Today I write about a personal (non-budget) passion project, that is online now:
dieehrlichen.com is a fictional storytelling plattform about people sharing a very intimate concern honestly to the web. It is also an actors lab, that empowers actors to play a role they dream about.
For this Project I teamed up with filmmaker Jan Georg Schütte and his actors ensemble. Together we wish that 'dieehrliche.com' will become an incubator for new transmedia ideas and experiences beyond sci-fi or conspiracy plots.
The plattform-title "Die Ehrlichen" is German for 'The Honest'. And at the moment the plattform is in German because it makes content production a little easier. Nevertheless we want to switch to english in the future.
Until then this slideshare presents our idea and our strategy for the next couple of months:
<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_5712605"><strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px">"dieehrlichen.com" - An Indy-Movie Transmedia Experiment</strong><div style="padding:5px 0 12px">View more presentations from Christian Riedel.</div></div>
Furthermore you can follow the story of "Bernd Schildknecht" - a school teacher who stumbles upon a very strange guy on youtube, who spreads satanic thoughts and looks exactly like Bernd.
The idea for dieehrlichen.com started about a year ago. Back then I met Jan Georg Schütte at the Digital Film Camp in Hamburg. We shared a common interest in transmedia storytelling and started brainstorming right away.
Since then I have been introduced to Jan's awesome actors ensemble. The call themselves "Die Glücklichen" (German for "The Happy"). And under Jan's direction they have already realized two feature length indy-movies and a TV-Mini Series. Currently they are working on Jan's new movie "Leg ihn um!" ("Kill Him!"). All their work is mainly based on improvisation.
And improvisation is also one of the greatest things about 'dieehrlichen.com'. It gives actors the ability to produce content fast, to react to the audience and most importantly: it is something that most actors enjoy to do (even without payment :-) ). We have discussed a lot of approaches to use the web for storytelling. We started with a complex conspiracy plot, thought about a series based on a screenplay while the actors tried out characters on youtube. In the end we decided two things: That improvisation is the most authentic way to work for this team. And that we need more feedback to get better.
So now we present our work so far in public. We think of it as a lab-experiment. And we hope to get a lot of feedback to build on and to attract actors, writers and others to support or join our lab.
So what do you honestly think of it?
Yay! This is a real interesting project! I really like Bernd's story, he's Bono like alter ego rocks and his clichee teacher-like shy reactions are really well played!
AntwortenLöschenI wish you all the best and loads of success for the project! Will pass on the word!
Thank you so mutch!
AntwortenLöschenIf you like follow the other characters on our site. I'am interested in your feedback!
One of the big problems with a lot of transmedia projects is that they depend on a prewritten story structure, complex interconnected sets of game assets, and a tight (often marketing-driven) schedule; your more flexible approach is bound to yield some interesting results, without placing too much burden on you and your team w/r/t planning and asset development. Really smart simple concept. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.
AntwortenLöschenBest,
Jeff Watson
Los Angeles
Hi Jeff,
AntwortenLöschenthank you for your comment. I'am always surprised how a project spreads over the ocean thanks to the internet.
I work most of the time in advertising -so i do know, what you mean by tight marketing driven schedules :-)
I see our greatest challenges in attracting more actors and in keeping the stories alive although our writers won't see money soon.
On the other hand we have the great opportunity to experiment without to much pressure.
I'll keep you informed how the project envolves.
Best,
Christian