Here is a slide representing THE LOST CHILDREN Transmedia plan I presented:

This is a repost of my thoughts on the lab from Filmmaker Magazine.

Imagine you’re a boxer just starting out. You’ve been given the opportunity to go learn from a group of pros. You’re excited. You feel honored. You might even be a little full of yourself. Yeah, they picked me. I must be the shizzle.

You get to the gym. There are pleasantries, how-are-yous, and the like. Then, the pros tell you to step into the ring. You think “Oh good, they are going to start teaching me some moves right away!”

Then they spend the next week beating the living shit out of you.

By day two you’re questioning things you thought you were pretty certain about.

By day three you wonder where your life went wrong that you wound up here, with a bunch of strangers beating the shit of you.

By day four you want your mommy.

By day five you are a pile of wet, thick pulp. You have no will. You cannot trust your own judgement. You wonder if you’ll ever make another film. If you’ll even want to.

Then you go home and go to sleep. A week later you start to heal, and you marvel that there’s a group of strangers out there who care enough to beat the shit out of you for a week.

This was basically the  2011 IFP Narrative Lab for me.

I’ve been slowing nudging The Lost Children out into the world this year, with a test screening at Cinema Speakeasy, sending it to a few trusted sources here in NYC, and now with the Lab. The Lab was the first exposure to a group of peers. Other filmmakers in the same boat. Many of them were more accomplished. Some producers in the Lab had numerous features under their belts. Some of the movies had name actors. But for the most part, we were all in the same situation. Trying to figure out that transition from making the film to putting the film out into the world.

It’s a dizzying prospect. Do you go for festivals? Which ones? Do you try to sell? Do you distribute the movie yourself? What paperwork do you need to make it all happen. Which new people do you need on your team? Oh, you shouldn’t go into a major festival without a PR team? Shit, that’s more $$ you have to raise. Oh, you need E&O Insurance? Damn. Did you budget for that? It costs how much? Oh, someone wants to buy your film. Great! Now, you just need to spend another $70K to deliver it to them. But wait, the movie only cost $30K. Pray to God they don’t want a 35mm print. Oh, nobody wants to buy your movie but you owe your investors how many hundreds of thousands of dollars? Oh, someone does want to buy your movie, but for how little? And how long do they want the rights for? If you distribute the movie yourself, oh that’s how much more work? Years, you say?

Fortunately for us, this week was largely just to raise questions like this, to make us understand what questions we need to be asking. The IFP has other workshops set up throughout the year to help answer some of these questions. But all of these questions are subservient to the one big question they raised: What is your film? Figure that out and to some degree, the rest will fall into place. Or at least your path will be clear.

One of the things I liked most about the Lab was that they brought us people who’d been successful in just about every path you can think of. Filmmakers who had sold for big bucks at Sundance. Filmmakers who got out and sold their films themselves. Filmmakers who were somewhere in between. And the overall lesson here was that every film has a different path. Based on what your film is. And whatever path your film has, it’s okay. Let it be that path.

It was also helpful to have the curtain pulled back on the N.Y. indie film world. It was oddly encouraging to hear the rather well-known producer recount the film he thought would “run him out of the film business”.

Equally encouraging was the other well-known producer telling us about the time she passed up good deals for her film in favor of a “handshake deal” with the distributor she liked, but when the distributor got back to L.A., his company was not so hot on the deal, and it fell through.

And of course the filmmaker who got all the way to the Tribeca Film Fest, ready to sell his film for the big bucks…but didn’t, and instead went on to pioneer new models in self distribution.

Equally encouraging was the advice from my one-on-one producing mentor. He tapped his chest lightly and said basically: “Make what you feel here.” It’s encouraging because following that philosophy has given him a career almost any filmmaker can envy.

Most encouraging though was the individual edit session on my film. Editor Michael Taylor, Jon Reiss, Rose Vincelli, and some of the other fellows really went after the film. Picking, prodding and tearing it apart. But there was nothing threatening about the session. It never felt like an attack. It felt like a collaboration. They were there to make the film the best it can be.

So at the end of the week, I went home and went to sleep. And now I’m ready to figure out what my film is.

Here’s me discussing THE LOST CHILDREN in some detail at the Workbook’s Transmedia Talk podcast. I talk about how the project came about, why I switched it from a standard film to a cross platform project, and how I see cross-platform projects evolving in general. I also talk a little more about that in a filmmaker magazine article here.

Download the podcast episode | Subscribe with iTunes

Go to the Workbook project

Photo by Timur Civan

I’d been asked to give a workshop at the 2011 DIYDays on working with a technologist in a Transmedia project. The workshop was not taped, so I’m re-inventing it here as a blog post. I didn’t know exactly what I should convey in a “workshop.” The guy who went before me, Brian Chirls, did some demonstrations with HTML5. Mine ended up being some practical advice with a healthy dash of evangelism. My workshop was called: “Coders, not just monkeys anymore!” And I wanted to discuss this in particular, because I often get the feeling from Transmedia folk I talk to, that there is not a very high regard for technology. I often hear: “It’s just a tool.” Well yeah, a camera is just a tool too. But in the hands of an artist, it makes your movie brilliant. In the hands of a fool, your movie sucks. I think there are technologists out there who are artists, who want to make incredible and beautiful things to entertain people. And I think it’s worth engaging these technologists in a creative way so that they might bring things to your project you might never have imagined.

