Andrea Phillips's Blog, page 24

Save the Date: July 31

Always wanted to attend one of my speaking gigs but never been in the right place at the right time? Or are you a new reader for A Creator's Guide and you're interested in hearing more of my nefarious wisdoms? Boy, are you in luck!

I'll be doing an online video chatting event on July 31 through a platform called Shindig. It's absolutely free, you just have to register to attend.

It's a very interesting platform -- I'll be talking to you guys, but you'll also be able to talk to one another in small groups. I'm still working out exactly what I'd like to do. Maybe a little talk, maybe I'll read from my book some... what would you like to hear about? The one thing I know for sure is that I'm planning on an extensive Q&A session. Frankly, I'd love to do the whole thing as one big Q&A and forget the formal stuff. Get ready to have a conversation!

Remember, that's July 31 at 6pm Eastern time. Register now, tell a friend, and start thinking up some questions! We're going to have some fun. 

Critical Eye: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

This is the first in my Critical Eye series of posts, in which I'm going to be saying hard things about transmedia projects. This is taking up the gauntlet thrown by Geoffrey Long in his post, How to Ride a Lion.

So The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I love this project with a pure and unashamed love, as evidenced by the enthusiastic post I wrote about it about a month ago. That's not to say the work is perfect, because nothing is, right? So while I see many things to love about this project -- the casting and wit, most of all -- there are a couple of observations I'd like to make, and pieces of unsolicited advice to give its creators.

First, if your first contact with the work is through YouTube, it's actually somewhat difficult to work out that there even is an extended transmedia component. There is no link directly to what I'd consider the single most important URL in the whole project: Catch up on the story from the beginning. There are links to Twitter, but it's for the actors, not the characters. There are links to Tumblr, Facebook, and Google+... for the project, not for characters, and without clicking around, there is no signal that you can follow and interact with the story someplace that isn't YouTube. Tumblr suffers from the same problem -- links to more information ABOUT the show, but nothing in the main navigation helping you to reach out and touch it.

This is a structual problem with user flow; it's making it slightly more difficult for the audience to find out that there's something more going on here than a series of videos -- and it's possible that if some casual viewers knew, they'd become less casual... and maybe drag in a few more viewers in the process. Enthusiasm and engagement becomes evangelism.

But the first step to engaging is knowing there's something there to engage with. My advice: Add on a line or two in the YouTube liner notes about connecting with the characters on social media -- and maybe links to Darcy, Bing Lee, and Caroline, in particular, who are otherwise completely silent in the YouTube version of the story. Why use the time and resources to create these pieces if you're not driving traffic there? 

That said, I highly approve of the volume of interaction occurring on social media with the characters. It's bite-sized; just enough to give the audience a taste and something to connect with, but not so much that it makes the creators insane trying to keep up. Expectations have been managed here very successfully indeed.

The second observation has to do with pacing. I watched the first twenty videos in one fell swoop. Since then, the story has felt awfully slow to me. Now, this probably has a lot to do with me and my taste than anything else -- it's worth noting that I'm holding off on watching Mad Men until the season is over so we can watch all of the episodes together.

But my personal taste aside, there's an interesting tension here between using up your handful of minutes an episode on moving story versus embroidering on character. You have to do one or the other. Episode No. 24, for example, felt a little flat standing on its own.

Aside from a grace note at the end with Lydia, it doesn't really present anything new about the story or about the characters. We already knew Jane had stayed the night after the party; we already knew about Vidcon. This episode kind of felt like filler. You can get away with that once in a while, but it definitely damages the momentum of the story to have an episode like that.

Which brings me to an interesting question about this adaptation. Given how long it's been playing, and how far into the story it's come, it's safe to say the project is meant to last several months, possibly about a year. If the timeline is true to the original novel, then there will be entire weeks when nothing happens at all. On the one hand, keeping that timeline will imbue the work with more realism and permit the audience to connect with the characters emotionally more like friends than like works of fiction. Lizzie going from meeting to wedding in four months would seem a little weird. On the other hand... the pace of real life is slow and boring, and we cut those things out of our stories most of the time for good reason.

Much can be forgiven if the characters remain witty and fun to watch, so I don't think everyone will abandon the story in droves in a slow patch. But neither will those slow spells serve to bring new audience to the table. It'll be crucial for the writers to make sure that each episode continues to feel relevant, and not like they're just marking time waiting for the next thing to happen.

