#campfirenyc

Yay, StoryForward Podcast is back with a new episode for 2017!

If you follow this Tumblr, then you’ve probably seen me post a bunch about Resistance Radio, the amazing story-driven campaign for Amazon Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle, produced by my friends and former employers at Campfire. 

If you’ve been digging Campfire’s work, then you’ll definitely want to listen to this latest episode of the excellent StoryForward Podcast. In it, host and renowned experience designer Steve Peters chats with Campfire’s Creative Director Steve Coulson, who shares some exclusive, behind-the-scenes insights into the creative process that brought this project to life (including some details about a couple of secret, hidden goodies that audiences haven’t discovered yet.)

The Man in the High Castle: Storyworld Artifacts from Amazon Prime Video

This week I showed my Transmedia Writing students the amazing “Resistance Radio” campaign my friends at Campfire recently launched to promote the Amazon original series The Man in the High Castle (see previous posts)... so when I got home from class that night to find this small, mysterious package from Amazon lying on my doorstep, my heart skipped a beat.

Did I order something from Amazon last week? Wait a minute....

I opened the plain, brown package, revealing another cardboard box inside. Printed on it was a dire warning about “listening to subversive materials,” along with an ominous Third Reich eagle symbol and the date “12-01-62.″ I had entered The Man in the High Castle‘s storyworld—an alternate-history version of 1962, in which America’s been occupied for 17 years by the Nazis and Japanese, after the Axis powers had won World War II.

I’d seen other photos and unboxing videos of this package online, so I already knew what the box contained...but actually holding this rare, meticulously crafted artifact in my hands still made me giddy with excitement nonetheless—especially since the package’s warning made it clear that I was seeing something the Nazis didn’t want me to see.

Inside was a 7″ vinyl record, the sleeve of which identified it (in German and English) as a “Children’s Songbook for Character Building”...once I tipped the record out, though, I saw the “bootleg” recording it actually contained: “The End of the World” by Sharon Van Etten on Side A and “The House of the Rising Sun” by Sam Cohen on Side B—both verboten in this stark world in which rock-n-roll had never been invented. Wow. I instinctively looked over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being watched. All clear.

Also in the package were a needle kit, to make a homemade record player to listen to this subversive material, and what appeared to be a sheet of Nazi propaganda...with fine-print instructions at the bottom that were very familiar to me, thanks to years of reading Mad Magazine as a kid. (I must confess, this was where my “Mint-Condition Collector” side won out over my “Immersed in the Storyworld” side, so I didn’t carve up the record with the enclosed needle or fold a crease in the propaganda sheet. If you want to check these elements out yourself, though, you can listen to Side A here and Side B here, and see the fold-in message here.)

In addition to live performances of these newly reimagined songs by contemporary music stars at South by Southwest this week, this package also pointed the way toward resistanceradio.com, which has several hours of compelling audio content available—18 songs, plus running commentary on the state of the alt-world from Miss Evangeline, Bob Montez, and Jake Rumielin, “pirate DJ” characters that were created for this transmedia extension.

As part of its transmedia campaign promoting Amazon’s alt-history series The Man in the High Castle, Campfire released the amazing resistanceradio.com last week (see previous posts here).

Well, another really cool part of the campaign involves actual, physical artifacts from the show’s fictional storyworld, which also were mailed out to a select group of lucky bloggers last week — check out this great unboxing video from Steve Peters, of the excellent StoryForward podcast (and also No Mimes Media, creators of the “10-minute ARG” Mime Academy, which we study in my class.)

Deja View is back! I've posted before about this fantastic interactive short film, created for luxury car brand Infiniti by some of my friends and past collaborators at the agency Campfire. In it, YOU control the direction of the story, as the two on-screen protagonists call your cell phone and ask for your help.

To play, visit www.infinitidejaview.com/awards, and send an email to the address listed there--you'll then receive a password that will unlock the experience. 

One of the things that's always kinda bugged me about working on alternate reality games and other interactive, transmedia experiences for clients is that they usually run for a specific, limited amount of time--typically three to four months, in my experience--and then they're gone. After that, there are usually case study videos, which can at least give you an idea of what the experience was about, but there's really no way to go back and re-live that experience, or even peruse the original websites in context. Like those monks who create beautiful mandalas with colored sand, only to sweep them away when they're done, I try to be zen about it...but sometimes I can't help but feel a bit sad when a whole beautiful storyworld just goes away.