“New Girl” has been a big new show for the 2011-2012 season, and it’s been hard to ignore. And while the series may not be totally my cup of tea, it has it’s moments, and is rounded out by a cast that seems like they’re having fun with it. I’ve written about some of the more interesting extensions they’ve done online with the show before, but I found this interesting twist that I’d like to point out. 

One of my favourite blogs, “Vulture,” is obsessed with the show and recently put together a mocked-up cover for a work-out video for Schmidt (who is played by Max Greenfield). Apparently this inspired Greenfield himself to go and make Schmidt’s work out video, and he posted the results himself into his own channel on YouTube. The video is hilarious, and while there’s not a whole lot of details about the production, it seems like Greenfield improvised the lines. 

I do wonder if FOX will pull it because actors aren’t allowed to “be” their own characters off-screen in any kind of capacity, and I imagine letting actors appear in-character on their own YouTube channels is a no-no. But I hope that FOX does make this official and move it over to the “New Girl” site, because as a form of web video “transmedia,” it really, really works… it’s fun, in character, and exactly the kind of things that will keep fans of the show hyped on a Friday until a new episode next week!

(Source: youtu.be)

Nothing gives a sense of location to a series with very specific geographic boundaries than an interactive map. For those of us who blazed through the books, a map of Westeros (and beyond) was an essential tool for understanding “Game of Thrones,” and the series is no different.

Building on a map from season one, the map for the second season goes interactive, showing all major landmarks, episode landmarks, and a few “special features.” 

The major landmarks include all the places that the series has visited so far over season one and season two, allowing users to click through a mini-map to see where the locations appear on the big map. Episode to episode land marks appear under a different menu, and prove to be good tools for rehashing where specific scenes from recent episodes took place. 

The map also promises three “special features.” The first of which outlines which territories each king controls, the next two promises to show Daenerys’ path across the Dothraki sea, and the upcoming war!

I really like the execution in this element, as like the maps in the books, it gives a great sense of space, and fills in parts of the narrative that you just can’t get from the series. The show is complicated to follow, and it must have features like this to support and engage with its audiences. 

Sometimes you can tell when there’s “heart” involved with a project, and I think there’s evidence of that with NBC’s “Inside Greendale Community College” site for their series “Community.”

Like other mini-sites for NBC, such as the ones related to “30 Rock” and “The Office,” the Greendale College site is built out of the show’s own Greendale College, the school at the centre of “Community.” 

It has lots of elements in regards to things you would see on a typical school site, such as details about registration and campus life, but NBC has almost built in callouts to their other extras, some of which are videos… which I can’t view in Canada. However, there’s a long-standing blog with entries tied to episodes of the series, and fun bios on little-seen characters in the student population. 

On top of that, NBC goes the extra mile to not wrap the mini-site in their NBC.com navigation, but allows the only noticeable reference to NBC be in Greendale’s big box ad, which makes the fictional site that much more believable. I’m only a casual “Community” fan, but I found myself engrossed in the mini-site, clicking on every single thing just to see how wide the content stretched.  

(Source: greendalecommunitycollege.com)

I’ve mentioned this before, but NBC is really good at turning out quick little features that tie into their series, and “Awake” has been one of those shows to do it really well. I really, really love “Awake” as a series, and with so many hooks to latch onto, NBC demonstrates how to build some of those elements out in simple, yet effective, pieces.

In a recent episode, the show’s protagonist, Michael Britten, drives up to a fast-food taco joint, and following his order, he begins to hear… instructions. Words of advice, really. It’s never explained who is speaking to him over the intercom (yet). It’s one of many David Lynch-style elements that continue to complicate Michael’s world. 

Keeping with that episode’s strange twist, NBC has produced a little “Drive Thru Wisdom” feature out of that element, which with every re-load, gives a new piece of advice. I like how it’s incorporated the logo/design of the restaurant from the show, even if I have yet to find a real “clue” about Michael’s conditions or the conspiracy surrounding his “accident” in it’s phrases.

Maybe I’m not looking deep enough?

I like that NBC has me asking that question.

(Source: nbc.com)

Personally, I really like seeing small sites related to “in-world” properties for shows, and NBC delivers those in spades for much of its programming, including “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Now, I hate to sound like a broken record when it comes to NBC sitcoms, but like “The Office,” I’m not really a fan of “30 Rock,” so while I appreciate seeing these mini-sites, I don’t really get the in-show element they’re referring to.

With that in mind, it does underline a problem that mini-sites like these have as a genre, is that they “preach to the converted,” and don’t seem to be efforts to bring in new audiences to a series. Should they?

I think one of the touchstones for sites like these is the “Oceanic Airlines” site, which was paired with “Lost” on ABC, and fed into that viral rabid-ness that entering “the numbers” into a flight schedule created. However, to achieve that kind of viral-ness with a mini-site is really hit or miss.

I do also like these kinds of sites, because they are relatively easy to create for small web teams, and allow for some creative innovation. I would like to see more “original photography” involved from on-set props to give a little more of a seamless broadcast/online crossover, but for NBC, they deserve props for the breadth of sites they deliver.

(Source: nbc.com)

A look at our transmedia storytelling world, and the (mostly) successful approaches to engage audiences in a deeper way, “The Art of Immersion” by Frank Rose is a must-read for anyone in the creative industry today. Rose accounts for a wide variety of approaches that have met in an intersection of video games, board games, movies, tv, advertising and more, illustrating the reality of today’s entertainment that storytellers must not ignore in order to engage the widest audiences who demand multi-platform engagement.

