transmedia storytelling: how to achieve creative ... · miptv transmedia storytelling: how to...

32
Transcripts provided by UK Tel: +44 (0)207 193 5443 US Tel: (818) 748 9781 www.take1.tv TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? Monday, 4th April, 2011

Upload: others

Post on 25-Jun-2020

14 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

Transcripts provided by

UK Tel: +44 (0)207 193 5443 US Tel: (818) 748 9781

www.take1.tv

TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING:

HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

Monday, 4th April, 2011

Page 2: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

2

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

This transcript has been professionally prepared for you by Take 1 Transcription:

Leading transcribers to the media industry and official transcribers of MIPTV &

MIPCOM.

We provide:

Transcripts for editing purposes

Post Production Scripts of finished programmes

Closed Captioning

Subtitling in multiple languages

Translations of audio/visual material and documents

Dubbing in multiple languages

Every day we’re relied upon by companies worldwide, as we guarantee the best service in

town! Here’s what they’re saying about us:

“Thank you for this - very useful. Being able to do it last

minute and overnight is brilliant.” Giles Harrison, BBC, UK

“I consider your transcriptions from MIP sessions as a

treasure!” Raija Paasi, Turun Kaapelitelevisio Oy, Finland

“I have high regard for the service and work done by

Take 1 Transcription. I highly recommend Take 1 to

everyone”. Steve Oakley, Bunim Murray, USA

Need this transcript translated? Call us today for a quote.

For more information about Take 1’s transcription, post production or multi-language services call Louise ([email protected]) or Saira ([email protected]) on +44 (0)207 193 5443 or (818) 748 9781

Page 3: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

3

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly Hello everybody. Welcome to the first session. It’s great, none of you have got hangovers,

you’re all here, it’s great. We’re going to be talking about Transmedia and Creative Excellence

this morning, but before we do that I thought we should just find out about what’s going on this

week in Cannes. I think there is a small reel for you to all enjoy…

Jesse Cleverly Well we’ll do our best to follow that. I’m afraid our dance troop were a bit late. Okay my name’s

Jesse Cleverly, I’m moderating this session. I run a creative solutions company in London

called Connective Media and we develop original IP for transmedia implementation and we’re

going to be talking about transmedia creativity. We’re going to really try not to talk too much

about money and ROI and all that because it feels like there’s plenty of people talking about

that at the moment. But how does one actually create and pitch and roll out a transmedia

property in such a way that you do achieve everything that you set out to achieve. And I have

got some of the masters of the transmedia universe with me today. All of them could probably

talk fascinatingly for the entire time that we have, so it’s going to be an exercise in brutally

cutting people short and ignoring interesting things I’m afraid…

Transmedia Storytelling:

How to achieve Creative Excellence?

Jesse Cleverly – Managing Director – Connective Media TV

Christopher Sandberg – CEO – The Company P

Nuno Bernardo – General Manager – beActive Entertainment

Luke Taylor – Founder – Bigballs Films

Matt Costello – President and Creative Director – Polar Productions

Tracey Robertson – CEO – Hoodlum

Page 4: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

4

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly (Cont) …But first of all I think what we’ll do is we’ll just introduce everyone so you can get a feel for

who’s on the panel today and where they’re coming from. And then we’re going to take the

conversation from creativity and conception through to pitching, transmedia projects and some

of the clients and some of the environments that you might be pitching into and some of the

challenges there. We’re going to talk about commissioning and rollout of the properties. We’re

going to talk about marketing and then we’re going to talk about how do we know when we’ve

succeeded in transmedia, which is not the simple matter of how many people watched last

night, as it used to be.

So I’m going to start with Christopher.

Christopher Sandberg Morning everybody, Christopher Sandberg, I’m the Chief Creative Officer of the Company P. I

come from a background of combining theatre and games and drama. What we do is we do

shows that the audience participate in, which often becomes transmedial, it doesn’t have to be,

but where the audience can.....agency.

Jesse Cleverly Do you have something to show Christopher?

Christopher Sandberg I do have something to show. It’s the beginning of a reel for the Emmy’s, we’re nominated this

year for the International Emmy, together with our partners Nokia and Tim Kring, and it’s sort of

the beginning of a video so it’s going to be cut short very brutally and it’s a bit sort of cheesy but

it tells a little bit of what we just did.

Jesse Cleverly So if we could see the Company P video please.

Company P Video…

Page 5: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

5

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly Great, thank you. Nuno.

Nuno Bernardo Good morning. My name is Nuno Bernardo. I come from Portugal, from a company called

beActive. My background is advertising and journalism. I set up beActive in 2002 to create

stories that were platform agnostic. Our first project was Sofia’s Diary and from then we create

other shows that were intended to be distributed on several platforms, from Flatmates, Final

Punishment, Beat Generation and more recently Aisling’s Diary. We have a small promo that

shows some of our past work.

Jesse Cleverly Show the beActive promo please.

beActive Video… Jesse Cleverly Thank you. Luke.

Luke Taylor Hello, good morning, my name’s Luke Taylor, I’m a Founder of Bigballs Films. We’re in our fifth

year now. One of our earlier projects was KateModern which basically launched us into this

world of online storytelling. We’ve done a series of various different shows since then;

Conquering Demons, Katie & Co, Dimensions, which was Asia’s first multi platform drama, and

more recently the BAFTA Nominated, Who Killed Summer, which is the clip that I’m just about

to show now.

Jesse Cleverly Can we show the Bigballs clip please? Not a phrase I expected to say in public… or anywhere

I hasten to add!

Bigballs Video…

Page 6: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

6

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly What weren’t we seeing?

Luke Taylor Actually that was it.

Jesse Cleverly So cheap!

Luke Taylor No there was a bit more to that, but no it basically ran down and showed where the show

existed on various different platforms. But we can go on and talk about that.

Jesse Cleverly Yes we’ll talk about that later. Tracey.

