This blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected to the new address. If that does not occur, visit
http://b2b.tellyjuice.com/blog
and update your bookmarks.

About Us


TellyJuice is a creative agency & video production company. Packed with creative juice, we are 100% good for you!

Thursday 26 July 2012

Transmedia Heaven: Beginnings

After some effort and thought over the weekend, has one our fictitious characters, Lesland, reached 30 likes on his Facebook fan page


A small milestone, but none-the-less we have now unlocked the insights feature on Facebook (you must have over 30 likes) so we can see who is consuming what, when and how frequently. We can delve into the darkest places of our characters fans base, yes all thirty of them, and analyse their media consumption rates. I feel like I am working at MI6 and have infiltrated a cell… of some description.

Ladies and gentlemen we have ventured into transmedia! And we're going to keep you updated on our experiences throughout the process, the things we learn, the things that don't work so well, and everything in between.

For those of you who don't know, transmedia is the technique of delivering a story or creative idea across multiple digital platforms and formats. The idea is to create content that permeates the audience's daily lives so they can engage with it on varying levels and using different platforms, and in this way be a part of the action, and in many cases even control the flow of the action.

We thought long and hard and came to the conclusion that this transmedia world is so new that if you have imagination, and determination, you can make an impact. We have listened to and read so many opinions on this topic and the average attitude is that the whole idea is so new that lots of things are still untried. But that’s good enough for us, we have lots of ideas that we want to build on and share. This will enable us to start to learn and perhaps share the process and results with our clients in the future.

On our research travels we have found some wonderful and unique examples people embarking on their own transmedia journeys. A nice example is Screw*d, a reality-based campaign for Craftsman. It featured Alan Weischedel, a tool-clueless guy on a mission to become a real handyman. Weischedel’s immediate goal was survival, he was put in situations and environments he had no experience with and was set challenges. It was streamed live and viewers were able to give suggestions, via Twitter and Facebook, to help Alan out of various scrapes or give information on what tools would be useful to build things etc.


 
 
An amazing thing happened today. We uploaded a video to Lesland’s fan page on Facebook and more people saw it than Lesland has fans! I know – incredible. It was ‘available’ to 42 people, he only has 36 fans. This means that if we create great, short, witty, grab-you-by-the-throat videos, we will grow an audience! Creator and audience in some kind of symbiotic relationship.

We are at the point of deciding the level of interaction with our new audience. All 40 fans of Lesland have liked him for some reason or other. How much will they want to take part in his life and adventures? What will the level of engagement be?
How can we get people to enjoy taking time out to spend with a fictitious person?? What do we know about these people? You might think very little at this point. Well not exactly. We know that these people are happy to press the like button and sometimes they will add a comment to a piece of video. Can we engage them in a story where they can be submerged in to our world?

The character Lesland is a Police Community Support Officer, a PCSO. Whilst ‘on duty’ he found a suspicious-looking single glove, so he placed a picture of the glove on his fan page and asked if anyone had any information about the owner or the suspect circumstances regarding it’s abandonment. Well blow me down! People bought into it. They added to the story of the glove’s owner, helping us to take the story in new direction. One person even uploaded an image they themselves had created to add to the digital silliness. The power of story reached out with its smooth porcelain hand and said “this way my child to the digital tomorrow”.
 

Not only do you get a response from real people it is actually fun to do. You feel like you are in the operation room of life. An altered ‘anything can happen’ life. I want more…

Thursday 19 July 2012

Time For Some Art

Whilst passing a shop window in Prenzlauer Berg on a recent jaunt to Berlin, I discovered ‘Standard Time’. A large TV screen visible through the glass had attracted a crowd of tourists all laughing and pointing.  On the screen was a large seemingly digital clock. ‘What’s so amusing about the passage of time?’ I pondered, but low and behold: this was no ordinary clock. This was in fact ‘Standard Time’ – an art project by Mark Formanek, recorded on film, lasting exactly 24 hours.

Standard Time - http://www.standard-time.com

In Standard Time, the lines that make up each digit are huge planks of wood, held by bolts and brackets. As every minute passes a team of workers enter, equipped with hard hats and ladders, to move the planks into their next position. These minute-by-minute changes continue through 24 hours. Though edits are visible, the sun does rise and set at the right time, proving that this art project was created around the clock (excuse the pun).

The anticipation of waiting for each minute change is tantamount to enjoyment for the viewer, and on this occasion in Prenzlauer Berg the assembled audience let out a giddy cheer when the clock ticked on from 22:59 to 23:00. On scurried the yellow-hatted team, ant-like next to the huge numbers. They had barely finished one change, when the next was due.

You can see the overall effect in this time-lapse video:

 

You can also see a behind the scenes of Formanek's more recent version, constructed in Rotterdam, in which Standard Time goes digital.

Though this work can be categorised as ‘performance art’, its practical use as a working clock has made it commercially successful. Standard Time is available on DVD and as an App for iPhone and iPad. Admittedly, my first thought on seeing it was ‘Where can I get a copy?’ though Formanek would perhaps argue that this was never intended as a commercial venture. His artistic explanation on the Standard Time website relates more to the passage of time than sales in the App store. He says: 

‘…this film is much more than just the recording of an action, the recording of something that has taken place in the past; it is also a clock. A clock for use right now and in the future which, as each day goes by, extends further into the past, but is still up-to-date and punctual.’ 

As a bit of a hippy, what I enjoy about this piece is its inherent theme of ‘Togetherness’. Standard Time involved 70 workers, and with a digital clock face measuring 12m x 4m, it was essential for each team to communicate with one another and work together to meet their timely deadlines.  

Standard Time is filmed in Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, with camera locked off for a wide shot. Berlin’s eastern bloc architecture can be seen in the background, punctuated by ball and spike of the TV Tower. The inclusion of a famous landmark suggests that this is not a generic work of art, but more precisely it is a German work of art. Formanek is putting Berlin on the map for its culture and boosting the German capital’s reputation. Over time the public will associate Berlin less with war and segregation, and more with creativity and unity. And for that reason Standard Time gets a big TellyJuice thumbs up.

Tuesday 10 July 2012

CowBird - Putting the Feeling Back in to Social Media

Working in a place like ours, from producers to designers, you are dealing with stories everyday and trying to communicate them in the best way possible through video, motion graphics and scripting. Throughout my day I'll always look to Vimeo to see how other people are telling their digital stories too, whether personal or professional.

The lasting effect of an engaging narrative can be rare but is always one that I want to share with others, so you can imagine my delight when I came across this little gem - CowBird.com
A site dedicated to very short personal stories and not just one off statuses. There's a different lead topic everyday and anyone can contribute. Mostly they are remarkably compelling and heartfelt given their length and the writer's anonymity.

The brains behind the site, Jonathan Harris, talks about his motivation to set up CowBird.
He's got a pretty interesting back-story too which he doesn't mind sharing.




Harris states that the idea came about on his 30th Birthday. He began running an experimental project, posting photos he thought were interesting to his personal site, number27.org, and adding an accompanying short story about each one. This small project then took flight and became CowBird.

Harris is also the designer behind 'We Feel Fine' which scans blog posts for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling", the idea being that in recent years, with the boom of social contribution sites such as Twitter and Facebook, people are posting increasingly distanced and unemotional content to the web. 'We Feel Fine', and now Cowbird, attempts to return to the emotional core of online social diaries and the digital footprints that we leave.

It's an incredibly beautiful site simply on a stylistic level but I urge you to check it out for some soul baring snippets.