Ray Quinn joins NightVision Cast

Ray was an instant success on the Xfactor, he won Dancing on Ice and more recently played the iconic Danny in Grease and Billy Kostecki in Dirty Dancing.

In NightVision Ray will play Warren a genius science PhD at imperial college.

ONLY a couple of day left to get special advanced and VIP tickets to NIGHTVISION DON’T MISS OUT! – http://nightvisionHQ.com

Oh the intrigue!

Make sure you get your advance tickets to be the first people the get to see what magic she weaves.

Check out:
http://tarabusch.com/
AnalogSuicide.com
@TaraBusch

GET ADVANCE TICKETS NOW

PlayThisNext is a cross platform development company. Equally at home developing concepts in TV, mobile, game platforms – our focus is solely on the viewer – delivering a creative product that delights, disrupts and empowers. With backgrounds in digital, branding and gaming our ambition is to develop content with an edge. We take an entrepreneurial approach to the business models that underpin our content roster to make the most of the opportunities of today’s media environment and our approach is open and collaborative – working with partners whose common goal is to ignite the next generation of entertainment content.

The Cast
We intend to shoot for the stars. The more money we raise the more we can spend on talent. We have already had some amazing conversation with some amazing actors. A stellar cast will be fully posted as soon as we can confirm. That said if you are already (or know) a super star and want to offer your talents then don’t be scared to drop us a line.

The Crew
Producer/Writer: Kevin Moss
Kevin Moss has been making websites since 1994, his experience stretches from making ARG’s for PlayStation, to working with the then Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion on the Poetry Archive, to creating gaming experiences on mobile phones. His personal projects include an animation series commissioned by E4/C4 and a short animation he created getting 20million Internet views.

He is now running the award-winning agency PlayThisNext.com who are shaping a new future for digital entertainment ranging from mobile applications, location based games and big budget TV shows and story worlds. In their first 12 months, PlayThisNext have been nominated for MIPCOM 360, 2010 Pixel Lab and won The Media Festivals Digital Arts prize sponsored by Channel4. Current transmedia projects include a big budget SciFi drama which has interest from a major US TV channel and the Street Gaming Epic ‘Everwake’.

Director/writer: Craig Griffith
Craig’s first feature film Through the Looking Glass won an award for Best Horror and was nominated for several other awards at festivals around the world. The film has since been signed by US distributor Goliath for world wide release. In addition he has also won several awards for his comedy short Little Blue Spot.

Editor: Claire Pringle
Claire experience spans award winning Feature films to Documentaries. She has just finished editing D.R. Hood’s Wreckers which is starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy

Casting: Clair Haynes
Little Narratives Casting Director is Clair Haynes, who has experience of many different sides of the industry and who brings this knowledge together to specialise in Casting. She trained through The Sorrel Carson Scholarship to The Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, and has worked in theatre and film.
Clair has worked in film marketing at Mel Gibson’s Icon Film Distribution on titles including What women want, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Ghostworld, Heartbreakers and The Dish so she understands the importance of the right talent to sell a project. Previous works include a short which was acquired for distribution by SHORTS INTERNATIONAL at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, work with a two time BAFTA winning director and corporate work has won some of the following awards: SC Award 2009, ISE award 2008 and a highly commended award with the IVCA.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2946516/
Other crew members:
We’re blessed with an amazing team that includes Andy Walker and David Pringle, Sound. They are a tight team who have already worked as a unit on Craig’s award winning Horror feature Through the Looking Glass. Between them they have worked on feature films and many hours of TV.

3D artwork: Geoff Rogers 3D artwork has been designed by Geoff Rogers. http://foomandoonian.carbonmade.com/

How will we spend $10k?
We value every $ people give us and we can assure you that it will all be ploughed into making NightVision the scariest experience you can imagine.
All of the cast and crew are working for costs, and below they’re day jobs with back end points (a profit bonus) included in their agreements. But like us and I hope you, they really want to be involved in something new and exciting.

The core team are working for nothing and will not take any money from your support.