Tracey Robertson My name’s Tracey Robertson. I am one of the Co-Founders of Hoodlum. Hoodlum’s been

around for about 13 years now in multi platform content and we started our first big show, which

was a multi platform drama series, it was called Fat Cow Motel, which we made in 2002 and

was broadcast in Australia on the ABC. And that was a multi platform property that was

commissioned from the outset, it was thirteen half hours of television and it was a massive

online component, every platform that we could use we did. It was quite an early project for

broadcasters, so we moved on to starting to work on other people’s TV properties and looking

at how we can extend those into the multi platform space. And we’ve worked on some big

projects in the UK, the US and in Australia. We’ve done a couple of projects for Lost in the US,

Flash Forward, we’ve created some big things for Emmerdale and Prime Evil in the UK and also

some very big properties in Australia. We’ve just completed production on a new project, which

again is multi platform from the outset. It’s a very big budget project in Australia called Slide.

It’s ten by one hour TV with a massive multi platform and we’re also just about to start work on

a new project as well, which has just been commissioned with the movie network channel

called Conspiracy 365, again multi platform from the outset. So for us we’re really…

Page 7: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

7

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Tracey Robertson (Cont) …evangelists in pushing that a show should be commissioned as a multi platform property from

the outset and that’s how you can maximise everything. What I’m about to show is the very first

ever scene, footage of Slide. It’s just in post production now and it’s being launched on Fox 8 in

Australia and distributed by Fremantle, and we did it in conjunction with another company called

Playmaker in Australia.

Jesse Cleverly Can we see the Hoodlum clip please?

Hoodlum Video… Jesse Cleverly Matt.

Matt Costello Good morning. My name is Matt Costello and I have nothing to show so I’ll take a few extra

seconds to talk about my favourite subject, me. My first experience of transmedia was in 1997

where I co-created Zoog Disney, which helped rebrand the network. It was basically described

as TV, don’t just watch TV, you do. And this is, you know, eons before broadband occurred

and it did partly pave the way for Hannah Montana, which I’m not sure is a good thing or a bad

thing. Since then, subsequent I worked for PBS, Sci-Fi and BBC in similar roles, again projects

included Doom 3, I wrote and created the story world for Doom 3 and then also went on to write

the novels for it and eventually it became a not so good movie starring The Rock. I just saw

Arnold downstairs, Arnold probably would have carried that role off better.

Recent projects include and let’s see if it comes up in our discussion today, finding the

transmedia proposition for a brand new IP that I’m creating with a company and then creating

the transmedia proposition for IP that’s been around for literally decades and making it come to

life. So that’s pretty much what I do.

Page 8: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

8

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly Great. So I think we’re going to begin this discussion talking about creativity and what the

creative process is because I think one of the things that strikes me as I’ve spoken to all the

panellists today is how many different creative approaches there are in what is still, even

though to some of us it feels like a reasonably well worn world, a pretty new world. And you

know whereas in TV we have all sorts of customer practice around first it’s this and then it’s that

and then we talk to this person, obviously in transmedia we have very little of this customer

practice in place first. So Tracey I’m going to ask you first, if that’s okay, I mean Hoodlum work

a lot with television companies obviously, so it’s a lot of what you do is around sort of education

and increasing the comfort level.

Tracey Robertson Yes.

Jesse Cleverly And I would say, of all the people here the process you described to me almost felt most

familiar from a TV perspective. I mean how does Hoodlum begin a new project? Where do

ideas come from at Hoodlum?

Tracey Robertson Well because we basically come from television, so our model is very similar to television. So

we develop ideas, it comes from story first. It’s always about the story. Because the kind of

projects that we do, part of them ends up online or in other platforms, we’ve needed to bring in

technology people into our fold because we found quite quickly by doing a few projects, when

you outsource, that it doesn’t always go as planned. And as company that prides themselves

on execution and knowing that we’re dealing directly with an audience and that audience can

come back and say this is crap, it’s very important for us to make sure that nothing breaks down

and that everything actually gets to that audience and that audience member has a great

experience. So for us we work as a TV company and we would develop ideas and because our

business has become on the one hand we develop our own IP, but we also have felt in the past

the market isn’t really ready for pitching multi platform; great but can you just do the TV bit first.

But what we really bring to it is this whole world. We help other people, other projects, to…

Page 9: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

9

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Tracey Robertson (Cont) …grow into that space. So on the one hand we get people coming to us and asking us to pitch

on work and so we have to be reactive to that and be able to pitch for what you would do with

Lost, for example, how could we actually take Lost, and each brief is very different. But in

terms of how we would develop our own work, we have a story team in house, we have writers

in house, but we also bring in specific writers that are for the project and it always start with the

story. But there are some other projects, because we have tech teams in house as well that

we’re developing, that story is always some part of them but we are doing some technology

projects as well where story plays a part. So again that is all generated in house really or we go

out and we find people that we think are quite interesting to partner with.

Jesse Cleverly And as a company who came from, or people who came from television, when you’re thinking

about a story are you always thinking who’s the TV customer here? Is that still for you, you

know, the biggest question as you move away from sort of the first meeting?

Tracey Robertson Yes I think as in your idea being very specific to a particular broadcaster?

Jesse Cleverly Well yes, just you know are you thinking yes it’s a great story but I just can’t see a customer,

you know, in a television context for that and therefore for us as a company that’s less

interesting?

Tracey Robertson Yes, as a TV production company would, we try and keep our eye on the market and go and

talk to people and see what they’re interested in and because we’ve been operating in this

space when there was no market, we have had to work outside of Australia because the

Australian market until the last few years, has been the smallest market for us, so we’ve had to

go overseas and pitch our wares to the US and the UK.. And MIP has been really important for

us to be honest because we’ve been coming here since 2000 and that’s where we meet people

from overseas and we start talking about what the potential is.

Page 10: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

10

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly Well it’s interesting isn’t it, you know, having an American, an Australian, a Brit, a Portuguese

gentleman, someone from Sweden. You know I mean this is a truly international game we find

ourselves playing. I mean Luke when I was you know watching your video, or some of your

video, you know we’ve got Vodafone branding all over it, so for you obviously you know your

customer is not necessarily television at all and yet you know at the same time for you very

much story is where you begin.

Luke Taylor Yeah absolutely, I mean for us story is where we begin and we had this, what we thought,

incredible story and we wanted it to be told in the right way. And funny enough the first

meetings that we did have were with broadcasters and the way we were talking up the show

and how we wanted it to be viewed, it didn’t sort of fit with the way that the broadcaster wanted

it to be aired, you know they kind of wanted it to be shown at a particular time when no-one was

going to be watching it. And we sort of were in meetings kind of sort of saying well we’re a bit

anti TV and then walking out, kind of going well why did we say that, what did we say that for?

