Nathan Mayfield and Tracey Robertson of Hoodlum Entertainment produced ‘Fat Cow Motel’, an interactive drama that screened on the ABC in 2003. Zone4’s Thom Saunders worked with Hoodlum to create the new media component of the program. Now the three have formed Hoodlum Active, recognising that new media and TV producers need to start working more closely together. Ellie Rennie spoke to Nathan and Thom about FCM and their new program ‘Housemates’.

ER: You specialise in multi-platform drama. In your experience, is the television industry keen to be taking-on new media initiatives and stories? Do their current practices conflict with what you are trying to achieve?

NM: We are grateful for interactive television as it has demonstrated audience participation. We are trying to take this into drama, using those tools that the audience now understands. It’s a hard slog to talk to a TV network and get something in prime-time that has an equally significant on-line or mobile phone component, but at least they are open to it. When we first pitched stuff four years ago you never pitched the interactive side. I don’t think that we should dismiss TV as the most important component but what they are understanding now is that you can build an audience by building depth through these other platforms.

ER: It sounds as though their priority is still getting the ‘eyeballs’ for free-to-air advertising. Are they interested in how this content might can create new models for advertising?

NM: I think that’s going to be driven by the advertising clients, not by the networks. We formed a joint-venture with a company that specialises in branded entertainment, recognising that there are new models out there where you can involve a brand at the story level to develop with your project. But that has to complement a TV network’s agenda.

ER: What lessons did you learn from ‘Fat Cow Motel’?

TS: From the interactive side, that it’s incredibly difficult to maintain the narrative if the storylines and characters are only fully known by one or two people. How do you see a mistake if the world is not real?

NM: That comes down to resources and time.

ER: Do time and resources restrict what you want to do?

NM: The benefits of making interactive content outweigh the cost. Creatively, it provides depth of storytelling. Economically, although FCM was an expensive exercise, we are now in a different environment where you can associate a brand with the interactive elements and capitalise on these costs.

TS: We also learnt that audiences want to know that someone worked hard to give them this experience. Smaller projects that haven’t showed the developer’s pain and suffering haven’t engaged the audience in the same way.

NM: You have to serve your audience and make sure it is narrative first and technology second. We had the best technology at the time to develop it, but as far as the audience was concerned it was entry-level technologies.

TS: We tried to make sure that the limitations on the user were as small as possible. We will always try to do that.

ER: Is it a good idea to let audiences direct storylines?

NM: FCM was never a choose-your-own-adventure narrative. You can’t get the production values with that style of narrative and it’s not fair on anybody – especially actors and writers. We plotted the whole series before we went into the shoot. What we knew was that the interaction was going to come out of the depth of involvement – extending the narrative and giving the audience a chance to solve the mysteries.

ER: FCM had a gaming element to it. Does that need to be there?

TS: The community was the game. FCM created a set of dedicated players that would play until they got every point, for a grand prize that was a plastic meat-tray. There was a forum on the site and if rogue players published scores from the current episode, other players would black-ban them and not have anything to do with them. It wasn’t the prize, it was about not getting relegated to the ‘cow pat club’ which is what happened if you missed a point. They (the audience) invented the cow pat club, it wasn’t part of the narrative. We had thousands of people play every point in every episode for this plastic meat tray. It must have been somewhere between 100-200 hours per person. From a TV/eyeballs point of view that’s massive. It was the same in terms of the pages that people were viewing in one sitting. We were getting an average of 75 page view per session where the average is usually 5 pages.

ER: Are you using that strategy in your new program ‘Housemates’?

NM: You have to make sure you are giving your audience a reason for being involved. It doesn’t have to be a ‘who-done-it’. They might be secrets. It’s about letting your audience be in on the joke, or in on the secrets.

ER: What needs to be taken into account when developing business models for multi-platform content?

NM: Telcos are evolving to become acquirers of content which means you’ve got new places to distribute your content. Will it pay bills? I’m not sure. But a distribution deal with a telco may be a fairer model than we have with current distribution companies. You can also approach production companies in other countries rather than going through a distributor – creating products specific for each territory. If you do, go for the one’s that have relationships with broadcasters and telcos. The interesting part is that mobile phones can have direct billing methods in place which means more opportunities to share in some of the revenue if it’s a successful show.

It may, in fact, end up fairer for the independents. Global markets are another benefit.
But you have to keep in mind that it’s not easy to repeat an interactive drama. For a traditional show you put in the tape and press play again. With this content there is all the infrastructure that needs to be ramped up as well. That can discourage networks, but they are still willing to do it for Big Brother.

ER: What are the technological hurdles?

NM: From our point of view, the only technological hurdle is not understanding the technological hurdles. We are driven by what is presented to us and we can only look at it as tools we can use.

TS: …and use the technology to its fullest. To do that you need to access the technology and experiment. Understanding how best to use interactive TV without direct access to the systems was the most difficult thing. We weren’t able to get close enough to the technology to learn how best to utilise it. The more open these systems are the more you’ll see people coming in and playing with the technology. We need test-beds where it doesn’t cost you thousands just to have a go. In the UK it was 20,000 pounds for the ‘Red Button” development kit. It’s not worth the money to get access to the tools.

NM: It is important to develop alongside the telcos. You want to make sure your next project is developing for the next generation of phones. To do this you need to have a relationship with them.

ER: Do all of your projects involve TV?

NM: You’d be mad to discount TV.

ER: Tell us about ‘Housemates’…

NM: It is an evolution of all the good bits of FCM. More streamlined, a drama format, cost effective TV that can be relocated and contained in each territory – which feels like the mobile phone world. The TV element triggers what plays out by MMS and SMS. Using the same model for Serial TV, Housemates uses a similar team of screen-writers who are put into a boot-camp to understand the language of the mobile phone. You are not going to see a half hour script, but rather a series of text messages that tell a narrative in the way we are used to receiving messages on mobile phones. It’s going to be a world that the audience can be involved in but not necessarily alter the outcome of. What we learnt from Fat Cow is that you can never underestimate the audience’s preparedness to simply go for the ride. As long as you give them the keys to the secrets and they are in on the joke, they are happy for us to lead the way. And hopefully Fat Cow Motel and Housemates can continue to open new opportunities for independent production companies to keep telling their stories.