That said there are always cost that we can’t beg or borrow. Your support will pay for:
• Script – Kevin and Craig have created this for love
• Cast costs – our budget for cast is estimated at about £2500 but the more you support the more we can give!
• Crew costs – as described above
• Post costs – as described above
• Camera’s – begged and borrowed though we may buy a cheap camcorder
• Sound equipment – begged and borrowed
• Lights – It’s shot in NightVision! that said we have begged and borrowed what we need
• Location – We have found the most amazing location in Cardiff. Photo’s here: http://on.fb.me/o6zAEz There is a small(ish) fee to the location
• Food – I’m an amazing sandwich maker – there will be no shortage of food and drink
and
a hat – a very iconic hat!!!

GO BACK AND HELP FUND NIGHTVISION

A massive nod to Matt Locke for his conference The Story. It started with the first Story conference and Coney’s presentation about Small Town Anywhere/ The project is great, the audience takes on different characters from a small town, the Mayor etc. On stage they play out a WWII scenario. What stuck in my head was the audience was encouraged to meet in the bar afterward and email a response to their theatre experience. Coney explained that this fundamentally changed the experience for the audience when they were given this space to create their story.

This year Mary Hamilton’s gave a fantastic presentation about Zombie LARPing and explained froth. (read it now) By not trying to inject to big a narrative into the LARP she realised the players afterward (over a beer) would create their own stories about the game they just played “oh it was you who was hiding under the table!”.

The two presentations talk about something very exciting.

It reminds me of a Ralph Koster quote “Games are not stories” and therefore can we say experiences are not stories? So with NightVision we’ve tried very hard to end the story. And that ending naturally pushes the audience to a discussion about what they just experienced. What they think just happened. What the story is, what their story was. We may add characters into this Froth, we’ll see and experiment.

As a final point a lot of this thinking came about because we decided to make NightVision a time locked event. An experience with a start point and an end point. By doing this it has opened up a lot of possibilities we’ve been conceptually struggling with. It was very freeing.

I’ve had an amazing time over the last couple of months, writing and experimenting with concepts. But I often came to what I called a wall of code. The moment of turning an idea into something. When I need a programmer(s) to ‘make’ something. I’ve run and been involved in enough builds to know what it means to build something, craft it. But project seemed to grind to a halt – paid work appeared, ideas suddenly explode into ‘platforms’ and 2.0 businesses or they just got too complicated.

My little moment of nirvana came when I looked at the Peak Oil project – collapsus.com. This isn’t meant to take too much way from a obviously interesting project but when I first hit the site I had no idea what I was really meant to do. I love the idea, the concept, the execution was beautiful but it just seemed so over done. All those panels – I asked around, it seemed I wasn’t alone.

So I set myself a simple rule – we we’re allowed to write any code (well very little). The story had to play out on platforms that existed. This constraint increased our creativity, made things tangible and also meant our audience wouldn’t have to learn anything new. They just got involved, jumped into the story. It was extremely obvious and very simple. It’s been frustrating but I hope the story is better for it.

(Just to add, we are beginning to map out a tool for semi-automating the character updates during the live broadcast)

The final post is fittingly about ‘Froth’

Not for the first time some one said to me “FaceBook users are so dumb”. This type of phase just can’t be true, can it?

I then did some research for a presentation I was giving about transmedia. I researched, a well trodden path, of drawing parallels with the film industry. It took over 15 years to create the first edit and then another 15 years for it to become main stream. There were technical drivers for this but one of the reasons it evolved was pioneers like Porter began to trust their audiences. While others thought cross-cutting would confuse audiences Porter pressed on and now it seems obvious he was right.

I wonder how many people said to him “But cinema audiences are so dumb”?

Back to NightVision and our moment of ‘trust’ came by giving the audience way to much footage for them to be able to watch in the timeframe of the plot. The audience is going to have to rely on each other to find the story, to edit together quickly. It will give a feeling of missing out, of something else to find, to discover. One last click. This seemed to be backed up, thankfully, in the end section of Frank Rose‘s brilliant book ‘The Art of Immersion‘ – the section about the psychology of surfing and gaming. So we are going to trust, and test and then test some more and hopefully we will find a point where the audience will be editing the content of the story. We’re going to give them a foot up by not expecting anyone to learn anything new… and that is the next post.

