Today I present you another French Transmedia project: L@-KOLOK.com that will start in November 2012.
Its goal: to teach young people global issues (ecology, sustainable development, food waisting, etc.)
How: by using comedy, interaction and gaming
With participation of : the French Ministry of Education, the French Ministry of
Agriculture, ADEME (Agency for Clean Energy), Region Ile de France, Paris
City Hall and GEMA Prévention.
Interview with Alexandre Pierrin, co-founder of "Le Vent Tourne"
1. Could
you quickly tell us what L@-KOLOK.com is?
L@-Kolok.com
is a web series and transmedia program that raises awareness about global
issues like ecology, food wasting, etc. with three originalities: comedy,
interaction, and experts’ opinions.
The idea is
to target young people and to create special programs that enable them to
understand these topics using media that they are already familiar with and
that they like to use such as web series, board games, twitter and Facebook. The
concept of the interactive webserie was originally imagined by Lucie Poirot in
2008 and I joined the project in 2009. We quickly turned it into a transmedia
program without even knowing the word “transmedia”!
2. What
differentiates L@-KOLOK.com from other web series?
There are a
lot of differences.
Firstly, we
want to entertain youth in an intelligent way by giving a special message on
specific issues such as ecology, sustainable development, food wasting and
saving energy.
Secondly,
it's an interactive web series. There is a pause in the movie where you can
choose what option to take next. For instance, we can choose to listen to the
character we prefer, a sentence we like or choose the next move of a given
character. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for information or just to check if we
are really following what has been said. So interaction is the second
originality.
Thirdly, we
will add pedagogical content to the entertaining; in such a way to have a funny
aspect about these subjects. But at the same time we show videos of experts
talking seriously about these subjects.
La-Kolok is
a program for young people but also a tool for teachers or other people who
want to work with them on these kinds of subjects. You can find these expert opinions at the end
of each video under the name "Parole d'Expert".
If we look
at the program globally, we use the game as a tool on all platforms. In the
first season every episode has a goal that one must achieve. For example one
character (boy) must meet a girl and you have to help them. So the game is something that we integrated
into the web series but also by creating a board game called "Popote
Minute".
We have an
ARG game that is scheduled to come out in April 2013 and different events or
contests linked to their Facebook profiles. So the idea is to always use games
to convey information on ecological and sustainable subjects.
Humor and
gaming are the two elements that we use in order to be more appealing.
3. What
platforms do you use?
We use
Internet, ARG, Facebook, Twitter and iPad. We also plan to edit DVDs with
pedagogical frameworks dedicated to teachers, so that they can use L@-KOLOK.com
in classrooms by the end of 2013. We
have a coproduction with the Ministry of National Education (Ministre
d'Education National) on the expertise side. Thanks to it we hope to reach a
wide audience of teachers and professionals in France.
4. How
does the storytelling change according to the platform?
The main
platform we use for storytelling is the web series because that is where we can
see all of the characters who interact together in their flat.
Every
episode is independent because each is financed separately.
In this way
each episode can be seen and understood without having to watch previous
episodes.
Moreover, if
you want to have more one-to-one content on a character, you can go on it’s
Facebook and Twitter profiles. There, you will see short videos that will give
a more humoristic or intimate insight.
5. What
is your business model?
Our business
model has been quite complicated so far because we have different ways of
financing our programs.
Our project
is based on two structures: on one hand we have a production company "Le
Vent Tourne" working all the
transmedia subjects and the web. The second partner is the association "Le
Temps Presse" that develops the pedagogical tools and part of the webserie.
So we have
two partners working on the same project. Each of these partners is in a
position to look for different funding. For instance, the association is able
to obtain public funding from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of
Agriculture, ADEME (Agency for Clean Energy), Region Ile de France and Paris
City Hall. The production company enables us to contact the Ministry of
Education and insurance companies through GEMA Prévention.
In doing so,
we will be able to offer our audience 6 to 8 months of content, free of charge.
The second
way is that we want to sell the different tools outside the web series, such as
a board game, ARG. The ARG will be launched during the Sustainable Development
Week in April 2013. The organizers needed an animation for this event, so we
proposed our ARG. In the future, we would like to sell more tools like these.
Finally, as
I previously mentioned, by the end of 2013 we want to sell educational DVDs.
6. How
many episodes have you produced so far?
There are
already 2 pilot episodes on the web today and we are going to produce 4 or 5
episodes for the first season. We don't know if they will become a part of the
first season yet or not because we want to have much more interaction off the
screen. And, as mentioned before, each episode will be independent of the
previous one.
The format
is 15 to 20 minutes long, knowing that if you do only one track you can finish
it in10 minutes.
7. It's
too early to ask you for statistics...
We don’t
have statistics because we haven't communicated so far, but we have already
10,000 viewers. These pilot episodes have been on Internet for one year. We
presented them in different festivals. For example two years ago and last year
we were selected for a festival in La Rochelle, so many people viewed them. We
also have been selected for the Transmedia Immersive University's event “I love
Transmedia”
8. How
will you communicate about L@-KOLOK.com?
We have
different plans about our communication. Our strength is that we have a lot of
partners and each of these partners has different platforms, different media,
Facebook pages, etc. At each episode we
will be able to launch a new communication based on the media that our partners
have.
Moreover, we
can use events that our partners organize and their social networks by
inserting teasers and videos before the episode starts in order to already
establish a "base of fans".
9. What
is the next challenge for you?
The next
challenge for us is to launch this project, to finish the episodes and to maintain
the activity for at least 6 months because the program will start from November
2012 to April 2013 starting with the web series and ending with ARG.
