Heroes’ executive producer Tim Kring, has written and produced some of the most successful serial TV Shows in the United States. Making his start in TV as a screenwriter for TV shows and telemovies in the 1980’s, on shows like Knight Rider and Teen Wolf Too, Kring went on to write and produce major TV shows such as Chicago Hope, Providence, and Crossing Jordan, before beginning development for Heroes in early 2006.

Earlier this year the Hands On All-Media team spoke with Tim Kring about his experience on Heroes.

For an understanding of the all-media platforms – WATCH THIS VIDEO on the Heroes Transmedia Storytelling Extensions

Designed by Section Design, UK. Published in Wired Magazine Aug 2010

This Heroes Case Study brings the following learnings to light –

• Fish where the fish are – find out where your audience is and meet them on those platforms
• Build a closer relationship with the audience – allow them to become part of the narrative
• Build funding for all-media into the production or show budget
• Plan for a large uptake of the all-media content and be willing to work with fan created content
• Collect content as you go and use what you have
• Forge partnerships with brands and the ‘new distributors’

CONCEPT

The idea of working with content outside the television format came from the realisation that there was a very limited relationship with television audiences, and that this lack of connection was behind sliding ratings. While working on Crossing Jordan, the network asked Kring to come up with show material that would live online.  The problem was that Crossing Jordan was a procedural drama and there seemed to be very little scope for online content. Kring vowed that if he ever got another chance to step up, he was going to figure out a way to forge a better relationship with the audience.

Kring’s resolution was to ‘fish where the fish were’. He decided to simply try to go wherever the audience was, ‘to cast a line and tell a story there’. In the planning/development phase of Heroes, Kring saw an opportunity to experiment with this idea of building a closer relationship between the show and the audience. Heroes had a comic book genre base, and the idea was to run an online comic book concurrent with the show. “I went into the network with the idea that I was going to try and make a show that had a relationship with the audience, that had a little bit more of a dynamic feedback loop between us and the show,” says Kring. The material that didn’t make it into ‘the mother ship’ of the TV show, would live online.

In a remarkable case of being in the right place at the right time, the mandate from General Electric was that the network, NBC, was to figure out how to reach their audience on multiple platforms. Kring walked in with a show that had a big splashy comic book feel that suited the demographic that was on multiple platforms.

On the day Heroes was picked up the NBC.com division consisted of seven people. Three weeks later, there were 67 employees in that division. Heroes became, in essence, a kind of beta testing ground for this brave new world of integrated storytelling that had never been tried at NBC. The team tried all sorts of ideas from webisodes to websites for companies and characters in the show. Kring recalls that the Heroes team became this kind of factory for making ancillary content. “We had this very large mythology on the show with very deep cannon that burrowed deep into of mythology of the show, so it lent itself wonderfully to all this kind of content,” says Kring.

FINANCE

Due to the network’s mandate to reach audiences on a number of platforms, Kring’s team were living in a very idealised and rare situation.  Kring remembers, “At the time there was no pressure to justify how it was meant to make any money”. It was deemed to be promotion and marketing not only the Heroes itself, but for the NBC.com division, a platform that was also promoting NBC’s other shows.

According to Kring, multiplatform content is mostly funded or ‘cobbled together’ with found dollars between marketing, promo, and brand money. However, he feels a better way to plan financing for multiplatform content is to literally, ‘bake it into the production budget’, so it is not an after thought or overlay on top of the traditional budget.

The challenge lies in making money through the all-media content. Kring highlights that for Heroes, it was a third party who figured out how to do it.

“There was a small company that started a social game on Facebook called, ‘Who’s your favorite Heroes character?’ It had a transactional backend where ‘hero’ powers and capes were sold. It made millions of dollars over about a 10 or 12 months period, all before NBC figured out that it was happening.”

Kring was impressed. It took the couple of guys in a garage somewhere to figure it out how to monetize the content with the audience. They created the concept and the fans were willing to pay.

