Andrea Phillips's Blog, page 22

Life and LIPA After Sandy

One week ago, I tallied up my damage from Hurricane Sandy: some lost shingles, but no flooding, though the storm surge got to within a hundred feet of our house. We had hot water and a functioning gas stove, food supplies to last several days, and in general felt immense relief at our near miss.

Now, in Day #10 without power, there's a worse situation brewing. It's because of a man-made disaster, not a natural one. And I need your help.

LIPA is the Long Island Power Authority, an organization with a colorful history of mismanagement and outright corruption. In the aftermath of Sandy, over a million Long Islanders were left without power. Huge swaths came back on in the first few days, thousands of workers were imported from dozens of states. From our refuge in Pennsylvania, it looked like, for once, the situation would be under control. Their helpful map showed areas clearing and having power restored rapidly. We thought once we made it home again on Sunday that even if we didn't have power yet, at least the town my in-laws live in would be restored -- after all, there were no colored triangles showing outages there.

We came home to discover that neither town had power. The map was disgustingly inaccurate. It was replaced shortly by a less-helpful map with no streets and no estimated repair times whatsoever.

At that point I was still willing to give LIPA the benefit of the doubt. After all, they were saying 90% of service would be restored by the end of today. (Now LIPA is saying there are roughly 164,000 customers without power. Note that number is not including homes in Long Beach or the Rockaways, who they have removed from the rolls. A neat trick, that.) 

And, you know, sometimes these things are slow for logistical reasons... but then came the Inspection Fiasco. here are a few facts that I want to get a little more public attention:

* LIPA is requiring homeowners who flooded to get a certificate of inspection before power is restored, or they'll cut the power to your meter when your neighborhood is restored.

* They first started talking about this requirement on Thursday.

* It's unclear who needs these inspections; some sources say everyone south of Merrick Road and Montauk Highway; others say you only need such a certificate if you flooded. We live south of Merrick Road, but we didn't flood, so... do we need a certificate or don't we?

* LIPA has never before required such a certificate or inspection for a flooded home. 

* No concerted effort to inform homeowners of this new requirement has taken place. We found out through hearsay and our paper Newsday subscription.

* LIPA's CEO is on record saying that homeowners don't need to do anything to make sure this inspection is "answer the door." 

* Our home in Oceanside is in the 40s right now. We're sleeping all together in a tent on the living room floor and escaping to Panera for a little heat and power in the mornings.

* LIPA has previously warned homeowners about fraud and burglaries -- you're not to open your doors to anyone who says they're from LIPA, as nobody from LIPA needs to go into your home to restore power.

* They have not given a timetable nor appointment times for these inspections.

* They say 40,000 homes will need this inspection.

* LIPA says they have 100 inspectors working on the job.

So the upshot is that LIPA wants homeowners to stick around unheated, unpowered homes in freezing weather on the off chance an inspector happens by, and given the resources they've allocated to the job, that could be weeks and weeks yet. Nevermind the people in shelters because they can't stay in their unehated homes. Nevermind the people still trying to make it to their jobs during this disaster.

Here's the kicker: The places affected by this ridiculous new rule don't have much phone or internet service... because there is no power. Cell phone towers aren't operating. VoIP phone lines and computers aren't working. Also: Gas shortages.  So many of the homeowners affected by this policy don't have a way to contact LIPA and get the straight truth, and not everyone is as fortunate as us to have the gas and financial resources to escape to another town for a few hours like we're going. And even so, we just might be shooting ourselves in the foot by seeking out warmth and missing the inspector.

We're still not starving. We're not going to freeze to death in the night. We haven't lost all our possessions. But we're cold, and tired, we're running low on clean laundry. The kids are at the end of their rope, especially my little one; there are only so many games of War and books a six-year-old can take in good stride.

There's no power in our school district, and school in Oceanside won't be back until Tuesday at the earliest. That'll make for a full two weeks without school. Even Long Beach -- Long Beach, the poster child for Sandy damage -- has resumed some limited school already. But not us.