Rose is a long-time contributor to Wired magazine, a former contributor to Fortune magazine, and a seasoned veteran of the media conference circuit. 

In “The Art of Immersion,” Rose picks the brain of pioneers in immersive storytelling, including Jordan Weisman, a video game designer who likens his work to “Dungeons & Dragons,” Elan Lee, who opines on what kind of entertainment the internet is telling us it wants, Howard Roffman and the creation of a canon “Star Wars” universe, Ian Schafer, CEO of AMC’s digital marketing agency “Deep Focus,” Damon Lindelof, one of the producers behind “Lost,” NBC execs responsible for bringing “The Office” online, “CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker, ad minds behind “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and experts in neuroscience and gaming. 

Overall, the book is an inspiring look at those who’ve attempted to create story worlds, and the pitfalls they faced, and how they were overcome. Big examples Rose examines are the universes of “Star Wars” and James Cameron’s “Avatar,” and looks at reasons why “Avatar” failed as a game franchise while what worked for “Star Wars” and its multi-platform extensions.

When exploring cases in engagement in television, it’s interesting to hear from Lindelof and his fellow “Lost” creators, and how they more-or-less stumbled into transmedia, and how “The Office” turned to the web to whip their fans into a frenzy. 

There are two lessons that I took away from “The Art of Immersion.” The first is the importance that any story, be it one rooted in film, TV or advertising, needs to have a well-thought out mythology — or at least room for one to exist and be invented at a later time… these are the very flesh of where fans will grab on with their fascination, keeping them engaged and engrossed until the storyteller reveals their latest twist.

The other is the need for transmedia producers, and those who adapt stories for online and other platforms, to become stewards of these universes and stories; to ultimately understand the narrative, the themes, and the smallest of world-details in order to wholly deliver this content in a meaningful way to audiences. You need to know the details of the world, but you also need the bigger picture. 

In light of the extensive blogs and other cool initiatives NBC has done for “The Office,” I’m not really a fan of how they’ve created a lot of “special features” which are really nothing more than a photo gallery of stock photos and copy that isn’t really true to the world of “The Office.” One the hope page of “The Office” they’re pushing “Kelly’s Breakup Tips” and “Party Pooper’s Guide” which are both examples of this… as a non-fan of the show, I feel a little duped, and I can’t imagine fans of the show will get a whole lot from it either. 

I can see that it does serve to keep the page looking fresh and moving older material off the main real estate, but I don’t know if using that kind of content works any better. I don’t know if I’d tweet or share these galleries, and judging by the lack of comments on these items, it looks like fans of the show feel the same way. To be fair, older gallery/exclusives that used more “Character” details and asked for input (ie “Newborn Tips: Pam vs. Angela) were far more successful.

I’ve been holding off on jumping into the plethora of online offerings for “The Office” for a while now, but I can avoid it no more. Even if the show is not really funny and makes you feel like a jerk by watching it, NBC has invested a lot of time and energy to build an entire online world for the series, and since they started with blogs in the earlier seasons, that’s where I’ll start looking too. 

When it comes to the online world of “The Office,” Dwight Schrute, a fan favourite and resident oddball, takes up a huge presence. That’s due in part of Rainn Wilson’s expertise as social media, as well as having a character with a lot of mythology and oddball eccentricities that are well suited for the internet rabbit hole. 

For example, when you first hit “Schrute Space,” Dwight’s blog that’s updated every other month or so, you also get links to Dwight’s “Private Investigator” site, a “Diabolical Blog” which seems to be broken, the “Dwight/Angela baby contract,” the Dunder-Mifflin store, the Sabre Corp, a sign up for Dwight’s email blasts and a Trip Advisor page for Schrute Farms.  

For Dwight’s blog, it’s all written in-character, offering up his take on why he thinks everything he does is awesome, and what may have happened around certain events when the audience wasn’t looking. It started in 2005 with a post entitled “Schrute-Space” and describes why Dwight hates Salmon, and what his DJ name would be.

From reading about the creation of “The Office” online offerings, NBC.com hired a pair of writers to fill out all this online content, including the blog, and when you see the sheer volume of it all, you can see where the work went. 

In other blogs, there’s “There’s No Accounting for Taste,” written by Oscar Martinez for the “Sabre Corporation,” though it’s a little lean with only a couple posts. There’s “Creed Thoughts” by the deranged office drone Creed, with archives reaching back to 2007. I find them to be pretty nonsensical, but from what I’ve seen from his character on the show, I guess that would be the point. Finally there’s the Halpert Baby blog, which is Jim and Pam’s “Mommy Blog” for Pam’s pregnancy and subsequent baby-related comings and goings. 

The “Baby Blog” has a pile of outbound Jim-and-Pam related links as well, including the wedding website with engagement photos. The rest of the links are links to “Working Mom” type sites and other blogs related to the baby-mother world, adding a level of reality and utility to their page.

I do wonder, if judging from the infrequency of the updated blog posts, if branching out into too many characters harms the entire enterprise. Character blogs can be a really great way continually engage audiences, especially during repeat breaks or summer/winter hiatus… but I would say that they’d need to be updated at least weekly to keep audiences coming back.

However, “The Office” should be commended for not resting on blogs alone, as their site is very deep with content, and it should be recognized for putting a character’s voice in a blog over seven years ago — and keeping it going for the run of the series.