Cross-Media Entertainment

I’ve still got UGC (user-generated content) on my mind as I’m writing an article on the topic at the moment. Something I forgot to mention in my last UGC post: Australia’s “multicultural and multilingual public broadcaster”, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), is starting a UGC site called Freeload. It launches on 20th Feb.

Freeload will bring together, as well as create a network of multimedia producers and showcase their digital portfolio to the whole world, irrespective of their level of proficiency, age, background, experience etc…
It’s Freeload’s aim to give everyone the chance to exhibit their work online and let punters and experts view it, rate it, comment on it and share it.

If you’re into music, film, animation, fashion, video, art, then become a freeloader!

Some items will be picked for broadcast on their digital channel. SBS have been involved with the production of, at least, three projects that have UGC: Swapping Lives (yay Sohail!); Straight Up and Sum of Our Parts (which we – LAMP — developed!).

Word on the street is that ABC is about come out with their own UGC project…they’ve being involved with many projects such as: Us Mob and Video Lives. What the commercial channels, 7, 9 and 10, are doing beyond offering wallpaper and ringtones to download, the ability to vote, to buy merchandise, to search the web via their sites, to let companies brand your child’s learning,  I have no idea… Let me know if there is something wonderful I’ve missed.

Tracey Swedlow, of [itvt], has put a few short videos of talks given by top interactive tv producers online. They are all relevant to CME design:

Brightcove’s VP of advertising products and strategy, Adam Gerber, talks about enabling the producer in a fragmented market

John Davis, president of Eco-Nova Productions, and Daniel Myrick,president of Gearhead Pictures (and co-creator of the movie, “The Blair Witch Project”), advise producers to create enhanced and interactive content

Josh Bernoff, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, suggests creating broadband properties as an on-ramp to larger distribution

Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff talks about the value of serving niche audiences

Sibyl Goldman, executive producer at Lifetimetv.com, recommends creating a “whole package” of enhanced and interactive content to support programming

Gearhead Pictures’ Daniel Myrick discusses Brightcove’s service

Gearhead Pictures’ Daniel Myrick advises using interactivity and multiplatform content to appeal to niche audiences

Gearhead Pictures’ Daniel Myrick discusses the value of combining linear programming, interactivity and community applications into a single, integrated experience
Adam Bain, VP of production and development at Fox Sports, comments on the complexities of tracking cross-platform

Jeff Shell, president of the Comcast Programming Group, argues that today content must be discoverable on multiple platforms

Channing Dawson, SVP of emerging media at Scripps Networks, Brian Seth Hurst, CEO of The Opportunity Management Company, and Brightcove’s Adam Gerber discuss user-generated content and changing ideas of media distribution

Fox Sports’ Adam Bain and Stephen Nuttall, director of business development at BSkyB, comment on the importance of working with amateur content producers

Fox Sports’ Adam Bain gives his thoughts on the phenomenon of disintermediation and on the growing importance of user-generated content

Scripps Networks’ Channing Dawson provides some observations on user-generated content

Robert Kernen, advanced media projects manager at A&E Television, demonstrates the “D-Day” History Channel broadband TV prototype that was developed under the auspices of the American Film Institute’s
Digital Content Lab. Designed by respected design firm, Schematic, the app incorporates user-generated content, multimedia, and contextual, immersive gaming

We’ve got .tv and soon we’ll have .mobi. Late May will see the beginning of .mobis being registered by companies with trademarks, and then general registrations in August.

Dotmobi is unique - the first top level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices. Scheduled for launch in May, dotmobi will revolutionise the use of the Internet on mobile devices. Dotmobi guides mobile users to made-for-mobile Internet content and services that can be accessed with confidence.

I’ve thought a few times that a cross-media world could be represented through multiple domains like .film, .dvd, .psp, .book. But then, they are all .net representations of non net devices and media channels. What you actually need is a domain name that subsumes all of the components of your cross-media world. At that address you’d have all the information about your entire franchise, with other domain names for the subsets, if you like. Possibilities are: .all, .world, .uni(verse), .ass(emble), .cme?! Any suggestions?

