As audiences play more of a participatory role in the world of interactive storytelling and digital media production, visionaries in the film & television industry are mashing up their content and their production strategies to best meet the new consumer demands.
Through social media networks, portable media devices and content capable smartphones, user-generated content and enhanced connectivity between producer and consumer is now being used to drive several online and broadcast TV properties.
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) is one local case in point, as it is working with a Canadian digital media company to offer Aboriginal Canadian writers a chance to tell their story using what may at first seem like an old media platform - comic books!
But Vancouver-based Zeros 2 Heroes sees the old fashioned comic book as a new fangled mixed reality media platform.
Using custom-created smartphone applications, online augmented reality interfaces and/or quick response codes that can be read by a camera-equipped cellphone, story creators and program producers can advance their storyline and enrich the characters by presenting more information online.
APTN and Zeroes 2 Heroes introduced the interactive game component of Animism: The Gods' Lake at a popular gaming event in Toronto last summer. The TV show's pilot episode will first appear online on Oct. 31, 2010 and then have its broadcast debut on Jan. 1, 2011.
Zeros 2 Heroes, founded in 2006, has worked with CBC, Electronic Arts-BioWare, Telefilm Canada as well as APTN and other content creators and distributors on several digital and social media promotions and projects.
Most recently, it was behind the multi-platform transmedia project called, Are You Awake, unveiled this past weekend online, and at Comic Con in New York City.
The creation of successful Canadian investment banker turned author, songwriter and radio host Keith Turner, it's a take off on the classic film noir detective mystery caper.
But with a digital twist.
Turner, as Executive Producer, is willing to let his story go, as any transmedia producer must, so it can be steered and influenced by the audience, based on new input and interaction.
That's the transmedia point, says Turner, who wants to engage fans "Not only with great entertainment, but also by giving them an active role in future story and media development."
He gives kudos to the crew at Zeros 2 Heroes, and how they've developed a multi-platform audience experience that goes to a whole new level through the creative use of social media, mobile apps and unique concepts like a mixed reality comic.
As Toner puts it, despite the highly technical nature of a multi-platform transmedia project such as this, "Really, we are tech agnostic. We don't care what tech solution is used, as long as it accomplishes the goals.
"We're like a business-to-business company, working with other media creators," Toner continues. "We use technology as the differentiator, but we really don't care what the tech solution is, as long as it accomplishes the goals."
In the case of Are You Awake, one goal is to launch a new TV series.
Plans call for the show to debut early next year, and Toner says that meetings with producers and distributors are going well so far.
One big advantage to building a grassroots following for a project, using social networks and other digital media tools, is that the show is more attractive to advertisers and investors with a built in audience. What's more, through social networking techniques, a strong and presmission-based portrait of the audience, its demographics and its retail habits, can be easily developed.
"The more we talk to fans," Toner continues, "the more ideas we get. We are building up a following, a strong community of interest, so that when the TV show actually launches, it will have its own audience. The seeds are sown, and the advertisers are happy. There are, in fact, multiple payoffs."
Taking a good story and a good brand from nothing to a digital property to a web series to TV - the big payoff - is just the start, Toner says, mentioning the fact that custom music, like that created for Are You Awake, can be made available as MP3 downloads and possibly even a soundtrack CD.
So TV producers can become music distributors, too?
"This will become more the rule than the exception over the next few years," Toner says of the enhanced opportunities to cross genres as well as platforms. "Look at what NBC did with Heroes; there are games, comics, fan events, character involvement, you name it. Those guys did it right, and we want to follow in their footsteps."
For more Mediacaster Magazine coverage related to this topic, please see:
Interactive Mobile Game Promotes APTN TV Pilot
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000383481
New Transmedia Production Process Flows from Research Partnership
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000386764
Interactive Motion Comics Support New TV Series
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000383955
On Screen Manitoba Tackles Transmedia and Interactive Storytelling
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000356125
Video Game Training Program Announced
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000077095