After the Big Push with our IndieGoGo campaign in February to raise funds for new transmedia elements for the Lost in Sunshine website, I was pooped.  A bit chastened.  Discouraged.  And, still underfunded. Sigh.

Then, one day in late March, I was checking Lostinsunshine’s analytics and viewed a lot of traffic coming in from a transmedia review site – digitaldelta – in the UK (which is now closed to the public, but here’s a link to its parent organization, CYFLE). Several of its members had reviewed and critiqued Lostinsunshine’s website. Wow! Yay! The critiques were bald and a bit harsh, but not unfair, and I responded to them with some history on the project and my own frustrations and efforts. I also thanked them for their observations.

That’s how I met Adipat Virdi, my new Transmedia Producer for Lost in Sunshine! Adipat “gets” it. I’m not singing out in the woods alone anymore! He gets how we have an opportunity to do something with “arthouse” material that hasn’t been done before – expand its storyworld and themes across media and engage folks to share their own stories about CHOICES. The last couple months, Adi and I have been Skyping and scheming about the transmedia strategy and pitch package for Lost in Sunshine, with an eye on being ready for the Toronto Film Fest in September.

Think productive thoughts for us, please!

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Doubt and recrimination are buzzing about in my brain about how to improve traffic to and donations at our IndieGoGo campaign for Lost in Sunshine’s multimedia website. We’re at the halfway mark to the deadline, and we’re not even close to a tenth of our target amount, yet.

I did a lot of homework before we launched it, referring to how-to blog entries and articles here, here, and here, oh, and here, to arrive at our targeted amount, campaign duration, and Perks ideas.  This blog here by Dr. Susan Weinschenk is awesome; it talks about the neuro-psychology behind Web searching and visitor perceptions.  Marketing consultant, Sheri Candler, wrote a good piece late last year about crowdfunding campaign missteps that was picked up by Filmmaker Magazine’s blog, and I nodded my head in recognition.

As we put together our campaign and put it out there, I’ve felt that it’s primary purpose is to publicize us and Lost in Sunshine, with raising funds a hot second.  Like every indie, we DO need money.  But the campaign gives us a call to action to put out in front of people.

Nobody’s acting, though.  Yet (that’s my hope peeking out).

Damn.

Right now, I gotta say producing sucks.  Independent film producing.  Transmedia content producing.  DIY.  Audience outreach, community-building, trying something new…  yep, for tonight, it all sucks.  I feel like I’m failing.  That I’ve had hubris to ask for what we’re asking and offer what we’re offering in return.  That we’re working hard, but not smartly enough, and that’s my failing somehow.

We have 500 fans on the Lost in Sunshine Facebook page, whom we love and appreciate.  We have hundreds of followers on Twitter.  We have hundreds of people on our email list.  I’ve put together a news release and submitted it to PRWEB.  We’ve had shout-outs from Filmmaker Magazine’s blog and Film Courage, transmedia sites; we’re doing radio interviews (here, here, and here, among others), and I’m racking my brains for ways to penetrate our target demo: 25 – 35 year old women, struggling with direction in their lives who’ve heard of the Law of Attraction, The Secret, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and so on.

At the moment, I don’t how else to “niche-ify” them further.  Do I target unhappily married 20-something women (like the heroine)?   What about (barely) recovering gambling addicts, like the hero?

Have I mentioned, we haven’t shot our movie, yet?  The gambling thing is supposed to be more of a “reveal” in the movie.

We have a listing on the Bust Magazine website… and, I’d love a shout-out about us in Jezebel or The Frisky.  I’d be thrilled if our campaign got shared among the whole 20SomethingBloggers community.  I’m reaching out to writers groups, too.  Matt Walsh at The Spiritual Media blog has put us in front of his readers (thanks, Matt!).  Every day, I’m reaching out to new outlets.

But, I still worry that it’s not enough.  Or, that I’m just misguided.  PLUS, when we are successful in reaching our target demo, I know they aren’t accustomed to “interactive online prequels” for indie comedy-dramas that invite them to add content, themselves.

If only we had mummies in our story.  Or, aliens.  Or, bi-curious Little People.  Something to make us “hook-ier.”  More niche.

