Transmedia Frontier

I recently saw Evan at a Film and Technology panel which I was on and he asked me about what got me into storytelling. 

I grew up in a storytelling family.  My father always told stories about the past and shot home movies of SF during the 1930s and the WW2 detention camps in the 1940s. His WW2 camp movies are the second home movie after the Zapruder film to be selected by the National Film Archive in the Library of Congress and he was interviewed by KQED about his experiences.

In the late 1970s, I began writing fiction (novel, short stories, and poetry, which I still do) with the SF Japantown Arts & Media (JAM) Writers Workshop. During my research for my Hiroshima novel, Steven Okazaki, an SFSU MFA student, asked to shoot a 5-minute class video of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors in the Bay Area,whom I was helping as a volunteer translator and organizer.  We helped Steve raise $150K for a one-hour PBS documentary "Survivors", which aired three times primetime and won the 1980 PBS Documentary of the Year Award. Steve has since been four-time Oscar-nominated and won in 1991 for "Years of Waiting". 

During the 1980s, I wrote two business books about Japan, which were produced for PBS and UK television:  

"Japan Dreaming" by Central Independent TV in London (Channel 1), based on my book "The Technopolis Strategy" (1986). 

"The Creative Spirit" (Kyoto scenes), a 4-hour PBS doc funded by IBM's Leadership Center, based on my book, "Created in Japan".

Since 1991, I've written 16 screenplays and someday plan to get a few into production. My experiences and background have led me to become a storyteller and entrepreneur.

To learn more or follow up with me head over to these links:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/statsuno/http://www.facebook.com/sheridan.tatsuno

Dreamscape Global: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dreamscape-Global/102391159821299https://twitter.com/SheridanTatsuno Silicon Valley Global Network: http://www.facebook.com/groups/109971182359978/

VR Sustainable Cities:https://www.facebook.com/pages/VR-Sustainable-Cities/1430285733935881E-commerce social venture: www.Hellene.gr

I’ve seen Sheridan Tatsuno around the Bay Area at, seemingly, every meetup there is to be had about media, entrepreneurialism, and film. He’s incredibly insightful and a great conversationalist. I recently went to see him speak on a panel about the convergence of Film and Technology and I asked him a few questions based on his unique position at the center of these industries.

How do you see the various forms of media we have interacting today and how do you think they will in the future?

VR and AR are the hot spots in filmmaking today in SF and LA, attracting $4 billion in the past few years in hardware, software and some content. JauntVR in Palo Alto recently raised $100 million, plus $65M from Disney, since all the Hollywood studios are planning VR films.  In a few years, when enough consumers use VR headsets, we'll see the rise of VR cinema, which will probably be monetized by advertising and shopping.  Like film, VR content will be a hit-driven business inentertainment, but much bigger for medical, scientific, business, and other professional fields.  VR tourism/learning and shopping will be a huge industry -- think VR Amazon on steroids where every place becomes an open VR shopping mall.

Marketing has moved from advertisement to "content". How does content enhance a brand? What are the benefits and pitfalls of content marketing?

People are tired of blatant ads; they prefer cool, fascinating, compelling stories around which products and services will be sold. More powerful story-centric and lesslame product placement.  The VR visit to the Syria refugee camp is a powerful example of "empathetic filmmaking". Today, if Steven Okazaki and I were to shoot our film "Survivors", we would immerse viewers in post-attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki among the devastation and dying, which would be 1000x more powerful than 2D film.

With so much content out there, it's hard to get your voice heard. How can you use transmedia to gain attention for you or your work?

As Steve Okazi and I learned making films in the 1980s, it's all about telling a powerful, compelling story in a creative way.  For instance, we used Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" with witnesses as our approach to telling the Hiroshima/Nagasaki story, which was incredibly powerful.  Even today, it upsets and moves me with the power of the images and survivors' testimonies.

What platforms or forms of media, current or emerging, are trendy and have potential? Which ones will fall away?

AR books are already taking in China.  The Agricultural Bank of China sold $200 million worth of AR books about "The Monkey King" in a few months at $10 per book,with free AR cartoons triggered in a smartphone.  Disney and other studios and publishers will probably copy China. I actually wrote an article about it called, “How will VR and AR Come of Age?” on LinkedIn.

Why is "immersion" such a hot topic? What is it about controlling the audience experience that seems so lucrative?