We're being worn down.

We're in discomfort, not danger, but even so, I'm starting to feel a little desperate. How much more so those who don't have the same resources as we do? If this is what being lucky after Sandy feels like... I just don't even have words.

So look: I'm just one customer. It's easy for LIPA to ignore me. But maybe public attention and pressure from outside of Long Island can get LIPA to do something -- recruit more inspectors, announce a timetable, or even drop this inspection requirement entirely. So please, please, PLEASE share and Tweet and propagate this information so the public knows what's going on out here. It's the only thing I can think of that might actually help me and the other 100,000+ powerless LIPA customers out here to get back to something like normal.

And if any of you is a lawer itching to start up a class-action lawsuit... I know a whole lot of people on the South Shore who want to see LIPA called to account.

Disney Living Worlds: Yeah, No

I love Disney.

This will be no secret for long-time readers here; I've written entire posts about the top Disney properties I'd love to work on, how Disney has inspired thoughts about cynicism and engagement... I've even used trips to Walt Disney World as rewards for my family for a summer house cleaning game, and another year-long version of the same that is not yet blogged. Big fans in this house, both on the level of personal consumption and as a matter of professional respect. Disney does great work.

It stands to reason, therefore, that I'd be jumping backflips with joy over the new Disney Living Worlds grant program -- and then polishing up a proposal to send their way.

This is not happening, nor is it going to happen. To explain why, let me walk you through the most notable landmines found in their FAQ and Submission Rules.

1. They can do anything they like with your submission, forever and ever, without compensation.

From their terms and conditions:

Enrollee hereby agrees and grants to WDI R&D, its parent and affiliated companies (“Affiliates”) and the successors and assigns of each a fully paid-up, transferable, non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license, including the right to sublicense, throughout the universe to fully and freely use the Work Product;

This is a big deal. It means that they can do anything they like with your idea, even without awarding you a grant or work contract, once you submit it. This has a notable detriment to the market value of that idea -- I could never sell that concept to anyone else afterward.

Why in the world would Penguin or Time Warner pay me to license or develop a concept that Disney's already claimed rights to -- even if they've declined to pursue a relationship? I would never, ever, ever in a million years submit the work of my heart's desire under those terms.

2. ...They can even give your idea to someone else:

You will own your idea. However, your application will be shared within Disney and possibly with other applicants so be careful not to put anything in it that you wish to keep confidential. 

So technically... even if they love your idea, they can give it to someone else to develop! They probably mean to protect themselves from cross-pollination here -- when you have a lot of ideas kicking around, sometimes the sources get foggy. It's a human thing to see a strong idea in a weak proposal and mention it to fill in a weak aspect of a stronger proposal. But this is woefully inadequate protection for creators.  

3. They aren't even providing Disney resources to develop with:

We will work to set up an Agreement with you to further develop the work in your proposal for WDI R&D as well as provide any necessary design guidance, but we will not provide any production resources to develop the proposals.

One of the big upsides of working with a company like Disney is access to resources, be those resources people, knowledge, money. I'm an indie creator without a production team to call my own; but apparently they're not interested in anyone who isn't interested in running a production team. So I can't go to Disney purely as a creator with great ideas to share -- I have to go as a project manager willing to hire and manage budgets, paperwork, and other administrative overhead. 

If Disney isn't promising to pay me for their license to my idea and won't even be giving me their muscle and expertise in the development process... why am I giving them all of those rights, again? 

In summation: basically this is unpaid concepting.

It's likely -- in fact, it's probably exactly the case -- that the people behind this grant program have nothing but the best of intentions. But I've been through enough bad projects and bad contracts by now to know that you should never accept questionable contract terms just because you trust the other party. And while I might even trust the people running this program... I kind of don't trust Disney's lawyers.

