But, I still issue this disclaimer: feel free to break the rules – so long as you have passion, vision and the drive to create.

1. SUCK IT UP AND LEARN SOCIAL MEDIA

If I hear one more of my film school colleagues who emerged from the last decade of digital trauma (!) say “social media is about popularity not art”, I will personally show up with a baseball bat and knock the sense out of them (for a small fee, I can do that for you as well). Social media is here to stay, and it is your friend, not your foe. Master it, and it will make you relevant. And if you have to ask me why, then you are in more dire need of this advice than I thought.

2. YOUR BRILLIANT IDEA MAY NOT BE A FILM

Deal with the fact that with the vast possibilities in media, the grand vision of your idea of a film MAY NOT be the smartest. And I’m not denying that certain ideas are far more brilliant on the big screen. However, as we move to the era of ubiquitous smaller screens, consider seriously if/how your idea might play on an iphone (yes) or a computer screen, or if an interactive element might serve your film better. Just sayin’. Let go of the visions of grandeur and worry about how to get your vision to the public. Film is cool but don’t get hung up on it.

3. PROFITABILITY WILL HELP YOUR CAREER

Ok, kids: the era of raising silly money from from your Wall Street buddies or the dentist who wants to go to a movie premiere IS officially over. And even if you do, you better know how you’re going to recoup that plus at least 10-15 % . Yeah, Madoff screwed it up for you. Everyone is suspicious of any investment opportunity that promises upwards of 110% return so if you can deliver that, you WILL have a career. Even if you have to sell 40,000 t-shirts to make it back, it will make you a less risky investment for your next project.

4. UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE A BRAND

This is not me selling you out to the world of advertising. This is me telling you that Your Identity, Your Persona, Your Creative Work form the CORE of what makes you appealing to audiences. Think seriously about what makes you unique and that is what will make you stand out in a sea of many other media-makers, some of whom may have similar ideas to yours. We live in an era where you simply cannot afford to hide behind your work or assume that someone else – a publicist, studio or production company will define who you are – step up and figure out how you need to position yourself to get the job done.

5. FIND THREE GREAT COLLABORATORS INSTEAD OF AN AGENT

Let’s just get some facts out of the way: Hollywood is a machine that does certain things well: mass distribution, financing, profiteering. There are other things it doesn’t do so well: nurturing new talent, grass-roots audience building, niche brand-building. If your hope is that you will get “discovered” by Hollywood, don’t worry, they will find you once you have done all the work. They can make you bigger, offer you a better paycheck, fame and a ticket to the Oscars. But not before you’ve worked your tail off. You need to accept the fact that they cannot do for you what 3 great peers (or 1/2 multi-talented ones) can do for you. A dedicated team with the following skills will get you wherever you want to go: A) Creative Supporter/Critic; B) Audience Building Strategist; C) Clever Business Brain/Monetization Strategist.

This is an amateur movie made by a member of the The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society in 1947. Strange, you may think, as it seemed to me when I first watched this one of several films created by members of this Society as a way to analyze their dreams.

Initially, The Lion Dream struck me as the tender, heartbreaking story of a son (possibly Jewish) who lost his parents in WW2 Germany and then as an adult in 1947, attempts to re-visit the fear he harbored as a child that something devastating was about to happen.

But that’s only part of the story.

I selected this film from the materials that comprise the project  “Dreamland: The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle, 1926-1972” because I found it haunting. Who is Teddy Weisengrund? Did he really dream this story? Or did he simply imagine it as an exercise in Freudian psychoanalysis?

