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Rob Pratten interviews creator Kristi Barnett, July 26 2011
"Karen Barley is a horror story told on Twitter with tweets linking out to YouTube videos and photos. It’s the creative brainchild of Kristi Barnett and during its three week run in July earned some impressive stats for a low-budget independent production including almost 700 followers on Twitter and over 5000 words in press coverage plus a spot on BBC TV.
In this article Robert Pratten interviews Kristi about the project’s development and delivery.
RP: You’re a “traditional” movie scriptwriter by trade Kristi so what made you want to write a transmedia story?
KB: I wanted to get one of my stories produced. I’d been writing for 3 years with at that time, not even a short made. I just bit the bullet and decided that using social media would be a cheaper and more immediate way to get an audience for a story. I wasn’t actually consciously looking at transmedia itself but rather the idea of using Twitter as a story tool. I knew no one had tried to tell a story over twitter as a character using other media like videos, photos, weblinks etc. I love twitter and am constantly on it so it seemed natural to me that Twitter could be used in this way. And it is a writer’s medium when you think about it; every tweet is a piece of writing.
RP: How many people were involved in the project from crew to cast?
KB: The total number of people directly involved was 10. The actual crew on the shoot days including cast and myself was 5. So it was micro-budget guerilla film making. I had myself as Writer, Director and Producer; I funded almost all of it. I quickly got in contact with Tim Clague whom I’d met at various screenwriting festivals and after looking at his work in different types of media I asked if he’d be a consultant on the project and story. He gave me some great advice on how to proceed and how to gain an audience and gave me the encouragement to continue and use the story I had. He ended up being an Associate Producer. I then moved quickly into looking for an Assistant Director. Someone that I knew would be creative and technically aware and who also loved the idea of different media. I asked Danny Tate of JellyFish Media to jump on board. He also served as Editor and Sound Designer and was instrumental in making the trailer and behind the scenes video diary (coming soon).
At the same time I was looking for my actors. So I got myself a casting assistant and casting co-coordinator; Matthew Turner and Mark Vella respectively. Then over two days I cast for the two main characters. Gemma Giddings and Benjamin O’Mahony were the actors I chose. They were great and could improvise off script and understand the scenes very quickly and were very intuitive with the camera, as they’d be shooting themselves. They loved the idea of what I was trying to achieve and I think and hope that it was a challenge for them; something very different to what they’d ever done in that they were shooting small video vignettes that only made sense if you read the tweets that went with it. The other actor was David McClelland whom I knew from my writers group. He’s also a technology writer and presenter so he loved the idea straight away. He played Bossman. I also had a Sound assistant, Elise Neola May and a Website Consultant in Anton Russell...."
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