If I were at a different place in my career, or if I had different priorities, the risks wouldn't bother me as much. It's true that in the marketing world, every time you pitch, you risk the client taking your idea to someone else to develop. Hey, when you're trying to get your foot in the door, sometimes that's a risk you just have to take. And if you're a creator without much of a track record to leverage, maybe the gamble with Living Worlds looks pretty good to you.

That's not standard op for the entertainment industry, though, and we shouldn't be adopting the practices of the ad business when we're pitching original transmedia works. No credible publisher, film studio, TV network, or music label is asserting the right to use your work forever and ever even without paying you... just because you pitched them that one time.

Luckily for me, I'm at a place in my career where I can refuse to do concepting or pitching for free. Ownership of original work and fair compensation for work-for-hire is a big deal to me, actually. Working with Disney would be a great opportunity -- maybe even a career-changing one! But submitting to Living Worlds is a little bit like buying a lottery ticket. The cost of that ticket is just too high.

Sorry, Disney. I love you, I really truly do, but we can't be together on those terms. Call me if you change your mind.

Futures of Entertainment 6

You probably already know that Digital Hollywood, Storyworld, and Power to the Pixel are all going on this week. Sadly, I'm not at any of them this year; too many deadlines at hand, and as I have no employer to expense it to, it's difficult for me to justify the time and expense. 

There are a few events, though, that I'd hate to miss, even if I can't justify them as giving me a platform for shameless self-promotion and mercenary reputation-building. One of them is ARGfest, which is always well worth carving out of my budgets for both time and money.

Another, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, is Futures of Entertainment 6, which is coming up fast. It's at MIT on Nov. 9-10 this year. I'll be there, and I'd love to see you there, as well!

The programming includes sessions on Nollywood, Nigeria's cinema industry; storytelling and sports; rethinking copyright for today's world; and so, so much more. Speakers from Maria Popova to Henry Jenkins to Mike Monello. This is going to be thinky, meaty material, and I am rock-solid certain I'm going to come away from it positively dizzy from all of the new information and piercing insight.

I'm looking forward to it more than I can even say -- it's been ages since I've been able to attend an event like this without the expectation to perform. So relaxing! I can just soak in the knowledge! In the meanwhile, though, for those of you at the conferences going on this week... don't have too much fun without me. Sob.

Circus of Mirrors

Yesterday, something intensely exciting landed on YouTube -- a trailer for Circus of Mirrors, the book I've written for Imaginary Friend Books!

This project is very special to me for many, many reasons, not least of which is that the Bearded Man is quite possibly the best character I have ever created. I LOVE THE BEARDED MAN SO MUCH YOU GUYS.

And this video is very special to me because holy smokes, was that a good hair day or what?

But seriously -- Imaginary Friend Books as a whole and Circus of Mirrors in specific have been a delight to work on, I am crazy proud of both of them, and I simply can't wait to show them to the world. Stay tuned!

My Life in Technology

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! This a day dedicated to celebrating women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics -- STEM careers, as the cool kids call it. Today, I'm going to do something a little different and off-program: I'm going to talk about myself.

Once upon a time, in another life, I wasn't a writer or a game designer or an author. I was a woman in tech.

Not a programmer, mind -- though I could write a mean shell script when it came up. Not an engineer or a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, and while I've always been great at math, I'm infamously bad at arithmetic.

But still: In technology. I worked at a boutique IT company, and my days involved designing and testing data management systems; wrangling enormous databases with hundreds of tables and millions of entries; configuring pieces of hardware costing well into five figures. My days were filled with SQL and DB2 and WebSphere, inscrutable IBM documentation, patches and batch scripts and the deafening chill of server rooms.

I went to industry events to work at my company's booth, and took a special delight in it. Men would wander up to ask questions about our products and their features, and I'd answer them with depth and nuance. Then they'd ask for information on pricing. I would demur. "Oh, I have no idea," I'd say. "I'm technical staff."

At that moment, there was always a pause, as the man (and it was always a man) reevaluated his entire opinion of me and my worth as a human being. His eyes would spark with new respect for me -- respect he hadn't felt before, when he thought I was a woman doing a woman's (sales/marketing) job, and not a woman doing a man's (technical) job.

