Interview with Kissinger Twins, winners of Webby Awards 2013 in the category of the best use of interactive video, for their transmedia project "The Trip"

"The Trip" is a transmedia project consisting of movie, documentary and archive mix together with digital technology and music.  The result is really surprising . 

The story is inspired by the real life event. 

To see the project, click on http://www.jacktorrancetrip.com/

1. Who are Kissinger Twins ? Could you tell me few words about you and your company? 

Kissinger Twins are Dawid and Kasia. Dawid complicates and Kasia simplifies things. 
(http://www.kissingertwins.com/)

2. "The Trip" tells a story of "The Man who took America to the Moon". 

It is based on the gossip that the first fly to the moon was actualy a fake event. Why did you choose this subject? 

We didn't choose this subject This subject chose us. We met this guy last year, he told us his story and then we decided to make a project based on it.

3. Are there any connections between your hero Jack Torrance and a fictional hero that got the same name from the novel "The Shining" of Stephen King? 

We decided not to reveal his details, instead of it use the fictions name. Jack Torrance was a writer, in his life the line between fiction and truth was totally blurred. 

Isn't it the same with present day world created by media?

4."The Trip" is a coproduction between your company and Unit9 with music of Smolik. How the idea of this project was born? 

Everything started in January 2011 when Andrzej asked us and UNIT9 to make an in interactive music video to his track 'Forget Me Not' (www.forgetmenot.tv).

It was an obvious choice to use his music as soundtrack to 'The Trip'. His music has got great 'cinematic' atmosphere. 

5. "The Trip" is an interactive fiction or more complex transmedia project? What platforms do you use? 

It is much more complex. You can WATCH, INTERACT and LISTEN TO THE TRIP.

It is a 10 minute short film, an interactive one, a concept album released on Vinyl, CD and in digital format, the VHS tape and finally large scale photo series.

6. Hard question: what was your business model? 

There was no business model with this project. It was just a totally experimental piece.

7. What does it feel like to win Webby Awards 2013 in the category of the best use of interactive video? 

It is nice to win awards.

8. What are your future projects? 

It is an erotic film. Revenge of Bee Girl. Emmanuelle meets Dirty Harry.

You can learn more about Kissinger Twins on  http://www.kissingertwins.com/

Moreover you can meet them during Filmteractive in Poland (25-26 September)  www.filmteractive.eu 

Gothic cathedral in Strasbourg - star of the transmedia project "The Builders' challenge"

3D film movie "The Builder's Challenge"

Do you want to travel to the Middle Ages, discover the mystery of the Strasbourg cathedral and its builders, then put yourself in the shoes of the modern architects and build the second tower? 

If you said yes, go and see  "The Builder's Challenge" – an English version is available from May 2013.  Click here to watch the web-documentary. 

This transmedia project is developed on 4 platforms: 3D film, a web-documentary, a mobile app and a media library.

3D film, directed by Marc Jampolsky and produced by SEPPIA, reveals the secrets of the cathedral and its master builders. 

Transmedia part was developed by Bigger than Fiction and Julien Aubert.

"Tower Buider" web-documentary

"Tower Builder" a web-documentary "built up like a video game" , immerses you in today’s world and challenges you: could you build the second tower?  

You get to meet experts, have access to various documents including the archives of the Museum Oeuvre Notre-Dame and unveil additional components to build your tower.

Mobile app is an interactive tour guide that offers you an exceptional visit of the cathedral.  
Moreover, mini-games are integrated into the app and if you solve tasks -you unblock more components for the web-documentary.

I'd like to know more about this project, so I interviewed Edouard Gasnier, Associate Executive Director of Bigger Than Fiction.

Edouard Gasnier, Bigger Than Fiction

 Interview with Edouard Gasnier, Associate Executive Director of Bigger Than Fiction.

Excerpts:

Could you describe in few words the project "The Builders' challenge"?

"The Builders' challenge" is a transmedia project about the Strasburg cathedral in France, which was built through centuries. 3D movie was broadcast on ARTE on December 2012. The project consists of 3 additional media platforms: a docu-game, a mobile app and a media library.

The transmedia part was conceived by Julian Aubert and developed by Bigger than Fiction.  Did you integrate the transmedia part from the beginning of the project?

Not exactly. The project began with the 3D movie, produced by the Strasbourg producer SEPPIA.

After working one year on the movie, SEPPIA and ARTE wanted to extend the project to transmedia.  This is the reason why they came to us, Bigger than Fiction, to discussed the transmedia design and the “story architecture” of the whole project.

How much time did it take to conceive the transmedia part?

We began in July 2012 and we finished in December 2012, so it took us about six months. It was very quick and required a lot of work.

Mobile App

You use QR codes and  NFC codes technology on mobile phone application. Could you describe  this  application in details?