Immersion is all about immediate presence and empathy.  Besides caring about others, such as Syria refugees and Hiroshima survivors, immersion is just plain emotional and scary at times.  At JauntVR, I heard heavy footsteps and turned to see a huge T-Rex dinosaur's open mouth ready to take off my head -- a total shock! Once you see powerful VR, you'll never be able to go back to 2D filmmaking and see it the same again. 

The future of independent distribution, according to filmmakers and sellers alike, seems a bit overwhelming and clearly disrupts the current model of business.

Forbes featured an article which says, "Netflix will rip the heart out of Pre-Sale Film Financing." Pre-sale is traditionally how films get their initial funding in Hollywood. What is Netflix doing to ruin the standard for independent film distribution? Well, in becoming a worldwide distributor, the article says they will destroy the value of DVD and pay-TV rights to local distributors. Indie film producers will need to finance their projects with pre-sales to Netflix instead of to local markets. The article continues on its cynical note citing the ever popular refrain that movie theaters will need to step up their game with new experiences to outperform the rise of home theater entertainment systems.

As if to address the current trends in independent film financing, IndieWire published an article asking independent filmmakers from Sundance Next what their biggest challenges would be in this new digital age of distribution. Most of the filmmakers seem to agree that with professional level equipment becoming cheaper, the amount of content being created is skyrocketing. This makes it harder to distinguish yourself from the now much larger crowd. Being seen and acknowledged by critics and the public, then using that initial momentum to launch bigger projects is what fuels indie filmmakers to create new content. But in a sea of YouTube home videos and easy access to a plethora of VOD sites, filmmakers need to concentrate on their storytelling. As Sundance Next director Jeff Baena states, 

"A lot of people overuse digital and visual effects. They overcompensate on the technical side as opposed to just telling a story."

The creators of the indie horror film "Lyle" took on the growing challenges of the indie distribution market in a way that - at first glance - seems pretty drastic: they gave their film away online for free. What's the benefit of handing out your lovingly created content like free leaflets on a street corner? Well, they believe that building a fan following first will help their content stand out later. As Zachary Wigon says in his Tribeca article about entrepreneurial filmmaking, 

"Independent film is much more about building a critical mass of viewers than about trying to turn a profit. There's so much material in the marketplace, and so few buyers, that it isn't all that logical to approach independent filmmaking with an eye toward selling your film as the utmost goal." 

YouTube has grown and evolved since its inception in 2005. Only one year after releasing its beta test version, YouTube's potential encouraged the colossal internet company, Google, to purchase the new platform for 1.6 billion dollars. YouTube has become the world's dominant digital video distribution platform and its existence is a major part of our culture and the way we use the internet. 

As it has developed, YouTube is now more than just a place to share home videos. While cat videos and goofy viral hits like David After Dentist still permeate the tubes, original content has also flourished and the concept of producing premium content for the web has become an increasingly ubiquitous reality. In fact, many people now make their livelihood by making videos for YouTube as YouTube partners and full-time YouTubers. Whether it's hosting your videos as a portfolio on your channel, building a fan following by creating regular content for your subscribers, or using the platform to distribute your original content as a digital media studio, YouTube has become an indispensable tool to the independent creator.

YouTube distribution has changed the landscape of independently produced media consumption. With access to a worldwide community and powerful analytic tools provided by Google, YouTube is a place where independent producers can begin to grow a loyal fan base. With more accurate data on viewership than traditional rating systems like Nielsen, YouTube and Google offer companies and creators alike the opportunity to engage with consumers on a more personal level. Frederic Filloux from the Guardian details some of the ways which Google and other software are making big data available to small players: “Why Google will crush Nielsen”.

Additionally, premium content created exclusively for the internet is transforming platforms like YouTube from a space for releasing passion projects for exposure to a viable digital distribution network. Monetization of online content has become a business in and of itself and major companies are making their own exclusive content for the web. Warner Brothers launched their digital distribution studio with a web series on YouTube called “H+” in 2012, which set the standard for high-quality web content with its television level production and budget. In fact, producer for the show Jason Taylor told the LA times back when it came out, "We wanted to do it in a way that meant Web was not to be messed with."