I loved that moment.

Nowadays, when events like Ada Lovelace Day roll around, I feel a little guilty because I'm not a woman in tech anymore. I've become a woman near tech. Tech-adjacent. A user. And it's easy to feel like I'm letting the feminist cause down by retreating into the warm embrace of a softer, artsier, more feminine career. Other women have felt a similar pressure against prioritizing family over career, or opting out of having a career entirely. 

But I refuse to let this feeling win. That feeling? It's part of the problem we're fighting against.

Ada Lovelace Day isn't about funneling all girls and women into STEM careers, and it isn't about shaming women who didn't want them or who chose a fork in the road going in a different direction.

The fact that I feel shame about winding up in a less masculine career -- or that some women feel looked down upon for becoming nurses and not doctors, stay-at-home moms instead of executives -- is a part of the consistent historical devaluing of women and women's work. (Why don't we see movements persuading more men to be childcare workers and secretaries? Because those are women's jobs, and as such pay little in cash and respect.) As a feminist, I'm not going to let that little snake at the back of my head make me feel bad about the choice I made.

Because what it comes down to is having that choice to make. Every child, every person should have the same opportunity to choose the life path that makes them happiest, regardless of gender.

And if a girl is persuaded that science and math are for boys, she won't know that she has that choice. If the subcultures revolving around technology start with the assumption that there are no women in their ranks, she won't know that she has that choice. If she never, ever sees a woman as a role model as a researcher or physicist or code jockey, she won't know that she has that choice. 

Once upon a time, I was a woman in tech. I'm not anymore. But I'm profoundly glad I knew I had that choice.

Zen and the Art of Transmedia Storytelling

Several months ago, an indie film director approached me. He was searching for funding for his film, and he wanted me to "make a transmedia plan" for him, because he thought that would make the project an easier sell to investors. His business logic was sound; he wanted a way to create fans ahead of time, because it's naturally easier to get funding and distribution for a film that has a robust fan base already waiting to buy tickets. We have Blair Witch Project and dozens of comic book movies to prove that point.

What this particular gentleman was missing, though, was a crucial pillar to any transmedia project. He wanted transmedia as a mysterious, separate black box to add on to the movie… but he didn't much care what it was, much less have a creative purpose in mind. I had questions. What experience did he want to provide? What story information did he want to expand or reveal? What subplot did he want to play out? He was unprepared to answer, because he didn't know those questions were coming.

Now, I have deep sympathy, because heaven knows I've been there myself. This echoes my own introduction to scriptwriting -- sideways and accidental. At the time, I was working on a big-budget film's marketing campaign, mostly writing blog entries, Tweets, and emails from various characters. One of these characters was meant to begin posting videos, so I dutifully wrote a few short scripts and sent them off to be shot.

The production team came back to me with their questions. So very many questions! What time of day was it? What was he wearing? What did the room look like? Should there be anything in the background? This was a revelation to me. I came from writing prose first, where you highlight only the most important details and allow the imagination of the audience to fill in the rest. Before that moment, I had never truly understood that every visual element in a film is there because somebody made a creative decision to put it there. I now call this the practice of mindful design: being present and aware of every creative choice.

This won't be a new concept to any filmmaker, of course. It's one of the fundamentals of film. Every line, every scene, every shot and prop and article of costuming serves a creative purpose, be it furthering plot, characterization, theme. Ultimately, each one of these small creative decisions affects the quality of the whole work, so every last one of them matters.

So it shouldn't be a shock when I tell you that extending your film into a transmedia narrative is exactly the same. No website, no Tweet, no social media profile or tie-in graphic novel or webisode should exist unless you know what it's adding to the experience of your story for your audience -- because once you send it into the world, it becomes a part of your story, and it will inevitably color the audience's perception of your film.

