When ALIAS went on the air, they experimented with fake websites devoted to SD-6, and Rambaldi. There were various different things and a suggestion that there was some game to be had. I never really paid that much attention to it.
What a difference a few years makes.
I find myself flabbergasted by the amount of work and precision that's gone into the alternate reality game for LOST, LOST EXPERIENCE. Fake Hanso Foundation commercials, fake phone numbers with secret messages, a book published with "interview" clues dropped on websites like Amazon and Powell's...it seems to me like finally someone came up with something to do with corporate media synergy.
Having come off a show (Charlie Jade) that could really have used some of these kinds of tricks to help with a mythology and worldview that was dense and vast, but that had nowhere near the budget to achieve anything even in the same universe as what the makers of LOST are attempting -- well, it fills me with a sense of wonder and a little trepidation about the future.
Wonder because it does do something interesting in being able to stoke the fires of interest even through the fallow period of a summer off. Everyone noticed how much LOST was hurt this season by the repeats. ABC has adjusted so that won't be a problem next season -- the show's going to run uninterrupted, for the most parts. But that still leaves the summer. So now there's this game, ready to step up and fill the gap. Nifty.
On the other hand, there's trepidation, because now that the bar has been raised like that, the burden of creating and maintaining a TV show mythology is only the tip of the iceberg. I feel like there's no going back from The Lost Experience. This isn't Barney's Blog -- this is a full on throwdown to those of us who create content and who try to get TV shows going.
It occurs to me that this could wind up being a cool new way to get junior writers involved. This could be part and parcel of the right of passage -- and open even more opportunties for young writers who think differently.
But.
There's always a but.
Here in Canada, of course, we have writing rooms with three writers doing the work that would be done with eight or ten writers. There's no accounting for that in the production process. But I'll bet you twenty dollars sometime in the next six months I sit in a room and someone asks me how this concept could spin out something like the LOST Experience. And the answer, "a few more million dollars and about fifteen more people," isn't going to cut it.
No, all around my city now (well, not now, it's Sunday, but go with me here) there are discussions about alternate content and what about cellphone content? and how can we do value added stuff?-- and the LOST game is going to be the new benchmark.
And we can't even afford to sit on the bench.
I've seen this before. Post-SURVIVOR, I wrote on a bunch of reality/documentary shows being done by Canadian channels. And the notes were always the same: They wanted Survivor- style reveals and twists, and no matter how my editor friends or I tried to explain it, no one seemed to get that you can't replicate SURVIVOR's 24/7 four dedicated crews and hundreds of hours of wall to wall tape with one camera shooting a subject over five days, for a few hours here and there.
So I sit here, open mouthed, marvelling at things like this weird stunt on Jimmy Kimmel Live:
And I know that's the new bar. I sense it. And I don't see how we'll ever be able to effectively compete with it. Is the only way to do a mystery series now to have a CSI, Bruckheimer-sized budget? I don't know.
I should say that there's no way you're going to find me going around taking part in this LOST game -- I barely have enough time for work and keeping up with TV. But I'll be checking out that clue page now and again-- dipping in as other people play the game, to see what they've found out.
I just wonder, in the end, what it all means.
3 comments:
it means exactly what you said it means, dmc...instead of focusing on creating interesting and entertaining 'originals', the next year to eighteen months will be made up of meetings 'brainstorming' to try to come up with the Canadian version of 'Lost' or the like, that cross platforms and penetrates the Canadian viewers psyche with its mythology, only to end up being a sad poor man's imitation (much like most of the Survivor-like simulations) that falls well short of 'expectations' (blame the writers, all 3 of them). By then there will be something new and hot in US tv and the cycle will start all over again.
And you're right about "a few more million dollars and about fifteen more people," being the 'answer' - but not the answer anyone here wants to hear...
I say that we should try to create and produce a show that is the exact opposite of whatever is hot or the bar/industry standard in the USA...so it can stand on its own two feet and be judged accordingly...but whatever that is, or how to ever sell it, I have no idea...
Excellent post again.
No worries on comment length. The insight is much appreciated.
Things like that Bell New Media Fund can bridge the gap -- and you're right, I'm familiar with the Degrassi website and it was very much ahead of its time.
Pointing out the critical mass of audience needed is also a key point in all this.
Unfortunately, what I remember, even in the "bad old days" of just having website content was it amounted to the Interactive person coming to the producer, who was busting ass trying to get the show to air, because there probably wasn't enough people doing that job, and no matter what the pitch was, the net result always was "how much stuff can you give us? Ie: it always became more work.
I'm a big believer in making the other, ancillary content a big part of the package. But --
--what will happen, at least initially, is the attempt to squeeze more content out of the same people.
That won't work. We have to be ready.
And by the way, just as you can't find a high school or university student who can contemplate researching something by starting somewhere other than Google -- we also have to be prepared that kids will gravitate toward the shows that provide this content for them.
It has become part of the basic selling package -- the cool shows that tweens will embrace will be the ones with value added content.
Writers, producers, stakeholders, just know that when you go to plan this content -- THIS IS SOMEONE'S JOB -- it is NOT "something else" you can just get the writers to come up with "on the side."
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