If it doesn’t exist, I can make it

Barclay: Computer, begin new program. Create as follows: workstation chair. Now, create a standard alphanumeric console, positioned for the left hand. Now an iconic display console, positioned for the right hand. Tie both consoles into the Enterprise main computer core, utilizing neural-scan interface.

Enterprise Computer: There is no such device on file.

Barclay: No problem. Here’s how you build it.

Shortly before DIYDays, the organizer sent me a question. Presumably, all speakers were sent the same, and the answers were to be used in the program, or promotional material. The question was this:

Which digital site or service can’t you live without (or wish existed) to help with creation or storytelling?

How interesting I thought, because I wanted to talk about exactly that. My answer was:

Code. Because there really isn’t any service or site I couldn’t live without. If I need something that doesn’t exist, I can just make it.

Of course, at one level, this is also the case for the technologist. I am going to leverage new technologies, code, frameworks, as they emerge. But I think there is a distinct difference between technologies and products. Technologies allow you to define what you want. Products force you to largely work within their playfield, and play by their rules. And you are at their mercy. They can change the terms, or dismiss the service you depend on at any moment. They are under no obligation to you. So I think it’s a good idea for Transmedia producers to work with a technology person. And I think it will become more and more important to indie projects to include a technology department, alongside all of the other departments. Especially for indie projects. Because you may not have money or names involved, you still have a chance to wow people with interesting use of technologies, with radical, wierd stuff that the bigger players would be afraid to do due to cost and risk. Finally, it’s important because though everyone likes to say: “it’s not about technology” it really is about technology because technology is going to invade storytelling more and more, and you need someone on your team who understands that department. I keep saying “indie” because larger projects already do this. They work with software shops or agencies with software shops.

Department Heads

• Production Designer
• Director of Photography
• Costumer
• Make-up
• Composer
• Editor

These are some of the department heads you’ll find on an average film. But what I think is important about these roles is that the director really doesn’t (or in most sane cases), just dictate to these people what he/she wants. A good director understands that each of these people brings not only skill to a project, but also creativity. Judgement. Knowledge to inform decisions in their areas. This is how I work. I tend to collaborate, and ask people in these roles to bring something I never could have. And I feel that my projects are better for it. For instance, in the grab below:

Art Directed Scene from THE LOST CHILDREN

Here, I gave the Production Designer(Steve) very little direction. He had read the script, and we’d discussed the character. Then I told him that I wanted the actor to be able to improvise within the space. I wanted him to be able to freely turn to the shelves in the back, or pull any book off of his desk, and be able to freely incorporate it into his improvisation. So I wanted every item in the room to make sense within the storyworld. Other than that, this room was very much Steve’s project. So as Transmedia projects explore new modes of storytelling, it makes sense to have a technology person in the same kind of role: Director of Technology. This person should be there not so much to make your websites and keep your servers going, but there to creatively contribute to the project within his/her area of expertise.

Stuff everyone can do

• Fake Twitter converstation
• Fake EvilCorp website
• Fake emails
• Foursquare checkins
• Blog software
• Mobile App “builders”

I think there are two primary reasons a lot of people gravitate towards this stuff.

1. It’s free. Free is attractive to businesses large and small, but especially small.
2. It’s there. Creators see it. They may not really understand how it works, and more importantly, they may not have enough knowledge to ask what else is possible.
3. That’s where the people are.

Now, there are many times when what’s there perfectly suits the need.

Runes of Gallidon

I spoke to Scott Walker, the creator of Runes of Gallidon. Runes is an online collaborative storyworld which invites all to participate. Write, comment, make art, etc. all set within this storyworld. To a large degree, this was built on entirely existing technology. Which is fine, because the technology available met their needs.

Unified Republic of Stars

Unified Republic of Stars is another collaborative online Sci-Fi storyworld built on a mildly customized WordPress and Mediawiki. In both of the cases above, existing platforms suited the needs. There is no need to reinvent the wheel where it doesn’t need to be reinvented.

Stuff everyone can’t do

This is where partnering with a technologist really becomes important; when you want to do something for which there is no existing solution, or which pushes the bounds of how an existing solution is used. In Jan 2011, I wrote some custom software for Lance Weiler’s Pandemic 1.0. I talk more in depth about Pandemic here. Much of the software driving the Pandemic experience simply did not exist. Working with other firms like VectorForm, we created what was needed to tell the story the way Lance wanted to tell it.

Pandemic 1.0 at Sundance 2011

Lance had ideas in his head. But he didn’t just sit back and wait for some company to come along with a product he could use. He let his ideas lead the way, and made what was necessary to realize those ideas. To a large degree, my relationship with Lance on this project was similar to what I describe above. Lance had broad guidelines for what he wanted in this part of the project. I took those guidelines, and was allowed to use my creativity and imagination to create something that would serve the story within those guidelines. We worked in an iterative manner; prototype->discussion->prototype->discussion and so on. I think this way of working can be beneficial to software in general, but to creative projects in particular. It mirrors the way I might work with an editor on my film, working through the footage and allowing it to reveal the story to us, reveal moments to us, reveal things we never knew were there.

Showing people something they’ve never seen before

Special effects in movies are a double-edged sword. Wielded by an artist with vision, they can show us things we never thought possible, tell stories we never thought possible. Wielded by a buffoon, they give us cheap CGI ghosts and very fake digital beasties. But they’re a perfect example of how, when wielded correctly, the technology can help lift the art to a new level.