Maybe it’s time to have a talk with Jentri about some rewrites…?  Lost in Sunshine, with Aliens.  No, no.  Lost in Sunshine, with Sexy Aliens.  We can enable our website visitors to create their own hot babe avatars for our Lost in Sunshine story-world!

NOT. 

Thanks for reading.  I hope some of my links above are helpful.

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Before I space it out (which is quite possible given my foggy, cold-addled brain), I want to share the specific link here to our current IndieGoGo Campaign, “Lost Without YOU!”.

We’re raising funds in support of creating free online games related to our story-world, and our Perks all embrace contributed content. Make a donation, add content to the story-world!

This is a big gamble, of course, because we don’t expect our target audience to be chiefly gamers. So, why add games? Because we want LIS to stand out and be memorable. By creating fun interactive apps/games for the site, I hope to draw fans back to the site again and again and feel some ownership in it.

I’d also like to point you HERE, where the writer-director of Lost in Sunshine, Jentri Chancey, writes in her blog Forloveofindiefilmmaking about the what’s and why’s of our campaign.  I gotta tell you, every day I am reminded why I offered to produce her script — she’s just awesome!

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Wow, it was just so fun to talk turkey with Nick and Haley and Dee!  If you’d like to listen in on our hour-long chat about my secret history as a former instructional designer (okay, so it’s not a secret) and how we all bonded over discussing transmedia as a means to expand narratives across multiple media, click HERE.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

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We launched a donation campaign for Lost in Sunshine’s transmedia website today, February 1st. Our goal is to raise $10,000 by March 4th. More details to come as we frequently update the campaign. Check it out!

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Hello!  I’m pleased as punch to share with you that I’ll be interviewed tonight, January 26th at 9 p.m. EST by Nick Braccia of Transmedia Talk.  PLEASE NOTE: The audio podcast of this interview should be available later this week (I mistakenly thought it was a live recording – oops!).

Some of the questions Nick has:

What prompted you to attempt narrative extensions like blog fiction? Was it part of the creative process? A desire to develop content to show investors that you were thinking outside the box office?

Is there a particular business model you had in mind when you started creating content tangential to the text of your screenplay?

What have you learned so far and how quickly have you had to move to adjust and generate/maintain momentum?

I’ll post another entry when I have a link for the podcast.

AND, finally, I’d like to point you to a very recent post I did on the Lost in Sunshine Filmmakers Blog that speaks, in part, to that last question above about what I’ve learned so far with our website – click HERE.

Thanks for reading!

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I’m on a roll this weekend!  In my latest entry at our LIS Filmmakers Blog, I write about our assumptions about our future-movie’s target audience and how we tried to design for them with Version 1 of the LIS website.  Plus, you’ll get your first peek at the design for our Version 2 Home page!

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Hello!  I said I’d post notices here when I’ve posted entries on the Lost in Sunshine website’s Filmmakers Blog, and here you go!  This link will take you to the entry where I discuss and show samples from the design of Version 1 of the site.

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I’m feeling STUCK today.  Jentri and I have been mulling over whether and how to do a Kickstarter fundraising campaign for supporting the launch of Version 2 of Lost in Sunshine’s website. Kickstarter is a website where folks – artists, musicians, writers, micro-publishers, inventors, you name it – can post their projects and fundraising objectives, along with a deadline.  If they raise the funds within the time frame, they get the money.  If they miss their fundraising target, no donors’ monies are collected, and they get ZERO.

In my last post, I blogged about embracing transmedia concepts for our Lost in Sunshine content, and how we feel we’re launching into some uncharted waters with our efforts.  That’s part of the reason I feel stuck.

A lot of indie films – documentaries, shorts, narratives, experimentals – use Kickstarter with success.  For instance, happily, our LIS editor’s documentary Cancerpants just completed its successful campaign – yay!

Folks also use it to raise monies for self- publishing written works and online magazines, funding interactive online games or new software gizmos, and rolling multimedia theater presentations.