But actually it was because we were searching for people that were brave enough to kind of

deliver the content in the way we wanted it to be delivered, which Vodafone at the time was.

For us, we wanted to sort of create a show that behaved like its audience and lived and

breathed where they did, and so yes Vodafone were brave enough to sort of take it on and it

just meant that the show that we wanted to create we could. And as Nuno said earlier it’s a

case of being platform agnostic and putting the show across many different sort of areas and

platforms for the audience to embrace it and engage with.

Jesse Cleverly I mean in a TV world where, you know I remember when I was kind of commissioning at the

BBC, people sort of remembered things I’d said in passing two years before and said “and we

went away and we did that”. And so people have got this kind of microscopic sort of

appreciation of what TV commissioners want, because you know that was the only game in

town and in a way when you were choosing projects you’re like oh that’ll be perfect for so-and-

so. But for you, you know, in a world where the commissioners themselves are sort of

potentially everywhere, you know how do you analyse a story? I mean obviously presumably…

Page 11: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

11

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly (Cont) …it has to excite you as creative individuals but what’s the next question you ask of a story in a

world where your commissioner could be a phone company or a TV company or, you know, a

confectionary brand?

Luke Taylor Well I think the thing for us is that the audience is massively important in us being able to tell

our story and really now we sort of think about a story with the audience at heart, because

where our story lives now isn’t just on TV, isn’t just online, isn’t just on mobile, it literally is

everywhere. Every project that we go into, we really honestly think about it first off with the

audience and then kind of grow it from there. So when we think about multi platform, nowadays

it’s such a powerful thing to be able to build an audience online before you take it to any other

platform. So we’re constantly sort of thinking of like how we can actually create and build and

take an audience with us from the start online and then actually take that audience to other

platforms. So I would say with whatever story it’s always audience is at the heart of it and

hopefully the more that we sort of do this, broadcasters and commissioners alike will start to

sort of appreciate and feel that it’s great to be integrated from the start and not just sort of

consider digital as a sort of poor cousin and actually sort of have it for, you know, from the very

beginnings of a show idea. So that’s our sort of goal and aim.

Jesse Cleverly Well it’s almost as if we planned it because that sort of leads me perfectly to you Nuno. I mean

part of my job is to sort of create false differences between these people, there’s a worrying

lack of disagreement on this panel, but one of the things that you were saying in our

conversation before we all sat down here Nuno, was that you start with demographics.

Nuno Bernardo Yes maybe it’s my advertising background, but almost every single show that we created we

started thinking who do we want it to attract? Who’s the target audience? Because everything

comes from there, comes from where do we pitch this idea? Where do we get money for this

idea and which platforms do we use? That’s why Sophia’s Diary started, was what’s the…

Page 12: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

12

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Nuno Bernardo (Cont) …demographic that most engages with mobile phones and internet and back in 2002, and it

was teenage girls. So we went there. When we went to do Flat Mates and because we wanted

to exploit the branded entertainment side and have brands attached to the show, something

that was for teenage girls couldn’t work because there was some regulation that did not allow

you to do product placement, so we needed to think about something older but edgy enough

and young enough to be interesting and attractive for an audience and also for the sponsors.

So Flat Mates started from there. It doesn’t mean that story is not important but the first thought

is, okay what’s the audience and then we start doing research; which stories could resonate

with that target audience. It’s more comedy, it’s more sc-fi, it’s more diary based and then we

build from there.

Jesse Cleverly I mean this notion of the audience, I mean it seems to me in TV we’re so used to dealing with

such vast wide and imprecise demographic groups aren’t we that suddenly we’re in a world

where we’re talking to global niches as opposed to sort of local, you know, adults between the

age of 25 and 50.

Nuno Bernardo I think one advantage of transmedia or these online properties is that they can be niche. You

can specify and create a show for an audience that can be just 15 to 17 and go into these

different sub-groups that normally on television we’re not allowed to carry because you have

such a wider audience. And that online allow you to go and connect with these people and be

really specific because that then influences how your characters have been developed, the tone

of the show and how you will present this to an audience. And again I think the characters are

as important as the story especially in the types of show that we do that are based on social

media, and normally when people go to interact with these shows on the Facebook, Twitter or

the other social media service, users and audiences interact with other people, they go to

Facebook to see what their friends are doing. So we try to create characters that feel real, feel

like people that you are interacting with. So the character, that has become the second most

important thing.

Page 13: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

13

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly I mean one of the challenges that TV faces obviously from digital is this ability to target very

precisely across, you know and brands increasingly globalised, audiences increasingly niche, I

mean that feels to me like the opportunity to be niche that transmedia presents is one of the

things that television finds, you know, both most fascinating but also most disturbing about what

we’re doing here.

Nuno Bernardo We live in a world that is being fragmented. The number of digital channels that you get in

every single country, it’s on the hundreds. You have You Tube and you have all these video

websites, so I think audiences now are being fragmented and fragmented and they are less and

less in sync, they are less connected with linear television, they are more fragmented. So when

you create something you need to really go for a specific niche because otherwise we will not

connect. I think online will be very different to create a show that is like 18 to 35 because

between 18 to 35 you have so many sub targets that will be difficult to create something that

could be interesting and engaging for all these different audiences.

Jesse Cleverly I mean this is one of those moments where to be honest I could talk about you know what

you’ve just said about you know we’re entering a world where characters, which is Facebook is

a world of characters and does that mean character, I mean we could talk about that for an hour

but unfortunately we don’t have time. I mean Christopher you know when we were talking

earlier, you were talking about this notion of the audience and participation and obviously one of

the things Company P is trying to do is create these sort of mass participations. So for you I

know that participation is one of the very first things that you consider. I think it will be very

interesting for people here to hear a little bit about that.

