March 19, 2013 at 7:26 pm (Film, Transmedia)
Tags: Apple, iTunes, Mike Vogel, Phrenic, transmedia
I recently interviewed creator, Mike Vogel, about his latest project, Phrenic, which, at the time of our discussion, was undergoing review by iOS. Mike e-mailed me this morning to let me know that Phrenic had finally been accepted and was available for free download on iTunes. Check it out: http://appstore.com/phrenic
Phrenic available now on iTunes
March 11, 2013 at 12:50 pm (Film, Transmedia)
Tags: app, interview, iOS, Mike Vogel, Phrenic, science-fiction, social media, transmedia, web series, webisodes
Recently I spoke with filmmaker, Mike Vogel, whose latest project, Phrenic, an interactive web series, will soon be released as an iOS app.
Phrenic is a science-fiction mystery about housewife, Alison Taylor, who is planning to kill her husband, Frank, in seven days. Alison believes her husband, a research scientist at a nanogenetics company, called Life Identical, is physically, no longer the person she married, and she fears his work on a top-secret project has something to do with it. Plagued by voices emanating from inanimate objects, including an old porcelain doll, Alison has sought help through medication and a psychiatrist, Dr. Katherine Trunk. As the series develops, the viewer begins to question whether Alison is actually the one going crazy.
Phrenic is set to be released as a mobile app in Spring 2013, the app, in addition to seven webisodes, will include a game, a body scanner, messages from Alison’s talking doll and a choose your own adventure ebook. Additional content provide supplemental narratives to the series. An in-app purchase component is also included for future webisodes. Ancillary components outside of the application include a website for the nanogenetics company, Life Identical, an eBook on Kindle and video blog called Stop Life Identical.
Citing the television series, Lost, as an inspiration, Vogel, a filmmaker, explained his interest in using other platforms to expand the storyworld of the web series “the thing I like… it’s not a continuation of the same characters and plot, instead we get to see a different part of the world.” As Phrenic continues to evolve, Mike is focusing his energy on further development of new characters and plot-lines. He hopes to use audience engagement and feedback from Phase 1 to help drive the Phase 2 narrative. And while he doesn’t want, or expect the audience to tell the story he believes that by giving them some of what they want it will continue to keep viewers engaged, “Let’s please the audience… make sure the interested people are getting what that want… there is, after all, room for us to explore.”
During our discussion, Mike said he originally submitted it to the App Store in October and it was rejected for being “primarily a movie.” The rejection prompted Mike’s exploration into additional components of the app, “I don’t think I was being [initially] creative enough on the app side.” His new approach expanded upon the narrative of the story, “A developer friend and I worked hard to create a bunch of interactive elements tied to the story…My hope is that I’ll be able to push out videos as in-app purchases, in addition to free content updates like stories or games.”
As I was going though the websites and videos during my research of Phrenic I noticed that a social media campaign for the project is currently non-existent. When I asked Mike why, he explained to me that a Facebook page for Phrenic has so far been reserved, but social media marketing will not be developed until it can be downloaded from the App Store. He expressed his frustration at drawn-out marketing campaigns; “I get really fatigued to hear about everyone’s project that hasn’t launched yet…I’m trying not to fatigue people.” When I asked him if he expected to use paid advertising or a large social media roll-out once Phrenic was released, he replied “I’m a big believer of doing advertising on social networks, targeted advertising is key… if you don’t believe in paid advertising, you don’t believe in your product.”
With an eye towards future webisodes and new content, I asked Mike how he hoped to finance additional costs of production. He explained that the idea is to allow the project to grow over time, but the biggest challenge is still to figure out a revenue stream. “That’s always the big struggle” he sighed “It’s hard to get people to pay for entertainment…on the one hand [there is] the chose your own adventure e-book on Kindle.” On the other hand? “ We can use the in app purchase component for new pieces of content… ultimately I am hoping the app will drive revenue”
Lastly, I wanted to know what he learned while developing his first transmedia project, “Some people don’t want to deep dive” Mike explained and “the hardest challenge is in getting people interested in the project… there is no clear path like there is for a feature, which people know how to get their hands around. How do you explain to people at the grocery store what it is? I think people ultimately want to figure stuff out, but they have to know how to get started.” On advising new transmedia producers he says that it “is a good challenge for someone interested in telling stories.” When I asked him what he found most exciting about creating a transmedia project, as someone coming from traditional filmmaking, he said “some of this feels like being a kid and I’m making it up as I go along.” As for the future of Phrenic? “I still feel like I’m in the conception phase, I think to myself, where else could this go?”
