FanTrust

FanTrust’s fan video contest launch! “I Know What TV Did This Summer”

admin — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:07:13 +0000

With the television rerun season kicking into full gear, kids breaking out of school for summer and Hollywood’s dream factory potentially weeks away from a labour shutdown, it’s a perfect storm for launching our FanTrust video contest, “I Know What TV Did This Summer.”

We’re encouraging television fans from around the world to riff on their favorite TV shows, by submitting videos that creatively interpret shows past and present — and answer that age-old fan question: “What the %&*! did these characters do all summer?”

Here fans can celebrate TV, make great stuff that other fans want to watch and maybe even demonstrate that user generated content and television can happily coexist.

Winners get free cable to make sure they stay on top of next season’s best television.

FanTrust’s “I Know What TV Did This Summer” contest is powered by memelabs, making it easy for us and the fans to upload, view, vote on, and virally distribute UGC videos.

Sony XDCAM EX In Depth

Greg Weinstein — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Abel Cine Tech, in association with the Producers Guild of America New Media Council and PostWorks, presents their second joint workshop, Sony XDCAM EX In Depth.

Click link to view invitation: http://www.abelcine.com/invites/

The Sony PMW-EX3 camcorder will be making its East Coast debut at this workshop.This new model adds more features and greater flexibility to the already successfulEX1 camcorder.

The EX3 adds an interchangeable 1/2" lens system and a hand holdable, ergonomic design to the already impressive specs of the EX1, a 3-chip 1/2" CMOS sensor that records1920x1080 native resolution HD images onto SxS PRO flash memory cards.

Learn about the new features of the EX3, and hear firsthand accounts form filmmakerswho have used Sony's revolutionary XDCAM EX format from production through post.

DATE: Saturday, June 28, 2008

LOCATION:
Abel Cine Tech
609 Greenwich St - 5th fl.
New York, NY 10014212-462-0100

TIME:
10:00 am - 12:35 pm, 1st session
1:30 pm - 4:05 pm, 2nd session

Please indicate which session you plan to attend. Your name will be on the list for thatsession at the door.

RSVP:
rsvp@abelcine.com

This is an invitation only event.
Admission is free, but space is limited.

To learn more about the Sony EX1, visit http://www.abelcine.com/store/product.php?productid=1000401

To learn more about the Sony EX3, visit http://www.abelcine.com/store/product.php?productid=1001002

Low hanging fruit - YouTube. Google. Facebook.

Catherine — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:42:23 +0000

YouTube. Google. Facebook. All of these channels are seriously underexploited by many entertainment companies, given that there are a number of simple things that content creators can do right now to capitalize on each.

With YouTube it is important that producers don’t just upload content and wait for hits. YouTube provides a number of strategies and tactics to drive traffic to your content; it is baffling that most producers don’t follow these guidelines.

Google ads generate real dollars with targeted advertising; it is amazing how many high traffic sites don’t host Google ads and leave these dollars on the table. In fact, fans right now may be taking your entertainment content and monetizing it themselves with simple Google ads.

In May 2008, Facebook launched Facebook Pages, profile pages created specifically for businesses, musicians, entertainment brands, non-profits and more to promote their initiatives - at no cost. The Pages include advanced functionalities and customization, including a Flash Player application. According to Facebook, “users can add themselves to your Facebook Page as fans, write on your Wall, purchase products, learn about special promotions, upload photos, and join other users in discussion groups. You can send Updates to all your fans whenever you like.”

Not surprisingly, entertainment (music, television, film), sports and politics boast the most significant fan bases on Facebook, according to this blog post by 20bits.

As well, you may wish to promote your content virally on social networks with applications – for tips on how to make this work for you check out an FanTrust blog, Fast Money With Widgets.

And, if you are really ambitious and want your own little piece of technology and some money to finance it, you can also get substantial funding from VC’s that invest in the development of Facebook apps. An upcoming July FanTrust Blog will show you the money.

Use the Force

Greg Weinstein — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:30:00 +0000

All fans are equal but some are more equal than others. For any given property, you've got fans… and then you've got superfans. Superfans make up a small percentage of the audience, but can have an impact far greater than their numbers. They're a loyal band of dedicated individuals whose focus and intention can make extraordinary things happen. In cult media terms, they're the Jedis of the fan world. As a transmedia producer your job is to get them to use their power for good and keep them from going to the dark side.

