Off the Map

It's been quite a while since I've updated my blog and a lot of that has to do with a crazy travel schedule for the last year. I had the opportunity to work with my good friend John in helping him build a strategy and organization at the ground level for a new music division at Maker Studios, a tech darling in Culver City that is catching both the film and online world's attention as it's quickly heading towards 1 billion views a month in Youtube traffic.

The opportunity appealed to me as there has been a clear trend developing with a shift of major dollars along with audiences to online entertainment. Convergence is finally becoming a reality. What does that mean exactly? It means that for maybe the first time in modern history, storytelling is changing. It now can be told and consumed in so many different ways that it makes the mind spin. Think about it. You now have a chance to create a singular story, cut it up into something that looks more like a puzzle and spread that across the web. Audiences are finding new content in the manner that they want to engage in. It's the storytellers job now to find them where they are with a piece of that overarching story and loop them into the overall grand adventure they are creating.

When creating, think about the overall palette you have available to you now. Not only is there mobile, TV, film, there are platforms everywhere, each with their own flavor. Youtube is king of content but it conjures certain viewing habits and tastes more than others. Vimeo is a completely different audience with different expectations of how long they'll watch a single video. Now you can include platform tastes including gaming device platforms, Blip, Sony, HULU, and Netflix and on and on. Put on top of that applications like Frequency, Roku, and a growing number of others that are curating content into a single place and you've got a lot of options.

If you're diving into your next story or script, think about the mass effect audiences are having on how content is made. Think like them. Who are you trying to catch? What do they like? Where do they live in media terms? Now start sketching how you want to go get them and where you need to start with that story. you have a chance to reach and engage in an entirely new way. Create the puzzle and go put it out there.