Brand funding was another option. On Heroes this was the case when companies like Sprint and Nissan approached NBC – the show would end up partnering up with them with the brands sponsoring webisodes and other all-media content.

Kring estimates that around 2.5% of the overall budget went to the production of the digital aspects of the show. The value of the NBC.com department that helped out with the ancillary content for Heroes is not included in this percentage, but would have lent significant staffing and resources to the production.

Asked about the value of engagement and audience building online through the ancillary content, verses the number of eyeballs on the TV show, Kring believes there’s real value in the all-media content, but in the world that he lives in – for the networks – it’s still all about the show.

“The studios actually make the product and they can sell DVDs, sell a property into syndication and sell merchandise. The networks are the single source of revenue business. They only make money one way. They sell ad time so for them it’s all about the mother ship of the show until they see some real value in the number of people who are engaging in this stuff.”

Kring points out that some networks believe that the audience that will engage in the digital realm or with ancillary content of a show, is an audience they reach anyway through the TV show. The significant numbers of people who engaged with the Heroes ancillary content bring this theory into question. By March 2007, The Heroes Evolutions website already had 48 million page views. Millions of fans found and created Heroes content online, with 2.5 million fans joining the Heroes Official Facebook page.

Kring believes that there’s now a way to make real money from all-media content and the interactive audience. Referencing the guys in the garage he points out, “There are people who figured it out who weren’t even part of the show”.

MARKETING

There is an interesting line in Hollywood between all-media content production costs, and promotion and marketing costs.  If a studio or network deem a production activity to be marketing and promotion, there is less impact on the profit participation agreements.  In other words, it is cheaper for the networks.

For broadcasters launching a new show, the priority is getting the TV audience.  Once the numbers start looking good, then the dollars for all-media content may become available. Kring’s contention is that the ancillary content creates new audience members for the show and vice versa. Kring thinks it’s hard to see where production ends and marketing begins – “We’re doing this to generate more and more interest and enthusiasm – to make the fan and audience participation in the show deeper and richer.”

PRODUCTION

It was clear that Heroes would need more resources and staff than a traditional TV show, along with crew members specifically dedicated to the all-media content. The engine room of the show was the writer’s room. The storylines from the show would all generate in the writer’s room but Kring hired four full-time people for the transmedia or new media division. Their job was to come up with the extra content, liaising between the Heroes writing staff and the NBC.com engine room of coders and web designers. Kring recalls, “There was no wasted piece of content. Anything that fell out of the ship of the show could then have a life on some other platform.”

NBC.com had literally thousands of pages of content to inform, entertain and engage fans. The audience members were encouraged to interact with the show’s characters online and through mobile connections.  Fans could receive texts from characters asking them for help, could create and submit artwork, mash-ups, suggestions for new characters and concepts that would become Heroes online graphic novels. There were widgets, news updates and original Heroes content that fans could tailor for their own home pages and blogs.

One of Kring’s most important lessons from Heroes was the speed at which the all-media audience consumed content and their demand for new material. After several years of stretching his team to produce additional content, Kring realised the only solution was to create a situation the Heroes audience could generate content for them. Kring believes when it comes to fan audiences, it’s less about creating content and delivering it and more about giving the audience a world that they can inhabit. It’s about creating a world that’s increasingly social and allows the audience to become inserted into the narrative in some way, to participate in the world of the show.

DISTRIBUTION

Kring feels that one of the ways to turn the tide and to make real money from storytelling across multiple platforms is to forge new partnerships across networks, brands and distributors. Kring’s feel good project, Conspiracy for Good (2010) is an example of brand integration, with Nokia willing to become part of the narrative rather than front and centre.

As a storyteller, Kring was looking for tools to help him reach people and to communicate with the audience.  A big tech company like Nokia had interesting tools that aid storytelling. “It works if you can partner with a brand, platform or distributor that can actually speak to their customers – somebody that has thousands of customers that they can push content to with a push of a button,” says Kring. Leveraging free promotion for your show by tapping into partners Facebook communities, advertising dollars and promotional spend should be part of the deal.