The application is a tour guide that helps to visit the Cathedral in Strasbourg and uses some content from the TV documentary. You can download the application thanks to NFC  in the  Cathedral or in the Tourist office of Strasbourg. You can have access to the content inside the Cathedral in Strasbourg, and in the Museum of the Notre Dame.

We wanted to use this technology in order to improve the way people visit the cathedral. Of course the application is free.

Did your game "Tower builder" attracted mainly architects or broader  audience?

The "Tower builder" is a videogame inside the web documentary. It is aimed at a very large audience although our targets were mainly people from Strasbourg and the Alsace region. 

Other targets: people who are interested in history, property, technology, e-tourism and serious games. We targeted a lot of communities on the web.

Tower Builder 

You organized a competition to design the best second tower. How many projects did you receive?

In March 2013 we had received about 1 400 towers, that is in 3 month time.

What was the prize to win?

Samsung Galaxy mobile phones (thanks to Orange) and a weekend in Strasbourg (thanks to the Tourist office in Strasbourg).

Could you give me some more statistics about this project?

The movie itself was a second best audience broadcast on ARTE on Saturday evening: 1,4 million viewers. The DVD was sold out already by December 2012. Our blog registered  78 000 views- the third most seen blog on the Arte platform. Web-documentary even today attracts around 3500 unique views per month. Very good numbers.

3D movie is a very expensive production, so is the development of the transmedia part. What was your business model?

Strasbourg producer SEPPIA obtained funds from the local institutions (city of Strasbourg, Alsace region) as well as from Germany, because "The Builders Challenge" works on both sides of the boarder (French and German). ARTE funded too. 

During the press conference, Cedric Bonin, head of SEPPIA, gave these numbers: budget of 1 M euros for the movie and 300 000 euros for the development of other devices (web-documentary, blog, mobile app, website, community management).

How do you feel after 6 months work?

We are glad because this project was successful. Arte is also very satisfied.

Moreover, the institutions from Strasbourg will give a second life to this project, because in two years there the cathedral will be 1000 year old. To them, our content is very good and they want to explore it and use it more and more.

What are your next plans?
A serious game is planed for the end of this year/beginning of the next year. We have a lot of development to do around the celebration of the 1000 years of the Cathedral. The movie will be broadcast once again on France 3 (FTV), and aired on the big screen the front of Cathedral during the summer together with light show.

We will take this project to a lot of contests and festivals in a category of gamified project, web documentary and transmedia.

Edouard Gasnier is associate executive director of Bigger Than Fiction. He was previously Community Manager, specialized in video games, and worked for Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation, but also high-tech brands and web services. He is now managing the relationship with communities in various transmedia project, which means that you may have a nice chat with him about webcomics, Alternate Reality Games, or TV shows.

Transmedia festival in Poland "Laboratory of Innovation", Warsaw, April 2013

Transmedia is everywhere. For the first time this year - in Festival de  Cannes ( in Cabinet of Curiosities -well, there is still some evangelization to do...). In Poland this trend is in an early phase of development.

  In April 2013 in Warsaw, together with Media Desk ( Joanna Wendorff and her great team), we presented to a Polish audience the bases of transmedia approach during the festival "Laboratory of Innovation". 
Well-known experts in transmedia: Alison Norrington, Michel Reilhac, Jean-Pierre Magro and Christophe Cluzel revealed the bases of multiplatform approach illustrated by numbers of practical cases. The Polish audience received it with a huge curiosity and interest. I'm sure that soon you will hear about Polish transmedia projects. You can count on me to show them to you.

On the second day I ran a workshop "Experiment Transmedia", a mix of theory and practical use of transmedia with creative methods integrated into it.

 I was nicely surprised by  a few things: the number of professionals taking part in it, their enthusiasm and curiosity, their great team working skills and  creativity. At the end of the day they conceived the bases of projects that could be presented to potential clients. 
I noticed also that Twitter and QR codes are still not used in Poland,  but it's only a matter of time. Eastern -European market is developing rapidly.

Birthright: the Palestinian - Israeli conflict presented as a transmedia romantic comedy

Birthright, Transmedia romantic comedy

Last year, during the festival Power to the Pixel I was intrigued by Birthright, the project of BoomGen Studios, pitched by Mahyad Tousi. 

They dare use the complicated and painful context of Palestinian - Israeli conflict and made a comedy out of it.  And they are right, as laughter is the most powerful weapon. In Poland, during the communist period, comic cabarets were the most wanted and watched shows. This year, the project was presented at the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels (Fipa) in France.  

Birthright  is a romantic comedy and political satire told through two different points of view: the film is about a shy Jewish-American kid Sam Raskin who follows the girl of his dreams on a free trip to Israel, only to get lost in Palestine, and a graphic novel showing a young Jewish - American girl who returns to Israel as pro-Palestinian peace activist.