King Kong 1933

The stop-motion animation in King Kong was headed by pioneer Willis O’Brien. And though people had been watching stop-motion for about a decade at that point, they had never seen it like that. O’Brien and team wanted to blow the audience away. They pushed the technology to show people something they had never seen before.

Walkers

Remember this? I remember sitting in the theater at age 9 when these things came on screen. And I distinctly remember thinking: “Oh my god, I’ve never seen anything like this before!” The walkers were done with the same technique as King Kong. But again, we’d never seen it like this before. Lucasfilm understood that they had to blow people away, they had to keep showing something new. They were dedicated artists who wanted to push the technology forward in order to tell the story they wanted to tell. And of course, Lucasfilm went on to push the bounds of many many technologies in film, by being set on showing us something we’d never seen before.

Jurassic Park

This was another moment for me. The extraordinary mix of CG and puppets again made me go: “Wow, I have never seen anything like this before!”

Avatar

What I love about Cameron is that he’s such an obsessive artist, he never settles. I was genuinely blown away by these blue folks. He did not settle for what everyone else was doing. He pushed the technology to get what was in his head, into his art. And he’s done the same thing throughout his career.

And of course, the ultimate example:

Pixar

Pixar started as a technology company. It was a division of LucasFilm. Now the most successful film studio in history, and known for work that’s not only high quality and emotionally engaging, but innovative on a technological level. They are always struggling to show us something we’ve never seen before. And they write custom software to do it when they need to. When there’s some aspect of animation they cannot achieve with their existing tools, they write new software or alter the source code of existing software to do it. When it comes to Transmedia, these are some of the examples I’d like to follow.

But there’s already a WordPress out there!

I want to make sure I’m clear that I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel. For the love of all that’s holy, do not create a new CMS from scratch. Use WordPress or Drupal, and extend one of those with their plugin architectures. What I’m saying is look beyond what those things do for you out of the box. I mean, why not write a WordPress plugin that periodically “hacks” your whole site and puts up a message by the “bad guys” in your story? Or write some custom code to react to users under certain conditions, revealing some new storypoint through the site. Or if you are going to send out an artifact to bloggers, why not put a little computer inside that artifact and program it to come alive in the middle of the night? How friggin cool would that be?

Business: Technology as an asset

With my own project, THE LOST CHILDREN, I am thinking less about this one project, and more about building my company over the long run. So not only do the films, series, etc. I develop become assets to my company, the custom technology I develop becomes an asset as well. And a potential revenue generator. I am talking to two other projects about using the DataStoryteller software I wrote for Pandemic. In addition, the same software will prove useful in my own LOST CHILDREN Transmedia experiences. I am also working on a location-based mobile framework with my partners, which we are planning on licensing, and reusing on other projects. All of the companies I mention above generate revenue from the technologies they develop. Why shouldn’t we consider this business model as well? In addition, I’m able to leverage some unique experience where storytelling and technology intersect to consult with clients. Another revenue stream.

Practical: Responsibilities of a tech lead

This list can be much more exhaustive, and I would welcome any contributions. But these are some of the things I would look for in a technical director on a creative project.

• Understands the implications of timeframe. This will inform not only what the tech lead tells you you can have, but also which technologies to use. For instance, on Pandemic, had I gone with my first technology choice, we simply never would have made the deadline. Some languages and platforms are faster to develop than others.
• Understands the implications of technology choices. In addition to timeframe, the tech lead should factor in things like: Developer base. If the developer is hit by a bus what are your odds of finding a replacement? Costs of developer base. Also maturity of technology; is it too new and probably buggy to give the audience a good experience? I think we ran into some of that trying to use the first NFC phones ever on Pandemic. The tech lead will understand and communicate the risks involved in these situations.
• Will deal with licensing. For instance, there are many open source licenses, with different implications for redistribution of software, sale of software, etc.
• Scalability. Will design your software in such a way that it can handle large amounts of traffic and expand with your organization. If all goes according to plan, a bazillion people will want to be involved in your project. Make sure you can handle them when they show up.
• Delegating. The tech lead will know the limits of their own knowledge and be able to manage a department of others with various skills.
• Good at rapid prototyping. Personally, I think this is good on all software projects. But particularly on a creative project. It’s nice to be able to get something in hand on a regular basis, and play with it. Especially with something like mobile. In fact, in the past, we’ve worked up small prototypes to take into mobile pitches, just because we know having the thing in your hand is infinitely more powerful than listening to someone talk about it. Besides that, as I said above I find working in an iterative manner to be beneficial, as it’s good for people to see and hold progress in their hands.
• Will handle management of the technology. whether that’s delegated or not, you should never really have to worry that the source is being maintained properly, for example. Will determine when and how you need to scale along with your growth.

Now is the time

This is such a fantastic time to be exploring new ways to tell stories. Everyone on Earth is tripping over themselves to find the next “it”, so I think this is a time when any good idea can be heard. It’s also the time to pull out all the stops on the craziest ideas we have. Those might just be the ones that stick. And for underfunded independents, your ideas might be all you have. Plus, things are moving so quickly, I don’t think you can afford to sit in one place for too long. To my mind, Transmedia further ties up entertainment with technology. And technology release cycles are extremely short. Already, I’m scratching things like the Twitter scene off of my list, because by the time we do it, it will be old old old.