Winning over superfans is the first step toward attracting a mass audience. "But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they." Avoid sparking these emotions at all costs. Honor and respect the property that they hold so dear. Do not underestimate the power of the dark side.

Jenkins: What are the risks involved in alienating the base of your audience?

Gomez: Franchises are built on the energy and loyalty of their hardcore fan bases. While these bases are often a fraction of the size of the total audience, they are indispensable, because they are vocal, passionate and active. A tiny fraction of the genre television series Jericho sent tons of jars of peanuts to the network that had just cancelled the program--moving them to reinstate the series. A small group of fans that gathered at conventions and shared amateur publications centered on the original Star Trek series managed to bridge the period between that series' cancellation and the Star Wars-inspired relaunch of the franchise in the late 1970s.

When the producers of the television series Enterprise publicly stated that the show was being designed for a much wider audience than previous incarnations of Star Trek, and exhibited this intention by altering the shows music cues, pandering to sexual titillation and (perhaps most egregiously) ignoring at will the established continuity and thematic tone of the fictional universe, the result was a gradual erosion of the franchise's core fan base. Without the approval and loyalty of "Trekkers" there would be no reason for the greater audience to stick around.

The original Crow graphic novel and feature film generated an extremely loyal fan base. But with the second feature, producers chose to ignore the fictional rules and tenets set down by the original work, and so the franchise experienced the first of what would become many fractures. Dubbing the property an "anthology franchise" that could be wildly altered based on the vision of individual artists and storytellers, the producers continued to build and deconstruct The Crow into smaller and smaller pieces, each with its own dwindling following. They chose to place the needs of their artists above the integrity of the mythology of the universe--a mythology that the fan base deeply cared about. The property now languishes in limbo.

Jenkins: What do you see as the downsides of generating such passionate consumers?

Gomez: On the other hand, passion can be blind and judgmental. Fan zeal can threaten to "box in" a property, potentially stunting its growth. It can generate negative "buzz" around a project, which can leak into media coverage and plant seeds of doubt in the general audience base. For example, Warner Brother's upcoming "Justice League" feature film has been the target of fan criticism around story and casting issues. Since then, script and casting choices have been amended. Whether or not this will help the production remains to be seen.

Jenkins: As some of these genres have become more commercially viable, the San Diego Comic Con has emerged as an important media marketplace. Can you speak to the role this gathering plays in the marketing of your properties?

Gomez: Comic Con International in San Diego plays a more and more pivotal role in heralding, marketing and launching new genre efforts. In the midst of negotiating with executives at The Walt Disney Company for a job working with one of their largest franchises, Starlight Runner took them on a tour of the Comic Con exhibition floor. Many of the "worlds" we helped to develop were on spectacular display: Mattel's Hot Wheels universe, the fantasy realms of Magic: The Gathering, high priced back issues of Valiant Comics, and the announcements for new video games and comic books based on Turok and our own "Team GoRizer" at Disney's own booth! Suffice to say, a deal was quickly sealed!

Each year, Comic Con attracts well over 100,000 "gatekeepers," fans of niche, cult or genre entertainment who make it their business to spread the word about the newest and coolest content to their friends and acquaintances both in their home communities and on the Internet. It used to be that one of these gatekeepers would have a circle of five to ten contacts back home to whom he or she would convey what was best about the convention. Now in the age of social networking and pop culture web portals, that number has multiplied exponentially. Add to this the mass media coverage given to Comic Con and content producers can reach untold millions through it.

previous Jeff Gomez post

Jeff Gomez (jeff@starlightrunner.com), is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Inc., a developer and producer of highly successful trans-media projects whose clients include The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, the Coca-Cola Company, Mattel and Hasbro.

Exclusive: Capcom builds fan trust

Catherine — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Here’s a shout-out to our friends at Capcom, an entertainment company that functions at the cross-roads where “Fans” and “Trust” meet. This weekend, Capcom did a stealth relaunch of Capcom Unity’s community destination.

Talking exclusively to FanTrust, Capcom Corporate Officer/ Vice-President - Strategic Planning & Business Development Christian Svensson said, “The feedback is largely positive. No other video game publisher has gone this far synching up fan activity.” Designed to let fans take their Capcom ID on the road, play across multiple devices and communicate across multiple user accounts, the new community hub has been in the works for about a year and sets the stage for the next level of fan engagement. “A lot of this is a very un-Japanese approach,” says Christian who notes that the global company with Japanese HQ had to push the limits of corporate culture for a deeper engagement with fan culture.

