Groundbreaking Transmedia Project Built Around The Audience' Social Activities

The Parasites Multiverse An Open-Source Transmedia Project

by Robert Pratten, Zen Films www.zenfilms.com

contents • What is Transmedia?

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• The Parasites Multiverse – – – – –

Synopsis Transmedia elements Parallel universes Web-series with audience participation Game architecture & transmedia relationships

• Engaging The Audience Across Multiple Platforms – – –

Designing Parasites around social activities Expectations of audience participation Managing complexity with the Klatcher Unified Transmedia Platform

• Revenue Model – –

Content goes FREE but there’s charges for utility, convenience, personalisation & merchandise How will a “free” revenue model work?

• Problems Anticipated • Reasons to Anticipate Success

About “transmedia”

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• Storytelling across multiple forms of media with each medium making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the story • Complex fictional worlds that can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories • Allows multiple entry points through the different media • The vast story creates gaps that encourages fans to create their own stories to fill the gaps • Henry Jenkins: “has so far worked best either in independent projects where the same artist shapes the story across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or co-creation) ”

Transmedia: cross-media & crossplatform

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Parasites Multiverse: core Synopsis

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• Set in a near-future dystopia, contagious flesh-eating parasites fatally convert human cells into metal. The slow parasitic assimilation of the human body induces alternate waves of pleasurable hallucinations and frightening paranoia. • Some, at the insistence of the Government, have chosen to embrace the nanoscopic predator; others have rejected it and live as anarcho-Buddhists outside the cities

The Parasites multiverse

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Parasites’ transmedia elements

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• Open-source storyworld: Creative Commons+ allowing free copying, sharing & remixing for non-commercial use • Feature film with live interactive screenings – – –

Results of live screenings impact online gameplay Cellphone voting on alternative endings Screening events are real-world meet-ups/social events for friends met online

• Online game: – –

Combination of strategy, role-play, & casual games with different levels of complexity and participation to suit the time-availability and motivation of a wide range of potential audience Voting at screenings affects game & player progress (screenings & voting matters!)

• Web series created by feature film team and audience using rushes and additional digital assets provided by feature film & audience creators • Creative community contributing content (fan fiction, audio, video, graphics) , feedback, discussion, locations, characters etc. • Online marketplace: $ to incentivize participation

A Parallel Universe

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“Official” storyline with multiple opportunities for digression, personalisation & contribution

“Official” Feature Project

Core Story World

Benefits: • Audience engagement throughout project • Build awareness from Day #1 • Lower cost, better quality input & feedback

Scripts

Storyboards

Poster Designs

DVD Designs

Graphic Designs

Costume Designs

Community Projects

Benefits: • Contribute something bigger to portfolio • Re-purpose or create something original • Use of professional digital assets • Online marketplace ($ incentive) • Career builder

Etc.

Multiple cross-fertilization

Audience-participated web series (1 of 2)

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• Web Series is multi-threaded, multi-media – Project produces 30 webisodes that re-purpose the feature film content & unused media (e.g. “delete scenes”) – Additional webisodes to explore characters, lore, backstory – Audience free to branch off at each webisode with its own storyline (alternative universes) – Selected rushes (dailies) made available for re-editing and re-use – Audience free to add their own content to webisode or modify our “official” assets – Branded content has potential to be based on location, device or channel (e.g. mobile network-dependent)

Audience-participated web series (2 of 2)

“Official” Storyline

Webisode 1

Webisode 2

Webisode 3

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….

Webisode 30

Webisode 1.5

Alt Storyline A

Webisode 2c

Alt Storyline B

Webisode 3c Additional Webisodes

Non-Linear Content

User-Generated Content

-Video - Graphics - Audio - Machinima

Branded Content

-Location dependent? - Device dependent? - Operator dependent?

Parasites game

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•

Draws from and contributes to the Parasites storyworld

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Provides different levels of complexity and participation to suit the time-availability and motivation of a wide range of potential audience

•

Audience falls into 3 categories: –

Gamers: those most active in the game

–

Players: those recruited to play games-within-games (themed problem solvers and causal games)

–

Observers: those who get pleasure (excitement) from seeing progress unfold

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Provides a strategic game that motivates players to win, explore, build relationships

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Allows socializing & collaboration among players

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Encourage viral spread of the game by offering increased points/additional webisodes etc. for recruitment

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Game progress influences the outcome of a screening and live voting at a screening feeds back into the game and affects game progress; influences availability of new assets (permissions)

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Allows personalization: customized assets (clips, audio, graphics) and "objects" (e.g. tools, weapons, cars, dwellings etc.) to be created by the community

•

Allows custom objects to be traded (swapped and sold).