With networks, deals like this are often difficult to navigate. Although the money is out there, Kring points out that there’s a lot of old world business butting heads with the new world.  The sales departments at networks want to land the deals with the major brands, rather than having all-media producers win the pitch. With new business models emerging, Kring wants to give all the options a go and would rather find partner dollars to fund multiplatform content. His plea to the networks is, “We don’t have to pay for it. Just give me permission to go out and shake the trees.”

Kring notes that some brands have done this themselves, building content divisions to better connect with their consumers.

“There are brands that are now ready, willing and able to almost become broadcasters themselves. Brands like Red Bull are making huge amounts of content and closing content deals. AT&T and Starbucks are out there too. There is now real business to be had out of going directly to the brands themselves for sponsorship of this content. Working with Nokia on Conspiracy was certainly an example of that.”

THE FUTURE

Kring believes that in the near future the electronics and technology companies who are beginning to equip themselves with the ability to become broadcasters may offer up some real challenges to the networks. Delving deeper, Kring comments that the most interesting aspect of all-media storytelling as we move forward will be the data that companies will be able to acquire.

“The data is going to be the new gold. Who are these people in the audience and what are their behavior and habits?”

Tim Kring was interviewed for this case study by the Hands On All-Media team in early 2012.

Kring is currently working on an interactive TV series called Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland, for the FOX Network.

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Frank Rose wrote and edited the book, The Art of Immersion: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories (2011).  The narrative traces the theme of storytelling from a traditionally participatory experience around a campfire thousands of years ago, through the age of the printing press and beyond, to a time where, today stories are again participatory.

Audiences are looking for more from story experiences than the input, output method of times gone by, where messages were broadcast from a source and simply consumed.  The fact is, they can now have more.

Rose’s premise is that in the last decade there has been ‘a powerful shift’.

‘No longer do we consume stories as they are told to us: now we share them with one another in ways that weren’t possible before.  All sorts of stories – journalism, entertainment, advertising, history.’

(Introduction to The Art of Immersion)

In terms of entertainment, content creators have bravely undertaken bold projects that extend the storyworld of their creations – movies and shows like The Dark Knight, Avatar, Lost, and Heroes. Rose’s book explains that whether it was live action role play (larp), gaming or online adventures tied to a primary property, a more immersive experience for audiences meant bigger numbers at the box office, higher ratings for the shows and more eyes on screens. This was possible because the audience became part of the story.

Towards the end of Rose’s key note, with marketers and advertisers in the audience seeing dollar signs, it was clear where all this was going.  Rose left us with some parting advice, “Tell the story, but leave room for the audience”.

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At this time of year when I hear folks singing Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer and children are waiting for Santa Claus, it prompts me to pause and consider one of the most successful transmedia franchises in history.

The story of Santa Claus stems from a tale of a generous monk named St Nicolas born around 280AD in what is now Turkey. Over time, stories, songs, artworks and poems have all contributed to the storyworld of Santa Claus.  Our imaginations were encouraged by many writers including Clement Clarke Moore, who in 1822, wrote a long Christmas poem for his three daughters entitled, An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas. The poem contained the phrase, “T’was the night before Christmas…’, and painted the picture of a jovial old fellow who could descend down chimneys and fly from house to house on a sled drawn by reindeer.

As for spin off characters, well there’s Rudolf of course!  Taking the idea of flying reindeer one step further, or extending it, as we might say of transmedia, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store, Robert L. May, wrote a Christmas-themed story-poem to attract more holiday traffic for the store.  The idea proved to be rather popular and lucrative -

May told the story of Rudolph, a young reindeer who was teased by the other deer because of his large, glowing, red nose… Montgomery Ward sold almost two and a half million copies of the story in 1939. When it was reissued in 1946, the book sold over three and half million copies. Several years later, one of May’s friends, Johnny Marks, wrote a short song based on Rudolph’s story (1949) that sold over two million copies.
(From www.history.com).