The new community site enables media sharing (which along with search is not yet fully developed) and received about 5000 uploads in the first 48 hours. In the past, says Christian, “fans fostered community in spite of Capcom’s inability to support them. Our goal now is to enable fans in all ways up to the point of making money.”

Evidently even that rule is meant to be broken. Capcom helped one die-hard fan of Mega Man monetize a music tribute to his favorite game, signed him for a Comic-Con appearance and gave him a license deal. The Philadelphia-bred rapper Raheem Jarbo, known to indie-hop fans as Random, was recently interviewed by Wired’s music blog, The Listening Post, about the love for Mega Man that inspired his Mega Ran album, and praised Capcom’s policy of encouraging fan content, instead of sending in the lawyers.

Looking ahead, fans can expect more from Capcom, everything from improved search within the community hub to what Christian calls “the most robust digital distribution strategy in the PC space, with up to 150 sites carrying our stuff.” And next month look out for what he promises will be the “world’s largest global digital launch” for the game 1942, when this classic shooter returns with better planes, bigger bosses and even sicker weapons.

At this point it is still hard for the company, which has inspired about 25 active niche communities, to ascertain what comes first, the strength of a game brand or the strength of a game community. But coming soon, says Christian, are some “explosive new products where the community will be the force directly attributed to their success.”

What’s Christian’s take on Fans and Trust? “Trust is the foundation of interaction. The more voice fans feel they have early on, the more they trust us. Trust is a funny thing… it’s not easily earned, but it’s easily lost.”

Thanks, Christian, FanTrust couldn’t have said it better.

New media, new rules - Just ask a ninja

Catherine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:30:29 +0000

After a whirlwind month of speaking on the future of digital entertainment and online video at the Vancouver International Game Summit, VIDFEST, Cossette Convergence Day, and nextMEDIA - I’ve decided to take a break and let someone else do the pontificating.

Ninja, of viral video “Ask a Ninja” fame, shares his thoughts on online video audiences, content and monetization below. Enjoy!

Do No Harm

Greg Weinstein — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:18:00 +0000

"First, do no harm." This phrase, typically associated with medical professionals, should also be heeded by transmedia producers. In his correspondence with Professor Henry Jenkins, Jeff Gomez asserts that transmedia executions must not compromise the core viewing experience.

Jenkins: What do you see as the challenges of generating content that appeals to both niche and mass publics at the same time?

Gomez: Like any good story, content designed for genre-lovers or niche markets should contain strong characters, evocative issues and clear, accessible through lines. Story arcs must be designed from the outset to feel complete and deliver on their promise.

Also importantly, the audience needs to be able to appreciate and enjoy the content as it is presented solely on the driving platform of the trans-media production. With Heroes, for example, the driving platform is the television series. Much of the success of the franchise hinges on the audience finding the show exciting, intelligible and complete.

What the producers of Heroes are doing quite well is in providing fans of the show with a far more expansive experience of the fictional universe of the show on the complementary or orbiting platforms of the trans-media production. This additional content is presented in the form of web sites, graphic novels, prose fiction, etc., and this material all takes place within the canon of the Heroes chronology. So fans are provided with the level of depth, verisimilitude, sophistication and complexity that they crave, but casual viewers are not required to seek it out to enjoy the show.

When the two approaches cross over, we have seen the potential for pop culture phenomena. The media's coverage of "The Lost Experience" for example, conveyed the fact that there was a greater architecture to the fictional universe of the Lost TV series than was originally suspected. The excitement generated by the trans-media components of the show helped to boost broad interest in it. The same can be said of similar approaches for both the Batman: The Dark Knight and Cloverfield feature films.

Also powerful on the home front, as families gather to watch Heroes, a teen fan of the show might recognize a peripheral character making her first appearance on a given night's episode as one he originally read about in the online comic. So our fan takes on the role of gatekeeper for the show, filling in family and friends on the back story of the character, and giving them a greater appreciation of the show with his "exclusive" knowledge, and making the whole experience more entertaining. In short, depth and complexity are built around the show, rather than weighing it down by presenting it front and center.

Jenkins: What kinds of trade-offs have to occur in order to broaden the appeal of media properties?

Gomez: Studios and entertainment companies are now learning that fewer and fewer trade-offs are necessary to broaden the appeal of niche or "cult media" properties. Contemporary audiences are now primed for high quality genre entertainment across all media platforms. So long as marketing efforts place focus on a driving platform, the launch platform and complementary content can be used to build anticipation, educate audience "gatekeepers" about the property, and enrich the overall experience.

