere to get it. People are platform-agnostic when the content leads them. They don’t think about moving across platforms or obstacles when they’re following content they want. So on
the one hand we have the need for design that recognises friction points, and on the other hand we need to remember that content is part of that design strategy.

LJ: Yes! I think there’s also a point to make though that people have an intrinsic understanding of how to get something like entertainment gossip (that it can come from TV, magazines, the internet), whereas getting them to understand that a piece of prose fiction can be delivered online via tiny pieces every day along with music and video and things may yet be something not intrinsic for a lot of people.

Lesson #6: Everything is a balance.
The more you ask from your audience, the less audience you will have. You can’t have both a huge audience that is also deeply engaged. If you give the audience control over the narrative, you’re going to lose control yourself. Everything is some kind of balancing act. In my case it was the balance between not asking a lot from my audience (I was only asking them to read a little bit of content a day) and asking enough to get them engaged (one tweet is not enough). I missed that balance. Now I have an introductory story, more content to hook them, and then the microfiction (which I present in much better ways than before as well). You can’t have everything, so pick your battles.

CD: Could you tell me more about how you’re planning on addressing different audiences now?

LJ: Part of it, which was always my plan but which I’m putting extra focus on now, is not making the bonus content — the music, the audio play, the game, and whatever else I devise — necessary to follow the story. So if you don’t know how to play an interactive fiction game and don’t care to figure it out, that’s ok.

Another big part is making sure the content is accessible in as many ways as possible — no longer just on Twitter, you can now get it on Facebook, Tumblr, or on its own dedicated website (with an RSS feed and email subscription). And if you don’t want tiny chunks every day but instead want to consume it all at once, I’m compiling each month of content into single pages on the site, as chapters on Scribd, Wattpad, and Book Country, and as downloadable PDFs.

Having a “Story So Far” page and a “Start Here” page will also hopefully make it easy for people to access the story even if they weren’t there from the start — a very clear step-by-step explanation of what this is and how best to experience it.

CD: Ooo, I should mention I cover some of the early attempts at making dispersed stories more approachable in this essay (PDF) and continue on the online augmentation to the essay.

Lesson #7: Promote yourself.
Your own networks aren’t enough. Unless you have thousands of Facebook fans and Twitter followers and blog readers, you won’t get word out far enough just by flogging your project on your own networks. (If you can, you’ve probably already done this step many many times.) What few RTs you get won’t be enough. Go where your audience is, to forums and blogs and news sites and put your stuff in front of eyeballs. Make deals with other creators. Bring in collaborators who will flog it to their own networks. Guest blog. Publicize.

CD: And here he is! hehe. Yeah, the next major stage of publicity for my project will be doing publicity outside of my networks. I’ll also share one thing I realised – that your peer network/audience is not necessarily your creative audience. It is one thing to have a network of colleagues, but that network won’t necessarily be into your creative work and your creative project will appeal to new people.

LJ: Absolutely! The trick will be finding those methods of publicity outside these channels. It will come, but it will be work ^_^

***
All of which is not to say I don’t still suck at transmedia. But I’m learning! Hopefully you are too. And hopefully the things I’ve learned will help make Azrael’s Stop a better and successful project. Check it out at azraelsstop.com, and let me know!

Thank you so much Lucas for sharing your lessons!

This is a special repost of Trevor Curran’s (@TrevorCurran) article from his Facebook group, reprinted here with permission. It provides a lot of juicy advice about funding and working with brands, and is a nice complement to Brian Clark’s series on transmedia business models at Henry’s blog.

Ok so in short…I’ve been asked ‘show me the money’ – where do you get it? In Ireland and EU these are good starting points: the EU MEDIA Interactive Development Fund, Northern Ireland Screen Digital Content Development, Creative Industries Innovation Fund and Invest Northern Ireland. Enterprise Ireland, RTE Storyland, Local County Council Arts Offices and IFB schemes such as Virtual Cinema. These should be enough to keep you going for a while but obviously there is as always lots of competition for limited funding so make your concept good!

Historically speaking broadcasters in Ireland and the UK have no coherent commissioning digital strategy, this is changing but very slowly with RTE Storyland, RTE YPP, BBC NI Innovation Slot, Ch4 OD. The reasons why there has been a bit of a failure to adapt stem from it being a new area for content, history and internal politics of broadcasters has a part to play with early web content being simply part of publishing in RTEs case the RTE guide and Aertel, which gave rise to an early site which effectively republished content. Change is difficult for large scale broadcasters such as RTE but their RTE player is taking hold even if they still have no way of commissioning content for digital without running fowl of internal debates on who should be commissioning for the web right now its still ad hoc at best.