NightVision - clicking soon

Part 1 of 4: The Lurker
I really wanted to create an experience that was created for the lurker. It might be worth a moment to define Lurker. Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker isn’t quite what I had in mind. Lurker implies a person passively sitting back doing nothing. That’s not the lurker I think about. My lurker is someone waiting patiently for *their* moment. Sitting primed to add their 2 cents to the argument, for their moment. Finger ready on the mouse. Following the stream. Not much passiveness.

At last years PttP (which was brilliant) I lost count of the 90-9-1 Rules for Participation triangle diagrams I saw with Lurkers at the bottom, followed by Contributors then Creators. Interesting stuff, I think I first came across this from Clay Shirky amazingly in 03! Power-laws of communities and emergent quality. It’s not that I distrust this thought, far from it, it’s that I disagree with the idea of constantly trying to get the user to ‘engage more’ and by doing so you are somehow making better content. If you believe the above that makes no sense?

So what we tried to do is create a mechanism that makes the lurkers constantly look for their moment. Get them to “free-link” (I think I just made that up) surf, rummage and dig around. Be happy with being a lurker. It’s a small point perhaps but its made a difference in how we created some of the content.

By Nightvision being on Facebook it will be interesting to see how our audience decide to contribute and when. The audience’s main task is to edit the footage and discuss it. (more to follow in the second post). Will people do this? Or will they just follow other users links or our characters links. I hope about 90% will just follow the links and do some free-linking.

A quick 90-9-1 google:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
http://blog.elatable.com/2006/02/creators-synthesizers-and-consumers.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%29

You can support NightVision and buy advance tickets by going to http://inv.st/12G
follow @kevmoss or @nightvisionHQ

NightVision - clicking soon

I find myself suggesting to people that they should think about crowdfunding but have never actually got a project funded myself, so here goes.

We started with Kickstarter, obviously. As a UK based company and individuals we can’t add our project (boo). Kickstarter has been saying they would go global for sometime – pull your finger out! Having looked around (a lot) you quickly see why kickstarter is the market leader. They are the best. They have thought about a lot of the detail, hat tip.

So where do we start next now? I honestly thought this would be easy, but it became obvious quickly why kickstarter are so damn successful, their service is just better than everyone else’s!

www.crowdfunder.com
This was top of my list to use, I really liked the feel and vibe. Most importantly it was used a ‘Fully funded’ model. Something we think is really important in asking for funding.
* Fully funded model
* Costs: 4% + paypal costs
* Credit Cards supported through Paypal
Prefect – until I came to test the process of funding (pretty damn important) For some CRAZY reason you have to deposit money into an account before you can fund. This put me off, and would no doubt put prospective funders off too.
(I really wanted to fund: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/invest-now/jar-of-angels-a-short-film-275 and I wish they had had a way for me to shortlink it to I could tweet – yes I could bit.ly I know, but I’m lazy. I’m really sorry Jar of Angels!)
We really like the site but for now we can’t use it.
UPDATE 1st Aug 2011 : Just spoke to crowdfunder and it seems that this may be changing this in the coming months so worth watching.

next…

http://www.sponsume.com/
* Costs: 4% and 9% if you don’t hit target. + paypal
* Credit cards via Paypal

I fundamentally think you have to have a hit target model. (or as I now know this is called ‘Fully funded’ )
Will I have to rethink this belief?
Looks and feels good
Funding process was straight forward. Though the terminology ‘delivery info’ confused me somewhat.

next…

http://www.indiegogo.com/

They too don’t have a fully funded model – strike from list
Project in $ (not a bad thing as we wanted an international audience)
Costs: 4% and 9% if you don’t hit target. + paypal
What’s with the MTV link? Not bad in fact kind of interesting.

next…

http://www.newjelly.com/

Fully funded model
Cost 5% of fee +plus paypal
The site is in BETA – which feels really odd when I’m handing over cash!
The site is very low on content: 9 new projects. 0 fully successful
Funding in €
They say they only support PayPal – but they may support cards via PayPal – I didn’t check.
If someone is going to take 5% of the money I make they have to bring something to the party, don’t they?

next…

http://en.fansnextdoor.com/

European site
5 successful projects! 7 in total ummm echoooo
This is getting depressing!

next…

http://rockethub.com/

Initially I was a little skeptical that this would support what we wanted from Crowdfunding. It has a very community driven approach and I wasn’t sure we would be able to commit enough to the community to make our submission work.