February 22, 2013 at 2:54 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: advertising, Andrea Phillips, film, Nuno Bernardo, NYWIFT, Sheri Candler, transmedia, Tribeca
Transmedia Storytelling: What’s Now, What’s Next and How to Do it
On Tuesday, February 19th, I gave a workshop for members and guests of New York Women in Film and Television at the Tribeca Film Center on Transmedia Storytelling. In my presentation I explained the definition of transmedia storytelling, provided some well known examples as well as examples of independent and micro-budget campaigns. At the end I gave a few pointers collected from other industry insiders and colleagues including Andrea Phillips, Nuno Bernardo, Sheri Candler and Jon Reiss. The link above takes you to a copy of my presentation, if you enjoy it then please feel free to share.
- Jen
January 2, 2013 at 6:08 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: Bear 71, hackathon, meetup, StoryCode, Storyworld, The Walking Dead, transmedia, TransmediaNYC
Let’s face it, 2012 was a rough year, from fires to floods, to hurricanes, mass shootings, tense elections, economic uncertainty and “Call me Maybe” playing on every radio station, across the U.S. I think I can officially say it was a pretty sucky year on many levels. And Canada, I’m going to demand an official apology for Carly Rae Jepsen, you have one year to meet my terms and conditions.
But aside from bad music, national disasters and a horrible job market. this year did give hope to many of us in the transmedia community, we had a few stumbles here and there, but the overall feeling is one of hope, and dammit, hope is all we need to get 2013 started. So here it is, my (un) official list of some awesome transmedia stuff that happened this year.
Bear 71: is an interactive web documentary by Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes about a grizzly bear in Banff National Park, who was collared at the age of three and was watched her whole life via trail cameras in the park. Bear 71 explores the connections between the human and animal world, and the far-ranging effects that human settlements, roads and railways have on wildlife. The webdoc features a map of Banff National Park that allows users to follow Bear 71’s movements by scrolling over the cameras, and look at other users by activating the computer’s webcam. Additionally, Lance Weiler helped produce an interactive, live performance of Bear 71 during the Sundance Film Festival.
The Lost Children: is a sci-fi thriller that tells the story of Evelyn Hamilton, NYC socialite turned would-be messiah. Running from her troubled family, Evelyn joins The Lost Children cult, who believe they are aliens from another world, stranded on Earth and awaiting rescue by their mother ship. Evelyn’s family hires professional cult deprogrammer, Jared Allen Tyler, to extract her from the cult and to “un-brainwash” her. But soon everyone in the film questions what they know to be real as the cult’s beliefs all seem to come true. The Lost Children is a fiction film shot as a documentary, using improvisation, hidden cameras, and actors filming the action themselves. The Lost Children is currently playing at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and was recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine.
The Walking Dead: In the land of prime time television series, The Walking Dead continues to break new ground with additional content, hidden messages, audience engagement, games, apps and contests. If you haven’t caught the series yet, I highly recommend it, you can read all about it on the AMC show website. For those interested in the additional content be sure to download the AMC app which contains webisodes, photos, live chat and social games along with clips from the show, The Talking Dead, a follow up program of interviews with cast, crew and celebrity fans of The Walking Dead. I have to hand it to AMC, not only did they strike gold with a well crafted series, but they have really raised the bar on interactive storytelling, I’m really curious to see what they do next.
TryLife: I stumbled upon this amazing project a few months ago while doing some research. A question posed on Twitter lead me to an incredible 2 hour interview with creator/ director, Paul Irwin.
TryLife is the first of eight websites aimed at young people under the Try brand.
It is an interactive, online drama designed by some of the best in UK talent from the Youth, Education, Health, Media and Creative industries. Based on adventure books brought back to life, TryLife is a new type of series, where at key moments the action is paused and you make a decision. Your choice will change the course of the storyline and will have an immediate impact on what happens next.
Though currently only one episode is available, it is worth the watch and with rumors of possible funding in the near future, this is one series worth checking out now.
Story Hackathon: StoryCode produced the first ever Story Hackathon in April of this year. The event overall was a success and created a sense of community and team collaboration inherent in transmedia storytelling. A total of 7 teams competed in the Story Hack which took place over 36 hours at the Film Society at Lincoln Center. The team’s challenge were to each create a cohesive narrative spanning 3 or more technological platforms to be executed on at last one platform at time of presentation. The projects were created by a diverse group of hackers and ranged from animated space journeys led, to interactive social activism experiences. For more on the initial concept and design of the hackathon check out my earlier post here.