The unions SPI and SIPTU in Ireland bless their cotton socks still haven’t managed work out crew rates for web content after ten years negotiations, thankfully in the uk BECTU and PACT seem more proactive as do unions in Australia and America. But on a basic what you need to know is this the normal tv and film drama production model makes digital and web content not really possible so a much lower cost base required to make it viable that may change in time but right now this is where we are at. So Top Tip use technology where ever possible to reduce cost base and keep coming up with ideas to reduce your cost base such as getting actors to record voice over and pod casts on set in-between lighting set up, you need to be much more effective in your production days then the system is used for and you need to be filming much more pages to make the whole thing work!!!!

Ok so as I said traditional drama budget rules simply cannot apply, however the broadcasters as they can’t commission this stuff make you pay for new media elements of digital media components often this must come from your existing production budgets. So you have been warned in advance!

This brings us to control and maintenance, ownership of IP and International sales, generally if a broadcaster pays for it they own it unless you can prove extensive development before commissioning so do yourself a favour and shoot a mini pilot it will give you a much better leveraging position in negotiating IP ownership and position for international sales down the line. If a single brand is paying for it then the same rules apply generally whomever pays for it is likely to want a slice of the action is international sales and distribution revenues…the question is how big of slice of the pie do you get?? If multiple brands are involved that has the many many benefits it stops one trying to dictate narrative – at the end of the day these guys make ads not entertainment that’s you job and you should know how to do it better then them. It also means you are in a very strong position when it comes to international sales and distribution revenues Woop Woop!!! Ah that so rarely happens ☺

So how do you get brands involved – well get a great idea to start with and figure out your distribution plan so that you grab your target audiences attention preferably before launch. You’ll need a pilot eps, mock up website, series bible, extensive markting and launch plan. A sample package for sponsors would often include:

1. Full integration of the brand/product within the episode/series
2. Off-line cross media activities using the brand and the show
3. Competitions using the show and requiring users to go to the sponsor website
4. Photos of main cast and logo for using in off-line materials, point of sale etc
5. Link from Series Portal page to brand page
6. Provide ‘as seen on XXyour series hereXX’ logo
7. Advance screening onsite
8. On-line casting for publicity
9. Press release with regard to innovation of brand in sponsoring online show
10. Pre roll logo – ‘Brought to you by Brand X”

Producers generally speaking should keep an open mind and always have a few suggestions regarding how best to integrate brands within your series. Ok some quick states to get your juices flowing:

1. Product Placement in US Market is worth €2.65Bn in 2009 – most current figures available.
2. The largest use of placement is in Music Videos up 8% on last year – Britney Spears, Lady Gaga – the range of products include Sony Products to Miracle Whip salad Dressing.
3. Product Placement currently accounts for 5% of US Advertising Revenue.
4. There were 400,000 Instances of Product Placement on US Television in 2009.
5. Brandchannel.com estimates that ‘Apple’ items appeared in 30% of top US box office films last year in 2010.
6. Indeed the Matrix Trilogy had the distinction of having so much Product Placement the film was actually in profit before anyone actually saw it in the cinema!!

In 2007 EU instated the Audiovisual Media Services directive, which in theory allowed broadcasters to take payment for displaying commercial products. However each country had to determine their own rules this was in large part due to the large volume of US television that was viewed in Europe which has lots of PP for revenue it was infact putting local European producers at a disadvantage in competition terms.

Due to the impact of Digital Systems – ie Sky+ which allow audiences to skip ads this had a dramatic impact hitting broadcaster revenues, and with the advertising crash IRL spend down from 350m 2007 to 200m since 2011. Irish broadcasters were in effect competing with UK broadcasters who have been allowed use PP since 2009 – and it now accounts for £ 20m + out of local ad spend in the UK. The UK first PP – was on the ‘This Morning TV Show’ in late 2009 – with a Blender being placement in the set background for a fee of £100,000. Indeed to much fan fair RTE announced their first major PP deal last week as part of Fair City the shop will be branded as a ‘Spar’ Shop – in a deal estimated to be worth €900,000 for 9 months appearing 4 times per episode of Fair City!

OK those of you from Ireland please take note of the following: (Broadcasting Authority of Ireland) BAI Product Placement has been given the go ahead from May 2nd of this year. There are conditions though its only allowed in Films, Sport, Drama and Light Entertainment. Its very much forbidden in News, Children’s TV, Chat Shows, or shows with more than 20% Current Affairs – ie Late Late Show. ‘PP’ – A Product Placement Logo must appear during the show and in the end credits listing the specific companies involved.