On a more cautionary note, I see people building stuff, say on the Foursquare API. I’d be careful about building your company on too many existing products. Unlike the WordPresses of the world, these products are far less stable over the long run. Sure, Google will be here in 5 years, but will Twitter? Or will they suddenly change their TOS out of the blue, and kill a great plan you had? Or will they suddenly lock down all of the data you have saved with them, forcing you to pay for it? Or will they kill their APIs altogether? When you depend on a Foursquare, or a Twitter, or a Facebook, you are at their mercy. And they have absolutely no obligation to you or your project. It’s the reason why when my partners and I wanted to create a “checkin” app this year, we went ahead and created our own server infrastructure for checkins, badges, etc. The technology behind that whole thing isn’t all that difficult to begin with and now we own one more piece of reusable technology. A technologist on your project can guide you through these and other pitfalls, and offer creative ways around them. At the same time, they can bring ideas to the table you may have never thought of.

I’ve always been conscious of developing the right look for a film. In my film R.P.D.M., I worked hard to show visually the effect of a drug which slows down time in your mind. In EVIE, I came up with different color schemes to represent visually what was happening in the story. All of the main character’s climactic moments in that film are told without words, purely through images and very specific color choices. Even as far back as my horror short BLOODY MARY, the look of each scene was consciously designed along with the DP, Timur Civan. I am bringing the same attitude to THE LOST CHILDREN.

I was in Austin for SXSW, going out for dinner with another filmmaker and a camera guru. The subject of DSLRs came up because the camera guru was speaking about them in a SXSW panel. I told him that I was using the Canon 7D on my feature, and he asked how we got away with that, was it our primary camera. I told him we used it for interviews, and for generating some footage that will later be degraded. The low-light capabilities make it possible to get 1080 HD footage even at night under street lights. And if your goal is to dirty that footage up later, and make it look like “found footage,” then you get quite a bit to work with.

Evelyn Night Vision

But the point was this. I said I was no longer in the business of trying to make little cameras look like big cameras. Now, I prefer to embrace whichever camera for what it is and exploit it for that. If I want to shoot something broad and cinematic, I will likely go with a big cinematic camera. When I am shooting on handy-cams, it’s because I am seeking something the handy-cam can give me. For instance, I wanted some scenes shot as if on the night vision you get from some older Sony cameras. So that’s what we shot that scene on. I don’t know how we would have gotten this look in post. I mean, I’m sure there’s some way to get part of it with enough time and skill, but I don’t know if you’ll ever get the eyes right in post without serious efx work. And it’s the eyes I wanted in this shot. I wanted the eerie, otherworldly look night vision gives the eyes.

This goes hand in hand with the post I wrote about why we chose the non-fiction format for this film. It allowed us to choose cameras for certain looks. It released us from the burden of having to keep up with the joneses in terms cinematography. And hopefully, it’s going to help us stand out some.

I started this journey last year with this post called “Cameras and Camera Tests.” So now I want to give some more on the results of this after shooting this way throughout 2010.

What are our goals?

First off, to create convincing “found footage.” Very often, you will see something in a film that’s supposed to be from a video camera, and it’s quite obviously some cheap plugin. There’s nothing wrong with this in and of itself, if it simply indicates to the audience that this section is “video.” It serves the story. But along with the Non-Fiction format, we wanted footage that might actually pass muster on the web. As in, if you came across a bit of footage on the web, you would have to look at it twice before you realized it wasn’t real.

Secondly, our goals were to create some unique and beautiful looks. Many filmmakers these days seems to define beautiful as one thing; does it look like the movie I saw in the theater last week. I think beauty in images can mean a lot of things. On the other hand, I see many independent films shot on camcorders, where it seems like the filmmakers simply gave up thinking about the look they wanted at all.

Click for full image

This image serves two purposes. First, it’s about what I want as a “surveillance video” image. I am still doing a lot of experimentation with this, but this image is coming pretty close. Secondly, I think there’s a lot of beauty in it. It’s “realistic” in the sense that it’s a “video image,” yet it’s a bit impressionistic too. The cross-hatch pattern and the saturated colors combine to make it almost like a painted image. To my eye, it lends a bit of a surreal quality to the shot. Which is also good in the context of this particular scene.

What is your opinion of this shot regarding those two purposes?

This image was created by shooting the actual scene on a 7D mounted high in the room as if a surveillance camera. I zoomed in on that image in FCP. Then played back and shot my HDTV monitor with the 7D again. I could have shot this on a lower res monitor to get a little more accurate as “surveillance” footage, but I like this look and think it’s a good compromise between style and “realism.”

Playing with static

There are certain points in THE LOST CHILDREN when cameras mess up, the image goes in and out, and sometimes go to pure static. Again, there are plugins that do this, but to my eye none of them comes close to the real thing – at least on the budget we’re working at.

Making Static 1

That’s beautiful.

Making Static 2

Look at the random “bolts” shooting through that image. Both of the above were created by first running off the original footage as NTSC to a deck. Then plugging that deck into a very old TV. Fortunately, my ever-resourceful art director has everything, including this old TV hanging around, for me to experiment with. ( Next to the TV, that’s the 3 TB of RAID 1 storage where THE LOST CHILDREN lives.)

Very Old TV

This TV is so old, that its only input is a coaxial cable. Look it up, youngin’s. That little black box you see on top of the TV has a coaxial input and RCA inputs, so it’s able to connect both to the camcorder and the old TV. In the end, we replay the footage from the NTSC camcorder, to the old TV, and then re-shoot the old TV screen it with the 7D, while jiggling the loose coaxial cable to get the randomized static we want.