Until about 2012, the word "web series" had an amateur connotation (H+ called itself a "digital series") and even today the web series genre is still underestimated. However, with more studios developing digital production departments, those who can prove themselves in the digital marketplace may be scooped up by these new divisions. This has happened recently with Lionsgate's acquisition of RocketJump, the independent internet studio created by famous YouTubers Freddie Wong and Brandon Laastch, and Legendary Pictures bringing Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist YouTube channel and Felicia Day's Geek & Sundry network under their banner, which made headlines in Variety magazine.

Can’t neglect a good soundscape when designing an immersive experience!

Medium.com has posted an article about the sound design for VR show casing the audio designer for Land’s End, Todd Baker. Read more about his work here: https://medium.com/@ustwogames/designing-sound-for-virtual-reality-a37a40e80463#.ihwq6fr54

The Mysterious Package Company brings transmedia storytelling to your mailbox with envelopes, parcels, packages and more for an immersive, analog game of mystery, intrigue, and suspense. It’s a members only club that sends participants, or the targets of those participants, correspondence through the mail with clues, cyphers, maps, and sundry items that only give you part of the story. 

Today the Independence Day: Resurgence trailer hit the internet and with it came the launch of the ARG website, War of 1996. 

“The site, set up as a "documentary"-style look at the War of 1996, gives background for the upcoming movie, and helps to bridge the nearly 20-year gap between the release of Independence Day and the release of its forthcoming sequel.”

- ComicBookMovie.com

With this kind of transmedia storytelling, 20th Century Fox’s bid to make this movie into a franchise will have more weight and continuity. A franchise stands on the world building its stories live in. The first movie alone stands by itself and wasn’t intended to be a continuing story. Expanding the story world by creating a timeline from then to now, Fox gives fans a bigger and more thorough experience than the movies can.

The price point and cumbersome amount of equipment necessary to engage in VR and AR experiences are finally starting to come down to a consumer level.

“Web series” has finally started to lose its low quality connotation and set itself as a viable and disruptive contender for Television. Their success will determine the future of narrative, episodic media creation and distribution.

Kevan Lee, from Buffer, the cross-platform social media posting, scheduling, and analytics app (I’ve used this great web app myslef to run my social media campaigns) has contributed a helpful infographic for developing a social media presence.

A quick way to turn your brand into a transmedia brand is through social media, and having a grasp of how you want your audience to interact with your brand is crucial nowadays.

The most cumbersome thing about VR and AR is the equipment. There’s a discomfort and a little more effort than feels warranted involved in just setting up what it takes to observe these experiences. I’m always interested in anything that pushes us towards more natural ways of engaging with these new media, such as the use of 4D effects to enhance the VR in The VOID.

I hope you didn’t throw this innocuous letter from the United States Postal Service away when it went out recently! I pulled this from my mailbox and nearly tossed it myself until I realized what was inside. Apparently, the USPS has a Holiday augmented reality campaign that I wasn’t aware of. (Probably because I thought it was just an ad for shipping supplies in previous years.)

In 2013, the USPS, surprising many, debuted an Augmented Reality app for marketers to enhance their snail mail campaigns with additional digital content. Originally developed with Aurasma, the USPS demonstrated an app at the Consumer Electronics Show intending for marketers to use the app to make print ads more interesting, engaging, and appealing to a society that’s quickly shifting to being paperless. Since it’s launch, the USPS has itself, for the purposes of demonstrating the technology and improving what it can do, released new features to the app through its own marketing campaigns.

In 2014, during the holidays, they updated the app to display custom animated overlays to their blue mail collection boxes. The animations changed every few days throughout the holiday season and depending on which box you viewed through the AR app, making for an evolving and unique AR experience. The USPS stated that, the AR app was, “one part of a holiday advertising campaign by the Postal Service ranging from direct mail to television and print advertisements, to social media and digital promotion.”

This year, the blue box AR animations are back, but the USPS has also added special stamps that, when viewed through the app, come alive with their own animations. Notably, these stamps feature the Peanuts comic characters, such as Charlie Brown and Snoopy. (I took some screenshots using the app which you can see above and below.)

By engaging in this kind of transmedia marketing, the USPS is showing that it can stay relevant and create new and unique experiences for its customers, who in recent years have used FedEx and UPS for their shipping needs, taking away from their market share. To experience the AR stamps and blue collection boxes yourself, get the app on the Apple App Store or Google Play.

VR is the next, perhaps last, medium. We are just beginning to understand how to make content. Some of it is interactive, some is passive, but it's best when it's immersive. And you get that best when it's at least stereoscopic. We are finally able to capture life the way it's seen. We are using the newest technology to record the oldest forms of communication and entertainment, such as live theatre. 

