THE COSMONAUT from Vinegar Hill on Vimeo.

The project, which began as a short film in 2008, exemplefies many of the innovations in our digitally powered and audience-centric media world, including ongoing crowd-funding, online webisodes, consumer-edited mashups, on-demand theatrical distribution, hackathons, simultaneous day-and-date release, and probably a lot of other stuff I have missed in reviewing this creative and business brief you can download from Riot’s main website. (And of course, all of the characters have Twitter accounts. Let's not get into continuity issues right now.)

If there’s no in-person screening, not to worry – you can watch it for free online starting May 19^th. The website is also where you can join the “K-program” for a onetime fee of 5€ that gives you 32 webisodes, a mockumentary, behind-the-scenes videos, a newsletter, a book, and 56 “Eastern eggs” (Lost, perhaps, in translation?) This stuff is intended, as one of the webisode links says, to “fill the empty spaces left of the film.” Some clips are also available on the site for free.

None of this I really knew when the lights dimmed in the theatre and I entered the world of the story. “The Cosmonaut" focuses upon two young men who join the Soviet Union’s space training program in 1967. While preparing for missions in the heated space race with the United States, Stas and Andrei both fall for a fetching female technician named Yulia. Andrei gets promoted to the mission team and sends Stas to the moon – maybe so he can win Yulia, maybe for some other mysterious reason.

Stas, Yulia & Andrei The film is jammed with loose threads and snippets of mystery: Did Stas make it to the moon? Did he come back? Was there a disaster on Earth? The film is steeped in evocative nostalgia and melancholic yearning as it makes its way through a jagged, non-linear telling of a series of events, both personal and world-historical.  I particularly liked the set-up scene in which an Italian space enthusiast tells of his discovery of a “lost” manned space mission that the Soviets never publicly admitted had happened. 

Stylistically, many of the scenes felt like Terence Malick, offering a kind of diaphanous, non-linear sensuality and very tactile verisimilitude. These guys put all of their crowd-sourced bucks on the screen (except for a few unfortunate space-modeling sequences that looked more like Jules Verne than George Lucas). The pacing and subject matter recalls Kubrick's "2001."The filmmakers list such iconic filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson, among others. 

Peter Gutierrez is a consultant, writer, editor and education expert who posts around the web, including School Library Journal. He interviewed me about Theatrics.com and the launch of 'Welcome to Sanditon.' Part 1 appeared May 15 and is reposted below. Part 2 follows on May 16 and I'll post it tomorrow. 

MAY 15, 2013 BY PETER GUTIERREZ  

Welcoming 'Sanditon' .. and a Whole New Level of Fan Participation

In case you missed it a couple of days ago, the first full episode of the new web seriesWelcome to Sanditon went live. Like its predecessor, the phenomenon known as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the series features an updated take on Jane Austen, sharp writing, a likable cast, and overall combo of smarts and fun that’s hard to resist. Of course both series display the strengths of the medium–brief episodes, modest production values, a clever leveraging of ancillary tech, and, most significantly, robust audience engagement. For the latter, the folks at Pemberly Digital have teamed up with Theatrics.com, LLC, which is pioneering fan participation in exciting ways that may have direct application in schools and libraries. With this in mind, I thought I’d check in with Nick DeMartino, with whom I chatted about transmedia and libraries last year, and who now heads business development for the company.

DeMartino has led Theatrics’ shift from a storytelling destination, which had been the model for its homegrown series Beckinfield, to a platform designed to extend storyworlds for its customers, specifically television networks. He facilitated the first such deal that brought the Theatrics solution into an online companion series for Psych called The S#cial Sector, and was product lead on the launch of the beta test of the new online platform at www.theatrics.com .

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Fans of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries could already interact with the characters. How willSanditon go beyond this?

Fans who come to Welcome to Sanditon will continue to have all of the opportunities to connect to characters that they did with Lizzie Bennet–posting their own YouTube videos, posting on Twitter, Facebook and especially Tumblr, and commenting on all of the platforms. But with Sanditon, they are also being invited to create their own characters and perform in character as the story unfolds. To achieve this, the producers have partnered with Theatrics, whose collaborative storytelling platform is designed to optimize fan engagement.