This image is not played back as is. But we cut up the static in FCP and add it to the timeline with our “surveillance image.” So that in the timeline, it looks like this:

Static in Timeline

We don’t play the footage back as is, because, for the parts of the scene you actually want to see, I think this little TV puts out too low resolution, so I’m worried about how it would look on an HDTV or projected.

I’m not exceptionally concerned about how this film looks on the big screen because I think, in the end, the big screen will be a minimal part of our distribution. But it never hurts to do the best you can to make sure your movie will look good wherever. We gave ourselves the added challenge by shooting on many cameras, in many codecs, in many frame rates.

But using these little bits of static along with our regular footage does a pretty good job for us. The static comes and goes quickly enough that it gives us the illusion that the static is actually in the footage we’re seeing. Combine that with some nice static noise and the illusion is complete. If you want to play with this yourself, FCP Studio comes with some static noises. Also, this site has a lot of sound effects. I don’t think they are really professional quality, so I may not rely on them for final output. But for working with your rough, and for learning, it’s a great resource.

That brings me to the final point about the look. One more reason I avoid plugins is that they are only going to make your movie look like other movies. At least at the level most of us are working now. I’m sure in Hollywood, they have all kinds of insane software for creating these effects. And I’m sure that with enough money, you could do it all in post. But at the low budget level we work, we’re usually limited to retail tools. So I feel like if we depend on those tools, it’s only going to work against us. I’ve seen sooooo many indie movies using the effects you get in Video Copilot. I appreciate what Video Copilot does, but I also think it encourages laziness, and I’m often able to spot it within seconds. They are playing on low budget filmmakers desires to easily and quickly look like Hollywood movies. But I believe that in the end, you just end up looking like everyone else.

And as I’ve said in a number of my posts, we are working hard to stand out, not blend in. So creating our static the way we did, and using the techniques of shooting and re-shooting on our specific screens and our specific gear will give us a look no one else will be able to easily replicate. And hopefully make us stand out.

The camera guru I mentioned at the top often says something on our filmmaker message board, DVXUser: To paraphrase: “Hollywood is already good at a lot of things. Why not make something they can’t do? That’s the way you can stand out.” Whenever I’m making decisions on how to proceed, I use this as a guiding principal.

Stay tuned, I will soon blog about the fun to be had in making fake entrails and shooting a massacre!

So blah blah blah how do we sustain, how do we distribute, blah blah blah. But I’ve come to a realization lately. Well, I’ve come to admit a realization. Many many micro-budget Independent Films just aren’t very good. Maybe if they were better, some of these other problems would be easier to solve. I’ve heard this from many people in the Indie-Film-o-sphere, but usually in blog comments that offer little more than snark.

So I’m going to try to look at the problem and break it down some. We’re always dealing with these things in THE LOST CHILDREN. And be warned, most of the lessons come from Hollywood. Because though they often make really bad choices, they typically know what they’re doing.

What happens next?

What happens next? This is the number one thing we need to strive for. Soap Operas could last decades by effectively posing this one question week after week. How many of us actively focus on this question? Working through post on THE LOST CHILDREN, it’s always, always on my mind. At the end of every scene, at the end of each act, I’m constantly asking: “Will they want to know what happens next?” If that one question isn’t in the air, you are left to founder on ambiguous things like your “voice” as a filmmaker. Which probably isn’t original. Or even worth listening to.

Right now my fiance and I are almost done with Season 3 of Mad Men. Last night we finished an episode that was so good, we had to stay up and watch the next one. We had to know what happened next.

I remember finishing The Wire, Season 1. I got Season 2 in the mail from Netflix. I put it in at about 11PM. I could not stop until the season was done, about 7AM the next morning. I had to know what happened next.

I had the same experience with Buffy. Finished a season, and ran out to Tower at midnight to get the next one. Had to know what happened next.

I know these are all TV shows, but I think the same rules apply to films. The last time I think I had to know what happened next in a film, was No Country, Inception…I can’t remember the last time I felt this with a micro-budget independent film. Primer?

I think there are exceptions to this. I actually found The Watchman movie pretty compelling, though to a large extent it was slow and moody. I felt like the film gave me the same experience the comic had. It allowed me time to ponder the ideas presented. And I think that was part of it structure. Intentional.

But for the most part, I think we really need to be asking: “Will the audience want to know what happens next?”

Characters

This should need no explanation, but it took me so long to learn, I figure others may not get it yet. It’s not about you. It’s not about your vision. It’s not about the filmmaker. Nobody cares about you or what you have to say (which is probably not original or unique anyway). It’s about the characters. They don’t by any means have to be “likable,” but they do have to be compelling. Some of my favorite characters ever are scumbags, or at the very least massively flawed: Walter White. Don Draper. Scorpius. Vic Mackey. Omar Little. When was the last time an indie created characters like this? Are we working hard to create compelling, memorable characters?

Use the Red Letter Media smell test for characters: Ask people to describe your characters without using their looks, clothing, or profession. I’m working on a web series now for next year, and this is probably the single more effective tool in our writers’ toolbox.

Writing and acting

Just like it says. One of the biggest issues with micro-budget film is the belief that just having access to cheap gear means you know what the Hell you are doing. You don’t. And out of all of the things you need to do to make a film, it seems that writing and acting are the ones people think they need the least skill in. Many micro-budget films shoot scripts that are…to say the least, underdeveloped. People think that just because they can type, they can write. They think that just because they have some (probably not original) idea, they should just run out and write it down and make a movie. We often had the same issues at the DVXFests. People would come on the board and say things like: “Script done in 3 days!” yes, your script sucks. And no I don’t even have to read it to know that. Because if you wrote it in 3 days and your name is not Epstein, you didn’t spend enough time on it, and are probably not even aware of which questions you need to be asking. If this is your first micro-budget feature and you have never written a feature before, you should spend at least 1 year on the script. At Least.