I'm confident that the creators are flexing the timeline to make sure they won't have weeks and months of videos where nothing much happens; but keeping the audience focused during those times when the story moves along more slowly will be an interesting creative challenge. It'll be interesting to see how they rise to meet it.

And I'm completely confident that they can rise to meet it, too -- this is very clearly a creative, competent, funny, and committed team, and structural criticism aside, I really am enjoying the project. It'll be really fun to see how it continues to play out.

 

 

Want more advice you can bring to your own work? Take a look at my book  A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling , on sale now!

Me Around the Web

Last Thursday, Chuck Wendig ran what I think may be the best interview I've ever done. I talk about characters and voice and why you should use transmedia. As a bonus, it includes a 2000-word story about a mouse that is 100% factually true. Please do take a look!

Not to be outdone, StoryForward also ran an interview with me -- they were even kind enough to edit out the most egregious moments of my blather. Better yet, it's not just me on the line -- you can listen to JC Hutchins and Steve Peters say insightful and entertaining things about the wider world of transmedia entertainment. And best of all, you can win a copy of my book by listening to it! Go, listen!

Speaking of my book -- A Creator's Guide is in the wild, and I have high hopes for it... but I need your help to make it happen, you guys. If you haven't bought a copy, please consider doing so. People I did not even know before are using words like "phenomenal" and "inspiring" to describe it! If you're on the fence, feel free to read excerpts from Chapter 1 and Chapter 5 and make your own mind up from there.

If you HAVE read the book... please consider leaving a review on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, your own blog, wherever you're comfortable. And I do mean whether you liked it or not; it'll help other creators decide whether it's right for them. That said, if you did happen to like it, please consider recommending it to a friend or colleague, letting someone borrow your copy, and in general helping me to let the world know that this book exists.

And finally! It looks like my email newsletter through Mailchimp isn't always sending out the welcome email. This is a problem, because that email contains the link to download A Creator's Bundle, my companion piece of sample project planning documents.

If you've signed up for my newsletter, didn't get the welcome message after confirming your address, and you'd like to know where your copy of A Creator's Bundle is... please drop me a line on email or Twitter and I'll make sure to get that link out to you right away. Thanks so much for your patience!

Good Things Come in Threes

...and it just so happens I have three good things to tell you about!

First off, it's still not too late to snag your tickets to tomorrow night's book launch event. By "tomorrow" I of course mean Tuesday, June 26, at 7pm. I'll talk about craft, transmedia, and that whole book thing with Matt Bolish, maybe sign some books, and hopefully have an all-around good time. And if you sign up for news about FilmLinc's Convergence programming, you can even snag a $2 discount on the ticket price! 

But I have my own special offer for you, too. If you come to the event and tell me you're a Deus Ex Machinatio reader, I'll give you secret stickers. One of them might have a robot on it. Another might have a llama on it. Also I will give you a high-five and/or handshake depending on your personal preference. You can even just say "your blog" since nobody knows how the heck to pronounce or spell "Deus Ex Machinatio." We're cool.

Next up! Indiewire has published an excerpt from Chapter 5 of A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling. Look at it, read it, enjoy it. Perhaps even consider... buying the book! And also leaving a review.

And finally: On Saturday I finally released A Creator's Bundle, the long-promised bundle of sample planning documents for a completely fictitious as well as fictional transmedia Romeo and Juliet adaptation. They're meant as a companion piece to A Creator's Guide. It includes live event planning documents, a sample interaction user flow chart, a budget, and more!

If you'd like to snag the bundle for your very own self, then all you have to do is sign up for my newsletter. (The download link will arrive in your welcome email after you've confirmed your email address.) Don't worry, I'm much too busy to send anything out more than once a month, so you won't be hopping onto the express train to Spam City or anything.

And that's it for today. Hope to see you tomorrow night!

ACG Unabridged: J.C. Hutchins

In today's penultimate installment of ACG Unabridged, I bring you J.C. Hutchins, podcasting pioneer and master storyteller known for such projects as Seventh Son and Personal Effects: Dark Art.  J.C. is the picture of an indie creator building his own fanbase. He's inspirational, energetic, and on top of all that, my god such a good human being. Clearly he has made a deal with the devil.