Story Hack Winners: Team Cupcakes and Rainbows
StoryWorld 2: For the second year in a row, the StoryWorld Conference and Expo attracted hundreds of creators and collaborators across disciplines to network with and learn from each other during the three day event in Hollywood, California. I unfortunately was MIA this year, but heard through the grapevine it was even better attended and with more hands on activities than the previous year (and that’s saying something). Be sure to check out the website for video clips of this past year’s presentations and keynote speakers.
#NetworkofNetworks: To borrow the phrase (and hashtag) from my friend and fellow transmedia alchemist, Karine Halpern, this is a short list of the growing worldwide transmedia community: Transmedia NYC, Transmedia LA, Transmedia Vancouver, Transmedia 101 (Toronto), EraTransmedia (Brazil), Transmedia London, Transmedia SF, and Transmedia France.
While this is in no way a complete list of the emerging global transmedia communities, transmedia projects currently in production or release, I believe it does provide a fairly accurate prediction of what is to come in 2013 that can be summed up here…
April 3, 2012 at 12:28 am (StoryCode, Transmedia, Uncategorized)
Tags: Aina Abiodun, FutureofFilm, Jen Begeal, Mike Knowlton, Power to the Pixel, Rahcel Fairbanks, StoryCode, transmedia, Tribeca
Last week I wrote a post for the Tribeca’s Future of Film blog explaining the rise of the technology revolution here in New York and what it means to the transmedia community. Here it is, re-posted in its entirety for you, my faithful readers.
Could the concept of a hackathon be applied to storytelling? Over a period of 48 hours starting April 28, Jen Begeal and StoryCode will find out the answer.
The New York transmedia community is growing quickly. None of us should be surprised, as New York is well known for its independent film community thanks to numerous festivals, schools and independent theatres.
However, many people may not realize that New York is also fast becoming a mecca for the technology crowd. According to meetup.com, New York is ranked as the second largest technology hub in the US, just being beat out by the (no surprise) San Francisco Bay Area. Trends indicate, however, that New York’s tech community could surpass the West Coast as early as the end of this year, which would be a first ever in the historic battle between Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley.
I receive daily e-mails listing new tech meetup groups forming in New York, and though the official NY Tech Meetup continues to hold the top place (at last count over 22,000 members), these new niche groups provide intimate arenas for like minded technologists to gather and share ideas, concepts, designs and talent. This combination of talent, discussion and ideas is also growing within the transmedia community and it is now providing a new space for creative development.
In its most basic form, transmedia is the place where technology and storytelling meet. As cross-platform storytelling becomes more prevalent in mainstream media, the demand for creators who can straddle both worlds grows as well.
The largest hurdle creators face, however, is bridging the gap between the two worlds. Many storytellers find that they lack the basic concepts of technology (from web design to coding). Likewise technologists have difficulty developing engaging narratives for their projects. Connecting the two groups is the primary focus of the New York transmedia community. This is how it began.
Founded in February 2010 by Mike Knowlton and Aina Abiodun the Transmedia NYC meetup group has quickly become the largest meetup group of its kind in the United States. Starting out with a few enthusiasts meeting at a local bar, the community has quickly grown to over 650 active members, whose event space is currently sponsored by The Film Society at Lincoln Center.
As Transmedia NYC expanded and developed, the need for a more robust and focused hub was foreseen, and in June of 2011 Mike, Aina and two other members, myself and Rachel Fairbanks came together to build a not-for-profit arm focused on the creation aspect of cross-platform storytelling. It is called, StoryCode.
StoryCode is designed to be an incubator, a place where technologists and storytellers come to develop and share creative content across media and technology platforms. It is modeled on Power to the Pixel, a company based in the U.K. that helps international filmmakers create, finance and distribute their projects across the growing cross-media entertainment industry.
StoryCode looks to provide an ongoing place where independent creators can come to learn, network, create and fund their projects. Since its inception, the focus of Transmedia NYC and StoryCode has been to exhibit projects that have had some commercial success. The presenters have come from around the world to showcase their works. These projects have included stories on human rights such as America 2049, the National Parks of Canada and the interactive narrative campaign launched for the premiere of Game Of Thrones on HBO.
This year, StoryCode will push the boundaries of the innovation one step further and launch a new endeavor, the first ever story-hack.
The story-hack concept comes from the traditional technology hackathon. A technology hackathon is an event in which computer programmers collaborate intensively on software-related projects. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week in length. Some hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, while others are designed to create new software or improvements upon existing software. Hackathons tend to have a specific focus which can include the use of an application or a defined subject matter.
The story-hack will go one step farther and will include a narrative component. A few months ago, Mike Knowlton wrote a compelling piece, titled StoryHacks for the Future of Film Blog where he asked if the hackathon concept could be applied to storytelling.
We are about to try and answer that question.