So what are the official views of the broadcasters well TV3 seemed mainly concerned with appealing to the BAI for a restriction on RTE PP levels, its debateable if that will ever actually happen. Both broadcasters are appealing the notion of having to inform audiences of PP at all via logo and credits. RTE argue that audiences already accept the concept of PP and given the amount of US it is prevalent in they have a valid argument. Setanta Sports on the other hand don’t see it as a viable source of income for them indeed they are not even sure its worth administrative inconvenience of including as a potential revenue model them is viewed as too small.

Ok people now go forth and make stuff!!
Trev

In response to my last post about Quality TV/Transmedia, Micheal Finberg emailed me. We chatted about a couple of points, one of which was his question about whether transmedia is disruptive. I shared the question with twitter and this was the response (in order of most recent):

Just a quick post (a habit I’ll try and get into so I post often!) to share a list of the distinguishing characteristics of “quality television”. The characteristics are developed by academic Robert J. Thompson in response to the emergence of “quality TV” is American television beginning with Hills Street Blues, and includes Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, and contemporary series such as The Sopranos. I’m just clearing out my office, and found these notes from his book Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (1996). Consider these in the context of transmedia and the emerging or need for quality transmedia projects. What is similar and what is different?

1. ‘Quality TV is best defined by what it is not. It is not “regular” TV.’ (page. 13)
2. ‘Quality TV usually has a quality pedigree. Shows made by artists whose reputations were made in other, classier media,like film, are prime candidates.’ (page 14)
3. ‘Quality TV attracts an audience with blue chip demographics. The upscale, well-educated, urban-dwelling, young viewers advertisers so desire to reach tend to make up a much larger percentage of the audience of these shows than of other kinds of programs.’ (page 14)
4. ‘Desirable demographics notwithstanding, quality shows must often undergo a noble struggle against profit-mongering networks and nonappreciative audiences. The hottest battles between Art and Commerce, between creative writer-producers and bottom-line-concious executives are often played out during the runs of these series. [...] When a quality show does become a hit, it is often after a long struggle and some unusual circumstances.’ (page 14)
5. ‘Quality TV tends to have a large ensemble cast. The variety of characters allows for a variety of viewpoints since multiple plots must usually be employed to accommodate all of the characters.’ (page 14)
6. ‘Quality TV has a memory. Though it may or may not be serialized in continuing story lines, these shows tend to refer back to previous episodes. Characters develop and change as the series goes on.’ (page 14)
7. ‘Quality TV creates a new genre by mixing old ones. [...] All quality shows integrate comedy and tragedy in a way Aristotle would never have approved.’ (page 15)
8. ‘Quality TV tends to be literary and writer-based. The writing is usually more complex than in other types of programming.’ (page 15)
9. ‘Quality TV is self-conscious. Oblique allusions are made to both high and popular culture, but mostly of TV itself.’ (page 15)
10. ‘The subject matter of quality TV tends toward the controversial. [...] The overall message almost always tends toward liberal humanism.’ (page 15)
11. ‘Quality TV aspires toward “realism“.’ (page 15)

Thompson then says that “series which exhibit these eleven characteristics listed above are usually enthusiastically showered with awards and critical acclaim” (page 15). He goes on to comment on the similarity of TV shows:

As this list suggests, when looked at all together, these “quality” programs all begin to look a lot alike. What emerges by the time we get to the 1990s is that “quality TV” has become a genre in itself complete with its own set of formulaic characteristics. [...] Quality television came to refer to shows with a particular set of characteristics that we normally associate with “good,” “artsy,” and “classy.” But we can say that of other media as well. The films that play in the city art houses also have a surprisingly lot in common with each other. Serious novels, paintings, and films have distinct set of characteristics that distinguish them from bestsellers, K-Mart seascapes, and Hollywood blockbusters. (page 16)

At many times during his book, Thompson refers to the techniques creators of these shows used to help with audiences that don’t watch every episode and those that do. I learnt a few techniques from Hills Street Blues! He finishes by talking about this approach:

But it is a formula that includes thoughtful writing, innovative stories, and strong performances among its principal characteristics. By institutionalizing “quality” programming into an imitatable formula, the creators of such shows have found a way to make artistically interesting programs that are compatible with prime-time television’s demands for predictability. (page 192)

Interesting stuff. I think it will take longer for gatekeepers (commissioning agents, funding bodies, broadcasters, etc) to identify quality…but it is emerging regardless!