Audiences, but not as we know them

Audiences eh. What to call them?

‘Audience’ just doesn’t cut it when the projects are designed to interact and encourage engagement.  Participant is too easily confused with the people helping to make the project/up on the stage/running the workshop/delete as applicable.

I’ve just spent a very clunky and irritating 3 hours writing a funding application calling them ‘audience/participants’.  Helps my words per minute stats, but surely I can do better than this.

Hmmm.  Audicipant?

Anyone?

Owned.

I don’t know why I spent so long thinking about terminology and sector-specific phrasing yesterday ahead of last night’s event.  There was a woman there who sets mathematical models to music.

Co-creation in the Arts World

This afternoon I’m going to an event put on by Creative Works to introduce their voucher scheme and to talk about the consumer (audience) as co-creator.  Looking at the attendee list, lots of forward-thinking people from the arts sector who want to discuss how to better involve their audiences in the development of their programmes- which will then of course lead to increased audiences for their programmes.  It felt that only a year ago the arts world were only thinking about using tech to create innovative marketing campaigns, now it seems like people are really engaging with the possibilities around creating content with audiences.

I’m very excited.  Lately I’ve been so frustrated that there’s this hugely exciting explosion of people making crossplatform stories, yet theatre makers don’t seem to be in that first wave- they seem to be entirely left out of the dialogue.  Despite there being quite a few brilliant interactive theatre shows that explore the audience as co-creator, and often use technology to take those audiences on journeys as participants, I don’t see the creators of those shows at transmedia networking events, where everyone tends to have a background in the audiovisual industries. I’ve never met anyone else from the theatre sector there, and it’s been a lonely experience! 

So I want to think carefully about what language I’m using when I talk to people this afternoon- I’m concerned that the word ‘transmedia’ is a huge turnoff in the arts world (it has the word ‘media’ in it for starters)!  I talk with ‘transmedia’ people about making immersive stories that are ‘platform agnostic’ (i.e story comes first, decide on platform afterwards) and how audiences can interact and direct the story- both of which are increasingly concepts the theatre world can get on board with.

So I guess all I need to do this afternoon is talk about how I ‘make immersive stories that engage the audiences as co-creators’, and I’m essentially spanning sectors.  And more importantly, hopefully engaging people in the idea that the mistakes and successes currently being made in transmedia has a lot to teach the arts world.

Wish me luck.

Cross Platform Pitch Up!

An attempt to take an old and popular format- Pitch Up! (complete with peppy, unsquashable exclamation mark) and make it work  for the crossplatform storytelling world.  Imaginatively titled ‘Cross Platform Pitch Up!’

I ran this event at BAFTA last week.  The format needs some tweaks but there’s potential to take it further.

What I’m really interested in doing is providing a pitching competition for people who are at an earlier stage in their careers than those who pitch to Power To The Pixel.  I am also really interested in making sure that people from the immersive theatre and arts/tech worlds get involved.  Such inclusiveness will all come down to the marketing.

Transmedia Producers

Talking with the lovely Alison Norrington last month, we talked about the genesis of transmedia projects.   Of the projects being created in my wider circle, the transmedia creators are often producing their own projects too, and I wonder about this – as quite often the person with the story is not the person who wants to do the hustling.  Hmm- I guess I define ‘producing’ as ‘hustling’.

Many brilliant people can create a compelling storyworld and also be more than able to pinpoint the opportunity to get it made, and bring on the people and the resources to make it happen.   But that’s so rare because it’s very difficult for any individual to get their own stuff made- in any media, but particularly true when it’s an individual trying to seed a story across multiple platforms.

So who are resourced to produce the transmedia stories?   Well, there are the PR/Marketing/Ad agencies working with a brand’s marketing budget, and the dedicated cross-platform production companies.

Lately, though, there’s been a critical mass of indications that both those crowds are seriously lacking great content.

Firstly, there was my cup of tea with Alison, who related her experiences talking to some self-made transmedia producers- smart people who’ve ‘spotted the next big thing’ and set themselves up with a ‘transmedia’ company- and then come to her, looking for advice on where to find content.

Then a few weeks ago I had a meeting with a cross-platform production company who are so keen on finding the next great transmedia writing talent that they’re spending considerable time and energy on training events to develop ‘old media’ writers into transmedia ones.

And this week I met with a world-leading PR agency, who are marshalling top cross-platform production companies so that they can get in on the ground with transmedia talent.  But what they really want is to access content (and the whizzkids with the instincts to exploit it best)

It seems to me that there are a lot of people circling each other and not getting very far.

Alison’s view is that its a collaborative process.  That’s one that I’m used to.  Coming from a theatre background, I’ll keep in touch with many theatre-makers and often we’ll develop ideas together.  Perhaps some agencies and production companies will be doing just this in the future, if they can find the resources to.