Inspiring ideas about weaving core story through online, film, video-television, phone, social media, theater and onsite events. At the end, someone said the video of this program would be archived with a password on the Paley, not the WGA website... any info on that? In the meantime, here are my sketchy notes on the event. Any mistakes are my fast scribbling, not the panelists'. Tita Beal, anntares@yahoo.com

The Economics of Digital Media 

Paley Center for Media with Writers Guild of America/east – 02-24-10

TIta’s rough notes – check Paley Center website for possible archiving of the video of this event

Discussants:

Anita Ondine, CEO, Seize the Media (a company that creates and finances transmedia entertainment properties that fully integrate feature films, TV, and web series, mobile micro-narratives and gaming applications. http://seizethemedia.com – or might be http://www.seizethemedia.com. (She’s a patent attorney, Australian I think – and, based on her creative, high energy talk, very worth contacting about projects. You can find her on Facebook and on Twitter: #anitaondine. Her email is anita@seizethemedia.com)

Mark Lukasiewicz, VP, NBC News Specials and Digital Media. (Defined technology as “anything that wasn’t around when you were born”)

Moishe (“Mo”) Koyfman, principal at Spark Capital, a Boston based venture capital firm focused on the media, entertainment, and technology industries. (Said they have spotted winners, new tech at the very beginning) http://www.sparkcapital.com. (Worth contacting if you have very new type of proposal in his fields)

Resources: Twitter – follow #digimedia, #wgae, #anitaondine

Terms:

UGC = user-generated content

UX = user experience

Boxee = Browser style experiences (banquet of choices, many media, interactivity, ability to chat, contact, email, contribute)

ARGs = ?

URC =? (maybe that was UGC) Or the R = Response?

NOTES ON ANITA’S 10-20 MINUTE PRESENTATION:

Story Structure with Media/Technology

Story can transcend media and become a social net game with story integrated into all media, including:

• Text/email messages… that can advance the plot or drive people to a website or event or tv showing, etc.
• Use of telephone/cell phone… a character in the story can call people after they attended an event or film (example: a stalker from a thriller calls people who attended a film showing on their cell phones and scares them)
• Blog by a character… people can add comments, etc.
• Website… that offers different parts of the story, announces developments, has streaming video, special but related storylines for different regions of the world or different interest groups, involvement of people in contributing to the story, e.g. sending photos, plot lines, solving mysteries/story-related puzzles, contributing expertise or learning info and skills related to the story, getting related certificates, multi-player games related to the storylines, etc.
• DVD
• News events …. Fake or real, but built into the story
• Real world events… a theatrical piece, tv show related to the story, radio, public events, e.g. Meet-Ups for people around the world or in local regions
• A social network
• If not entertainment story, can use above for customized journalism

Think of story as franchise that manifests differently. Story world - the world of story in many media.

Retelling of the story is aligned with many media – might go from Mobile phone to theater to public events to blog to website game to … etc.

Professional development

Build a personal brand so you appear across media. E.g., Jack who (a quality content producer who does…, etc.)

Embrace new platforms. Be on them all – specially Twitter, Facebook. Understand them

Watch how people interact thorugh media. Listen, learn what they want and what they value

Start ideas with the consumer first – what do people in a certain market want?

Funding:

Allocate time and money smartly. Design phases. Create inexpensive segments of the story first to engage with and build your audience

Create buzz – not crass marketing, but engage through storytelling

Use initial segments/media to find out what works, make refinements and then start raising money for it

Ubiquitous distribution – be where your consumers are, all media and real world associations, locations

Give some basic story away and charge for uniqueness, great stuff

Attach sponsorships. Build brand sponsorship into the story, subtly, and get commercial sponsors to invest/fund segments

Use “crowd sourcing” – get multiple small investors to make advance purchases before developed. As investors who pay before it is developed, they get something in return – meet-ups, chance to vote on plot, make suggestions, get credit, whatever is appropriate for each type of audience market

In ancient times, art was funded by kings and charities – think of ways to get that back within your story

New revenue opportunities:

• Digital goods (i.e., virtual fake stuff – cards, certificates, animations, screen savers, email from character, etc. related to characters, storyline)
• You can sell opportunity for an experience in your story – a special one that’s not part of the basic free story. Can relate the experiences to different interest groups, cultures, regional locations, etc.
• You can sell products related to your story – through specialists in distribution and shipping
• You can sell storage (Not sure what this note means – maybe people can write segments and pay to store their writings, photos, video related to the story?)
• You can charge for tickets to real time onsite public events related to the story
• Don’t repeat failure of music biz that tried to hold onto music when it was easy for people to share free… let them share your main story free. That builds recognition. Use viral marketing by letting people share your basic story – but you embed add-on offers throughout that people can buy if they want special experiences, products, etc.
• Control your own destiny. The traditional model was to extract money from end users. The money went through a hierarchical food chain with content creator at the end and often barely or rarely paid
• Internet empowers creators in today’s flat, open world: how many from that traditional food chain deserve money from your content? Today you have a voice. Start small. Talk to the right audience. You are not locked into the food chain. Talk directly to your audience via media. You decide how to present, how you get paid- you decide that with your audience

Make it easy to share freely. And when there’s a need to pay, make it easy to pay. Give the basics away free stuff as free marketing.