Nielsen Media Research teamed their research with Comcast’s to establish data on audience usage of VOD. They tested 180 households in Philadelphia during June-August last year. The key finding, for me, is that audiences are still using VOD AND scheduled TV — I don’t like using “scheduled TV” as part of the TV experience, for me, is serendipity: how about SSTV? But, back to the point. Audiences are using BOTH, not one above the other. Why? Because each has it own affordances, its own unique traits. This is what cross-media is all about: a wider range of media that audiences CHOOSE according to their availability, access, desired experience, preference…not replacing fixed media with new media and having convergent devices (in the end there can only be one convergent device!) everywhere. Here are the results, and the full report with nifty charts is downloadable here.

“This study confirms that VOD complements the traditional TV viewing experience. In addition to watching programming not available on traditional TV, customers are using VOD to learn about shows they may not have seen before or ‘catch up’ on past episodes of series they’ve missed.”

• 75% of households with access to VOD used it at least once during the three-month study, indicating a high VOD sampling rate. VOD users averaged 69 minutes of viewing per day.
• Households that tuned to Comcast’s ON DEMAND service watched traditional television for an average of 723 minutes per day — 9% higher than all digital cable households and 38% higher than all cable households.
• The VOD audience is a younger audience. 18-34 year olds comprised 37% of all VOD minutes viewed compared to 20% of all traditional television minutes. Children age 2-11 accounted for 19% of all VOD minutes, but only 9% of all traditional television minutes. In contrast, viewers over age 54 accounted for only 3% of VOD minutes compared to 30% of all traditional television minutes.
• Free VOD (including shows from ad-supported cable networks, a library of movies, music programming and more) was the most sampled VOD content, viewed by about 42% of VOD homes during the survey. However, subscription VOD content (from services like HBO, Showtime and Starz) accounted for the most minutes (54%) of viewing, with VOD homes watching an average of 670 minutes of this content over the three months.

And, not only are audiences watching VOD and SSTV, they’re online for an equal amount of time too!:

Juniper Research’s report, U.S. Entertainment and Media Consumer Survey, 2005, (released 30 Jan 06) details how the average audience member is using 14 hours of the Net, which is about equal, they say, to the time spent watching TV. Here are some other findings:

• Even the most intensive users of newspapers and magazines spend less time reading these publications than they do online or watching TV
• 37% of all online users report that they spend less time reading books because of their online activities
• Intensive online users are the most likely demographic to use advanced Internet technology, such as streaming radio and RSS

If you haven’t already noticed, Europe is the place to be if you’re creating, researching or experiencing CME. It is not surprising considering the technology available in the home (and therefore the services then supplied to audiences). Here is a list of some of the sites about CME by those living in Europe:

Monique de Haas’ blog, Netherlands

Jill Walker’s blog, University of Bergen and her research into “distributed narratives”

Lizbeth Klastrup’s blog: Klastrups Cataclysms, IT University of Copenhagen (did a paper with Tosca on “transmedial worlds”)

Susana Tosca’s blog: Thinking with my Fingers, Volda College, Norway (did a paper with Klastrup on “transmedial worlds”)

Anja Bechmann Petersen’s PhD research site, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Valentina Rao’s blog: Bad News Live, who has found is (i think) looking for a supervisor in Copenhagen

Daphne Dijkerman’s blog: Something New, University of Amsterdam? Saxion Academy of Arts & Technics (Enschede)

Theo Meereboer’s blog: Commedia

Indira Reynaert’s blog: Crossmedialog

The Cross Media Group’s blog: Interactivity: “the cross-media idea”

HvA Cross-Media Students blog, University of Amsterdam students?

X-Media Club: blog & streams provides presentations by convergence experts (including Monique de Haas) in a casual lounge environment.

Dutch Cowboy’s Tech blog: crossmedia thread

Marcel Houtman’s blog: Houtwatch, Netherlands

Crossmedia Forum

I will definately be going to the Netherlands and around sometime in the next couple of years to see everyone! I’d come over for Cross Media Week if there was english speaking talks going on…

I attended a conference on Digital Storytelling recently and picked up some good UGC (user-generated content) projects. Digital Storytelling, for those who like me who get confused by the term, is the term used to describe stories that are created by amateurs about themselves, using digital equipment. They are not often interactive, usually films shot on digital cameras. Here is a mix of the UGC websites mentioned at the conference, ones I know about and new ones:

Jay Ryan vlog [single-person, but is perhaps “the” vlog];

Rocket Boom vlog [single person, was featured on CSI & just auctioned advertising space on eBay for $40,000];

Sticky (Aus)

Knot at Home, SBS (Aus)

Strait Up, SBS (Aus)

Zed TV (Canada)

Terminus 1525 studios (Canada)

Seed Collective (Canada)

And here are some pivotal Digital Storytelling sites:

BBC Capture Wales

Center for Digital Storytelling

I haven’t listed sites that just provide the function of uploading without a content coating. A helpful listing of such sites is provided by Gary at Personalize Media.