Here's what I had to cut from his interview for A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling -- but this is a mere fraction of his wisdom. The rest? Inside the covers of a certain book, on sale now!

Q: Where do you see the art and business of storytelling headed over the next few years?

A: To be clear: There will always be stories best-told through a single medium. Folks need not worry about their novels or movies going away. But I believe transmedia narratives will crack open storytelling in new ways that we’ll be exploring and experiencing for decades.

We’re already at a point where storytellers can economically craft narratives in which their characters can receive and send emails and phone messages from real people (aka consumers), post video blog “confessionals” or handheld location shots, and leave behind “evidence” in real life locations that can be documented and shared online by audience members. What I just mentioned is kindergarten, low-cost stuff that nearly any creator can execute.

The future of storytelling is so bright, and is gonna be so cool.

The true and disruptive potential of transmedia storytelling is that nearly everything around us — your phone, a billboard, a mailed letter, a t-shirt, a Twitter update — can be used to contribute to a cohesive narrative. Your narrative. That’ll blow your mind if you let it. And you should let it, because storytellers need to be thinking about this stuff.

There’s a trade-off, however: When you start adding additional media or channels to tell your story, you start adding time, effort and risk to the project. You also add expense, which can sharply decrease your number of achievable cross-media / cross-channel storytelling opportunities. I reckon this is why the most famous transmedia stories — such as the brilliant alternate reality game Why So Serious? — are funded by mainstream entertainment entities as promotional vehicles for films, video games and TV shows. These stories have many moving parts. You gotta cough up cash for those parts, and for creatives like me to make them go.

 

 

This is bonus material from  A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling , in stores now! It's also available from the internet retailer of your choice, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, and others. Pick it up and let me know what you think!

A Creator's Guide is Launched!

It's here, it's here, the day is here! A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling is on sale at an internet retailer or even a physical bookstore near you! (Unless you don't live in North America, in which case you have another six weeks to wait on the physical bookstore part. Sorry?)

Buy it on Amazon! Or Barnes & Noble! At Powell's! Or Chapters! Or any other bookseller you like, because, you know, I'm not picky. I'd also appreciate it very much if you could leave reviews -- honest ones, mind -- once you've read it. (I love praise as much as the next girl, but saying it's better than it is doesn't do me any favors in writing a better book next time!)

A Creator's Guide is my effort to spread to the world everything I know about the art and craft of telling teansmedia stories. The effort here was to make something 100% useful from the moment you pick it up, no matter if you're a transmedia novice or a skilled practitioner in your own right. Emphasis here on practical.

It includes everything from suggestions on how to choose your media to what kinds of prior art you should learn from and even how much a transmedia professional should charge. Yes, with real numbers. I've done everything I could to make it the best and most useful book I could, and I really hope you get a lot out of it.

And here I'd like to stop and note that this book is the culmination of a lot of good fortune, and more than that, the generosity of many, many people. I am awash in gratitude. I've gone on about it at great an specific length in my acknowledgements, but let me say a briefer version here: I could never have written this book without all of the people I have learned from and leaned on these last ten years. Thank you, all of you. You should be as proud today as I am.

Nike Fuelband for the Highly Sedentary

My job is probably killing me.

I knew this in an abstract sort of way even before I bought a Nike+ Fuelband. I mean, I sit and type all day. Often with my head stuck in a bag of Fritos. No exercise + lousy food = looming cardiac doom. But I was able to rationalize that surely I wasn't as inactive as all that. No! I have small children! Sometimes I do active things like cook and clean! Not only do I have a gym membership, but there are days when I go to the gym, you guys! But I'm a data junkie, and it's nice to have a little reassurance.

Enter the Nike Fuelband, a gussied-up pedometer in the form factor of a bracelet. I held out on buying one for a long time, jonesing instead for the similar Jawbone UP, which does activity tracking, plus tracking of sleep quality... and has a silent vibrate alarm to wake you up in a period of light sleep or get you moving when you've been sitting still for too long.

But the UP was pulled from the market after selling for about two weeks last winter. Turns out they break. All of them. Within days, at most weeks. They're supposed to come out with a more durable model soon. They've been saying that for months, though, and I want my shiny activity-tracking toy NOW.

So the Fuelband. I bought one. And it was a revelation. ...not the good kind of revelation.