Christopher Sandberg Yes a lot of the transmedia products out there are marketing vehicles for something else rather

than their own IP, so you create a show or a transmedia project to launch a product of some

sort, a service of some sort and that of course motivates how it’s designed. We try to produce

dramas that are for itself, sometimes it’s sponsored by or been possible by a brand that helps…

Page 14: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

14

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Christopher Sandberg (Cont) …us do it. This question is so huge, how do you decide this, how do you create this so that it

works? And having done this for some years, we’ve sort of cut down to the simplest way to talk

to the different players involved, television, marketing, new media and so on and we’ve been

doing this with you know top Hollywood show runners like Tim Kring and Joss Whedon and so

on, and so we need to talk their language and we realised that the common denominator, the

easiest way to talk about the creative so that the script writers and the game designers and

everybody understands it, is to talk about people. And so it’s the people, like you said, the

characters in the show, the people that populate the story, rather than talking about the

storyline or the story arc, which is of course important, we talk about the people and their stakes

in the story, how they come into a scene or an act and how they leave it. And then we talk

about the other people, the audience, and how they can share these stakes. So basically it’s

the character on the show and the character caring for the show and how they interact. And if

you can create a dramatic platform where these two groups of people, the audience and the on

air characters basically, share the stakes, care about the same things and can influence it

together, then you have a show that can work anywhere and you can sort of research your

target groups or research your technology from there. There’s different ways to approach this

of course but talking about people is a good way to bridge the new world with the old world and

to understand at the heart of it how to design your story or your show.

Jesse Cleverly I mean Matt you’ve worked with many different companies and individuals and you know we

have people who start from various different places. I mean there is no right answer but as you

survey and experience different corporate cultures, I mean what do you observe about what

seems to be working most often?

Matt Costello Well just listening to Christopher there reminded me of being in Australia and doing a workshop,

a lab, in Brisbane and I actually took something that we had worked on the BBC together and

led people down to the beach, it was a week long lab, led them down to the beach and had

them think about what excited them as kids, what turned them on, what fantasy world they

loved. They were all involved in doing fictional creative transmedia projects and they actually…

Page 15: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

15

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Matt Costello (Cont) …in the process of walking on the beach, thinking, then coming back and sharing they became

in contact with that kid that was there. And for me I go back to what Luke was pointing out

before, it’s so much about the story but it’s really about getting that passion, like if you like to be

scared, it’s one thing to be scared as a six year old or an eight year old, what’s it like to be

scared as a 20 year old or what’s it like to be scared as a 40 year old when you’re perhaps

worried about children. So in a way it’s capturing that feeling and finding that creative window.

On the other hand, there’s a project I’m working on called Rage which it’s going to roll out first

with a graphic novel series, then with the game and the novel, Day and Date, and I created the

game world and wrote the novels. In that case when I went there they had tech that they

wanted to use, a new game engine. So that was a given, that was there already. They also

wanted to do a game that was going to be targeted to a certain audience, because it was an

audience they hadn’t reached before, it was a younger audience. And yet we had nothing, we

went in with this sort of a blank slate and I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, it’s so vital if

you can get that golden window of time, where no-one’s building anything, no-one’s filming

anything, no-one’s programming anything and you can explore. Eventually all those questions

have got to be real and solid, you’ve got to come down to earth. And so my goal is, on a

project, when I enter a company, like I’m doing a project for one of the largest media companies

in the world, if not the largest, someone there had the vision to give that window of two to three

months were we could explore creatively and to me that’s absolutely vital.

Jesse Cleverly Okay. So let’s move on to the challenge of the pitch and Tracey you spoke very interestingly I

thought, and you’re going to again I know, about some of the challenges about who do you

pitch? You know because certainly in my experience you get a broadcaster and the person

you’re talking to and, you know, who’s the turnkey here? If you could talk a little bit about some

of the ways in which you’ve sort of unlocked those organisations perhaps.

Tracey Robertson Yes I mean we’ve been most successful, I mean we’ve made a business out of multi platform

for 13 years which is pretty unusual, and the thing that’s actually got us there is that we’ve…

Page 16: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

16

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Tracey Robertson (Cont) …found champions inside organisations that believe and they have the ability to make things

happen. Fat Cow was an example in 2002, who would have ever commissioned a multi

platform drama in 2002? But the challenge I think now, particularly working on other people’s

projects and our own, is that broadcasters are set up where there’s the TV commissioning

person and then there’s the online digital guy, and usually the online digital guy doesn’t have

any TV experience and they don’t really know about commissioning and they haven’t come

from story, they’ve often come from a web design background or from a web company. They

may have done a few smaller projects or something like that but they’re not really thinking about

story.

Some of the work that we’ve been doing is trying to encourage or consult and bringing those

people together and that the multi platform should be commissioned from the one area. If

you’re commissioning one story you don’t need to know all the details about the platforms, you

just need to know what the story is and that the story has potential to live on many different

platforms and then bring in the experts about how you actually do that, instead of no, no, no

let’s just worry about getting the story in there first and getting the TV right and then we’ll worry

about it. And what then tends to happen is then the digital guy comes in and says we’re gonna

do six webisodes and that’s the business model that they’ve set up. And so it’s very, very

difficult to really, I know we’re not talking about commercialisation, but it’s very difficult,

everyone says yes but how do you make money out of it? You can’t because all TV companies

are set up to do in the most cases is to do display advertising, pre-rolls on the front of

webisodes and that’s what we end up doing. It’s very, very difficult I think.

Jesse Cleverly I mean finding that turnkey individual, Christopher I mean you’ve had the opportunity to work, I

mean in a way the American system is so sort of show run orientated. I mean that’s been your

way in has it not?

Page 17: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

17

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Christopher Sandberg Absolutely, and you know the show runners are becoming more like audience runners or

community managers at the same time and I’ve found that all these people who work with who

are excellent standard people that are working with storytelling and script writing in drama, for

normal broadcast, they also got there because they love the audience and they love to have

that dialogue and now that the new media affords them to do that, a lot of them actually

embrace that. So they become the spokespersons within the organisations for us and since we

get funded from the production and not the marketing or the IT, that’s really the only way for us

to start. So I mean we do talk to the executives at the studio or the network and we do talk to

the .com or you know the interactive visions, but we talk to the show runners and the lead

writers to start with and we figure out what the script is. And since new media is social and

social means people, that’s why the characters and their stakes are so important for us at least.