Fans will create a “Persona” through which they interact with the show creators. In character, the fans can generate videos, stills and blog posts in response to Calls to Action posted by the show creation team. Audience members can rate, link, and share this content, and by so doing earn points and badges, because the Theatrics platform is fully “gamified.” Along the way, the work of some fans may be plucked from the Theatrics site by the producers and shared across the entire storyworld of Sanditon, creating additional incentives for fans to deliver “great performances.”

To what extent is the series being produced with this interaction and character- or persona-creation in mind? In other words, in what ways is Theatrics organic to experiencing the series rather than just a neat add-on?

The folks behind Lizzie Bennet and Sanditon are such brilliant storytellers for this new socially-engaged generation, and they’ve set up the story container for audience engagement in a very inventive way. First, they’ve adapted Sanditon in a range of ways to advance the audience’s opportunity for engagement. Like LBD, they have moved the location to California and of course made the setting a contemporary situation. Second, they have brought Darcy’s sister Gigi from LBD into the Sanditon story, and prepared for the launch of Sanditon by posting a teaser video that sets up the premise, namely, that she is moving to this new town which is trying to bring itself back with the help of Pemberley Digital, the company Gigi’s brother runs. Pemberley is launching a new piece of video software called Domino, which was a big element in the climax of LBD. In Sanditon, this fictional “app” will be used by residents of the town–this is the activity that occurs on the Theatrics.com site.

Gigi Darcy

Thus fans will not only have the opportunity to interact with the story, but actually be a part of it. The platform will power the in-story beta test of the fictional Domino “life-revealing” application, allowing fans to create their own characters and interact directly with the storyline, offering a completely new interactive experience.

We’ll see how the LBD fans take to this new concept, but given the level of their engagement with story and characters, it seems very likely that they’ll jump on the chance to perform. Which means there may be lots more “location”-style video uploaded, in addition to the “vlog” style of LBD.

Does Sanditon being an unfinished novel enter into this at all? Will fan participation drive how the narrative itself ultimately plays out, or is that already close-ended?

As Margaret Dunlap, co-showrunner of Welcome to Sanditon has said, “People were constantly asking us about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: ‘How did interaction with fans affect the story?’ And the truth is that when you’re working from an amazing and well-loved story like Pride and Prejudice, there’s only so far you can stray from the original before you aren’t telling a version of Austen’s novel anymore.  Using Sanditon—where literally no one knows what Austen’s ending was going to be—as the basis for our next project seemed like the perfect way both for us to do something new, and to be able to invite the fans to help create the town alongside us.”

The show creators refer to Sanditon as a “bridge” series–they raised nearly $500,000 from fans on KickStarter to support a DVD boxed set of LBD, and to launch a new series in the fall, based upon an as-yet unannounced property. Sanditon will bridge the two full-scale productions this summer,  and will by design include fewer fully produced video segments. The story will more fully unfold as the fans create characters and co-create the story.

Does it make sense to think about educators working with students to create their own low-budget series shot in everyday settings like LBD that are based on other works of canon lit in the public domain? Will Theatrics be a viable resource for media and edtech specialists in this respect?

While I was at AFI we created a curriculum under the banner of “Screen Education” through which teachers helped their students use the vocabulary and techniques of digital filmmaking to explore all sorts of subject matter. We saw filmmaking as a literacy issue, a means to an end, e.g., harnessing kids’ interest in filmmaking and storytelling as a way to explore subject matter. Teachers who were comfortable managing this sort of constructivist learning process achieved amazing results.

With the Theatrics platform, the entire classroom assignment can be structured within a contained and controllable story container. Teachers can give assignments on an ongoing basis through the Call to Action feature. Students can create videos in response, can comment and vote on each others’ work, and can share it across the open Internet (or not, it’s the teacher’s choice).

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Please check back tomorrow, when we will get into more specific possibilities involving Theatrics and curriculum… Thanks!

Join the show to create your own Persona and learn more about how the Theatrics platform is helping this team of 21^st Century storytellers bring their fans into their story world. The story’s home page is here. Pemberley Digital, the company producing both projects, selected Theatrics.com LLC to provide a new component to their newest transmedia experience, complementing story and interaction on popular web platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Key to the Sanditon strategy is the formulation of their Theatrics site’s value for audience engagement. The overall storyline calls for residents of the town of Sanditon to “ beta test” a new type of online video software called Domino. The Theatrics site is where that “test” is being conducted, allowing fans to create their own characters and interact directly with the storyline in a completely new interactive experience.