Nike Fuel

The Fuelband tracks calories burned and steps taken, but it also calculates a made-up metric called "Fuel." What is Fuel? Nike says:

NikeFuel counts all the activities of your athletic life. Running, walking, basketball. Nike+ devices measure your moves and turn them into NikeFuel. And since NikeFuel is calculated the same way for everyone, you can compare and compete with anyone.

So basically it's a generic "activity" metric. As one might expect, since it's measured by an accelerometer on your wrist, it vastly undercounts activites like cycling. You're not supposed to swim with it (though you can shower with it on.) Strength training and yoga aren't going to fuel you up, so to speak.

But thinking about how the device measures the activity you do on purpose for the sake of exercise is entirely missing the point of the Fuelband. There are a million devices to measure a workout -- Nike has a few themselves. Heart rate monitors, GPS tags in your shoes or phone. What the Fuelband is good for is judging how active you are all of the rest of the time.

Just How Active Are You, Really?

Here's where we get to "my job is killing me."

Nike says on an average day, a normal person shouldn't have too much trouble hitting 2000 fuel. If you hit the gym, that's about 2500. If you're a real athlete, you might hit 3000, or even 3500.

My first day with the Fuelband on all day was a Friday. All fired up with my new purchase, I went to the gym, played a little Zombies, Run!, it was fab.

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Not bad, right? Then came Saturday. I hung out with my kids, we went and did a little shopping, so I walked around a fair amount, and it was... you know, an ordinary kinda busy Saturday.

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Oh. Oh dear. So then what does it look like when I basically sit around and play video games all day...?

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I... I see.

Is there maybe something wrong with my Fuelband? Is it undercounting or broken? Surely we can test this.

I mean, sometimes I go places and do things! Like conferences! And meetings! For example, this was a day at the Nordic Games Conference. Any day at, say, SXSW would probably look substantially the same. 

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ON FIRE! Soooo yeah, probably not broken then, is it? (In fact, just yesterday Naomi Alderman and I Did Science and showed that our Fuelbands are counting exactly the same activities the same way. Not broken. I really am just that lazy.) 

That 3900 fuel is an exceptional day in many senses, because I'm not at a conference every day. So let's face the facts: An ordinary person spends 2000 fuel in normal daily activities. But me, with my working-from-home at a desk job that involves sitting very still and staring off into space... yeah, that's not exactly the recipe for longevity. Now I know exactly how bad a recipe it is. Yikes.

Still, none of this self-awareness and shame matters unless it results in behavior change. And have I seen behavior change?

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Looks like, don't you think? I still have an off day (and sometimes days in a row), and my goal is a modest 1700 for now and not 2000... but that's still way better than an average under 1000. The interesting thing: Some of that is gym time, sure, but most of the extra fuel is coming from ordinary daily tasks -- stuff like folding laundry and mopping that I should really be doing way more often to begin with. Having that judgy little black bracelet on my wrist, it turns out, makes me a better housekeeper.

So do I think you should buy a Fuelband, too? Yes. Yes, I do. It's an excellent way of peeling the layers of denial from your eyes. I can't promise it'll make you thin or strong or a better athlete or even (like me) a marginally better housekeeper... but it will at least make you more aware of what you are and aren't doing. Now I know just how rapidly my arteries are turning into cement and my muscles are turning into sludge. And knowing is, as GI Joe says, half the battle. 

A Contest! But First Some Other Stuff

So hi there! Lots going in these last few days before A Creator's Guide comes out, and I thought I should make a note of all of it. An event! An article! A plea to subscribe to my newsletter! Also: A contest. Stay tuned.

First up: I'm having a book launch event on the evening of June 26 at Film Society of Lincoln Center! It's a ticketed event that costs money, but if you can spare the ten bucks, I promise I'll do everything in my power to make it entertaining and informative. And it would mean a lot to me to see some familiar faces there. Please do come! Please. No, really, please?

Next up, you might like to take a look at a piece I wrote for Fast Company's Co.Create blog a week or so ago. It's called Five Lessons for Storytellers from the Transmedia World, and in it I summarize some of the most important ideas from my book. I've been surprised and delighted at how well-received this piece has been. 

And for our last piece of news, I'd like to remind you that I'll be sending out a few sample planning documents to my email list on Friday, as a companion to A Creator's Guide. If you're interested in snagging these for yourself, may I interest you in signing up for the newsletter now? 