MindVR (and CloserVR Studios) main focus is the 'close in' space. VR is more than just 360 degrees. Without depth, there is no connection. Parallax provides that depth. And parallax is most compelling within 8 feet or less of the viewer. This is also what is commonly known as our 'personal space'. 

Our visual and audio processing is wired directly into the primitive part of the brain. It's where fight-or-flight happens. Also empathy. So we are dealing with more than just a 3D space, we're dealing with an emotional space, which no other medium has ever been able to do. And because we are able in influence how people feel like never before, we're on new ground with how people will respond to it. I think caution is prudent. If you're out to really scare someone, you may cause some real harm. Lawyer up!

I am also currently a Technical Architect Manager at Accenture in their Emerging Technology's 'Wearables and AR' group, working on AR solutions for enterprise.

-Dave Arendash, @ThatVRGuy on Twitter

MindVR & CloserVR Studios: http://www.mindvr.com/

Star Wars is more than just a movie franchise; it has become a transmedia property. There is more to the “story world” of Star Wars in all of the different forms of media it is a part of than just what’s in the films. And because those stories are told on different media, this makes Star Wars, more than most IPs, a prime example of transmedia storytelling.

Transmedia’s basic definition is that the story or stories of a particular intellectual property are told in more than one medium and aren’t just repeating the same content in those other media; they’re extending or expanding upon a main story to further build the story world around itself. Star Wars has its core movie trilogies and the Clone Wars cartoon telling the saga of the main characters in that particular arc. The “Expanded Universe” (Now Star Wars Legends) books and comic books, until recently, were considered “canon”, already qualifying Star Wars as transmedia storytelling by expanding the story to different characters, plots, time and place settings within the universe already established, and utilizing completely different media to do so. However, there is so much more to thoroughly entrench Star Wars as a transmedia property.

The video games, toys, websites, marketing campaigns/partnerships, and the new virtual reality experience coming out today show the power and ability of transmedia storytelling to enhance the experience of the fan. The more you’re willing to engage, the more content you will find and in the types of media you prefer. Let me give you an example of how Star Wars’ transmedia has already effected how you view its content. What are the names of these characters?

Right, of course. Everyone knows what an Ewok is and who Emperor Palpatine is. But, how do you know? If you were to watch the original trilogy again, you’d realize neither of those characters are named in them at all. How did we come to know these characters by name? The toys. 

Then some more movies. Then the books, etc. There’s so much more to the story world of Star Wars that the more you read, watch, and play of the properties in the franchise, the more immersed in the world building you become, gaining a deeper and richer experience than if you had just watched the movies alone. That’s the essence of transmedia. It rewards those who wish to dive in, to go down the rabbit hole. Transmedia is for people who like to learn and explore, the curious or avid fans who want to know why.

Star Wars is building out its story world again and is releasing an experience today fans and media lovers alike will want to partake in. The Star Wars Cardboard VR experience “Jakku Spy” is a serialized story that will lead up to the events of the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The app has many additional features to entice Star Wars devotees including: ● Get instant notifications on big announcements, including trailer releases and movie news ● Theme your app with Light Side, Dark Side, or Droid interfaces, each containing different designs, sounds, and animations ● Unlock 3D characters from Star Wars: The Force Awakens using a special Augmented Reality camera feature ● Take and share a Star Wars “selfie” in various iconic costumes and settings, including Jedi, Princess Leia (with hair buns), Han Solo’s carbon freeze, and more ● Get Star Wars-themed weather and five-day forecasts, featuring original art and parallax effects of in-universe planets and locales ● Wield a lightsaber and hone your skills against a training remote, as seen in Star Wars: A New Hope ● Discover behind-the-scenes fun facts with This Day In Star Wars History ● Play classic sound clips and sound effects from your favorite Star Wars characters, creatures, weapons, vehicles, and scenes ● Watch official Star Wars videos, including movie trailers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and more To see this new experience, all you need is a smartphone (and to follow these instructions to make your own headset): https://vr.briztech.co.uk/instructions.html

Verizon is also offering exclusive Star Wars Google Cardboard headsets to its customers: http://www.cnet.com/news/star-wars-vr-force-awakens-themed-google-cardboard-viewers-are-cute-and-verizons-giving-them-away/