And when they’re excited, when you have praise from …….. then you can talk to the rest of the

organisation, hopefully. But it is, you know, it depends on the country. In Sweden the support

structure of IT has become a core part of the broadcasters and it’s not sort of an add on

anymore and you can see that somewhere in Europe too. And in the States it’s starting to

happen but it’s often, as you said very separated and you talk to this guy who understands that

world and that guy who understands that world and you try to get them to marry.

So what we’re trying to do and what we’ve done more often than not, is some show cases or

experimental project where we tell everybody okay we’re going to try this, it’s a pilot, we’re

going to screw up a little bit and we’re going to see what happens, but because it’s an

experimental project everybody’s a bit more open to stepping outside of their comfort zone and

having divisions that normally don’t talk to each other, start talking to each other.

Jesse Cleverly I mean Luke when you’re talking to a brand, I mean I guess that, in one’s mind you think oh you

know working with a brand will be a nightmare and you know that would be worse than TV and

they won’t get it. But when you’re pitching a brand, what are you pitching? Are you pitching the

story still? Are they interested in that or are you pitching benefits?

Page 18: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

18

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Luke Taylor Yes I mean we’re always pitching the story and then following on to that how it can benefit the

brand. I mean they’re always looking to sort of see how they can, now they’re a lot more savvy,

is to sort of what we’re doing in terms of telling stories now. So they’re really interested in how

they can seamlessly be integrated into a good story. So I think that is something that brands

are definitely doing more with regards to the online world.

I mean we came out with the same sort of stumbling blocks with broadcasters where

commissioners, although one commissioner actually said you know we got told all the

departments came together and the head of the company basically said the Facebook tank was

mowing down the media lawn and we all had to basically join together and work on ideas that

were multi platform, but at the end of it he was like that’s not going to win us any BAFTAs is it.

So you know when Vodafone came to us with this idea that we had, at the time they were

specifically looking to target, 16 to 24 year olds in the music environment and it was kind of a

lucky fit at that time and it just really worked for them in what they wanted to do and create.

And funnily enough it did end up getting nominated for a BAFTA which was mad because it was

the only show that was funded by a brand that didn’t actually have a TV show. Unfortunately

we lost out to Embarrassing Bodies which we sort of felt there was a bit of an irony there,

Bigballs losing out to that!

But no, I think brands are becoming a lot more sort of savvy now, they’re much more into sort of

like, although the start of that reel shows Vodafone all over it, they were very much, you know

they just wanted to set it up where you got the notion of the brand but then after that it was

much more about the story sort of being the advertisement for them rather than how can we get

Vodafone sort of plugged into here. So that I think is exciting for us because people are much

more willing now to sort of tell stories without being overtly sort of in your face with branding

which is good.

Jesse Cleverly Well we’ll talk about measures of success later, but I mean you know when you say, again on

the video, five million people between this age and that age, I mean this is the generation that

TV has almost given up on I would say, you know you just can’t bring them to…

Page 19: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

19

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly (Cont) …television etc, etc. I mean are they, you know when you go in there are you promising them

numbers?

Luke Taylor No I don’t think you can promise any numbers to be honest with you but you can definitely sort

of look at the results of previous projects and the bottom line is that, more and more people

statistically are engaging on a sort of constant level with entertainment online and it’s the fact

that you have this engagement, whenever you want it. And so there’s not this appointment to

view so it’s not a case of having to sit down, as we all know, sit down at 7.30 and watch this one

show. We can embrace the show whenever we want and wherever we want. And I think that’s

what’s exciting for brands really, it’s being able to be that nimble around an environment where,

you get pockets of audience sort of everywhere and then they can all be aggregated to one

place. And that sort of helps with the way that brands are able to market things as well

because you can pinpoint sort of audiences in different places, which is again sort of attractive

for them.

Jesse Cleverly So Nuno, I mean I know that you’re pitching, you said something about you know my pitching is

fishing for partners.

Nuno Bernardo My experience is a little different from Luke. Of course when you go to a brand, normally you

don’t go to the brand directly but to a media agency or advertising agencies, what excites them

is stories. The story, the way the pitch is what excites them and then the bottom line is which

audience are you giving to them. So most of the decisions, I don’t know about your experience,

but the shows I’ve done and the brands I attracted, the bottom line is how many people are you

selling to me. Your story is nice, your video will be seen by ‘x’ amount of viewers but what

audience are you giving to me? Because my experience is these media agencies, they have

these excel files and you give them a number and they give you the money that they are willing

to put in your show. It doesn’t matter if your budget is one hundred, one million, ten million…

Page 20: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

20

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Nuno Bernardo (Cont) …viewers or dollars, what matters is how many viewers are you guaranteeing that will watch

your show. And then they will say “oh if you guarantee me this audience, I’ll be willing to put ‘x’

amount of money in your show”.

Jesse Cleverly And are they porting TV metrics into digitals experiences? Are they saying oh well we would

have spent this on TV to reach this many people and now we’re going to spend the same…?

Nuno Bernardo Unfortunately I think the advertising industry is still focused on eyeballs and the less expensive

medium is television, because an eyeball in television costs almost nothing because it’s

overpopulated with ads. So everything tends to be compared with television eyeballs. So I

think these weird excel files that I mentioned, they are based on television metrics. I think what

is exciting is when you do something that is multi platform and goes on different platforms. You

can build on that audience, so you can give them ‘x’ amount of viewers online, you can give

them ‘x’ amount of viewers on mobile phones, you can give them ‘x’ amount of viewers on

television if your show crossed to television as most of our shows do. So that becomes an

interesting proposition for them.

Jesse Cleverly So just to come back to the sort of, you know, to recall here Matt, I mean you know we were

talking about ways of exciting people. Appropriate for a family audience please!