Over the next four months the Sanditon content creators will use Theatrics tools to:

• manage the characters created by the fans
• download fan videos to share socially and for compilation edits
• send “Calls to Action” to accounts that have created personas, so they can help drive the story forward
• connect the Theatrics experience to the other social platforms where the story is also unfolding in other forms

If you have questions about how to use Theatrics.com for your project during this beta test period, please feel free to contact me at nickd@theatrics.com 

• Audi launched its A3 car in North America with Art of the Heist, a spy movie that audience members could participate in. The campaign was one of the first so-called “alternate reality games” launched by a brand and agency Campfire. Here’s a case study. To track these types of games, subscribe to newsletters from ARG.netand Unfiction.  

• Wrigley’s launched a mysterious “Mission Icefly,” a game that recruited “test subjects” who could only get deeper into the game by using special codes printed on packs of gum. The process of discovering the mysterywas a big part of the appeal of the game, produced by veteran transmedia firm 42 Entertainment.

• Old Spice created an online sensation when it brought back its tired old brand through humor and a sexy spokesman, Isaiah Mustafa, showing a keen sense of how different platforms can be used to create brand ambassadors out of curious users, including a cool interactive ad, profiled here. Dive deeper into the brand’s masterful internet “meme” in this case study.

• Lego transcends toys by creating story-based experiences for kids and other customers. Check out this overview of the Lego approach to transmedia.

• The iconic apparel marketer Levi-Strauss built a youth-targeted YouTube-centric story universe with video channels devoted to culture, men’s and women’s style, collaborations, and events. Read more.

• Toymaker Mattel built out the back-story of its famous dolls with videos, games and other digital content, radiating from a website hub. Check out this case study.

• Google’s Creative Sandbox website curates successful digital campaigns, including some cool transmedia storytelling experiences.

• “Transmedia Storytelling and the Media Cloverleaf” offers a PR agency perspective from Edelman.

• B2B Transmedia Marketing, one of the newest disciplines, is one of the areas of focus for a program at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.

The more the audience can participate in your storyworld, the greater their emotional connection.

By now you’ve heard the buzz about transmedia storytelling, right? Stories that reach fans across multiple delivery platforms, like those created by the big entertainment franchises (Star Wars, Batman, Glee, American Idol, Halo, Harry Potter and more).

Or the big consumer brands, whose inventive story-centric experiences have deepened customer engagement (like Coca-Cola, Audi, Old Spice, Mattel, Wrigley and Levi’s).

Or a new class of independent experience designers who are pioneering this art form with more imagination than money. They are tapping into the power of new digital platforms, devices and social media.

All of which is leading many marketers to believe that transmedia storytelling is the future of brand building and consumer engagement. By using these new techniques, marketers expand their brand campaigns across various media, reach new audiences, deepen engagement, and delight in the story and its messages.

Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California who first popularized transmedia, offers provides the definitive definition: “Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.”

More than just a technique to propagate a brand or message (integrated marketing), transmedia storytelling uses narrative devices like character, plot, themes, tone and emotional engagement to create a complete experience.

In other words, a story.

“The reason that we keep saying that traditional marketing approaches no longer work is that the social web has created a new consumer psychology,” writes says media psychologist Pamela Rutledge. “Consumers expect you to earn their attention, not interrupt them for it.

I'm thrilled to be involved with the launch of the beta version of a new collaborative video storytelling platform from Theatrics.com

The product features tools that allow a storyteller or a brand to involve the audience in the creative process while providing a host of communications and management features unavailable on other platforms. 

Theatrics is throwing open the doors to storytellers and brands who'd like to experiment with this truly unique collaborative storytelling cloud-based software available.

The goal of the beta is to develop ground-breaking online interactive video productions that will engage their users -- customers, employees, fans, and audience members – in content creation. Use of the platform will be free during the beta trial. 

I'm working with Theatrics and prospective users of the platform to help build exciting new experiences. If you've got an idea, please email me or signup on the site to get a feel for the tools. Just as Wordpress is a tool set for bloggers, Theatrics is a toolset for video-based storytellers. Here are some of the ideas from companies we're working with:

• A successful web video series wants to invite fans to create their own characters that perform and live in a new fictionalized storyworld 
• A documentary filmmaker wants to conduct a contest for audience members to tell their own stories in video and still images
• A franchise chain wants to create a new application that its affiliates can sell to customers featuring video tributes
• A national brand with a salesforce in the tens of thousands wants to build a hub where they can share stories and inspiration
• A sci-fi series wants to provide CG backgrounds for fans to use in creating their own in-story characters
• A meetup group wants to challenge its members to co-create a new story and a new storyworld.

