Advertising Panel: "At least getting people to feel neutral about you is still an achievement."

[was too busy to write notes during that]

Cult Media:

Aww, what a sweet story. Grew up as the different kid, some facial paralysis, in New York, beat up and miserable, escaped into fantasy, godzilla, fell in love with the depth of Tolkien, wanted to emulate that with d&d, had to find a way to get street thugs to play d&d. Grew up, started creating worlds, really wanted stories to jump across media. He's all grown up, and a CEO, but I still am feeling empathy for that little different kid. They take properties, and develop the universe a lot.

"Jeff Gomez is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a content development and production studio based in New York City. An expert in the field of transmedia development and creator and producer of highly successful fictional worlds, Gomez exponentially increases the value of intellectual properties by preparing them at early phase to be extended across a wide variety of entertainment platforms. He has written and produced elaborate trans-media universes (including content such as feature and episodic animation, video games, comic books, novels, and web portals) for 20th Century Fox, The Coca-Cola Company, The Walt Disney Company, Acclaim Entertainment, Mattel, Hasbro and Scholastic. Gomez has worked on such properties as Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, Magic: The Gathering, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hot Wheels, Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney Fairies, and Coca-Cola's Happiness Factory."

Jesse Alexander talks about how "heroes" tries to have something for everythign characterwise, the cop, the cheerleader, the brothers. Ensemble!

Henry asks about the tension between building up something that will achieve a hard core fanbase versus network/economic success.

Jesse: Claims to be a "superfan".

Jessie: very broad archetypal characters that people could grok easily.

Jeff: Kid and his mom watch heroes every week, minor character walks on, says something, leaves, kid expains backstory to mom, she says "what? i watch this every week, how do you know that?" and it lets the kid bring more to it.

Jesse: On Alias, they did the web stuff, the transmedia stuff, because they loved it, because they wanted to, for fun.

Danny: Tried to revamp and relaunch "the flash", they changed all sorts of stuff, "forget the hardcore fans, this is about the KIDS!" but who reads comic books? guys over 30 who care about the cannon and the details. they look it up on wikipedia, trying to find the obscure details, and they got attacked at comic con for getting the details wrong, they said "sorry, my bad" wanted to say "no editorial help!" but had to be nice.

Jesse: Has to integrate products to meet the budget, he can work in cell phones or cars or cisco, but he can do that, if you let him do it organically, let him talk tot he advertisers and work it in, not just have it handed down to writers. you need to have a dialogue with the advertisers, and work with them creatively. "We did great things with the Nissan Versa". He thinks that it was organic, the car became a character in the narrative, Hiro's joy for the car felt natural. [Laura: I dunno...] They have a Hiro-branded Nissan Versa in france.

Gordon admits that he picked a nissan versa for his zipcarring.

[wander off to discuss product placement in the confrence chat room]

Jeff: Approached by mattel to make content around the Hot Wheels anniversary, said they could start online, and then jump into videos, they workd with the barbie video people, and they could make a TV series out of it. to my shock, they went for it, aid we had to do it immediately, so right away we wer emaking a transmedia storyline around hot wheels. they started in june, they needed to have stuff in stores around the world in november, wrote a race around the world in an alternate dimension, they put in all these landmarks and gave mattel heart attacks about having races to a statue of christ in rio, and they sell stuff to india and saudi arabia. mattel said no women in th storyline. 36 cars, 10 people, no women allowed. "our consumer base doesn't want girls in their entertainment." we said "no, why, really why?" the bottom line from backchannels as that this product is sold in antiosn where women drivers don't exist, and we took a stand and said we would leave if we couldn't. we almost lost an 8 million dollar account. called up mainframe, solidarity, and told mattel "the chicks are in". Girl solves problem with math, (not with cooking), and not a peep from those countries, the children of saudi princes watch this dvd all the time.

Jesse: The actor who plays Ando is Korean, how will this play in Japan? Is his Japanese good enough? Jesse thinks it sounds great, Japanese makes no sense to him, makes a gibberish noise. Apparently it is a "massive, crazy success in Japan!". lot of worry it wouldn't work, but it came from a pure, honest creative space.

Question: Disabled Americans are 20% of America, largest minority, least shown. Discussion of havign diabled people play disabled characters. [Me: Isn't it important to get visibility of diabled people regardless of what the actors are? If a Korean can play Japanese, why can't a non-disabled person play a disabled character?]

Jesse goes back to the trouble with working in new charcters to Heroes.

[Amusing comment from the backchannel: "The story of Starlight and the homoerotic racetrack is admirable. Is this an exception? Can we hear a similar story (anonymize the actors) with a less happy ending? I'm curious about the prevalence of this moral conundrum."]

Worked on the Sims. What I leanred was, give the users the tools, and they will do your job for you. you set the stage, and let the players come in.

[There is nothing wrong with being the overflow room here, which is *right* outside the door. people talk more freely because we're no in the auditorium, we have more room, and i can talk on the backchannel and the chat room just as easily)

These networks will not do transmedia because it is cool, they do not part with money easily.

I did this show called the sentinel, that was designed for 18-35 year old males, and the fanbase ont he internet was 100% women! i didn't know what was going on, or if they were having conventions, or what.

[and i run off to a student obligation]

[and i run back]

Oh wow, people in Brazil found Heroes through the comics and didn't know it was linked to a show? I can't imagine reading the comics without knowing the characters from the show! Fascinating!


Starlight can geta comic out in a months, as transmedia they ridge story arcs, expand universe, flesh out 2ary charcters, lead you towards next story arc.

Arguments about peopel not wanting to read, comics as a "gateway" to reading

And it's over, and it was wonderful.