I’m not 100% convinced about the ‘fuel’ metaphor and the design puts me off a little (would it do the same for funders?)

The gamifaction of crowdfunding sort of put me off, but then again I suddenly really wanted a badge – I’m being sucked in

Oh hold it !!!
Not a fully funded model – they have a All & More™ which means it’s get as much as you can model
Cost: 4% fee + 4% cards (most seem to be 3% based on paypal) + 8% if you don’t hit target

next…

http://www.fondomat.com/
Not open yet!!!

I’m getting a little desperate not and thinking about changing my nationality – perhaps it would be easier:
I started to wade through this: http://www.crowdsourcing.org/directory

At this point we had a discussion internally – why don’t we just set up a page and take pledges via another method. It didn’t seem like these sites were going to bring us much traffic so perhaps we could do it ourselves. We pondered. Perhaps we should use a PayPal Donate button? @StanDoubt pointed us to http://bit.ly/cARQKq – interesting. This suddenly seems overwhelming. We want to make NightVision not a webste..

On with the hunt:

http://invested.in/
A all or nothing model AND a raise as much as as possible. Actually you get to decide what kind of funding you want. All or Nothing, with or with out a deadline. Or a model of raising as much as you can. there is a downside though… we can’t bust our limit if we choose the All or Nothing model (I think this is true – I’ve just emailed them)
Cost 3%
+ Credit card fees
Some of the other sites do updates better so I think we would need to integrate into Facebook better. (something we didn’t really want to do.
It doesn’t seem like there is a massive vibrant community of funders. Lots of 0% funded projects.
A pretty simple and straight forward payment system, but you do need to create an account, but that seemed easy…
hold it, why is there always a BUT – doesn’t except paypal just Credit Cards.

———-
Enough is enough. We stopped researching. So it has to be one of these options.

We’re still convinced Fully Funded is the way to go. I like crowdfunder but I just don’t get why I have to deposit cash – it make no sense. For this reason they are out.

This leaves invested.in or do it ourselves. I’m worried about trust if we do it ourselves. (and I did hear a couple of stories of paypal holding/freezing cash if they feel they need to investigate you) plus it means it will be harder to run a fully funded campaign (if not impossible)

so invested.in it is. And here is our page…

Now after all that amazing research give us your cash >>>>

http://inv.st/12G

]]> http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/08/crowdfunding-research/feed/ 10 http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/04/7-extremely-useful-letters-list/ http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/04/7-extremely-useful-letters-list/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:04:00 +0000 admin http://www.playthisnext.com/?p=44 To say that the alphabet is one of the most useful creations is a massive understatement. But to fully use the amazing Word Service we’ve created a top list of the ’7 extremely useful letters’ list that will really help you get the most out of the alphabet. Hopefully this will get you on the road to really using the alphabet service to a maximum effect. Don’t forget if you think we missed any important letters do let us know. We’re always keen to keep ahead of the curve and spot trends.

1) A – A-level important

Coming in at number one on our ’7 extremely useful letters’ list is the letter A. It is the first letter in the alphabet and classed across the western world as the top letter. (except in German where they seem to prefer U). The word Apple is often thought of as a word that captures the true essence and magic. A letter none of us can do with out.

2) F – is fantastic

The letter F is our number two in our ’7 extremely useful letters’ list. It is often missed in lists like this, but we think it is one of the best. F is a free letter, unlike a lot of other letters, and comes with the added bonus of acting as a simple form of abuse by using it’s open API and adding OFF or YOU. Innovation in a letter.

3) Z – not to snooze at

Z is the last letter of the alphabet but gets into number 3 spot in our list of ’7 extremely useful letters’. Z is a niche letter and not to everyone’s taste but we think if you try to use it regularly you will really see the rewards. Strongly recommended.