As Theatrics CEO Biff Van Cleve puts it: "Generation C is as comfortable with creating content as consuming it, so the Theatrics video storytelling platform taps into millions of people who are shooting and sharing video on a daily basis, enabling creators to engage their audiences to tell stories in exciting new ways."

Theatrics.com provides creators the opportunity to establish a story world, characters, and plot and the audience to participate by uploading video and blog posts as personas they create themselves. The process is seamless and easy to use. Additionally, the platform offers a second screen experience for studios and networks to give fans the opportunity to engage directly with their favorite shows and films – to actually create and play a character in an on-going, online story world. 

About Theatrics 

With offices in Houston and Los Angeles, Theatrics.com is an interactive entertainment company offering a collaborative video storytelling platform that easily enables creators to incorporate and manage user generated content. The Theatrics.com toolset provides creators the ability to push the boundaries of storytelling by controlling the story, characters, and vision, while the audience adds their own creativity by performing in the show and interacting with the story and other users. Theatrics partnered with USA Network for the launch of PSYCH The S#cial Sector and produced its first series, Beckinfield, as proof of concept. For more information, please visit: www.theatrics.com. 

The panel is on Wednesday, May 1st, 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM in Salon III, and entitled:

The Social TV Ecosystem: Smart TVs, Guides, OTT Content, Tablets-Smartphones and Apps

There is no separating it - TV viewing and social media have joined hands. TV shows are posting tweets and encouraging an immediate social relationship among viewers. TV celebrities are reaching out to their fan base and viewers are creating a host of social media-TV relationships. As most major websites, from Facebook and Twitter to the TV sites themselves enable their communities to reach other, all roads lead to the further interaction between the TV viewer and social media technologies.

Moderated by Mark Ghuneim, CEO, Trendrr, the panel includes:

Jeremy Toeman, CEO, Dijit Media
Rebecca Baldwin, VP/GM, Zap2it
Nash Parker, Director, Emerging Technology Commercialization, Alcatel-Lucent
Nick DeMartino, President, Nick DeMartino Consulting
Benjamin Chen, Chairman, Viggle Inc.
Marc Scarpa, Producer / Director x factor digital, Grammy live, incubus hq
Diane Bernard, CEO, FLM.TV

Among them, the first officially sanctioned meet-up of transmedia meet-ups from around the world, organized by Paris-based Karine Halpern, including folks from groups in New York, Paris, London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as well as producers, tools-makers, broadcasters, academics, and technologists interested in the transmedia movement -- altogether about 50 attendees.

The session’s call to action announced the intention to form a Transmedia Alliance in order to formalize ties between transmedia groups under the umbrella of an international non-profit. Its goals would include: sustaining the global transmedia community, promoting best practices, helping newcomers enter the field, and sharing knowledge.

The idea of an alliance was stimulated by the upsurge of activity by local transmedia meetups since the first StoryWorld Conference in San Francisco in October 2011, when a similar meetup of meetups was held. Informal ties between groups have continued, including groups on Facebook and Linked In. For many activists like Halpern, something more structured is required. Her model is Transmedia Europe, which launched last January.

The session at SXSW lasted only an hour, barely enough time to get through introductions, so the hard work of organizational structure, governance, and operational process remains to be achieved. It’s hard to do that kind of work at a crazy conference like SXSW, that’s for sure. And harder still across thousands of miles.

On the other hand, the session relocated to the bar, which I skipped in favor of something I needed to do for a client. So I cannot report on what next steps may be contemplated, or whether incorporation, bilaws, membership eligibility or structure have yet been formalized for the Transmedia Alliance.

I peered into my crystal ball again to delivery a lightning round on the topic of the future of TV, framing it in terms of ten questions to ask if you want a good answer to that preposterous question. I've done a version of these slides before, but there is new material if you would like to take a look. I left the notes off the slideshare upload, only because I ad-libbed like wild. It was fun. Based upon the Rotary Club in Long Beach, I think the premise of "Bowling Alone" may be a bit off. These people do bowl, and they do a lot of other stuff to help their community.

And a good number of them were cord-cutters, I learned. Rotary International Cord Cutters.