It's easy to miss this simple fact. Transmedia has achieved super-hype buzzword status, and as my experience with that director shows, there's an idea floating around out there that "having transmedia" will help you with funding, distribution, or marketing… but lagging behind is the understanding that creating a transmedia narrative is fundamentally different from hiring a marketing team or cutting a licensing deal.

That pivotal difference is that transmedia elements are received as a part of the same creative work as the film itself, and so need to be produced with the same creative vision behind the wheel -- if not the same creators.

The evidence for this is manifold. Even a decade ago, the experience of watching movies like Blair Witch Project or A.I. were deepened by understanding parts of the story world revealed only on their web footprints. More recently, web components like the fictional TED talk deployed for Prometheus shed light on the history, character, and motivations of CEO Peter Weyland, and affected the viewer's perception of him in the film. If those elements hadn't been resonant in tone, quality, and content, the totality of the experience would have suffered.

That means you need to bring to your transmedia components the same kind of mindful design that you bring to your film. This is true at any scale, from the broad sweep of the big picture (when you're first choosing to, for example, create a blog or web video meant to convey a subplot cut from the film) all the way down to tiny details (like choosing fonts or putting a character on Pinterest vs. Tumblr). Because at the end of the day, for your audience, it's not just an add-on. It's another facet of the same story.

This doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself, of course. There is a growing industry of transmedia professionals experienced at reading a script or watching a rough cut and understanding the creative vision well enough to expand it across media. And it's not new to transmedia, either. It's simply continuing the tradition of film as a collaborative art.

But it also means you definitely don't need to hire an expert to do black magic and hand you "some transmedia" that you can then point investors toward. Indeed, outsourcing that responsibility could turn out very poorly indeed. Removing your guiding creative hand from the equation risks something much worse than wasting time and money. A tone-deaf and badly executed transmedia extension might damage the experience of your story and degrade the experience of your film for your audience, just the way a tone-deaf and badly targeted marketing campaign can hurt your film.

Does that sound a little scary? Relax, it shouldn't be. Absolutely hire on a team to build websites, draw graphic novels, or manage a social media footprint if you don't have the time and skills to do it yourself. Just keep yourself in the loop. As a filmmaker, you already have the single most important ingredient for a great transmedia narrative: a vision for the story you want to tell. All you have to do to use the transmedia toolbox is take a step back and imagine that story -- your story -- behind and beyond the frame… and mind the details. 

ARGs and LARPs and Me

Tomorrow at 1pm Eastern/10AM Pacific, I'm going to be taking part in the webinar series that the LA transmedia meetup (and in particular, Scott Walker) are putting together in the run-up to StoryWorld! The sessions is called "ARGs, LARPS, and Transmedia – What’s the Difference, Anyway?" I'll be a guest along with LARP expert Aaron Vanek. Here's the description, all official-like:

Alternate reality game. Live-­‐action role-­‐playing. Transmedia. These labels for storytelling and immersive experiences continue to spark definitional debates. But do these separate practices actually have some commonalities? Are they complementary? Are they even, perhaps, potentially describing the same thing? With an understanding based on years of playing and designing these kinds of experiences, Aaron Vanek and Andrea Phillips will explore the intersection of ARGS, LARPs, and transmedia... 

I expect it's going to be a fabulous time, and I'd love for you to take a listen and poke us with your sure-to-ve-insightful questions. Please do register for the event! The smart money says it's going to be a really fun conversation.

Pitching Felicity

It's been almost exactly six months since I first started telling you about Felicity. That six months has been... hectic, I guess you'd call them. In that time, I've launched a book and written another, designed and run Deadly Affairs, wrote for or consulted on no less than five other projects, and then there's the speaking... so much speaking. 

But while speaking, nonfiction and work-for-hire projects are great for maintaining my visibility and standard of living, the fact remains that I want to be a creator, not a pundit and consultant. So I've kept the iron labeled "Felicity" on the fire.