Henry Jenkins was one of the first media theorists to identify the subject of my research and and what he terms “transmedia storytelling”. He is co-heading a dedicated research lab at MIT now, called the Convergence Culture Consortium. The Consortium is geared towards, it seems, providing data to industry as well as contributing to scholarship. They are addressing the following:

Transmedia Entertainment describes the newfound flow of stories, images, characters, information, and sounds across various media channels, in a coordinated fashion, which facilitates a deepening expansion of the consumer’s experience.

Participatory Culture describes the way consumers interact with media content, media producers, and each other as they explore the resources available to them in the expanded media landscape. Consumers become active participants in shaping the creation, circulation, and interpretation of media content. Such experiences deepen the consumer’s emotional investment in the media property, and expands their awareness of both content and brand.

Experiential Marketing refers to the development of novel approaches to brand extension and marketing which play out across multiple media channels so that the consumer’s identification with the product is enhanced and deepened each time they re-encounter the brand in a new context.

Their ethnographic approach focuses on “three key, yet different, cultural groups”:

Fan Cultures
Brand Cultures
Style Cultures

These are the research questions the consortium will answer:

• How has the intersection between old and new technologies shifted the ways that people consume entertainment and brand content?
• What new media methods and models can sponsors and advertisers use to build a lasting emotional connection with their brands? (e.g. product placements, advergaming and viral marketing)
• What happens as brand cultures (the most hardcore consumers of a particular consumer product) interact with fan cultures (the most hardcore enthusiasts of a particular entertainment franchise)?
• What strategies do brand managers need to adapt to the instantaneous global circulation of entertainment content (such as Japanese anime, Korean soaps, and hip-hop)?
• Does greater consumer participation in brand cultures result in stronger brand affiliations?
• Where do companies “cross the line” in their efforts to attach themselves to particular entertainment franchises through product placements and tie-ins?

My heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw this group. But I was relieved to see they are concentrating on the audiences and not narrative design in particular. Initially, my research design included studying companies and the reception of their content. But, I found not many companies actually knew what they were doing! Times have changed though and this consortium will provide alot of valuable info, along with the busy researchers in Europe. [I’ll be doing a round-up of the cool stuff happening over there soon.] This is a huge area that has researchers & creators popping up everywhere across the globe. I had better hurry up and get my PhD out there (next year folkls!). They have a blog that seems very informative.

Apparently, according to all the hype, the first feature film, shot entirely on mobile phones, has been created. SMS Sugarman (the site is down) is by Aryan Kaganof of Virus Films. It is a film that follows one night of a pimp (played by Kaganof) and his two prostitutes, in Johannesburg. Kaganof shot 60 hours of footage on a Sony Erikson W900i over 12 days. But it wasn’t just one mobile with a single POV,  one scene used 8 mobiles (can I say cameras?). He is now editing the film to be released at cinemas, DVD, TV, the Net and mobile phones.

[source: The Age, 4th Feb, 2006]

The Media Centre’s blog, Morph, has morphed. It has grown into a multi-threaded blog called Morph-the media Center conversation. The threads, or tracks, have a large collection of “official” contributors and are themed as:

I’ll be following the Narrative stream, called: We Imagine!

 Here are some edited highlights of the intro post of We Imagine:

Welcome to We Imagine!    

Storytelling and communication always relied on technology, and for the last several thousand years, we were pretty good at developing technologies to tell stories - the mask and cothurn of the Greek theater; the amazing African costumes that often combine visual and acoustic elements; the ancient temples and gothic cathedrals; the laterna magica of Athanasius Kircher, Lumiere and Edison; and computer-based virtual-reality systems; the string phone, VOIP, plumes and punch cards. We continuously imagine and invent new storytelling technologies. The communication and presentation media obviously impact the story being told and at the same time tell a story of their own.

     

We develop a new type of narrative as we talk about the narrative, which is of course also about our identity and our memories. 

Are there true paradigm shifts in the technology we use today or are we just infatuated with the “now,” discounting the “old stuff,” and more interesting, what will be the next way to tell stories?

How will we tell stories in 2006?

Imagine…