Parasites game architecture

Game Logic/AI

• Casual (2D) • Social RPG/Strategy (2D) • MMORPG (3D)

GAMES

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Parasites game content & signaling (1 of 2)

GAMES

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Parasites game content & signaling (2 of 2)

UG video & machinima

results recruitment GAMES

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Game story

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• Game story starts 500 years after end of feature film –

this allows the game to be more futuristic and the feature film to have a lower budget (because costumes, props and locations can be more contemporary)

• Global warming has turned much of the UK into forest or is under water with only the wealthiest cities able to afford the continual cleaning and deforestation • The cities are gleaming wonderlands of skyscrapers that are ruthlessly ruled by a governing dictatorship that lives in the Capital. • Governing elite spy on the population with millions of cameras and tracking everyone’s whereabouts and life history from cradle to grave on national databases. People in cities live like docile animals, taught to conform and beaten into submission • The prison population has soared due to psychometric testing of children age 7to identify possible criminal traits and tendencies. Many tower blocks on the edge of the city have been turned into borstal-blocks or feral “kid cities” • Society segmented into four basic Sects (next slide…)

Game Sects

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• Games is divided into four societal Sects: – Kings - a non-elected ruling elite (government) who create the laws (and enforce them) for those living in the cities – Dark Dharma - anarcho-Buddhists living outside the cities. Masters of Tai Chi, pacifist and reject modern technology and the law of the Kings – PME - "ParaMachinErotica" - those addicted to the hallucinations caused by the parasitic infection. They fetishize & worship technology. Social outcasts that live on the lower floors and on the boarders of urban and rural living – Extremist - thrill-seekers/adrenaline junkies hooked on sports like rock climbing, base-jumping etc. These guys live in the tower blocks at various levels

Gameplay goal

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• Goal is to achieve an enlightened, balanced life before death • Missions (and hence conflicts) are based on Sect • Gamers start the game with full life energy and slowly grow old and die as the game progresses. This create a "ticking clock" for each player. As they age they lose mental capacity and physical agility • Progress in the game can slow or reverse the onset of death • Gamer must decide optimal time to die but suicide is not allowed • At death, the gamer’s character is reincarnated or sent to hell – depending on the character’s karma • Karma is calculated from positive and negative actions in the game: search for truth, battles, success in missions, compassion, dedication

GamePLAY -to-media integration

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• Counter-Time Dependency Event Matching Machines (CTDEMM) – or “RevKars” as they are more popularly known - are time-travel devices that can affect the past and hence rewrite the future. People and things can't travel back in time but these machines use nonparametric regression analysis to identify the smallest possible event to change which will have the desired effect in the present (think chaos theory and the butterfly flapping its wings) • Gamers use RevKars to affect the movie, web series, screenings & access to assets • Live screenings are affected by Sect members physically present and the collective balance of their karma at time of screening • Actions (voting) at live events impact the present and hence effects ripple through into the future (e.g. the game progress)

Engaging the Audience

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• Designed to stimulate & provoke: – social activities – debate about role of politics, technology, art & spirituality – feature film premise is “modern life is rubbish”

• Participation is incentivized • Creative Commons+, Web Series, Live Screenings & Game encourages competition, cooperation, collaboration

PARASITES IS Built Around Social Activities

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Forrester's Social Technographics Ladder of Participation

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Audience Participation assumptions

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• 90% audience will be passive and want to be led • 9% audience seeking low-effort participation • 1% hardcore • Participants seek guidance, recognition & reward • Multiple paths and non-consensus eases pain of community management & lowers barrier to participation

Why Participate? • Kudos – Demonstrate creative flair – Demonstrate intellect

• Immortality – lasting evidence of life on earth

• Belonging • Reward – sales and job opportunities

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PARASITES MANIFESTO: GOALS

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#1: To create an open-source (transmedia) storyworld that belongs to everyone #2: To help those who contribute find what they need in life: recognition, reward (emotional, financial), friendship #3: To pay back the financial investors, plus an acceptable return, then use the money that's left to have the biggest wrap party(ies) in history with simultaneous drinking and live linkups in five continents #4: To find a successful (i.e. profitable, repeatable) business model for filmmakers and those who contribute to their work