The artist Zoe Beloff seems to be asking that question and many more about this curious group that was active in Coney Island between 1926 and 1972. What is not immediately apparent but which I later learned, is that this film may or may not be the ACTUAL film Teddy Weisengrund created in 1947. And maybe there was a Teddy Weisengrund or perhaps there wasn’t…

I was introduced to Beloff’s work by Mike Monello, who showed me a delightfully rendered book “written by” members of the group. It seemed for all intents and purposes a “genuine” work. But upon further investigation into Beloff’s project, I discovered it was in fact deceptively simple. As Monello astutely pointed out, this project is an unidentified piece of Transmedia storytelling – a kind of creativity without media boundaries, filled with such enormous passion for these stories and characters that you almost don’t care if it is “real” or not.

Zoe Beloff is one of those wildly creative figures whose ambitious work lives in a space somewhere between filmmaking and installation art. Her multimedia exhibition that showed at the Coney Island Museum this past summer was a combination of objects, films, drawings and writings about this visually prolific group of amateur psycholanalysts whose interest in Freud led them into all manner of activity, including trying to resurrect DREAMLAND a razed Coney Island museum and fashion it into “the first amusement park ever devoted to the elucidation of dreams in accordance with the discoveries of Doctor Sigmund Freud M.D.”

According to the New York Times article on the exhibit, Beloff, who works with found footage and objects, accidentally discovered relics of this fascinating bunch of psychoanalysis enthusiasts, and began this project to reconstruct their world. The article discusses Beloff’s prior interest in the relationship between the real and fictional, noting that most of her work “incorporates film and video in multimedia projects and environments in which the boundaries between historical fact and creative interpretation — what really was and what might have been — tend to blur.”

For the project, Beloff set about reconstructing these films, made for dream analysis purposes and imagining how each member (fictional or real) might have created his/her film. It seems Beloff has combined found home video footage with some new images fashioned in the style of the time and of the individual authors who puportedly created the films, to complete the ideas that make up the Dream Films 1926-1972 .

Beloff’s work, as wild and bizarre as it sometimes seems, illustrates what can happen when storytelling is released from the bounds of specific media or the constraints of the fictional versus the real. To me, The Lion Dream is a beautiful, understated testament to the quiet terror of a child in a moment of uncertainty made even more poignant by the possibility that it was recreated by one person in memory of another, in honor of two others.

Over tea in Brooklyn’s train-rattling DUMBO neighborhood, Monello and I spent a few lively hours discussing a broad range of ideas surrounding the practice of Transmedia and what it means to the form and art of the story when we cross into the wild, expansive possibilities of narrative without boundaries. Again and again, he cited examples of  audience engagement AS art, performance, and not simply the necessarily evil creative people have to suffer to get their work seen by audiences. I recognized that as artists, especially filmmakers, the “art” of audience engagement may be the hardest one to embrace yet in constructing the full Transmedia experience, Monello demonstrated how critical it is.

What struck me as we spoke was how accessible and practical Monello was but then I remembered that it was he and his group of collaborators after all, that were responsible for the savvy, practical and explosive phenomenon known as The Blair Witch Project. (He calls that an early, unidentified Transmedia project – which spawned lesser known books and games that expanded the story and appealed to varying audiences) Yet as the same time, I found myself his unbridled love for story and his zeal for the challenge of creating compelling, immersive experiences rather infectious.

Because it was my obsession with rapidly shifting world of narrative form and content that led me to start writing this blog in the first place, I bombarded Monello with questions about how he and his partners at Campfire manage to do what they do, convince brands to let them create cross-platform stories and experiences; badgered him for the requisite end-of-year 2010 predictions; and pestered him for speculations on when Transmedia might go wide. He was gracious and patient with his extensive answers – a limited selection of which I am posting here.