Birthrights uses the following platforms: theater movie, interactive graphic novel for mobile/tablet (Tear Gas in the Morning), web, print experience.

 

Graphic novel Tear Gas in the Morning

The comical story untitled Tear Gas in the Morning was written by a writer and artist Katie Miranda and is  based entirely on her own personal experience. 

The ambition behind this project is "to explore other political conflicts through the lens of classical and contemporary love stories".

Interview with Mahyad Tousi, CEO and co-founder of BoomGen Studios

Mahyad Tousi

Birthright is a transmedia comedy that shows Jewish-Palestinian conflict - which is quite amazing as a mix. Why did you chose this form, quite politicaly incorrect?

The power of storytelling is in its ability to break through stereotypes and preconceptions and to reveal humanity even in the most absurd and tragic of circumstances. Taking a light-hearted approach to a heated political issue in this case helps to relieve manufactured tension and help the audience to connect with the characters. At the same time, the beautiful thing about this type of cross platform narrative design is that the story no longer needs to be defined by genre or format. Birthright is neither just comedy, nor just fiction. The motion picture layer of the transmedia property, however, is a fiction comedy. 

What kind of audience do you want to touch with Birthright?

We believe that the project will have a young international audience. What's interesting about having a motion picture, graphic novel application, and a game element is that you touch very distinct niches in each area. Having said that, we expect our core audience will be progressive 18-36 year olds, and leaning female.  

The story is declined on multiple platforms such as an interactive graphic novel, a mobile game, and a feature comedy. From which platform did you start the project?

Creatively it started with a film script penned by Ari Issler and Ben Snyder that came to us. We started working with Ben and Ari in further developing the script. Then we took a step back and asked ourselves what is at the core of this story? What truth are we hoping to tap into? We looked for and created other story layers that would further enhance that core message, the core truth.  

It's a long-term project. What are the phases of its development?

Graphic Novel, Game, Motion Picture. 

What is your business model? As you debuted the Tear Gas Teaser application in front of a live audience equipped with Samsung Galaxy tablets, I suppose it's your official partner, isn't it?

Samsung is not an official partner. The teaser is available for download through the google play store for any android device that has a screen resolution of 1280x800. 

The business model is simple. By no longer confining ourselves to the limitations of form, (i.e. book, tv, film, etc.), we create opportunities for a story to exist in multiple forms. In this way we tell bigger and better stories, and touch multiple niche markets and revenue opportunities for our investors. I call it sustainable storytelling.

What are the next steps?

We're working on the Graphic Novel and casting the film. 

More information about Birthright on website: http://boomgenstudios.com/birthright

The Tear Gas Teaser application: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boomgen.teargas 

 

The Spiral - European Transmedia Coproduction

I'd like to present to you one of the biggest European transmedia projects: "The Spiral".  This participative drama series was coproduced by 7 broadcasters, and a five-episode participative TV series was broadcast in September 2012 across Europe reaching more than 2,5M viewers. 

"The Spiral"  started with a burglary where six major works of art  from six different countries were stolen. Arturo, an enigmatic artist who heads an art community called The Warehouse was behind it.  The thieves invited everyone to search for the paintings, hidden deep in www.thespiral.eu. You could simply enjoy the thriller series on TV or experience the story through the game, the online community and the physical events.

Peter De Maegd, producer and story architect of "The Spiral", reveals how this gigantic project was born and the challenges he faced.

Interview with Peter De Maegd, story architect and producer of The Spiral

 

Peter de Maegd

Peter De Maegd is an independent film producer who focuses on the new opportunities of converging media. Over the last decade, Peter was involved in the production and marketing of over a dozen feature films. With his company Potemkino he focused on innovative projects and formats like "Where is Gary?", "Miss Homeless" and "Jean Wordt Vlaming". He also collaborated for a few years with Caviar Films. Peter gives lectures on storytelling for Converged media.

Excerpts:

How was the idea of "The Spiral" born?       

4 years ago, SVT (public broadcaster in Sweden) and VRT (public broadcaster in Belgium) teamed with the ambition to build an innovative participative story project and to work on a pana-European level. 

They brainstormed with other broadcasters and focused on two questions:

-What story theme pleased viewers across Europe? The response was crime.

-What setting brings together characters from different countries in a harmonious way ? The response was an artistic setting within Europe. 

That's how the concept was born: 6 artists from 6 countries living in the artistic community and stealing art.  

Concerning the participative part of the project, an audience was invited to recover the paintings by hunting for them. Additionally, some of the artists were killed during the process, so the series became a crime series.

The answers to these 2 simple questions enabled us to create the core of this project.

And I joined the project at this stage of development.

Thus the idea of coproduction was present  from the beginning of the project. How did you find other broadcasters? 