PARASITES MANIFESTO: RULES & GUIDELINES

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#1: There is no absolute truth, only the search for truth. Multiple explanations and stories can exist within the same world. You don't have to ask permission to create a new character, a new location or a new story and you can build on other people's ideas without permission. There's no right answers, only answers that might take us more quickly to a version of a truth #2: Lurking, reading, watching is active participation and we thank you. Linking, digging, forwarding and recommending is participating too and comes with increased good karma. Commenting, collaborating, creating is the highest endorsement you can give us and we hope you'll get a creative high... but we can't promise nirvana #3: If you create something for Parasites we hope you'll give it away for free. But if you want to sell it, it must only be sold on our marketplace where we'll take a commission to help repay the project #4: Less is more. Try to focus your thoughts, your words, your work and your creative energy you will have a bigger impact and it's respectful of other people's time #5: Don't be a dickhead. While we'll try hard not to censor, if you post something to a website we control that's racist or nasty in other ways, it's gonna get pulled. Only give constructive, specific criticism if you have to - and after re-reading Rule #1 - but better is to show how you think it should be done. Be considerate of other people's feelings - you'll find the love will be returned to you (The Beatles: “the love you take is equal to the love you make”)

Our transmedia participation model

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When ATTENTION & REPUTATION matters

Collaborators

Increasing engagement Contributors

Critics

Multiple Audiences

Advocates

Ignorers Referrers Lurkers

Transmedia complexity

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UNIFIED Transmedia technology platform

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Klatcher simplifies the complexity

Multiple Audiences

Multiple Media

Multiple Platforms

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Klatcher: technology partner

Unified Transmedia Platform Publishing

Collaboration

Distribution

Content Mgmt

Measurement

Marketplace

Social Media (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Typepad) Internet

Mobile

Events

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Klatcher management

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• Johannes Bhakdi (CEO) – 8 years professional experience in international marketing & media innovation. – strategy director at S&F Group, CMO at eChinaCash, Executive Director at BBDO. – clients: Electrolux, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Sinopec, BMW, Siemens and others. – loves publishing, creativity, scalability, efficiency and people • Robert Kunze (CTO) – 4 year track record in strategic software and system design, coding (bleeding edge web technologies) – consultant and project manager for technology developers, co-founder of formyband.com – clients: Government, Mobizcorp, local e-commerce companies – loves artificial worlds, high tech furniture, hates bugs

Revenue Model

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• CONTENT is FREE but charge for utility, convenience, personalisation & merchandise • Movie & web series FREE to watch and play online & download • Games FREE to play • Content FREE to distribute, contribute & re-purpose • REVENUE from multiple sources: – – – – – – – – – –

$ sponsorship (Parasites as branded content) $ voluntary donations (seeking to use VODO) $ in-game revenues (sale of digital assets) $ home DVD & pay-to-view downloads $ rushes/dailies on DVD & external drive $ merchandise $ commission from marketplace $ vanity release (put yourself in the movie) $ commission on live event $ foreign-language sales of feature film to TV, DVD, OnDemand

How Can free work? (1 of 2)

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1ST ANSWER: It’s an imperfect market

Minority: - active experience - time-rich, cash-poor - influencers

Creators

$ Potential Audience

Majority: - passive experience - cash-rich, time-poor - followers

Trade participation for free content

Trade cash for convenience, consumption, impulse

How can free work? (2 of 2)

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2nd ANSWER: FREE and Open-Source Maximizes Spread Audience Sees Movie or Webisode

Awareness

My kind of movie?

attitude towards movie

emotional response

consumer funnel

Consideration Preference

love the movie

Buying intention Purchase

Fan

share/remix

Loyalty Advocacy

movie creation

Problems Anticipated

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• It’s easy to say “create a transmedia story” but is anyone listening? – possible to create lots of media and opportunities for participation for very little gain

• Project still needs hooks to peek audience interest; else it’s another movie looking for an audience – mainstream media and “old world” values still play important roll in signaling “worthiness” of the project (cast, genre, director, sponsors) – how many people in your social network are really interested in the genre, the story or participating in your project?

WHY PARASITES WILL SUCCEED? • OPEN • AUTHENTIC • AUDACIOUS • PROVOCATIVE • IMPORTANT TO THE INDUSTY • DESIGNED AROUND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

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Any Questions?

Robert Pratten Producer/Writer/Director www.zenfilms.com [email protected] www.twitter.com/ZenFilms www.parasitesmultiverse.com www.parasitesmultiverse.com

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