Master storyteller, L Frank Baum, of Wizard of Oz fame, even jumped on board with the Santa Claus storyworld, penning a novel titled, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

Today children (and some adults) all over the world buy into the storyworld of Santa across many platforms.  We can read books about Santa, watch movies and television shows with guest appearances from Santa.  We can leave cookies out on Christmas Eve, have our photos taken on Santa’s knee, we can write an email to the big man and we can even track his progress across the world.

Jesse Schell believes the beloved world of Santa has indeed evolved over time, and it may be because of it’s appeal to our sense of story and imagination. Schell writes, ‘If ever there was a fantasy utopia that people truly want to be real, it is Santa’s world’, (in The art of game design: a book of lenses, Jesse Schell, 2008, p304).

Whatever your take is, it might pay to check if you’ve been naughty or nice just in case.

Merry Christmas!

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Multi-award winning author, Ursula K. Le Guin, remarked on the link between human society and story;
‘The story – from Rapunzel to War and Peace – is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.’ (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1979).

It’s likely that Mike Monello (well known in transmedia circles – CCO & Partner at New York based agency, Campfire), draws on this notion that story has been with us since we gathered around a campfire to recount stories of a day’s hunting and gathering.

‘Campfire is a marketing agency that launches products and changes perceptions through storytelling. We ignite the influencers, fan cultures and communities that drive results for our clients’.
(campfirenyc.com have worked on Game of Thrones and True Blood).

In a similar vein, ‘all media are inherently social’, says Gunther Sonnenfeld, designer, developer, data specialist and general digital genius (portfolio includes brand work for Sony, Toyota, Nestle and Motorola).  ‘You could apply this to history: from the Bible, to the Dialectics to Shakespeare’. (more here).

Media Psychologist, Dr Pamela Rutledge believes that ‘social technologies’ have contributed to the strength of all-media storytelling as a method of communication and engagement.  Combining parts of a story over a number of platforms and devices, and being able to share experiences, allows audiences a fuller experience of a story.

Rutledge specialises in the intersection between behaviour and technology and likens transmedia storytelling to the way that the brain works – ‘constructing holistic meanings from bits and pieces of information and experience.’  All this suggests that all-media approaches to storytelling appeal to an inherent human desire to socialise, understand and connect.

Rutledge continues:
‘Transmedia storytelling transforms communications so that we can interact, construct, share and create meaning within the storyteller’s world.  It will be the dominant form of communication strategy in marketing, management, entertainment and education, because it creates a multi-sensory, immersive experience directed by the audience’.

Whatever we call it – all-media, transmedia, multiplatform, cross platform – storytelling that excites, engages, involves and entertains is here and as storytellers, content creators and producers, we want to be on board.  What a wonderful way to tell stories and reach audiences!

Hands On: A Guide to All-Media Producing and Commissioning will look at how writers, directors, producers and commissioners are working in the all-media space to extend stories across platforms.

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Here’s how Screen Australia outlines definitions that they use in the All Media Program.

Interactive: Non-linear projects, where the user has a direct and meaningful impact on the events on screen throughout the experience, beyond simply ‘point and click to play’.

Linear: Storytelling that is not interactive, but which may screen on any platform including broadcast television, online or mobile devices.

Cross-platform: Using multiple digital media to distribute a piece of content (eg a webisode delivered online and via mobile device; a program for TV broadcast and online delivery)

Multi-platform: Content created to exist on different platforms in different forms (eg a TV program with a website delivering separate audiovisual content; a feature film with an associated game).

Transmedia: Storytelling across multiple forms of media, with each element making distinctive contributions to a user’s understanding of the story universe, including where user actions affect the experience of content across multiple platforms (eg reaching a score level in an online game unlocks the next mobile episode).

Single-platform: Content produced for one platform only (eg a standalone website or game or mobile series).

From: Screen Australia Funding: All Media definitions

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Marcus explains how important it is to develop content that engages with audiences beyond traditional linear media platforms.

Recorded at Creative Sydney Playhouse, Opera House 1 June 2011

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SCORCHED NOMINATED FOR AN AFI

More big news!!!