The challenge of the story-hack is very clear. Design a cohesive narrative project spanning three or more technology platforms and execute it over the course of 48 hours.
The weekend long event, begins on the morning of April 28th and concludes the evening of April 29th. It is open to writers, designers, filmmakers, and developers. Current university students, recent grads and working professionals are welcome to participate.
The story-hack is being hosted by StoryCode event partner The Film Society at Lincoln Center, open-source video community Kaltura, social networking tool Social Samba, and SMS technology service Twilio.
The story-hack will be judged by a jury of notable creatives, technologists and sponsors who will evaluate each project and presentation based on creativity, originality as well as the innovation of the idea and presentation. Prizes and the chance to present each project will conclude the weekend’s events on the evening of the 29th with a cash grant being awarded to the winners
We want to provide a collaborative atmosphere, a place where storytellers and technologists come together to build projects showcasing their talent and bridge the gap between the two communities. This is the first of many events to come out of StoryCode that will support creators and better connect storytelling and technology.
For more information or to sign-up for this event please check out our Story Hack webpage.
February 26, 2012 at 11:49 pm (Academic, StoryCode, Transmedia)
Tags: Alan Seiffert, Campfire NYC, Game of Thrones, Jeff Gomez, Steve Coulson, StoryCode, SyFy, transmedia
I was honored on Friday to be a part of a Transmedia panel during the Columbia MBA Media and Entertainment Conference. The panel was designed to be a discussion on defining the term transmedia and how it plays a role in today’s multi-screen entertainment. Other panelists included industry professionals; Alan Seiffert of SyFy Ventures, Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment and Steve Coulson of Campfire. Topics ranged from the use of transmedia as a marketing tool to the ingredients required for a successful project, which prompted plenty of conversation between the four of us, who all come from vastly different career backgrounds.
I choose not to go too in depth into the conversation itself, as fellow transmedia ally, Simon Pulman, wrote a brilliant recap of, not only ours, but a few other panels from the conference, which you should check out here (our panel is at the end). I do however want to thank Rafael Filippe and Leao Carvalho, both from Columbia’s Business School, for reaching out to me and asking me to be on the panel, and to our moderator, Kabir Ahuja for his great questions and control of the conversation. And while I am no novice to public speaking I want to also thank Jeff and Steve for once again making me feel comfortable during our discussion and also to Alan, whom I met for the first time on Friday, for likewise being an engaging and gracious fellow panelist. Here’s to the future of transmedia and the hopes that we converted a few more business majors!
Goofing around a bit before the panel
January 11, 2012 at 8:02 pm (Life, StoryCode, Transmedia)
Tags: Game of Thrones, Lincoln Center, Ride5, social media, StoryCode, transmedia, Zenith
You know, every year I promise myself I’m going to get better at my updates, and every year I fail, I suck, I’m sorry, moving on.
Anyway, today is more of an update on where things are in the world of transmedia, you’ll get thoughtful posts when I actually have more than 5 minutes to devote to my writing (I swear).
StoryCode update – First of all a special thank you goes out to the wonderful, Simon Pullman, whose post this morning about StoryCode on his blog, Transmythology, solidified our goal of identifying ourselves as not just “another meetup group” but as an independent entity being developed through member and sponsorship support. Secondly I want everyone to take a look at the StoryCode web page, this will soon be the home page for our brand new (very robust) website. Some elements we plan to include on the website will be information about upcoming meetups and events, case studies of projects presented during meetups and hackathon information. We are hoping the new site will be live by mid-February, so bookmark the URL, Digg it, or just file it away on a twitter feed somewhere because you’re going to want to see what we have in store for 2012. Lastly, regarding the hackathon, some of you heard mumblings about us holding the StoryCode hack during this year’s upcoming NYC DIY Days, and though we appreciate all of Lance’s support and willingness to help provide a location and resources for us, the reality is we were just too short on time. Never fear though, we have only pushed back until late Spring and promise to keep everyone up-to-date as we know more details.
Transmedia NYC – In case you missed it yesterday, we posted our January meetup, Steve Coulson Presents GAME OF THRONES, it’s pretty self explanatory but to recap: Steve Coulson from Campfire will present “The Secrets of the Kingdom” a look behind-the-scenes at some of the techniques and strategies employed to promote the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which combined unique sensory-driven experiences with an immersive fan-centric puzzle challenge. If you did miss the announcement and wanted to attend I regret to inform you that this highly anticipated event reached capacity in under 4 hours. The good news is you can still sign up for the wait list and hope that a few people have some last minute engagements to attend. One caveat about this event, unlike our past events, it will NOT BE LIVE STREAMED! Due to the sensitive nature of the content this will essentially be a closed event.