There may be trade-offs, however, when it comes to the level of depth and complexity of the core property and how interdependent the driving platform content is with complementary content. The Wachowski Brothers ran into difficulty with the mass audience reception of the second and third Matrix films, because the films were hard to understand without a working familiarity with the characters and storylines of the orbiting platforms (graphic novels, video games, direct-to-video animation). Hence, at this point in the evolution of transmedia storytelling, it is still vital to present a full and complete entertainment experience within each component of the rollout.

It should be noted that niche productions such as alternate reality games don't tend to bother with these distinctions, trusting the sophistication and intense loyalty of their audience to follow plotlines and story nodes back and forth across multiple media platforms almost indiscriminately. I believe that some day soon, web-based alternate reality games and experiences will evolve into much more accessible and dynamic productions, playing a vital role in transmedia storytelling.

previous Jeff Gomez post

Jeff Gomez (jeff@starlightrunner.com), is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Inc., a developer and producer of highly successful trans-media projects whose clients include The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, the Coca-Cola Company, Mattel and Hasbro

How can you use fan activity to support your main business?

Catherine — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:06:29 +0000

As we’ve seen, the digital world lets you reach audiences directly, eliminate the middle man and disintermediates the big boys. But for many producers, that is a very big leap. Most producers operate as business-to-business companies. Whether you sell TV to broadcasters, secure distribution for film or get game publishing deals, you can still create compelling sales tools that take advantage of fan activity.

This fan activity may be your own, for example, if you have a website with respectable traffic stats; but you can also get great, relevant stats by pilfering fan data from show, film or game properties similar to your own.

I recently introduced 42 Entertainment’s executive team at VIDFEST 2008 (read VIDFEST’s “liveblog” of the session here). 42 Entertainment bills itself as an original content production company – media agnostic, focused on “monetized entertainment experiences” for distribution partners of all stripes – including broadcasters, broadband, telcos and publishers. Their work is legend, earning them a feature in a recent issue of Wired magazine for their ARG for Nine Inch Nails.

42 Entertainment lives (and pitches) by the mantra: “Experience is King”, “Content is Queen”, and “All the world is our stage”. With this resonating, content producers will hold court when pitching to a broadcaster, studio or game publisher.

Above: The Nine Inch Nails Resistance Meeting, part of the experience created by 42 Entertainment on the request of band frontman Trent Reznor, outlined at length in the December 2007 Wired article.

Think of digital fan communities as focus groups waiting to be mined.

Count your fans
Use fan reviews
Cite fan forums
Use fan art/fan productions

Package this up in a colourful pitch that demonstrates your depth of knowledge about your key audience, its demographics and psychographics. Show your buyer that you are ahead of the game when it comes to supporting publicity, promotion and sales efforts.

Ultimately, many buyers such as broadcasters and publishers, want to see your whole multiplatform plan built into your pitch. If your fan data and your multiplatform thinking does nothing more than help you land that traditional TV or game deal, then it proved to be your competitive advantage.

Experience Design

peter.giles — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:17:06 +0000

Recently we have been brainstorming concepts and furiously writing new curriculum which we are going to teach at AFTRS in 2009. The work we have been doing at our Laboratory of Advanced Media Production has been influencing many of our new offerings in games, virtual environments and more generally in screen content. The process of rapid prototyping, user-centred design and iterative project development is something we have been seeking to firmly implant in the new curriculum. Came across this great definition of experience design from Nathan Shedroff via our own very talented designer Catherine Gleeson.

There are, at least, 6 dimensions to experiences: Time/Duration, Interactivity, Intensity, Breadth/Consistency, Sensorial and Cognitive Triggers, and Significance/Meaning. Together, these create an enormous palette of possibilities for creating effective, meaningful, and successful experiences.

The most important concept to grasp is that all experiences are important and that we can learn from them whether they are traditional, physical, offline experiences or whether they are digital, online, or other technological experiences. In fact, we know a great deal about experiences and their creation through these other established disciplines that can-and must-be used to develop new solutions. Most technological experiences-including digital and, especially, online experiences-have paled in comparison to real-world experiences and have been relatively unsuccessful as a result. What these solutions require is for their developers to understand what makes a good experience first, and then to translate these principles, as well as possible, into the desired media without the technology dictating the form of the experience.

