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DAY ONE: SHOCK AND AWE!

Published: October 2, 2009Tags:

ShockAndAwe!

On this blog I scribble about the changing media landscape. About how audience behaviors are forcing storytellers and media companies to adjust how they do business.

I have an amazing new show at NBC called: DAY ONE. It is the story of ordinary people working together to save the world from an extraordinary threat. Though Day One’s prime time adventures are simple and compelling, its mythology is vast and designed to be experienced across multiple media platforms. A new kind of transmedia epic.

Day One’s two hour pilot episode has been filmed and looks awesome. NBC ordered more episodes and scheduled the series launch for spring 2010. But over the past couple of weeks, much of the new Fall TV season has rolled out and the ratings have rolled in. Clearly, launching a new scripted series in prime-time on a broadcast network has never been more challenging. The message was clear…

For Day One to have the greatest chance of long term success, a new launch model was needed.

Working closely with NBC’s creative team, I came up with something very exciting. We’re taking the thirteen hours of story that was to be drawn out over as many weeks, and making four hours of spectacular entertainment. Showing it over two nights in a row. It’s the miniseries model. A contained story. Easy to market and promote. Asking the audience to make a finite commitment: Show up at this time on these two nights and watch something incredible. If you like it, we will make more.

As the show’s creator, I no longer have to worry about my story being interrupted mid-stream by a knee-jerk shift to another night or time slot. I don’t have to worry about any Day One fans being disappointed if the last couple of episodes never make to the air. Now, all I need to worry about is making something that doesn’t suck.

Stay tuned!

DAY ONE’S TRANSMEDIA ASSAULT BEGINS!

Published: September 2, 2009Tags:

day_one_nbc

As anyone who could possibly have any interest in reading the wonky text of this blog surely knows — I’m obsessed with the transmedia approach to telling a story. Extending a movie narrative, video game fiction, or any story universe, across multiple media platforms simultaneously. This approach has the potential to reach a broad audience on their platform of choice, allowing fans to immerse themselves in rich content.

So, when I created DAY ONE, my new television series for NBC, I very much had in mind all of the various media platforms where my story might find a home: on the web, DVD, comic books, novels, globally, gaming, toys, etc. I’ve done this transmedia thing before, working with cool ideas that other people have created, but DAY ONE is my first opportunity to embed the transmedia approach and culture into the DNA of the original concept.

While DAY ONE the television series is what I like to call “THE MOTHERSHIP”, it can only accommodate a very specific piece of the massive DAY ONE story and mythology I’ve created. Over the last few months I’ve been working with NBC’s amazing licensing group to find creative innovative partners willing to take a leap of faith and collaborate with me and my team, taking transmedia storytelling to the next level.

The first of these exciting collaborations happened yesterday. A well known and award winning creative professional from a medium other than television — came into the show’s writers room and collaborated with me and my amazing staff on content for their slice of DAY ONE’s transmedia pie. Working under my supervision, within a defined creative box, playing to the strengths of this creator and their platform of choice — we created relevant, original, and exclusive content that will be canon for the DAY ONE universe.

As a proof of concept event — the success of yesterday was huge. My vision of a respectful collaboration between creative professionals with different skillsets ain’t crazy — it’s awesome!

MY INTERVIEW WITH io9.com!

Published: August 30, 2009Tags:

This past week I did a guest blogging stint with my favorite website: io9. It’s a gawker owned site that offer up science fiction news and snarky commentary by the megaton. I wrote a couple of from the hip posts for them made some comments here and there. And polished it all off with an interview that’s just gone up over there. I had a blast. It reminded me how I’ve been neglecting Global Couch. Now that cool things worth talking about are starting to happen with DAY ONE at NBC — I figure I should start blogging about it all! So look for more blah-blah-blah activity here starting this week!

Here’s a rambling snatch from the io9 interview about transmedia storytelling:

IO9: “You’re talking about what you’ve called on your blog “Transmedia Storytelling”; that there’s going to be Day One the television show, but that there’s also going to be Day One the web presence, and comic books as well… Is that how you see storytelling in general now? Multiple platforms for one story?”

ME: “I certainly do see storytelling as going across multiple platforms now, but that really has a lot to do with how I grew up as a kid. As I always say, everything I learned about everything comes from Star Wars. For me, those movies were so impactful on me, such a consuming reaction. But it was also playing with the action figures, reading the comics, reading the books, playing the games, making Star Wars movies of my own… All that stuff just imprinted itself in my head. So when I think about the worlds that I create, I just automatically imagine the expanded universe component and get excited about using the different platforms to tell the story in new ways.”

ME: “I’m very lucky that transmedia storytelling, crossplatform narrative, is so important right now in the entertainment business, in all facets of it, whether it’s a video game or a movie or a TV show, it’s important to be able to extend your story across platforms to be able to reach the fractured audiences that are experiencing the stories in so many different places and in so many different ways. I’m lucky to be able to think about that stuff naturally.”

You can find the entire interview and links to my other i09 posts by clicking HERE!

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