We’re not like those, exactly.  Our site is in support of an eventual movie, yes.  We are developing several interactive games for the website, yes.  And, we plan on a Rolling Roadshow in support of event/theatrical screenings of the eventual movie, yes.  But, we don’t have a movie, yet, to send to donors as a “thank you,” and won’t for at least a year.  We don’t have a finished manuscript to offer, yet, either.

I’m struggling today with how to categorize LIS if we execute a Kickstarter campaign in the next couple months.  There’s no Website category.  Or, Transmedia Project category.  Plus, what can/will we offer as “thank you’s” or fun, unique incentives/rewards if we’re not like the above examples?

We need money to finish and launch Version 2 of our website – which is putting on a show.  We’d like to raise enough money to pay for Version 2, and support its maintenance and continued development throughout 2011.  So, something Web-oriffic…!  Hm.

At the moment, the only category that I could see us falling under on the Kickstarter menu is OTHER.  Not very sexy, huh?

OTHER doesn’t exactly scream Support This – It’s Fantastic, and Important, and Worthy!  It’s an OTHER project!

Okay, I’m done being whiny.    Writing this all down for you has actually helped me get some clarity, thanks!  Gotta go leap on this A-Ha! moment while it lasts.  Will post again very soon with the follow up.

Thanks for reading!

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From the beginning of taking on Lost in Sunshine as its producer two years ago, I’ve believed that it had an opportunity to set itself apart from other indie fare by experimenting with and embracing its online possibilities.  That meant, a website up and running in advance of shooting the movie.  Hell, in advance of even securing full funding to shoot the movie.

I wanted us to create a website that isn’t just an online poster for a little indie movie.  I was enthralled with Franny Armstrong’s site for The Age of Stupid.  And, I found ZeFrank’s website/archive for The Show to be a light-bulb site for me, as well.  And, Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films website.  They were portals for shows.  They were continually adding new content and soliciting participation from their audiences, with success.  Wow, yes!  They were portals for communities.  I hoped to create that for LIS.

It was fun to put on my designer hat again.  In the 1990s, I had a corporate career as a multimedia designer and project manager.  I once devised and pasted about 1600 index card-sized images/storyboards up on my entire office wall to map out the interactivity of a “virtual locomotive” maintenance inspection.  And, this was for final output on a CD-ROM and video laserdisc hardware setup.  You design/Web techies can laugh your asses off now.  You also probably have a keen insight on why I burned out on corporate multimedia development.

But, with Lost in Sunshine, technology and consumer access has finally caught up with the potential to create cool-ass shit for fun and enjoyment, instead of strictly for corporate, industrial training or military use (yep, worked on some of that stuff, too).  So, like I said, it’s been a satisfying full-circle occurrence for me conceive and guide the development of LIS’ website.

Not that it’s perfect.  I’m painfully aware today of all the ways our current site is klugy and busy and dense and underwhelming.  It’s got too much going on on its Home page.  As we’ve added content over the last 8 months+, it has gotten stretchy and unwieldy.  Visitors don’t seem to “get” the character blogs of the two main characters (maybe we should start calling them what they are: blog fiction).  The site’s not succeeding, yet, in getting visitors to chime in, participate either.

We’ve been aware of presenting something unfamiliar, a different paradigm than what’s been presented before for narrative indie films; and, we’ve expected confusion, furrowed brows, and apathy from our site’s visitors.  But, we haven’t known the magic recipe for success, so, we’ve just kept showing up, as Elizabeth Gilbert says, and presenting content we believe is relevant.  Throwing spaghetti, you might say.

In August, our analytics told us that more folks are repeatedly tuned in to our LIS Facebook postings than our frequent website content additions.  It’s time to reorganize some spaghetti.

Ari and I are on it.  I’ve been wire-framing (we used to call this storyboarding in the 90s) a redesign, and we’re expecting to launch it at the end of November.  Meanwhile, I plan to blog about the process at our LIS Filmmakers Blog.  I’ll post notices here as I do.

But, before I go, below are a couple links to some really interesting sites/blogs that write about web design.  I’ve been consuming them like a painter in an art supply store. 

100 Things You Should Know About People: #43 — People Expect Online Interactions to Follow Social Rules

Eat Sleep Social Blog

You Suck At Transmedia

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