Now that Kindle Serials has launched, the iron is too hot to ignore, so it's time for me to bring out the hammer. The market is primed to consider a serial project like never before. So early this morning, I got together a draft of a pitch document for Felicity, and I sent it on to Jason Allen Ashlock, the charming and incredibly savvy agent who sold A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling to McGraw-Hill. It's time to start looking for buyers.

We'll see where it goes from here. Maybe I'll get that traditional publishing partner, and maybe not; maybe e-publish through Kindle Serials, or another path. It's even possible it won't ring any bells for Jason, and he'll pass on it entirely, leaving me to steam ahead all on my own.

But the main thing is this: If I want my career to include making and owning my own work (and I do, very badly), the only way to do that is to actually do that work and then send it into the world. No sense sitting around being jealous of Chuck Wendig or Naomi Alderman for succeeding at doing something you aren't actively trying to do your own self!

So I'm on it. I'm going to make it happen.

Converge on the New York Film Festival

I am delighted to say that I'll be speaking at the New York Film Festival's Convergence event this year! My talk is titled "You're Such A Character: New Roles for Audiences in Storytelling," and it will take place at 11:30am on Sunday, September 30. I believe it will be in the Amphitheater at Film Society of Lincoln Center, but please double-check the details before you go, as it is possible I've confused something. 

Passes to the Convergence track are available for $150 (or $125 if you're a member of the Film Society.) But if that's a little rich for your blood, you can also get tickets to just my thing for $16.50/$11.50.

I'm really looking forward to this talk -- I'll be airing some new thinky thoughts about point of view, audience participation, and role assignment. And of course I would love to see some familiar faces in the crowd! Spread the word, and hope to see you there!

Deadly Affairs: Some Final Thoughts

Now that the Deadly Affairs experience is over, I have a little housekeeping to do!

First up: Though I'm being widely credited as the writer for the project, this is only a partial truth. I did break the story and write most of the pre-scripted stuff, but I also had a family vacation schedule smack in the middle of the run. There was no way it could be a solo effort.

And so let us all give mad props and credit to Dee Cook, who not only saved my bacon by handling the vast majority of the responsive writing, but made the character of Julie come to life with pieces of a romance novel so bad they could only be written by a creative genius. I am awed and humbled. I mean, look at this:

A storm was brewing in her viscera, the kind of storm that knocks the power out and leaves car windshields all coated with pollen and leaves from the trees. She covered her face with her elegant, slender fingers and wept tears that were more bitter than the pith from inside the rind of a really old lime. Afterwards, she felt cleansed, renewed, almost like a bird caught in an oil spill who had been painstakingly wiped off by a loving environmentalist. But the fact remained: she still needed to win back the affection of her one true love.

Talk about going above and beyond. Dee, if you were to write such a book and send it to Kindle, I would flog the hide off that thing. You would make so much money. All of the money!

Beyond that: The structure of this story was really interesting to develop. I've been considering it high-level plotjitsu. That's because our mission was to integrate with the Deadly Affairs promo, which shows you whodunit right out of the gate. That put certain limitations on how to create and prolong narrative tension... and so we pulled a proper Roger Ackroyd, as I've been calling it.

If you're not familiar, that's a reference to an Agatha Christie novel in which you learn at the end that the first-person narrator has been the murderer the whole time. And for Deadly Affairs, we led you down a garden path thinking the character of Gabs is the wife -- but she's been the mistress the whole time. Switcheroo!

That narrative complexity was balanced, though, by making the actual story itself fairly accessible and easy to navigate. Light on challenges, moderately heavy on available character interaction (especially compared to the standard for a project out of a TV network or film studio). It did the things we wanted it to do very well, and the community it was aimed at -- the ID Addicts who make the network go -- were asking us to do another game like this one even before the end. A good feeling, that.

And of course I am delighted that I finally got to do a soap opera like I've always wanted... though I didn't get to throw a wedding at the end. One day. One day.

Last but not least: I owe a huge thank you to TC Conway in specific, and also to Investigation Discovery as a whole, for making the project possible. It was a lot of fun, and I'd love to do something like it again.