We have just been nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Screen Content Innovation!! The awards ceremony is on August 1st, 2009, so we’ll be holding our breath until then.

This is the first time for this category for the AFI’s, so we are stoked that we are a nominee in the inaugural award for innovation.

To see all the nominees, go to URL; AFI Nominees Announcement

Ellenor Cox and I will be speaking at the TV Production Seminar which is part of SMPTE tomorrow (22nd of July) and this evening I am speaking at the Creative Social Gathering in Surry Hills.

Additionally, I have been invited to speak in South Korea at the Broadcast World Wide Forum by the Korea Creative Content Agency in September. And on August 5th I’ll be doing a seminar by Skype wtih Charles Sturt University. My first virtual speaking engagement.

Signing off

MG

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WE WON!!!!

Marcus Gillezeau is currently in Cannes at MipTV celebrating our win of the International Digital Emmy Award.

Below is a story that was in the Herald Sun online and links to a number of other stories.

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25270844-2902,00.html

http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=15565&s=News_files

SCORCHED IN THE NEWS TODAY – 16th March, 2009

Bushfire drama Scorched in Race for Emmy, The Australian.

FIRELIGHT NOMINATED FOR AN EMMY – 10th March, 2009

Some great news for us at Firelight, we have been nominated for an International Digital Emmy Award for Scorched!!!! We got the news at 8am on a work day, so unfortunately we couldn’t crack the champagne on the spot – it had to wait. The crazy thing is this is the only mainstream digital media award we are eligible for as there are none in Australia – no Logie, AFI or IF Award. So we had to be content with… the biggest TV award in the world. The competition is stiff of course with projects from the UK, Argentina and France. It should be a fun night at the ceremony which is in Cannes at MipTV on the 30th of March. I was already heading to MipTV so this is a bonus indeed.

We are also nominated for Scorched for Best Entertainment for the Australian Interactive Media Awards. We’re off to the ceremony this evening with lead actors Kate Bell and Zac Garred. So it should be a fun night. Fingers crossed we’ll win. We’re up again a couple of good projects. It’s a kind of odd category as we are up against the ABC’s iView which is an app? If we do win, it’ll be great as this is the highest honour for an all-media project in Australia.

Also this evening Ellenor and I are speaking at the AFTRS at ‘Friday on My Mind’ – a kind of ‘in conversation with’ session they do each month (or week?). So that should be a bit of fun as we will already be in our sparkly outfits for the AIMIA awards this evening. Kate will also be at the talk at the school. It’s good we are able to finally speak at the school as Gary Hayes and Peter Giles who are in the digital media department were instrumental in the development of the project though the LAMP workshop that we did a few years back.

And, on another note, we are totally stoked as Storm Surfers continues to storm on. It looks like we’ll be making some more episodes, one in NZ and another in the US. At MipTV I’ll be chasing the gap finance we need to make it. I guess it will be a real test of whether the market is buying at the moment.

Cheers,
MG

MARCUS GOES TO LA-LA LAND – 5th November 2008

In L.A. in the big US of A on what is, of course, a massively historic day. These guys have voted in, somewhat resoundingly, a black president. There are plenty of people, especially coloured people, who are still in disbelief that such an amazing thing has happened. And did you see Obama’s acceptance speech? It was pretty amazing and will likely go done in history. Let’s hope that from here something really will ‘change’.

Spent the night last night in a bar that seemed to be Obama supporters – I’m quite glad they were. I was hanging out with Cameron Daddo who played David Langmore in our film Scorched. It was good to learn more about life in LA for an Australian in the business over here.And the business. It’s so, damn, big. I am still trying to get my head around it. There just seems to be an incredible amount of opportunity.

Yesterday I did a screening of Storm Surfers at Redbull’s HQ. What a lot of fun. They seemed to really like the film which is good. Now we just need to nail down a US sale.Tomorrow I am speaking at the American Film Institute Dififest Conference on a panel about Scorched. That’ll be fun. Then I get to soak up another day of seminars before flying back on Saturday.

Blogging off…
MG

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