So About That Contest

Some day very, very soon, my book is going to be on real actual shelves in a book store where they sell books in exchange for money. That day might even be today! I would like documentation of this momentous occasion. To that end, I am offering a FABULOUS PRIZE to the first person who sends me a photograph of my book on a shelf in a bookstore in the wild. A real bookstore! Where they are selling my book, for realsies!

You are not eligible to win this contest if you:

* Already possess a copy of the book that I have written in
* Smuggled the book you already own into the store
* Are married to me 

To submit your photo, Tweet it to me, tag me on Facebook, or I guess you could email it. If you like that kind of thing.

So what is this FABULOUS PRIZE, you may ask? It's a SECRET, I tell you. Maybe it's unopened packs of Perplex City cards! Maybe it's a never-before-released piece of writing from my youth! Maybe it's a batch of home-made orange marmalade! The only way to find out... is to win.

 

ACG Unabridged: Caitlin Burns

I've been lagging a little with the ACG Unabridged posts, but you can rest assured the ones remaining are all spectacular. Case in point: Caitlin Burns, who is not just an indie creative light with Jurassic Park Slope, not just rocking the Hollywood IP at Starlight Runner Entertainment, but is also the PGA's first official Transmedia Producer and is now serving on the PGA's New Media Council as well. How's that for an impressive resume? Caitlin had so much great stuff to say, it broke my heart to cut any of it from the finished book. So just wait to see what made it in!

Q: How did you get into transmedia?

A: Well, like most people I started out thinking I wanted to do something else, I  wanted to be a paleontologist. Paleontology seemed like a lot more stable a career path to me than the whirlwind world of Film or TV, or at least it did to me as a teenager. I also loved theatre, though I knew that acting and production were cutthroat career paths, and applied to only one school for the arts and got in. Eventually this got me to Theatrical Production Design, with a minor in Environmental Systems Science and shockingly, I realized that the way storytelling structures and systems worked were as robust an ecosystem as any other I could find in nature and that they were only getting more complex. 

I was studying (and working) in New York in off-off and occasionally off Broadway and became fascinated with experience design in strange venues, warehouses, under bridges, etc... Every production required projections, film; marketing was just getting online as well. I was still in College when I was fortunate enough to get my first opportunity to work with Jeff Gomez at Starlight Runner Entertainment. My skill set from production design, a really thorough research methodology and an attention to the oft-overlooked details of a production really translated well into the complex projects that Starlight takes on.

Once I realized just how exciting and interesting the process was there was no getting rid of me, it’s very hard work but it can also be fantastically enjoyable. 

It was immediately clear to me that a lot of the things I’d already been talking about in terms of theatre were being applied across platforms to film, gaming, publishing and everywhere else one can imagine, and that I had a knack for this sort of development. Transmedia Storytelling also requires a certain type of collaborative mindset, it’s a very fun and creative process and it was abundantly clear that one of the most important elements of working on these transmedia projects is being able to foster and inspire that sense of active sharing of ideas and artistic work with groups who haven’t necessarily been given the opportunity to engage with one another that way. Being able to join in and to see the amazing results of getting different types of creators, even in staid corporate systems, in the same room never gets old.

Q: Can you tell me a little about your favorite projects?

A:  Every project we work on is really vastly different and I love them all. Admittedly that sounds like a line, but when you’re doing deep dive research you definitely have to find something about the content that you love or go crazy in the effort.  I’ve been supremely lucky in the variety of the projects we’re gotten a chance to work on. The first one I was really involved with was Pirates of the Caribbean for the Walt Disney Company, and I must have watched that movie 45 times in the first 6 months. We came on between the first and second films’ release and it was amazing to see the sheer scope of narrative that was being created in all their divisions and the creativity that was being brought to bear on a really entertaining property. I ended up fascinated by pirates and wrote a blog about them for a few years to vent the stuff that had nothing to do with the active fiction. 

Halo was an amazing project as well, I had been playing the game casually for  years, and the combination of a truly epic chronology detailing the entire history of the galaxy and an enjoyable console game are hard to beat. I absolutely love the work we’ve done on projects I can now watch with my kids, Disney Fairies and Transformers Prime for example; it is a comfort to know how much thought was given to how these stories would impact them and their development above and beyond the obvious profit lines. Tron hit me right in the cool-sector of my brain and I love the music and remixes that are still coming out of the fan space. 