WHAT IS A STORYTELLER WITHIN TRANSMEDIA?
Rejecting the limitations of titles such as “filmmaker”, Monello says stories can be anywhere and on any platform so he privileges the term “storyteller” above all others. When a storyteller is effective, s/he is “conducting” and “orchestrating” a creative narrative experience for an audience, no matter where that might be. He is adamant that audiences should be able to engage as lightly or as deeply as they want, and that all engagement experiences should be built with that in mind – value at very level. Emphasizing that a Transmedia narrative might have a component as low-tech as a paper invitation (which Campfire used in the True Blood campaign), the goal is always to allow the audience to engage, and dig deeper if they so desire.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ARTIST/AUTEUR’S VISION IN TRANSMEDIA NARRATIVES?
In designing the narrative experience, Monello says, “the dirty little secret of transmedia narratives: creators have far more control over the story than anyone really lets on.” In more cases than not, when an audience engages with the intention of building/contributing to a narrative, they are playing a role that has been designed by the author of that story. So to all those auteurs nervous about crossing into the abyss of a creative world run by crazed mob fans, there’s nothing to fear. On the contrary, encouraging fans to engage can only increase the value of one’s brand.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR TRANSMEDIA NARRATIVES TO BECOME MAINSTREAM?
Right now, he says he still struggles with mainstream marketing teams resistance “to constructing a convergent multiplatform narrative” because of the splintered way agencies handle all their platforms–hardly ever basing a campaign vision on a unified cross-platform story. Despite challenges on the brand side with which he works,  Monello thinks the Transmedia road is still a lot tougher on the Film and TV studio side where one might expect there to be more story innovation. The ideal scenario, he says, is that a powerful showrunner will initiate a Transmedia project across the board and turn it into audience gold but doubts that will really happen. He believes a more likely scenario is that the “game-changer will come from an indie creator,” not unlike a Blair Witch scenario of the next decade who “with the force of the fans will reformulate the system”.

When I found this nicely done video of Henry Jenkins (of whom I am a great fan) talking about his theory of Convergence in the middle of Times Square, I thought it would be a nice kickoff. Nice conceptual and VFX work by HCD Media Group.

Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies: Unlike other forms of media the Internet will not destroy the pay-TV model. Consumers want a high-quality video experience across platforms (mobile device, laptop, monitor). Consumers will demand quality and ease of use.

Doug Knopper, co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel: Consumers are getting closer to the type of content experience they want when it comes to video. Winners will be twofold in this world: those that create compelling content and those who can figure out how to build a business model around that content. Allowing the media companies the control and flexibility to manage and monetize their content will help content creators survive this transition.

Avner Ronen CEO and co-founder of Boxee: It may be the year of TV Everywhere, but the future is Internet Everywhere.   Storytelling will change. There are no limits on the length of a story, and viewers will be able to direct their viewing experience. One can also run parallel stories within a show. By 2015, there will be an Internet show that will be bigger than a TV show today. You will have more Apple subscribers than Comcast subscribe. People will watch more video and they will pay more for it.

Jeremy Reed, SVP Content and Editorial, Demand Media: Next big thing is trying to understand there is an imbalance between supply, need and cost. You need to understand the ROI before you greenlight content. Is it quality and relevant to a community? And increasing the competitiveness — in a search world is a social world.

And perhaps the MOST controversial was James Spare’s demo of “my TV is watching me” (watch demo close to the end of the video). Everyone screamed Big Brother!

James Spare, president and CEO of Canesta: We’ve invented technology that can track objects in 3-D space. The market for 3-D is huge. A new market is 3-D input, which can, for example, have a screen detect your motion and then be able to interact in a 3-D environment. (Shows video of TV watcher moving channels with hand wave gestures). This will give rise to a whole set of new capabilities.

There’s no denying that feisty chef Anthony Bourdain is a compelling character to watch. Which is why he has his own show on the Travel Channel in the first place. So I was fascinated to discover (via @laughingsquid) this trailer for his new show, Anthony Bourdain’s Alternate Universe which is as you can see, animated! It looks like a fictional foray into his crazy, spice-flared, slightly inebriated brain. I love the idea for a couple of reasons: first, it’s a clever way to expand the Bourdain brand and second, it’s one of those life-meets-fiction experiments that blurs the line between real and the imagined. Looking forward to the fun of Mr Bourdain’s brain!