Grants for Interactive Media Projects

We thought we’d make Thursdays our regular slot for sharing links and information about funding, grants, sponsorship, revenue models etc.

I’ve been looking into UK development grants for large interactive projects based around narrative film. We were interested in seeing if there was any funding available for writing and detailed planning, which didn’t require presenting a ’script’ already completely written and planned.  In other words, support that would take us from a treatment/synopsis of the story with an outline of interactivity and technology, to a fully written & planned story world (scripts, bible, maps, timelines, production schedule etc).  Optimistic, I know – but worth a ring around.

So far I’ve spoken to the Film Council, Skillset, UK Media Team at Mediadesk, LDA Business link, Harrow in Business, Film London, The Script Factory, Arts Council, Screen South.  Bursaries that were/had been/were going to be available all required a completed script.   The LDA said they consider funding when there is a viable business plan in place, which in the case of script writing would require a buyer for the script ahead of it being written.

The UK Media Team seemed the most promising – every six months they have “calls for proposals” for interactive projects. (NB: the next deadline for interactive projects is on 27th November).  However, their applicant criteria is that your company must have produced at least one previous project which has been recently commercially distributed with demonstrated revenues.  Nothing for startups like us.

Although not for interactive projects, the UK Film Council have a First Feature Film fund, to write and develop a feature film…  They require a half A4 page summary of what happens in the film, a detailed outline (3-5 pages) of the dramatic action in your idea from the beginning to the end, the first 15 to 20 pages of your script based on your film (not required if you are including the full screenplay).

I’m hoping that this is just the start and not the whole picture.  We’ll continue our investigations and I’ll update you soon on what else I’ve found.  Any pointers on missing links most welcome

Ted Hope: The Six Pillars of Cinema

Ted Hope delivering his keynote speech at the Power To The Pixel forum at BFI in London last month: “Take Back What Has Always Been Yours” (full text)

In it he encouraged film makers to “take back” what he called the six pillars of cinema – since they have traditionally only concerned themselves with the first two:
1. Content
2. Production
3. Discovery
4. Promotion
5. Participation
6. Presentation

Readers of his blog, Truly Free Film, will be familiar with his analysis of the industry and call-to-arms:

“We must also recognise that there is no workable present day business model to support the current mode of cinema, other than one built on the exclusionary practice of isolated control of the funding, marketing, distribution, and exhibition systems. We know the model for financing and distribution – and by extension, also creation – is now running on fumes.

How long can the controlling studio model survive when the wall of control has already come down and the people — now embracing that they are both audiences and creators – have recognised the power they truly have and will unlikely ever surrender that power again?

How long can a business based on library assets survive when everything that has been digitised has also been copied and can now be spread with a touch of a button – and every time it is stopped, it is only to reappear somewhere else.”

Christy Dena: Transmedia Lessons

This is a video of Christy Dena presenting at the excellent Power To The Pixel forum here in London last month.

Below it are her slides from the presentation which you can play alongside the video of her talking – for a genuine crossmedia reconstruction

Her talk was about what she’s learned studying around 150 ARG’s and transmedia stories over the last 10 years, with guidance for those of us thinking about how to structure interactive entertainment.

Hypervideo: Indecision

Although we’ve been expanding the scope of what we do, the initial idea to start Chapterplay as a company arose from my work with hypervideo and hypernarratives.

I’ve been mapping out and writing hypernarratives for about three years, gripped by the idea of developing immersive hypervideo stories. Over the course of this year, I’ve started to work on scripting fictional hypervideo narratives in earnest, though I’ve resisted publishing what I’ve been working on until now.

Last year, when YouTube launched their clickable hotspot & notes tool, Annotations, I’d been waiting for a popularly accessible hypervideo technology for so long that I assumed there’d be an explosion of creativity. And yet surprisingly little has been done with it – a few cute puzzles and Choose Your Own Adventure stories.

We’re going to pick out some examples of hypervideo to post here – and Mondays are going to be our regular hypervideo slot. So I figured I should start with my own little videoblog Choose Your Own Adventure story using Annotations from July 2008. It’s silly, but it conveys a simple idea of what can be done with hypervideo.

I’ve also been coordinating a large collaborative hypervideo video art project, which was on hiatus while I had a baby and moved countries, which is underway again and will hopefully be published in the New Year. And we’re also developing a longer hypervideo fiction script. More news of all that here as we progress…

WE ARE CHAPTERPLAY

It’s 11.45pm on Sunday November 1st, and I’m sitting in the dark by a quiet log fire in my father in law’s rambling old country house, bluetoothing a video about ghosts from my phone to my laptop.

My diary today says that I am supposed to write the first blog post here, and that it’s to be called WE ARE CHAPTERPLAY.

I think the idea is that I tell you about who we are, why we’ve been brought into existence and what we’re doing with interactive filmmaking, transmedia storytelling and collaborative art. But it seems to me now that doing this would ruin all the fun of figuring it out.

So instead I’ll start posting new pieces of the answer here every day – I wanted to start on November 1st, before the site is even launched, because today is the first day of NaBloPoMo, blog posting month, the collaborative challenge to post something every day in November.

And anyway, the only people reading this right now – when the site hasn’t even launched – are you few who have been nosey enough to look up the chapterplay.tv URL from the email addresses we’ve quietly started to use – and been curious enough to subscribe. In other words: players

You’ll find the video I’m about to edit at my mobile videoblog, twittervlog.tv. It’s the second entry in a month long game of videoblogging consequences I’ve devised as part of NaVloPoMo (the vlogging equivalent). Each day in November, a different person will post a 90 second video inspired by the previous day’s entry.

And it’s also vaguely hinting towards another little game – a ghost story – that we have planned for the long winter nights to come. When ghost stories are supposed to be told. In the dark, by log fires, in rambling old country houses.