Matt Costello I see where you’re heading with that! Well I think you know it’s really important to avoid the

where, what, how questions. A word popped out when I was listening that the importance in all

of this for me is play, in other words everything I do hopefully becomes real. I’ve had projects

not happen but I’ve had many major projects happen. But truth be known they all started with

me playing with the people, with the project. Now I don’t know how you capsulise that and sort

of a metaphor that you can use for work but it’s very important, one way I think I’ve

mentioned…

Page 21: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

21

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Matt Costello (Cont) …to you, there’s a new title, transmedia producer, which I think is made official by the Writers’

Guild so we can probably use those words now, producer of transmedia, whoever that person is

it’s important to have the ego disappear so when you walk in and when Tracey was talking

about the dichotomy between the television person and the online person, it’s important to

make that disappear. They have to become part of one entity, working on one thing. And again

if you get that window ahead of time where you can go in there and people can play with,

maybe it’s story, maybe it’s characters, maybe it’s the idea, maybe it’s something they enjoyed

when they were young, maybe it’s something they remember fondly and they’re playing as one

team and then slowly you unpeel the different skill sets that people have, that’s the process.

But for me it begins with something pretty sort of whimsical, in a sense that you have to get in

that creative space where for a while we forget about the real hard world that’s out there.

Jesse Cleverly But in a pitching context where someone’s looking at their watch and tapping on the table…

Matt Costello Well they never do that with me though!

Jesse Cleverly Great! Christopher what do you think?

Christopher Sandberg I’ve got nothing to add.

Matt Costello Do you have a question though about that in a pitching context?

Jesse Cleverly Well I mean I just, you know, it’s that thing isn’t it, I mean we’re all very used to, and some

people are great at pitching TV and we’ve all pitched TV and TV pitches go a certain way and

what’s the elevator pitch and you know, so it goes on.

Page 22: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

22

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Matt Costello Well you know as we sit here the C360 people are working on their projects and they’re getting

mentored by, you know, people that we know, trying to shape their pitch because sometimes

they get this burning vision inside but if it doesn’t get out, if it doesn’t touch another person then

they’re not going to get it where they want to. So it’s really important.

Nuno Bernardo From experience my pitch differs from the person that I’m pitching to. If I’m pitching to

television I tend to focus more on the television elements, if I’m pitching to advertising, I’m

pitching more on the audience that the show can reach and if I’m pitching for a

telecommunications company, I’m pitching more the full transmedia experience because

normally telecommunications company are one of our biggest clients, so if our shows are paid

by a telecommunications company what they want is some sort of content that can fully exploit

the fact that these companies are now truly multi platform; mobile phones, fixed line phones,

internet websites and they have also television. So when we go pitch there we can be fully

transmedia to avoid the problems that were mentioned before. When we go to television we

tend to just concentrate on television because I lost a lot of meetings when I’m pitching a

television show and then I made the mistake of talking about multi platform and then the

commission editor brings the person from digital, then brings the person from marketing and

then it becomes like a huge team in the other side and nobody wants to own the project. That I

think is the problem, you need someone, the corporate, to own the project and champion it

inside. Like the show runner does in the US for projects.

Christopher Sandberg Yes because it is really a big meeting. I remember at Fox it was like 20 people at the same

time from you know international, syndication, .com, the show, the studio, so it is a mass of

people.

Jesse Cleverly So talk to me Chris because one of the things you were saying is, I mean obviously one of the

reasons why we’re all sitting here is they say the Producers’ Guild has ratified the first new…

Page 23: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

23

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly (Cont) …credit for goodness knows how long and it’s the transmedia producer and you can get a

credit and you can get paid and everyone goes home happy and you know hence suddenly the

industry has gone, ooh you can get a credit and you can get paid and hence we all turn up in a

room to listen for an hour and fifteen minutes. So you know let’s just talk about that show

runner person because you know the transmedia show runner seems to me to be this sort of

new creature that sort of is almost like this new kind of, I’m going to come to you for this first

Tracey, do you think in your company that finding that transmedia show runner, who are they, I

mean obviously a show runner in the US for a TV show is someone who owns the story, who

pitched the story, who created the story, who’s the sort of visionary kind of custodian of the

story. For you when you’re looking for a transmedia show runner, are you looking for a

visionary? I mean Matt’s talking about checking your ego in at the door but yet vision and ego

are reasonably closely aligned.

Tracey Robertson I mean we try to target show runners that we know have a vision across all platforms, I mean

that makes our job easier to start with, if we know that someone …… we work with Lost, you

know those two guys wanted to get, you know, everywhere and they had a massive fan base so

that’s what they wanted to do. But we definitely try and get to creatives who, and we use

agents to do that, who are pitching new shows, who want to do something but they don’t

necessarily know how to do it but they have a big vision. And definitely visionaries, you know

because otherwise you just keep coming up against, well okay let me get the TV right and then

I’ll come back, and I can guarantee that if they don’t go in and pitch it as the big property in the

beginning and what that whole franchise will be, then they will not get the end result, it will be

taken away and given to somebody else, they won’t own the IP in it, it’s no longer theirs, they’ll

just be relegated to doing that. So you know the concept of a transmedia show runner or

producer to me, it’s a hard one because I actually believe the producer of the show should

produce, should have creatively a say in all of the elements that go into a show. That’s what I

think. They should have that vision.

Page 24: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

24

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Christopher Sandberg

I totally agree and also the fact that it’s good there’s a title out there but there has to be people

who can handle that title. I mean, you know, I’ve yet to find one guy that can do deep drama,

deep participation and handle all the different technologies. It’s like knowing camera and sound

and editing and coding and so on. So you know you can have a guy that’s a specialist in

integration I guess, which I guess that producer, person could be, but it’s not only that guy, the

transmedia producer is hard to find. It’s also the studios and the networks are not set up to

work that way. So in our next project that we’re doing called Treasures, which is the first time

that’s mentioned in public actually, we’re doing it together with EBU and therefore we have that

sort of umbrella approach, all the broadcasters are going to be a part of it and EBU is really

very helpful in opening the doors and making sure that, you know, let’s do this in the new way in

all the departments and the broadcasters.

Jesse Cleverly But I mean structurally speaking, what I’m hearing here and in a way this is a role that I imagine

you’ve taken Matt and I know I’ve taken, is that you know you sit at the sort of top of the

Christmas Tree like the fairy and below you are the sort of platform experts and in a way you

have to understand enough about each of those businesses, to speak a language, that they

don’t just think, because show me a digital person and I’ll show you someone you know who’s

like oh that’s so old school and TV of you to have said that. So there’s a million ways or indeed

talking to a TV person and start talking about social media and everyone say yeah but we’re a

TV company. There’s so much kind of pent up sort of concern isn’t there and fear in all these

different, you know, often very siloed bits of the organisation and it seems to me that you know

the job of inspiring is and then enabling, I mean that’s a very challenging role for someone to

take on isn’t it?