You stick 'em with the pointy end
Me – Isn’t this why you people come here, you want to hear about MY life, about MY thoughts? I didn’t think so, but in case any of you WERE wondering about what little ol’ me is doing besides steering the StoryCode ship, here’s an update or two:
Well, that pretty much sums things up for now, I still promise to write a less informative and more thoughtful post at a later date. Happy New Year everyone, here’s to starting 2012 with a bang!
December 4, 2011 at 11:04 pm (Life, Transmedia)
Tags: birthday, Christmas, December, Hanukkah, social media, transmedia, TransmediaNYC
I recently wrote a post for Tribeca’s Future of Film blog entitled Where the Transmedia Girls Are, I’d paste it here, but Chris and Kristin do such a great job of handling my writing over there that it’s best to just link to it and let them have some of the glory.
I’ve been on one of those career roller-coasters lately, if you’ve ever worked as a freelancer you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve had several requests for proposals in the past few weeks, some big jobs, some smaller ones, and have been happy to spend a few hours on each one researching, gathering information and meeting with the potential clients to ensure I have all of the details ironed out before I develop a proposal and send it out. The problem of course isn’t in the proposal development process, it’s in landing the actual job. I know a lot of individuals and small companies are still reticent to hire on anyone with “Social Media” in their title, but why ask for the proposal in the first place? I rarely give away any info with my proposal’s (i.e. I never write a deck until the first check is in the bank), and have undercut my pricing to a point where it’s almost not worth it, but a girl’s gotta eat, and every little bit helps…or would help, if only they would sign on. My question is, have you, my freelance friends, been having similar problems? If so, have you found a solution, or is this just another example of our horrible economy?
Well, enough about work, let’s discuss some of the fun happenings this month…
It’s the holiday season, do you hear sleigh bells ringing? Me neither, though I’m still pleasantly surprised by this weather; today I think topped out near 60, I’m not complaining mind you, I’m just unnerved and having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit. I did however see lots of cars with trees strapped to their roofs on my drive home today, good to know I’m a bit ahead of the pack however as my apartment is all festively decorated (yay tree!)
I actually enjoy the holidays, sometimes...
It’s party season, and I’ve been invited to my share this year, the most highly anticipated one of course being the Transmedia NYC party at Max Fish. What’s more fun than hanging with a bunch of creative people and drinking? Nothing really, so if you’re free that evening you should defintiely come out and join us. December is also, unfortunately, my birthday month (but ssshhh, don’t tell anyone), there’s something rather aggravating about having a birthday that’s so close to Christmas and which this year happens to fall on the FIRST day of Hanukkah. I have expressly forbidden my friends to do anything for my birthday and if work allows it I will be out of town that whole week anyway (fingers crossed). What are all of your plans for the holiday, going out of town, staying in, getting drunk and prank calling your exes Christmas eve? (I’ve never done that, I swear!) If I don’t write before then, I do hope y’all have a Happy Holiday season and I’ll see you in the New Year.
November 16, 2011 at 9:27 pm (Transmedia)
Tags: henry jenkins, Lance Weiler, Robot Heart Stories, StoryCode, storytelling, Storyworld, transmedia, TransmediaNYC
This will be a short one, basically because I just finished writing another post for Tribeca’s, Future of Film blog, and will cross-post that here shortly. In the meantime here are a few updates I want to share with the community:
Robot Hearts Angry Birds
O.k., enough updates, get back to work people, I have a conference call to attend to *sigh*
October 26, 2011 at 11:00 pm (Life, Transmedia)
Tags: Frank Rose, Nate Goldman, StoryCode, The Art of Immersion, transmedia, TransmediaNYC, Undead End
Last night’s TransmediaNYC meetup was one for the record books. First off was the highly informative panel between “The Art of Immersion” author Frank Rose and transmedia director, Nate Goldman; second was a case study on the Fanfan2 project presented by Sylvain Leroux from Orange in France; lastly was a 5 x 5 presentation by Zach Lieberman. The turnout itself was amazing, as we had a packed room at our new location in the beautiful Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center. After wards, our gracious sponsor, Lincoln Center provided a cocktail reception for our attendees. However, the best part of the evening by far (for me anyway) was the announcement of our new non-profit arm, StoryCode and my involvement as the managing chairperson. But, don’t take my word for it, check out my friend James Carter’s post on last night’s festivities, and enjoy some photos compliments of Mo Krochmal of Social Media News NY.
Frank Rose Presentation
Nate Goldman and the Undead End
Zach Lieberman
Aina & Mike
Susan & Sasha
The audience
Brian & me
