By Andrea Six
The Savannah Film Festival’s Transmedia Showcase on Oct. 30 in the Gutstein Gallery explored the different medias available to tell stories. After an introduction from Adam Neuhaus, creative producer of Radical.Media, the three transmedia creators shared their work.
Zeke Zelker
Zeke Zelker, a transmedia producer, filmmaker and entrepreneur started the showcase with the Billboard Project.
It all started as an idea for a film and expanded with the help of social media. He created a virtual radio station, WTYT960, that has its own Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It even hosts contests and has gotten real bands in on the action.
“We have stories entirely written on Twitter,” said Zelker. “It’s really happening.”
In addition, he also has a web series he’s posting while filming the Billboard movie and off of that web series, he had a play produced and preformed. Zelker is using all these tools to build an audience.
“Giving artists the chance to be a part of it,” said Zelker.
Zack Lieberman
Zack Lieberman, the co-founder of Exit Strategy, jumped in to talk about how he integrated new technology into his work.
He decided to “gamify” a film by adding options for the audience. When someone watches one of his episodes, they are given multiple options to choose from at different points during the program, that determine what viewers watch next.
“You’re editing your own episode,” said Lieberman. “You choose what clips to watch.”
Lieberman showed an example on-screen at the showcase. He added an element of activity and interaction to shows. Not only is he engaging the audience in a different way, but he’s also putting the story in the viewer’s hands.
Lieberman explained how he uses different types of media — and mediums — to tell a single story with his current project, a three-dimensional film called Max and Charlie.
Before making the film, his team is going to create a graphic novel to raise money and awareness for the film. He plans on creating action figures, stuffed animals and other handcrafted goods to support his movie. He’s building a fan base.
“You’re independently creating a Disney franchise,” said Neuhaus.
Navid Khonsari
Navid Khonsari, the founder of iNK Stories, opened his presentation with a story about his life in Iran when was young and started talking about the inclination people have to make a change – to revolt – whether that change be good or bad.
Khonsari spoke of how the Iranian Revolution, or Islamic Revolution of Iran, changed his home, stating that it was the reason he chose the story. Instead of creating a film or a game, Khonsari decided to make an episodic game for tablets, called 1979 Revolution.
He is creating a whole movie but dividing it up into episodes, with mini games to push people through the story. Each episode will be about two hours long and three episodes will make up one season, which will end with a cliffhanger.
He showed a video demonstration of it after explaining how it worked. In it a man stood on a building watching a protest. The player’s goal was to get pictures of the protest. They had to zoom in using two fingers and even focus the camera.
Khonsari incorporated the audio from real interviews and included actual pictures of the revolution. He said that his goal is to entertain, not to teach, but that he would be happy if people were passively educated in the process.
After their presentations, Khonsari, Zelker and Lieberman answered questions from the crowd about their projects.