4) K – kicking in to touch

Often in top lists but can be a little silent and therefore doesn’t make it further up our list. That said it’s the first letter of my name so can’t be all bad. We found in our experiments it works extremely well with ‘C’s. Try it out.

5) O – a little circle of trust

This is radical and I know we will be questioned about our O inclusion – what can we say we love it. We like the way our mouth makes the same shape when you say the letter. Try that with a Z, ain’t going to happen. We like the way OO looks like eyes (or boobies) plus vowels rock…End of.

6) E – total ecstasy

E is the most versatile of letters an we strongly recommend you check it out. Doesn’t matter if you want to use it to start, end or even use in the middle of a word it will never let you down. That said it lacks true innovation which we find a little disappointing and stops it topping our ’7 extremely useful letters’ list . It also gets negative points for being a crytologists favorite letter.

7) X – full of kisses

X is a true innovator. Not just a letter but also a multiplier eg 3×4 or 6×9 or even 11×17, magic. X can be used to tick a box, or just as Xing eg. crossing. And of course for kisses lots and lots of kisses. Bugger all words start with X so it sadly it can’t really get higher than number 7 in our list of ’7 extremely useful letters’

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They didn’t make our top ’7 extremely useful letters’ list but we want to give a special mention to S. S makes things more and ‘i’ because you can draw a little smilie face in the dot.

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Images nabbed from mag3737′s flickr photostream

]]> http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/04/7-extremely-useful-letters-list/feed/ 0 http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/03/transmedia-thinking/ http://www.playthisnext.com/2011/03/transmedia-thinking/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:10:02 +0000 admin http://www.playthisnext.com/?p=35 I gave a small talk at Cardiff PetchaKutcha last week, which was nerve-racking but also very good. I didn’t want to list a bunch of transmedia/crossplatform/interactive stories or just explain, or fail to explain, what transmedia is. I decided to talk about the difficult stuff in the middle – the things I’ve been trying to benchmark ideas against and use to come up with new ideas. It was possibly a little to ambitious for a wide crowd but I heh I enjoyed it.

Just an excuse to use a Star Wars image?

I started with an image of Star Wars, the point being that what a lot of people label as transmedia is actually just franchising. (I got everyone to boo if I used the word by mistake, see my wrangl debate) Plus it was a good excuse to look at C3P0 sitting on a tape dispenser. (Since the talk I noticed this SXSW diagram doing the rounds which touches on the same point)

I made a tongue-in-cheek argument that the most interesting cross-platform stories are being told by ad men – a brand like Nike tells a story across shops, packaging, service, magazines, TV, running, and of course their products. Their story, their purpose is woven through everything. I probably would say that coming from a ad background. I’m interested in how these complicated campaigns can exert ‘control with no control’ something that is a constant battle I find.

The best transmedia producer?

Now on shaky ground I came out and said that the best Transmedia Producer is Simon Cowell (I expected a bigger boo). If you don’t think about Xfactor as a TV programme, isn’t this a great cross platform story? It has a very distinct start, middle and end. Played out in Newspapers, magazines, facebook campaigns, twitter, phone voting and of course TV. It has villains and heroes and with mobile in hand, it seems like we are in control.

blah blah blah – bit about ‘choose your own adventure’ books and how we need to look forward. I didn’t but I really wanted to say how much I hated people mentioning Masquerade to me as though this was the most ground breaking piece of information. You get that too right?

What will Transmedia's first edit be?

I think one of the problems we have at the moment is that we haven’t worked out the edit, this will be the next big step. I love the Arcade Fire video, not just because it is brilliant but the editing is so damn good. I used cinema as the obvious example, it took over 15 years to create the first edit and then another 15 years for it to become main stream. There were technical reasons for this, but the main reason was because filmmakers didn’t trust their audience’s to understand. They wanted to put it all in so it made sense. We are doing the same. We have to learn to trust our audience. But at the same time how many times have you heard a developer say “The thing you have to remember is FaceBook/Internet users are just really dumb.” Really? Are they? I use both and wouldn’t call myself stupid. So not only do we need to trust them we have to understand them too? Feck!

