The Arrglington Jump - The Go BZRK Case Study: Interview with Rich Silverman (Part 1)

via jump.snappages.com

Excerpt from an Interview by April Arrglington:

"1. How did the idea of the ARG came to be? When Michael approached you did he have a clear concept of what he wanted to do, and just needed someone who knew how to execute it? Or did you have to conceptualize all the material for the experience from scratch, making it completely separate from the book?

Michael and Alex LeMay, the CEO of the Shadow Gang, the company that produced this experience, had wanted to do a Transmedia experience for the book for over a year. Michael is a successful novelist in the YA world and Alex is an accomplished documentarian and filmmaker, but neither had created or produced a transmedia project before. Fate brought us together at the Transmedia Hollywood event at UCLA earlier this year. We hit it off immediately and they brought me on to develop, write, and co-produce this experience from the ground up.

They pretty much gave me carte blanche for that, which was great and quite possibly unprecedented. I’m used to layers of approvals and bureaucracy, but we were able to cut through all that and focus on the creative, which is more like how a book writer works as compared to someone in film or a creative working on an ARG for a marketing campaign.

Basically, Michael handed me the rules of the universe and a bunch of backstories and characters that he created that are not necessarily included in the novel. At least not in the first book. I went through this material and cherry-picked certain elements and characters that I thought would be compelling in an ARG… then went on to adjust timelines, character details, and create new characters and situations that sort of hung on some of his pre-existing mythology.

Michael was very open to my ideas and re-working. When I pitched my three-month narrative for the ARG Michael loved it and let me run with it on my own.

2. How many characters or plot points from the novel are integrated in the ARG? Since the novel hasn’t been released, there is no way for the audience to know how the storyline for the ARG is connected to the novel. Or how many questions raised by the ARG are going to be answer in the novel, etc...."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales