About the Course

Tim started his career as a web developer but he was always passionate about film and television. After studying Screen Production at QPIX he went on to produce a multi-platform feature film called Jack Kain that rolled out on DVD and online. Jack Kain was a break-through concept – part film, part online game. This project proved to him that audiences were evolving and viewing behaviours were undergoing a revolution.

Tim has also produced two award-winning short films through QPIX’s Raw Nerve initiative - Blue Rinse Bandits and Jump. He has also produced TV commercials and music videos. In 2008, he was awarded a Creative Fellowship from the Pacific Film & Television Commission. Tim is currently the Development Coordinator at Hoodlum Active, a digital entertainment company in Brisbane. He is always interested in the latest technical advancements in the industry and continually strives to find new ways of connecting with modern audiences.

What were the 'telling signs' that a film like Jack Kain needed to be rolled out in multiple platforms?

There are ultimately two underlying motivations for multiplatform production:

Creatively, it's just plain cool. As a filmmaker you get a kick out of an audience enjoying your film. There's no better pay off than sitting in a cinema with your audience and hearing them laugh, gasp and talk about your film afterwards. Moving your story in to other spaces allows them to extend their involvement with the narrative and the beauty with online is that it's inherently an interactive platform. Deploying a passive experience for online is like making a TV show with sound only and no pictures. In the online world, there's a greater sense of ownership. There's a quote I heard somewhere that says if you allow your brand to engage with social media, you no longer own it, your audience does. It's really true and motivating online audiences to create discussion and user generated content around your property is the best outcome you can expect.

Commercially, and with the work we do at Hoodlum, multiplatform production is all about extending audience engagement. We're basically an extension of the marketing departments of networks and studios and their sole objective is to raise brand awareness. They realise that the entertainment landscape is fragmenting. Today, audiences have so much power over what, when, where and how they consume entertainment that traditional outlets are scrambling to catch up with these new trends. Although audience behaviour is changing, it’s important to note that there are long overlaps and the issue isn't about one platform replacing another but rather an emerging platform living side-by-side with another. After all, it takes a generational shift for big changes to take place.

Could you provide us other interesting examples of this kind of multi-platform strategy that have already been rolled out or about to be rolled out?

There's a pretty interesting multiplatform series on at the moment called Valemont on MTV (http://www.valemontu.com). It's set in an American University and follows a girl searching for answers relating to her brother's murder. Each episode is under 3 minutes and MTV bookends The Hills and The City with Valemont episodes on air as well as making them available online. In addition, there's a bunch of character accounts on Twitter and a University forum in the world of the show (http://valemontcommons.com). The series was sponsored by Verizon and was made by Electric Farm Entertainment who previously made Gemini Division (http://www.geminidivision.com) with Intel as the main sponsor. These kind of brand/network multiplatform hookups are starting to gain traction, especially when they're cast with known actors and given air time on TV. As long as the ad model remains viable and advertisers can see good ROI, they will keep getting made. Sony has invested considerably in their own multiplatform destination site www.crackle.com with the aim to commission original multiplatform series. Every now and then a disgruntled producer or production company will announce that webseries are dead and that there is no way to monetise the content. Because these ventures are usually low budget, then the production outcomes are predictably low budget too. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. If content creators expect to see profit, they need to be making content that attracts eyeballs.

In terms of brand sponsorship, another fantastic example I would cite is Green Eyed World (http://www.greeneyedworld.com) which is a reality web drama that lives on YouTube. The series has had over 2 million views and is the latest series from Tony Valenzuela who made 2009: A True Story (http://www.2009atruestory.com) during the writers’ strike in the US and Harper's Globe for the Harper's Island series. I love his work. It's always really slick and well made. Green Eyed World is sponsored by Sprite and is the first YouTube series I've ever seen that integrates Facebook Connect functionality and iTunes store directly into the YouTube page. It's very clever and I'm sure it will spawn many imitations.

Was there an audience difference between the film and the gaming platforms (ie similar to a huge festival where a band would pull in certain groups of people)

With Jack Kain, not really. Because the experience was tightly integrated, you really had to watch the film first before going online. On the DVD cover and the marketing materials we tried to make it very clear that the film would end after act 2 and to continue the experience, you would need to go online. We worried whether that would be too jarring for an audience – imagine sitting down and watching a film for an hour and then suddenly it ends mid-story and tells you to go to a website. It seemed like a big ask. But the audience loved it. They became highly motivated to click on to the site and continue the experience. And these people weren't necessarily gamers, in fact we didn't target gamers at all in our mainstream marketing.

It's almost commonplace for TV shows to throw to their online offerings during the closing credits as a way to extend audience engagement. It's something that mainstream audiences are becoming more accustomed to and as long as the online content is engaging and offers them something new, there’ll be more of a movement towards this. Bring on the future!

Thanks Tim! 

Hoodlum specialises in creating meaningful online experiences that engage audiences in 'active storytelling' - by participating in the experience the story is revealed. Hoodlum also specialise in integrating these active storytelling experiences with existing on-air storylines so what audiences discover online is played out on-air and vice versa. As a result, Hoodlum offers audiences compelling reasons to migrate between media platforms.

Hoodlum makes no apologies for aiming to reach as many people as possible, and whilst we endeavour to build our experiences so they are tiered for different levels of ability and interest, it is the mainstream audience who are our main focus. On many of our projects we have a specific end point we need to reach, so we need to lead our audiences to that point and make sure they arrive primed and excited.

As professional filmmakers, game designers, writers and developers, we work together to create compelling stories with dimensional characters that move, amuse and inspire. Everything we do is uniquely designed to balance story and interactivity, challenge and entertainment. We are always story first, technology second.

Through traditional techniques of story and character, we motivate our audiences to migrate across platforms and inspire them to return again and again. Ultimately it is this deep understanding of story that gives Hoodlum the ability to connect with mainstream audiences all over the world.

2009 PRIMETIME CREATIVE ARTS EMMY ® WINNER
2009 GLOBAL MEDIA AWARDS WINNER
2009 AWGIE AWARDS WINNER
2009 CONTENT AND TECHNOLOGY AWARDS NOMINEE
2009 ATOM AWARDS NOMINEE
2008 BAFTA AWARD WINNER
2008 BAFTA CRAFT AWARDS WINNER
2008 PRIMETIME CREATIVE ARTS EMMY ® NOMINEE
2008 BROADCAST DIGITAL CHANNEL AWARDS WINNER

Must read's: Kelly Chapman of KCDC at SPAA Fringe {Keynote} {Video}, The Future of Digital Art with Jaymis Loveday (interview), The Future of (Serious) Gaming