Coleridge - an old photo is deep

I’ve learnt it’s always important to get an image of an old bloke which I managed to do seamlessly. This old person is Coleridge and he coined the term “Suspension of Disbelieve” as I found out on Wikipedia. I think that suspension of disbelieve is one of the most interesting challenges and areas of investigation for interactive storytelling. Perhaps it is through understanding the term we can learn how to gain trust from our audiences? My wikipedia search did pull up an interesting fact, Coleridge initially thought it was the burden of the author to create the suspension of disbelieve, in the following years this was revised to be the responsibility of the reader. Is there something that rings true when you read this? Have transmedia storymakers got it the wrong way around?

Frankie Howard V Shakespeare

I was very pleased with the next slide and being able to place Frankie Howard and Shakespeare next to each other. Proud.  Two storymakers that used the ‘Fourth Wall’ to comic and dramatic effect. The question that I’ve heard is “What happens when there is no wall?” The question I’ve been asking myself is how do I let the audience create their own wall? I saw a good presentation at Matt Locke’s TheStory about Blast Theory’s SMS drama for C4 and with in it they showed some of the SMS’s Ivy received. They were meaningful, thoughtful and touching. I don’t think any of the teenagers that send these messages believed that Ivy was real, I think they had just allowed themselves to suspend their disbelieve.

So what we end up seeing is a lot of fake CCTV footage, fake webcams, fake facebook, twitter and blog posts. And as a writer it is hard not to think like this. Not to create the fake. But is it fake or fictional? Is that subtle difference enough to write differently? If we trust our audience a little more does it help? It has for me.

This talk was quite a whistle stop tour of some things I try to think about when writing. I do think about the campfire analogy on how can the story be changed or adapted, what feedback will allow me to do that. How can I make this a story a conversation or even dare I say it a community…

In conference land you can’t seem to get away from a pyramid diagram, with super users at the top and lurkers at the bottom. It normally is split something like 80/20%. This power law, discussed by Clay Shirky in 03, is extremely interesting. I also find it interesting the diagram is a pyramid not a funnel. I think we need to design more for the 80%, the lurkers, but we get sucked into thinking about the interesting creative superusers. Did the Simon Cowell design for the 80% or the 20%.

Lurkers are more important that your super users

Following on I think it’s important to discuss what lurking is. Lurking isn’t watching, lurking is on the edge of participating, ready, just waiting for your moment. I think one of the powers of interaction doesn’t have to be the interaction in it’s self but the possibility of interaction; of adding to the conversation. This is powerful stuff and as a confirmed lurker for the last 15yrs I feel an expert.

I spoke about Improv very briefly, I’ve not really delved too far into this but on the surface I often think about it, as a simple metaphor and a prompt. I think we can learn a lot from some of the technics that Improv comedians use. I remember talking to a friend who had just done a course and they said that you need to keep a conversation open, never shut it down. This intrigued me, how can you make your writing open, allowing people to flow into the gaps. It also reminds me of Jeff Gomez‘s ‘Swiss cheese narrative’. As inspiration this is a good article on improv do’s and don’t

Finally I spoke about Froth. I’ve been thinking about this concept since last years TheStory when Coney spoke about, Small Town Anywhere a theatrical event they created. It was a fascinating insight, but what stuck in my head was their description of an important element of the production which was the discussion of the event afterwards, in the bar. This informal space was when the story of the events were constructed. People could explain their actions and piece together what actually happened, the story.

Roll on a year and Mary Hamilton talks about Zombie LARP! and Froth. Mary’s talk was fabulous, full of brilliant drawings and fun. If I remember correctly, she spoke about how they tried to embed narratives into the Zombies LARP’s but it never seemed to gel. But what they did notice is players were creating stories (and boring people senseless – see her slide 55) retelling their adventures. It made me remember a Raph Koster quote “Games are not Stories”. How often do you have to remind some of this? So if games are actions, and stories are the retelling the juice bits, that sounds interesting – doesn’t it?

Right I’m off to get pissed and then retell the best bit on facebook. God, where did my mate get that photo from!!!

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