I find it painful to watch the acting in many micro-budget films. Often you don’t have access to professional actors to begin with. And on top of that, you may not know how to direct them. Meaning, you haven’t learned the actual, demonstrable skills a director needs to do his/her job. Do you know what an objective is? Do you know what actions are? Can you communicate your needs to an actor in these terms? Do you know how to get an actor to do nothing? Do you know what that means? When you have very experienced professional actors, you can sometimes let them go their own way. Meaning, if you don’t know how to direct, they will still be able to turn in a pretty good performance, because they know how to break down a script, figure out actions, etc. But with inexperienced actors, if you don’t know how to direct, you’re in trouble.

As we work on our film, I am constantly applying this test: I watch a real movie, a Hollywood movie or TV show with professional actors. And then I ask myself: “Does the acting in my movie/scene look like that?” If the answer is “no,”  I know we have a problem. You should always be holding yourself up to the best work you can find and asking: “Is it as good as that?” Always.

Feedback: focus groups

This term I’m sure, causes many an indie to sprout hives and die. But it will save your butt. I encountered this first in the indie film world when Zak Forsman invited me to be a part of a focus group for Heart of Now. I was no stranger to feedback. I had long participated in DVXUser short film competitions. And those generally led to a lot of good feedback from filmmaking peers, mostly on technique. And in the software world, I had led teams and held code reviews. But with Heart of Now, it was the first time I had been invited to an actual focus group for an independent film. I think I was pretty honest with my feedback. I tend to be pretty objective about work, including my own. Zak then screened Heart of Now for about 50 people who weren’t friends, past collaborators or “fans.” And this is critical; showing it to people who don’t know you and have no stake in your success. Absolutely critical.

When we started THE LOST CHILDREN, we made a series of small videos representing parts of the story. You can see them on the film’s site. They are right at the top of the home page in that little rotating carousel. Before embarking on the actual film, we created these and showed them to a focus group. Then we asked them a series of questions. We used that data to alter the script. It’s not about pleasing or pandering to an audience. It’s about trying out your material and seeing if you are even being clear. Do people even understand what you’re talking about? Do they get the points you’re trying to get across? Do they find the characters compelling? Are they with you for the ride?

We are fortunate enough that a small group in LA is putting on a rough cut focus group for us later in the year. And we are doubly lucky in that the audience (hopefully) will be made up of people who don’t know us. We did this in the example I mentioned above too. We asked friends to send us people who don’t know us. People who have no interest in our success, so will hopefully let us know if we just wasted their time. Again, critical to the process, I think.

I encourage everyone to do the same. In fact, I ‘m brainstorming ways to create some safe review processes through NEW BREED.

Let’s all make better movies.

Sorry it’s been a couple of weeks, but editing, client work, and wedding plans have eaten up my life. This is part two of a small series I’m doing on how we’re experimenting with WordPress as a platform for managing our whole storyworld. In part 1, I talked about data types, or custom post types, as well as the UI for creating those. I went on to discuss some of the fields each post type would have assigned to it, and how they would help the functionality of those fields.

As I said in part 1, this is not a tutorial so much as us sharing our process in real time. So here I’m going to show you a mistake.

Building the Relationships in our Data

We’re going to start here with Data Relationships. There are any number of ways to do this, but in keeping with our goals of leveraging as much existing code as possible, we searched for WordPress plugins we might use. And we came up with Related by Matthias Siegel. This plugin allows you to manually relate posts to the current post you are editing.

Plugins Menu

When I got Matthias’ plugin, it only had the ability to relate posts to other posts. Obviously, since we are creating all kinds of other content types, this wouldn’t be enough. So I altered the plugin to give it the ability to relate a post of any content type to a post of any other content type. The whole point of this is that if we now have  a content type called “Short Story,” and another called “Short Film,” and both of those have the same character, we can now create a “Character” content type, and relate it to both the short story and the short film. This way, we can later query our data and report by character, say, and see all of the Transmedia elements a character shows up in.

So now, with my altered version of Matthias’ plugin installed, every post you edit of every content type  has this new section:

Related Plugin

That’s kind of cool. Nice. Simple. Explicit relationships.

D’Oh!

Okay, so once I got Matthias’ related plugin installed and altered, I made some relationships and was happy. Then I realized something bad. This plugin does not make bi-directional relationships. Meaning, when you relate a post on one edit screen, if you go to the related post’s edit screen, the first post is not related there! Wha??????? But nope, I took a peek under the hood and that is in fact how the data model is set up. Bummer. This renders this plugin useless for my needs. I was just about to set out altering it further, when I discovered another related posts plugin. This one was by someone named “Microkid.”

Microkid Related Plugin

Not only does Microkid’s plugin include bi-directional relationships, but it also handles custom post types out of the box, and has a more attractive interface to boot. When you install it, each post edit page adds this:

Microkid Related Posts

As you can see, the interface is very nice. It breaks up the custom content types and shows you how many of each is related to this post you’re working on now. There is a fancy little AJAX search box that allows you to look up posts by name, so it keeps things clean and organized. Nice little plugin. And once again, saves us the work of having to write it ourselves. And the lesson here is that I should have looked a little harder before I focused on the first one.

One thing to note about this plugin is that it has an options panel. And when you add new custom post types, you have to go to that panel and tell it you want to include them in the relatable types.

Microkid options

This options page also gives you the option of showing related posts automatically on your blog, or turning that off and placing them where you want with a widget. Since we’re not really using this for its intended purpose anyway, we turned it off.

Now that we have relationships among our data, what do we do with them? Good question. Well here’s one example besides THE LOST CHILDREN, where this might come in handy.

Neal Stephenson’s new venture is called “The Mongoliad.” This is a “digital novel.” You sign up for a subscription and get new installments every week. But it will also include other media, as well as user submitted content. They have a wikipedia type thing where users can go contribute to the world. And they say if you write something great, it might even make it into Canon. I like this idea, It’s inherently Transmedia. I think it actually has a decent business model about it too.

I don’t know what their back-end is, but it looks like something common. The “‘pedia” has “tags” just like WordPress, or typepad, etc. But the system I am developing here would pretty perfectly serve their needs. If you go to the “stories” section, you will see they have things called “Content” and “Illustration.” Those are content types. Relationships can be made and so you can sort of generate your own “wikipedia,” or world dictionary, automatically.

And I like this idea. Whether you’re in a world created by SABI, or one created for Hotwheels, I like the idea of spending hours thumbing through a world’s dictionary, then dipping into a story linked off of a certain character bio, sinking into that story for a while, then coming back up to the “dictionary,” thumbing through some more. Or getting into one story, then finding a link to another interesting character and following that. Like, imagine going through the “Fringe” world, then deciding to go off and watch or read some stories about Walter’s past at Harvard. I kind of dig this. And again…is there a business model there? Just selling subscriptions to the world of the story? Low cost. Levels of access and access from anywhere, because you were smart enough to document your world with an online tool like WordPress? Again, as indie folks looking for the edge, I think this stuff is worth really thinking about.

Though, as the Romans would say: “nihil sub sole novum.” In Andrea’s post on interactivity, I remembered a “novel” from the 80s, written like a dictionary. And beautiful, moving, and subtle.

What I also like about this “dictionary” road, is that it doesn’t have to reduce the quality of any one piece. If a video game is not right for your world, then for God’s sake, don’t make a video game. But I see nothing wrong with cross-linking between, say HEART OF NOW, and a short film about some other part of Amber’s life made by another SABI director. And I think that can be done without violating the integrity of that world.

This is going to be basically a four part series on how I am going to use WordPress to manage the storyworld of our project THE LOST CHILDREN. I’m hoping to deliver these parts about once a week. Might be a little off, since things with the film are very busy, but in general, I am trying to document what we’re actually doing for the film as we go, so…

Organizing Our Data

The first thing I need to say is I am no expert on Transmedia or ARGs or anything like that. There are many other people who are. So this post is not meant as me preaching The Truth down from on high. This post is meant as an exploration of what I am working on now, in the hopes that it sparks some others’ imaginations. In the interest of us all learning, I’m simply sharing the process we’re going through right now.

The second thing I need to say is that this is not a tutorial, and not something that just anyone can do. I’m actually writing some software for this, and the things I’m talking about here will require more custom software to deliver to users. Eventually, if this works, I will likely write a set of WP plugins to simplify this process and make it something anyone can use. But for now, I believe that ideas are what count, and I think many people will be able to understand the ideas here and maybe contribute some of their own.

Bad Diagram of Data Relationships

The goal here is to see if we can use WordPress as a place to maintain our entire storyworld, and then feed that storyworld out to our various platforms; Tweets, Text Messages, Phone Calls, Location-based content, blogs, etc. The benefit here is that all of our data is in one place, it can be queried, analyzed, related, tagged with metadata, etc. Another benefit is that we are using a good deal of free tools.

What we want to end up with here, is a matrix of our related data, so we can easily know which characters are involved in a which storylines, campaigns, etc., or all of the platforms a certain character is involved in, etc.

There are some various groups out there writing Transmedia software systems right now, with the idea of licensing the technology. I’m sure these systems are far, far superior to what I’m doing. But another goal here is to encourage the lowest of low budget storytellers to think about these things, and know that you too can do them to some degree. Don’t be daunted by your lack of budget. Yes, I have software skills that save me money on a number of these things, but I am also using a lot of free software. Essentially, if you don’t count my time, and say hosting costs and the cost of asset creation, I am spending $0 on this.

I wrote a previous post about how to use WordPress to feed data to your mobile apps. In a sense, this is a follow-up to that post. Or more accurately, it is a prelude to that post. In part 3 of this series, I will loop back around to that JSON post and show you how it ties in with these.

WordPress 3.0

Many of you know WordPress as blog software. In recent times, it has grown in popularity to be more like CMS software. In reality, there is no difference between the two, it’s all just organizing data. But WP has added more and more features that can make it useful for far more than just your blog.

In 3.0 WP introduced a couple of very important concepts. The first concept is the Custom Post Type. This means in addition to “Posts” and “Pages” you can now create “Books,” “Songs,” “Dogs.” “Cats,” whatever you want.

The second concept is that of Custom Taxonomies. A taxonomy is just a big word for categorization(which I guess is a bigger word), it’s just a way to group stuff. WordPress comes out of the box with “Categories.” Now you can create a taxonomy called: “Buzzwords,” and then tag your content with Buzzword->Transmedia. That means you can now query your content and look for all of the content that tagged with the “Buzzword,” “Transmedia.” Make sense?

What I’m Using

1. WordPress 3.0. This is the newest version of the software and you probably should be on this anyway.
2. 2 Plugins. So far, I have been doing what I’m doing with available plugins. Sort of. In a couple of cases, I made changes to those plugins for what I needed. But generally, I submit those changes back to the creators and they generally include the changes in their next release.
   1. The First Plugin is Custom Post Type UI by WebDevStudios – allows you to have an admin interface for managing custom post types, then puts those in your admin menu on the left hand side of the Dashboard.
   2. The next one is Related by Matthias Siegel – allows you to manually relate posts to the current post you are editing. I altered it to call up all post types. Have not submitted this back to creator yet, but will do so probably this week.

Plugins Menu With Plugins Highlighted

I also make liberal use of what WordPress already comes with: The ability to add custom fields to a post, the ability to add media to a post, like images. This is all built in, saving us untold numbers of hours writing it ourselves.

Data is just Data

So what do we mean by data? A character is data in your storyworld. Their backstory, upbringing, photos, relationships, etc. Locations are data. A storyline is data. All of your content is data. The thing you have to understand is data is just data. A “post” post type is the same thing as a “page” post type as the same thing as a “character” post type, as a “text message” post type. These are all just buckets with different names.

So here is the content breakdown I’m working with for THE LOST CHILDREN:

Post Types available with WordPress install:

1. Post – Main Site
2. Page – Main Site

These are the types that come with every WordPress install. So I am allowing these to populate the main site: http://www.thelostchildrenmovie.com. Simple enough. Along with the built in Categories, this allows me to serve up content just like any other WordPress site.

Custom Content Types:

So once we’ve installed the Custom Post Type UI plugin, the left hand nav of the admin screen will have a new option for managing Custom Post Types. It’s at the very bottom. When you click add, you come to a screen for creating Custom Post Types.

Create Storylines Custom Post Type

As you can see on this screen, we are able to determine which standard post fields are available to this new post type. I usually just add them all. You never know when you might need something. You can also choose to mark a custom post type as “hierarchical.” This means that these post types can have parent post types and child post types. This too might come in very handy. So I mark it as true.

Bottom Half of Create Post Type

Here are the Custom Post Types we’re starting with for THE LOST CHILDREN, along with some of the custom fields that affect their functionality.

1. Storyline
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: StartDate
   4. CUSTOM FIELD: EndDate
2. Character
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( for the character’s name )
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
3. Shadowman – We have a character in THE LOST CHILDREN called a Shadowman. No one knows how many of these there are and they can pop up at almost any time. Our first ARG will be based on these guys. The idea will be that they can be scattered around a city, and you go find them, and figure out what they really are. So I wanted to create a type that represents a character that may not really have a name or an identity of his own, but be available when we need him any number of times.
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: Latitude
   4. CUSTOM FIELD: Longitude – These fields make it possible for us to place this character on a map for location-based stuff.
4. Short Film – We’re assuming in our case, that any short films will be online, so we will give them a URL.
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: URL
   4. CUSTOM FIELD: StartDate
   5. CUSTOM FIELD: EndDate
5. Text Message
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( maybe for the subject field? )
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: From
6. Phone Call (A phone call you receive in an ARG, say)
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: URL – Perhaps to the audio file?
   4. CUSTOM FIELD: Phone Number
7. External Blog – In THE LOST CHILDREN, some characters keep outside blogs on the web
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title ( for the title of the external blog )
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: External URL
8. Talisman – in our ARG, you can find certain talismans which help you discover, fight off, subdue and interrogate the Shadowmen for information
   1. BUILT IN FIELD: Title
   2. BUILT IN FIELD: Body
   3. CUSTOM FIELD: Latitude
   4. CUSTOM FIELD: Longitude – Make it possible to place this object on a map for location-based stuff.

Left Admin Nav

So once you have created these custom post types, you’ll start to see them show up in the left hand admin nav. You can see the highlighted “Storylines” type in the image over there.

So, I’m still not sure if we are actually going with the idea of a “Storyline,” but it demonstrates a couple of things you can do with WordPress. Another word for this might be a “Campaign?” But I think the central idea is that it is a piece of content designed to last over a certain period of time. So I go to add new.

The Hector & Celia ARG

So here I create a storyline called “Hector & Celia.” The ARG we’re creating is about a young man and his sister, who are abducted by the Shadowmen. In the ARG, you will receive messages from Hector, you will chase down Shadowmen at actual physical locations, snap photos of them( through Augmented Reality ), gather talimans to fight them, interrogate them for info, and hopefully find Hector & Celia before it’s too late.

So this entry simply defines that particular storyline.

Create or Edit a Storyline

As I said above, a storyline will have a start date and an end date. WordPress posts already come with a publish date, meaning, you can set something to go live at a certain future date. But there is no concept of an end date. And if we’re doing a “storyline” or a “campaign” we want that. So I am using the Custom Fields capability available to every WordPress post type:

Custom Fields for Storyline Start and End Dates

Okay there’ s a lot of information here. So I think I will cut off part 1 at this point. In part 2, I will pick up with creating other content types and relating them all to one another. In part 3, I will show how we are going to actually send this data out into our Transmedia elements. And I think in part 4, I will start to look at metrics and gathering user responses.

As I said at the top, this is an ongoing work in progress, what I am trying right now for my film’s launch in 2011. So I welcome any and all dialog.