Obviously though, as a lapsed student of environmental science, Avatar has to take some pride of place in this list. We literally worked with hundreds of hours of interviews and dozens of designers who had been working with James Cameron to create Pandora and the detail that had gone into that work, and the building of the story world was really unparalleled. In truth, the starship that is onscreen for about 90 seconds in the beginning of the film, they could likely build it. 

Q: What would you recommend a transmedia creator learn about to improve their craft? 

A:  The first thing I recommend is to get to know people outside your specialty as well as who work in it. If you already know someone with expertise in a field you can call up and ask questions you’re in a good place. There are all sorts of ways to do this, professional networks, online, etc… Follow your interests, chances are they cross into other fields and that the people you meet pursuing things you already enjoy will be able to help you out down the road. 

This also helps with my second recommendation; learn how to talk to people in fields you don’t work in directly. Many groups use different terminology for the same concepts, learn how to discern those and chat with people unfamiliar with what you do before you have to do it on a project. 

Finally, get to know the different platforms that are out there, it’s a common problem I see that someone starting out on multiple platforms knows they need a certain thing (a game, twitter, a novel, a live experience) but don’t know why. The answer may be that it’s not necessary and it doesn’t fit the story, learn about the  platforms, think about your story, and choose what really fits for good reasons. 

Q: Is there anything you can do early in a project to make sure it's easier to manage over the long term? 

A:  To bring it back around, write it all down. If you have notes from you earliest development meetings, and you organize those into sensible documents that you can look back on later 

Q: Jeff has (as you know) spoken out about the culturally transformative power of entertainment. Do you have any thoughts on that you'd like to talk about?

A:  Mass Media combined with the Immersive power of Transmedia is one of the most culturally potent tools for social education and change that the world has ever seen. The potential for social good, expanding horizons and bringing people together with stories is incalculable. But, at the same time, it must be treated with a real respect, what can spread a strong message can spread that whatever the message may be. When you are immersing even a single person in a narrative, there is an ethical responsibility to treat them respectfully and  to take that relationship seriously, because your audience certainly will. When you are immersing a greater number of audience members that responsibility is exponentially larger. The way to maintain a grounded relationship with one’s audience is to actually listen to them. Feedback mechanisms, from social media, online forums, fan groups are easy to access and if there’s one thing fans love to do, it’s talk.

 One need look no further than The Arab Spring to see what can be accomplished when groups with a goal join together with multiple platform tools at hand. This is the way the global population communicates now, the possibility for its uses in and out of entertainment are profound. They will change the world as we know it.  Whether you’re approaching a fictional or non-fiction property, you can find out what people think. If you’re engaging them, you can learn how and why, if you make a choice transparently your failures will be defended by an audience that knows you’re trying to work for them. The job of the creator is more complex than ever, asking often introverted artists to look outside their work to see its effects on the world and then to respond, the response can be “Go Away” or it can be “Maybe you have a point” but either way, showing that your audience is a valuable part of the story is the most powerful experience of all.

 

This is bonus material from  A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling , officially out on June 22 -- that's this Friday! But it's shipping now from the internet retailer of your choice, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, and others. Pick it up and let me know what you think!

 

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Continuing my spotlight on anyone-but-me: You guys, Lizzie Bennet Diaries is so good. The writing is funny, the actors are charismatic and convincing both, and the adaptation manages to stay true to the spirit of the source material while adapting the whole thing for modern times so that it feels inevitable and natural. SO. GOOD.

In case you don't believe me, just take a look at the first episode your own self.

I've been meaning to catch up on this project for weeks now -- it's 19 episodes in already, and of course there are presences for the characters on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and probably a million other places. But don't feel overwhelmed! I caught up in just a couple of hours, and you can too, by just watching the videos online, and then catching up on the relevant pieces of social media on the LBD hub, which captures them in Storify. 

This project isn't just pitch-perfect on a creative level; on the structural level, too, they make it easy to engage on the lazypants level (like I likely will) but there are more immersive layers there, too, if you want them -- and because of that catching-up hub, you can be a lazypants without feeling like you're missing out on key parts of the story. If I were to offer one critique, it would be that the catch-up link isn't as dead obvious as it should be; I wish they cross-linked that particular URL from every video.

Still, in all, it's an exemplary project and you should all go check it out. Well played, gentlefolk. Well played.