Cinematic Arias

A few posts ago I mentioned that my weekend vlog shoot was part of a multi-medium project, what’s more popularly referred to as transmedia narrative… ugh, I hate that word. It makes me think of transfat or a knife wielding transsexual… but that’s another story.

Where was I?

Oh, the vlog shoot (another word I hate: vlog). You might say we look to Felicia Day and THE GUILD for inspiration… although I’ve never seen an episode of her show so why don’t we?

Felicia was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal article and here’s what I gleaned for my own project.

1. If she has too many DVDs to mail out, she needs a fulfillment company like Neoflix. I’d go nuts stuffing so many DVD mailers.
2. She’s selling DVDs and using the funds to finance the show. That’s awesome! I think my own venture needs to think about selling DVDs, Blu-ray, t-shirts, hats, panties, whatever we can because making films, even short ones, costs money.
3. The music video was a great idea, a very great transmedia idea. I need to start generating ideas for songs, video games, comic books, ARGs, all of that.
4. Even after Microsoft invested in the show, Felicia can only pay for 2 full-time employees. Bummer… but she must be paying the cast and crew, right?
5. It’s all about building communities around the work. My colleagues and I need to be better social networkers. We need to set up our website ASAP (with PayPal donation button), as well as start planting flags on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, you name it (and this can be both diegetic and non-diegetic).
6. Olivia Munn was in Playboy but didn’t get naked. FAIL! PS, when you bite your thumb like that… the most unsexy thing is to force yourself to look sexy. Just be sexy and others will see you as sexy.

Now, I should mention that at least one of my partners on this project isn’t too keen on social media. He’s always saying, “what is that, I don’t get it, it seems like a waste of time” and such. Is he a crotchety old man like the kind the kids would bust at the end of a SCOOBY DOO episode? Yes, but maybe he just hasn’t seen this:

One more PS, I love this new, evolving definition of “value” but that don’t pay off the student loans.