Matt Costello I mean the thing is I’ve been around for a while, you know interacting with the interactive field

and the television field and the online areas, and my tech knowledge has often been nil to none,

and everything that is current and happening and cool, two years later has all gone and

changed. So even, you know I don’t exactly have a Pollyanna attitude towards it, you have to

be aware that this exists and devices can do that, you can’t let your creative idea be married…

Page 25: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

25

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Matt Costello (Cont) …to we have this and this is the way things are going to work because you don’t know what’s

going to happen. Yet be conversant. Now in terms of working with those people, once they

come on board, I think if you can get someone whose area is a text speciality, talking to you

about characters and story, that’s wonderful because then they’re emotionally engaged in the

team.

And the way for the future I think is the project which you know about that I recently did,

wherethey had one specific issue with an animated series they were doing, except they knew

the issue is really important, it’s core to the show, but it’s equally core to any interactive

property and game. And if they had one solution that worked for the script editor who’s about to

come on board and the screen writers, if that didn’t work with the game they’re going to have

trouble down the road. So jumping in, it was very narrow and very focused but the wonderful

little thing about it was it recognised these are not two separate worlds, that the animated series

and the interactive world are really one world to work on.

Jesse Cleverly Okay I’m going to have to brutally move this along I’m afraid. Let’s imagine that, you know,

we’ve come up with an idea, we’ve pitched it, we’ve been commissioned and now we’re going

to start to make it and roll this thing out. Christopher you said to me virality is good design.

Christopher Sandberg I did?

Jesse Cleverly You did. And, i.e., I mean one of the things that I observe in this world is that the line between

what is marketing and what is production is fast disappearing. I mean I thought virality is good

design, that’s such an interesting, i.e. you know in the core of the IP there is something about it

which virally transmits itself between people.

Page 26: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

26

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Christopher Sandberg Yes absolutely, I mean when talking to broadcasters it’s become apparent over the years that

they started to talk about transmedia as something you add to a show but that doesn’t

necessarily work, it’s like superficial ancillary things and if it’s not interconnected with the heart

of the project it won’t work. So what you have to do is you have to change the content and the

script, the acting, the directing, everything at the heart of it, so that it invites people. And if you

change that design so that it, you know, it’s open for virality, it can be inviting the audience to

participate, and it’s different for instance to directing, the character has to need the audience in

another way to be complete than maybe imposing normal drama character need, but if you

design it for that, if you write it for that and if you produce it for that so that audience

engagement is at the heart of it, then it can spread. Because if you have a very sort of

complete and in a way dead art piece, that’s already done, there’s not much you can add or

care for or carry as an audience to make that go out into the world. So that’s why we sort want

to design the content for participation and for, viral spread and then design the mechanisms to

make that happen.

Jesse Cleverly Because Luke you were talking about this notion about the new commissioners being people

like Netflix or Red Bull, and in a way these people’s business models are so different aren’t they

that the idea of marketing and content for them is, I mean do they have a completely different

conception of the relationship between those two in your experience or are they still struggling

with this is content, this is advertising?

Luke Taylor Yes I think the main thing for companies like that and Red Bull as well, they’re interesting

because they’re the sort of new broadcaster in a way and particularly with Red Bull I think it’s

the fact that they have this direct communication with their audience which will enable them to

sort of tailor their marketing in the right sort of way. And I think the thing is whenever we go into

a project, we’ll have an idea of the sort of marketing behind it but I think the reality is, is that

we’ve got to be prepared to be able to tear that strategy up like half way through and just totally

react and adopt to whatever we need to at the time to continue to appeal to the audience. I

mean with Who Killed Summer we were shooting on the weekend, editing on the Monday and...

Page 27: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

27

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Luke Taylor (Cont) …it was going out on the Tuesday in five different languages, so it was kind of, with two

episodes a week and different content throughout the day, every day of the week, you couldn’t

have a marketing strategy behind it, so we had to basically listen to our audience. And they

became our sort of marketeers as it were because we were able to kind of communicate with

them, get the characters to speak to them, and that’s when you know the shift in the way that

you actually sort of market a show becomes really interesting, because it’s kind of driven by the

audience themselves.

Jesse Cleverly So you’re sort of iterating seven times a week in a way?

Luke Taylor Yes I mean we were doing our best to sort of please them and not all of them were but most of

them were which was good. But yes I think it’s really important to iterate and have the ability to

be able to do that because, in this sort of entertainment, you can’t foresee what will be the right

way to do things. For us we’re definitely much more of a reactionary company and do what we

can to sort of please the audience along the journey by listening to them.

Jesse Cleverly Because Nuno you said to me social media is the brand HQ, another phrase I’m going to be

using as my own. But I mean social media is obviously a place where things, you know, it’s

new posts, we’re here behind us with Tweets coming in etc, etc. So you know what is the effect

on the roll out in the marketing if you’ve set up your HQ in social media?

Nuno Bernardo I think the way people use the internet is shifting. If you go back to the mid 90s, you have

things like Yahoo. So everything that was internet you can just index, just create it in a

directory, people go and navigate through the directory like Yellow Pages. Only in 2000 Google

came along and the content on the internet was so big that you couldn’t just index it, you need

to search for it. Nowadays you just don’t search, you are recommended things. Last night I

was having dinner with some friends here in Cannes and the last half hour after dinner was…

Page 28: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

28

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Nuno Bernardo (Cont) …talking about the videos that we watched and we thought were funny on You Tube, so we

were sharing links and experiences and that’s how people consume content and buy products

and do other things on the internet, is what their friends are doing, what their friends are

watching. And I think recommendation is becoming more and more important and probably in

the future more important than search, is what my network of friends, people that I trust and I

connect with, are watching, are consuming, are doing. And I think mouth-to-mouth will become

so important and the tools that social media allows you to make this global almost immediately,

allows people to really find out things.