Options to pay:

• Once your audience is interested, what’s best/easy for them? If busy executives, they are cash rich but time poor. They will pay for quality, availability, multiple platforms – e.g. Pause on TV to meta data that picks up on mobile [I don’t remember what that last sentence means]

Design Strategies:

Think backwards from media users to story events. “Mine the intersection point between audience and story” 

Social media are similar to conversations around the watercooler… Where is your audience meeting and talking? Twitter? Facebook? Existing blogs? Discussion areas of websites related to your story? What types of live events do they attend?  What types of events can you build into your plot – live events/Meetups your audience attends anyway that you can post as video into your plot and story?

Make it easy to share your basic story. You can embed video player and an editable Blog into your website. You want to go viral so make it easy to share what you offer to others. 

Start the conversations with your audience early. Build engagement before Day One and move it into the story – so plan the lead up to the launch of the main story as you plan the story

Think globally – and embed local branches of the story:

• Can be offered a choice of languages
• Think global audience not people in one country. Can access a specific audience in pockets around the world in one or many languages
• The storyline can have sub-plots, optional, that go to other parts of the world or to sub-group interests
• Same franchise, same core story – can involve other cultures and languages… local people can engage with the story at local levels including onsite events, cultural idioms. Don‘t write one story for all

Rozh Mutabchi (spelling?!):”Build the life you want to live in”

Think of the script as a blueprint. 

NOTES ON MARK’S PRESENTATION (10-20 MIN)

(Gave background on news, journalism, impact of pocket video)

New technologies provide new ways of meeting socially, new connections, new ways of telling stories. Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell others are using Twitter’s 140 character nuggets as a creative new opportunity. The story is sequenced over many tweets

Many consumers of social media. Few generate constantly

163 million in 3 years on You Tube – 167 million as of Feb 7 2010

They view videos like “Charlie bit my finger again” and, popular, ”my friends”

“Transparency Is the new objectivity” – Opinion is now okay

Who pays? Who are the sources?

“transmission of experience on TV is like a rocket launch. Now we have a volcano with experiences and possibilities constantly coming out. 

He spoke about the importance of journalism and the financial problems that are making it difficult to send investigative reporters to important places. He made the distinction between an eye witness and a journalist. 

One of 5 human beings has video or still camera on a cellphone or other device in a pocket. Eyewitnesses can capture what’s happening – but only journalists can find out why, who, what it means for people, what’s next, etc. 

“No gatekeepers – no gates” (He or one of others said this)

NOTES ON MO’S PRESENTATION:

Spark Capital – Sequoia, Kliener,Perkins etc. 

Looking for technical talent – venture captal’s goal: “faster disruption”

Scalable value – when we create new media and/or when we disrupt an existing one

Most interested in “anyone, any way, any time” content creation

E.g.s:

• Android – Google phone operating system similar to iphone. Mobile will interact with real world
• iPad – new – changes how consumers engage content and learn. It’s a beginning
• Cloud computing – move of computing data to lease… the Internet biz of tomorrow. Launch a website and be billed, no worry about how. 

Some principles:

1. Democratizing and participatory: Iran rebellion via Twitter
2. Web is fundamentally social
3. Real time – second by second. A.D.D. culture – we publish, consume, engage – NOW
4. Open Source – API lets websites engage with each other. Like an eco-system. Alive, interconnected
5. Persistent identity and connectivity. Use socal network credentials and relationships to create new site, find friends – similar to neural networks

How to make $?

• Ads on web
• Target users – don’t buy audience or content, Advertizers want to reach people. Data provides ways to follow people, helps advertizers touch people. Buy ads fast – e.g. Toyota wants to be directed to individual who just visited website to look at a car
• Digital goods – virtual stuff – people will by a virtual banana or card. Specially at gift times. Cost is 0 to producer. Consumer will pay 99 cents vs real world goods. Digital goods are a 1 billion business

Content is king. New media has no closed distribution. No king maker. Individual are king makers. Gawker, Huffington Post – new forms of news. Free to participants. Daily Kosk, fm, Pandora, The Hype Machines, You Tube others – Boxee. Connected to TV live events

People see friends viewing, see their recommendations. No one can tell you what to do, when 

Gaming is leisure time

To build buzz, your website needs video player so it’s easy to “add this” or “Share this”… needs compelling content so it is buzzworthy… needs a personal brand to hold it all together

Tita, March 21, 2010 at 10:58 pm