SVT and VRT brought three additional partners to the table. We needed a sixth broadcaster to make it work. And after a lot of legwork and lobbying, we got two more broadcasters who teamed up: TV3 in Denmark and ARTE for France & Germany. 

You were the story architect for "The Spiral". How did you develop the transmedia experience?

We already had a strong idea from the start which was to introduce Larping ("Live Action Role-Playing", a form of role-playing games where the participants physically act out their characters' actions). Then we started to analyze the project with the participation parameters. We decided to open the participation to a higher level of involvement, knowing that fewer users would be involved at the beginning. The Larping  was done by Martin Ericsson who also did “The truth of America" produced by SVT.

We asked ourselves : What would happen if the story on TV were real? How would that play out online and in reality? We went through the script noting a long list of things and after that we defined which elements we could develop, adding in the participation parameters in a way that would build a coherent storyworld in relation to the TV series. 

What other platforms did you use? 

www.thespiral.eu was our main platform. It was a point of entry into our story world and we had 140 000 visitors there. Another point of entry was the Warehouse community, which was only active online. Then we had a Twitter channel, Facebook groups such as TheSpiral EU and The Warehouse, games and the physical events. 

What was the audience participation? Could you give us some statistics?

We had 4 phases of our community growth. The first one involved building the online Warehouse community as it was a real community. That was done with about 40 selected and experienced LARP’ers. This stage wasn’t public.

In the second phase we started www.thespiral.eu. We announced this platform and encouraged our audience to consult the Warehouse community if they wanted to know more about it. At the same time we tested the challenges and games in the Warehouse community.  It generated 7000 participations.

In the third phase we launched a game on the 21st of August 2012 and we stole the painting.  We actually removed 6 paintings from 6 different museums and we organized press conferences.

In the game people could find additional information about "The Spiral" such as why there are 6 missing paintings, etc.

During the last phase we broadcast the series on TV. The TV series helped the online players to understand the plots in the game so they could be one step ahead.

Moreover, we followed the logic of reality so if a painting  was found by internet users in Gotland, it really appeared in this place.

One hard question that many producers face: What was your business model?

The game and multiplatform approach accounted  for almost 10% of the total funding  and was separated from the funding  for the TV production.

Business model of "The Spiral"

Concerning the investment per source, one third of the investments came from the broadcasters. However, since it was a coproduction, this participation could be higher and reach as much as 50%.

Another third came from partners such as the Dutch Film Fund, and the European Media Program (Interactive Works and Media Broadcast support).

The Media Interactive Works Fund was extremely important for us because it gave us necessary investments for the long phase of development for this project which lasted 2 years. Once Media Broadcast support came in, the broadcasters were convinced that this complex project was going into production because they knew how difficult it is to obtain this kind of support. The combination of these two funds permitted us to build a new financial model.

 A quarter of our funds came from the Belgium tax shelter and the remaining 8% came from our own investments and presales.

 

What did you learn from this experience?

The main lesson we learned from this project  was that we integrated the social networks too late in our communication strategy (starting in May 2012). We therefore missed out on many opportunities to communicate about the story.

From the beginning we wanted to build a story as it was real, with paintings that disappeared from the museums. So we thought that if we wanted to create a suspension of disbelief across multiple platforms, we should not communicate about the story and simply leave people free to explore it. In fact, as people want to believe, the only thing that can damage their suspension of disbelief is bad storytelling, bad acting and inconsistencies. 

If you could change something in this project, what it would be? 

First of all I would have started communicating about the project already during the development phase and use this opportunity to build momentum for the fiction story. 

Secondly, I believe we should have one person on board who represents the 7 broadcasters. Since we didn't have this person, each time we had a major discussion, I had to contact each broadcaster. This was a major weakness in our very complex organization. Now I know that when you have a coproduction you should have one team member from the broadcasters who represents all of the broadcasters. In this way you can communicate efficiently. Moreover, I was the only person who knew exactly all of the details regarding the project and that created a bottleneck effect at some points.

Where can we find "The Spiral" today? 

In France you can find it on Arte. And it will be released on DVD soon.  We will also upload the behind the scenes on our website.

We recently posted a 5 minutes case study video on  http://www.thespiraltheseries.com.  And we plan to upload the video of the presentation that I gave at Power to the Pixel (in October 2012) . 

What can I hope for you now ? What is your next challenge? 

The next challenge is pretty simple: to use the network and the know-how that I have acquired and to work towards new projects. Innovative projects such as Jean Saves Europa which is a participative documentary series based on Jean Becomes Flemish and of course we’re looking into a second season for The Spiral.

 I'm also working on a horror movie and we plan to do something very specific with it: to do a crowdfunding by selling some traps around which the story is built. You can follow the project on Facebook:  WELP project https://www.facebook.com/CUBthemovie?ref=ts&fref=ts