Jesse Cleverly You see I mean that’s interesting because that’s a very long tail business then isn’t it? If it’s all

about recommendation, we’re not just in that was our little broadcast window and now it’s over

and we’re going to move on. You know one of the questions I asked the panel before we came

is like well how do you guys measure success, you know at the end of a project, and you know

Nuno said well we really try and avoid dead. So these are projects that potentially never end.

Nuno Bernardo Our goal is to create projects that also never end because this is a long tail business. For Sofia

we started in 2003 and there are shows still being produced in China, in Latin America, we have

a version in Venezuela coming very soon and that’s how we make our money, is the fact that

this property, this IP, still generates revenues and still engages with an audience. Because

most of our revenues that come from traditional sources are revenues, as you saw on the

video, we sold one million books, the royalties from the books represent a huge part of the

revenues of the project. Licensing for different broadcasters, licensing for mobile phones is

another way to get revenue so you need not to do something like a one hit wonder, like in the

80s with pop music where you just have a huge success. For us it’s more having something

that engage an audience and stays on air as much as we can. Our goal is to create the next

Dallas that can be on air for ten years or so.

Page 29: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

29

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Jesse Cleverly Yes whereas for you Tracey, when you were saying you know we have three measures of

success, you know, sort of awards, cash and the audience. It was a little more delicately put

than that I hasten to add! But you know for Hoodlum there, has the hierarchy, I mean obviously

the days of they won a BAFTA are still very much with us and have meaning in an industry, but

frankly to the average 18 year old, a BAFTA…

Tracey Robertson No-one cares.

Jesse Cleverly Yes right. So for you at Hoodlum is it changing how you measure success at your company?

Tracey Robertson Yes I mean look you know the ultimate success for us is to have big audience numbers.

There’s nothing more heartbreaking when you put your heart and soul into something and you

have a hundred people and thankfully we haven’t done anything like that because we have

always set out from the outset to make something which has a big audience. And I think

because we come from television and particularly Nathan and I first worked in soap, TV shows

are set up to be set up and pay off. Everything about the end of a scene is driving you to the

next scene because the reality is everyone is sitting at home on the couch with their remote

control and they’ll channel switch and they’ll get rid of you. And I think as TV producers we

have to realise that in the very beginning, that people will just get rid of you, if it’s not sending

you somewhere else. And so we take that into every other platform we do and that just

becomes even harder when you’re thinking if I’m putting a piece of content out here, how am I

going to get that person to go somewhere else? And so everything has that set up and pay off

and the pay off is often somewhere else.

So it’s constantly every webisode that we’ve created, it has a question at the end of it in some

way which is driving someone to the Facebook page which is then sending someone back to

the game and it’s all about sending them around that world, it’s not just thinking I’ll put

something out here and hopefully someone might see it. It has a strategy around every piece…

Page 30: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

30

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Tracey Robertson (Cont) …of content. And we come up against, when we bring, you know for Slide we brought in TV

people and you know we gave them the whole, this is a multi platform show, you have to think

about it as multi platform and then we’d sit down and we’d say we’re gonna do this and they’d

say but isn’t that marketing? And the reality is it is marketing but you know we’re making

content for those platforms that used to be covered by marketing. And so now that we’ve

actually completed the show and we’ve gone into Foxtail Marketing who are basically beside

themselves with the amount of content, we’ve got content, it’s story content and each piece that

we’ve written has an end which is sending someone somewhere else. And so the kind of stuff

that they’re coming up with doesn’t need to be just putting a poster here or putting something

on here because we’ve done all of that and all of that is about sending someone all around this

whole world of Slide.

Jesse Cleverly I mean we are fast running out of time, in fact we kind of have. But I mean Christopher you said

that every project that Company P undertakes, generates a PHD thesis.

Christopher Sandberg Yes.

Jesse Cleverly So that’s really interesting because I mean this is about understanding new forms of human

interaction and consumption, worthy of a PHD.

Christopher Sandberg Yes absolutely I mean it’s a completely new discipline or interdisciplinary field so one of the

goals or all our projects have that as a goal, to learn, to do the next project better. And since I

come from an open source and sort of that kind of shared background, we always have our

core technologies, if they’re not …….. to one of our partners, it’s open source, anybody can use

it and we have researchers following our projects so that we can learn. I think that you know

we’re in the vaudeville tents right now, everything has to be fantastic and impressive and waves

on the Cliffs of Dover; the early film sort of wow effect. And then in a few years it’s going to…

Page 31: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

31

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

Christopher Sandberg (Cont) …be more layered and more interesting storytelling and more interesting directing and

characters. But first to get there we have to learn a lot.

So yes we do have academia following our projects and getting a lot of knowledge

management out of that and you know we measure that and then if it’s a brand partner we

measure their internal investment and so on. And as they said the marketing is core of the

experience so when people go out and do activities, we call it people placement instead of

product placement, you know, the next clue’s at Starbucks. So we measure these things but in

the end we know that we’re newbies at this and it’s going to take some time before we’re going

to really know what to do.

Jesse Cleverly I’m going to give the last comment to you Mr Costello. I want you to say something about

uniqueness.

Matt Costello Well I’m going to say something maybe that connects uniqueness. It’s a cautionary tale,

marketing is obviously not my area which should be apparent, the other night there was a show

that was on and they were promoting a new act for the smart phone and there’s a show I love

and you put the phone up, it basically listens to the show and you get cool new content at the

same time, it reads it. And I said this is neat. Did it, put it on and the content happened to be a

nice poster size, on my phone, picture of the whole cast. And so where’s the vision in that?

Here they had something I said this is really cool, this will be a lot of fun to play with in various

shows. So in a way you know there was a great marketing idea, the vision down the road has

to come first.

Jesse Cleverly Okay that’s all we have time for. I’d like to thank my panel very much for the time and trouble

they took to prepare that and all of you for coming and I hope you have an excellent market.

Thank you.

Page 32: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE ... · MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE? 3 +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781 Jesse Cleverly Hello

MIPTV TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: HOW TO ACHIEVE CREATIVE EXCELLENCE?

32

www.take1.tv +44 (0) 207 193 5443 - (818) 748 9781

For more information about working with the team at Take 1 please call or email Louise ([email protected]) or Saira ([email protected]) on +44 (0) 207 193 5443 or (818) 748 9781