Any new idea for a product or service should start with meaning and progress from there. These ideas are the basis of a Design MBA which is being run at the California College of the Arts which claims that Design is the Future of Business. A noble aim indeed which has a place in any future looking creative content educational program (or should that be experience)?

Transmedia Crossover

Greg Weinstein — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Like any pop culture junkie, there’s nothing I like better than a good crossover – when characters from different realities step into each other’s world. Like when Laverne & Shirley or The Big Ragu appeared on Happy Days. Or when Batman and Spiderman teamed up to take on the Joker.

Crossovers happen in real life too. This past fall, I witnessed one of my favorites when Jeff Gomez and Henry Jenkins met at the Future of Entertainment Conference. Seeing these two transmedia giants interact was as epic and entertaining as any fictional crossover.

Prior to the panel discussion, Professor Jenkins had distributed a set of questions to the speakers to help them prepare. Gomez recently decided to revisit these questions and sent his current thoughts back to Jenkins. Events in the transmedia space have progressed so rapidly that he felt it would be valuable to keep the dialog moving ahead.

Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out portions of the correspondence between these two transmedia heavyweights… it will be as entertaining as when the doctors from St. Elswhere crossed over onto Cheers for a drink.
-------------------------------------
Jenkins: Let's start by examining the concept of "cult media." What does this phrase mean to you, and do you think it accurately describes the kinds of projects you've worked on? Why or why not?

Gomez: To me "cult media" is exemplified by the slow crumbling of traditional media content aimed at huge swathes of the population, down to the more contemporary approach of designing content to engage subsections of that population or even smaller "niches."
My company Starlight Runner works on "cult media" in that we work on projects that already have mass appeal or have the potential to reach mass appeal, but what those projects always have to begin with is a specific genre appeal that almost guarantees an extremely loyal core "niche" audience.

Starlight Runner also consults with movie studios, comic book and fiction publishers, and videogame developers to take their niche or "cult" content and prepare it for extension across multiple media platforms. In this case, we are acting as transmedia storytellers, developing and producing "cult" properties for exposure to a much larger audience.

Jenkins: The idea of cult media historically referred to films that appealed to a fairly small niche of consumers. But many genres, which once were regarded as cult -- fantasy, science fiction, superheroes -- have emerged as increasingly mainstream. What's changing? What accounts for the mainstreaming of niche media?

Gomez: There are five factors that seem to be contributing to the "coming out" of cult media:
1. Baby boomers and gen-X'ers weaned on the explosion of pop culture spurred by the proliferation of television and movies in the aftermath of World War II have come of age and taken control of the entertainment industry. Naturally, they have a strong desire to recreate what they loved and share it with others who've had similar cultural experiences.

2. Genre product such as science fiction serials and horror films, which had been relegated to Saturday matinees and second or third billing in movie theaters, could now be given A-list treatment. The new moguls and visionaries could now apply top grade production value to this content, and hire marquee talent for it, secure in the knowledge that genre fare is more than likely to turn a profit. In the international market, a growing hunger for action and genre content could boost domestic failures into profitability.

3. Attention to quality extended to storytelling. Filmmakers, comic book writers, genre novelists and their ilk were better educated and more interested in stories that conveyed better character development and stronger verisimilitude. Star Wars was fueled by the work of Joseph Campbell.

4. Genre content became more reflective of the mood and politics of the time, and therefore resonated more powerfully with mass audiences. Note the nuclear spawned monsters of the 1950s, the "acid trip" sci-fi of the '60s, the terrifying "evil children" of the early '70s, the "gee whiz" hope of Star Wars and Close Encounters later that decade, the political morass and moral ambiguity of Battlestar Galactica currently.

5. Like no other time in history, devotees of this type of content have complete access to one another via the Internet. Fans whose imaginations are fired by these stories make a deep and lasting connection with them. They become "specialists," intensely knowledgeable of the property, the way that sports fanatics memorize the accomplishments and statistics of their favorite teams. These fans become "apostles" for the property, devoting time, effort and creativity in celebrating the story and characters, collecting ephemera and licensed extensions of the brand, celebrating it with others of their ilk. They form the property's core fan base, which in turn fuels the continued success of the brand.

Jeff Gomez (jeff@starlightrunner.com), is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Inc., a developer and producer of highly successful trans-media projects whose clients include The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, the Coca-Cola Company, Mattel and Hasbro.