Television is a mass medium that reaches millions of people. Right now, TV is mostly passive when it comes to the run-of-show and plot built into the stories that are told by producers, directors and writers. Social TV apps like GetGlue and Miso aim to let you socialize around TV content and Youtoo hopes to create an easy way to upload snippets of video content that can then appear on broadcast.
But there’s another approach by a company called Theatrics, which has named it “Mass Participation TV” or MPTV. Its first web show, Beckinfield, “is the only social TV experience where anyone can create a character and play a part in professional plot driven show.” MPTV is the company’s “patent-pending process,” which they hope will change the way anyone can create a character for the plot, which they are then encouraged to upload to be included in a weekly trailer of clips that make up an episode. The winner of their competition was just announced and awarded $10,000 and a trip to Hollywood. We spoke with Bob Gebert, cofounder and vp of creative for Theatrics about their hope to impact social TV.
LR: How did you come up with the idea for the show?
Bob Gebert: The spark for Beckinfield, a mass participation web series where anyone can create and play a character, began when I was teaching classes to working actors in Los Angeles. In addition to my acting career, I had written dozens of plays, sold a screenplay to a major studio and written and directed an indie feature film that had won awards on the festival circuit. A number of my acting students approached me about writing some monologues for them that they could upload to various sources to help in the marketing of their careers. Instead, I thought it might be better to teach them how to do it on their own. I took a number of screenwriting principles and developed a workshop that became Character Creation in the Digital Age (and the character creation tutorials that are on the site.) I then though that it would be interesting to have all these fascinating characters that were being created as residents in same small town. That was the beginnings of what became Beckinfield. It was such an interesting experiment, that I showed it to my close friend Tracy Evans, who had an interactive media company in Houston. I had known Tracy since we were teenagers and we had collaborated on many projects in the past. I knew he could bring a level of polish and sophistication to this project.
Tracy had an even bigger vision for it than I did. In addition to designing the site and user experience, Tracy brought most of the social elements to it. Many were inherent in the concept, but weren’t really the focus. We then teamed with Tracy’s longtime collaborator, Biff Van Cleve who brought the business expertise. And together we created Theatrics and Beckinfield.
LR: What are the social aspects?
BG: The whole Mass Participation TV concept and the Beckinfield site are really built around social entertainment. It’s hard to separate one from the other. Anyone can create and play a character in the mysterious small town of Beckinfield. Each week, participating “actors” get secret plot scenarios of events that are happening in the fictional town. The actors then create video diaries as their characters comment on and react to the events and each other. They then of course can let their fans and viewers know that they have posted a new video and anyone can watch and comment on the videos.
The actors create their individual stories within the world of Beckinfield. We often have one character mention another in a video, and then the second will often comment on that. It’s fun to see the actors bring each other into their stories.
A “backstage” area lets the actors connect and collaborate on storylines or just chat about life, the universe and everything. We had an amazing collaboration recently involving 5 or 6 actors from 3 states and 3 different countries all posting videos within minutes of each other, as if they were all at the same lake in Beckinfield doing research. The actors had created this collaboration on their own; I didn’t know it was happening. I found myself totally caught up in the story as each new video went up. It was really very suspenseful.
Additionally, some of our fictional characters, which are part of the Beckinfield mythology, have twitter accounts that actors follow and comment on in their videos. And of course some of the actors themselves have taken their characters into the social world with Twitter and Facebook accounts.
LR: Was there good participation?
BG: It’s just been fantastic from the world go. The amount of passion and excitement we’re seeing from actors and acting enthusiasts at every level has just been amazing. We have number of serious actors who use it to help further their careers; some use it to develop skills to help them create their own content and web series. And obviously we have a lot of people who are just using it to have fun and a creative outlet.
LR: Do you have plans to get this on linear TV?
BG: We believe there are many other directions and platforms that the story of Beckinfield could expand to. Conversely, we also think that the Mass Participation TV platform has many applications as well.
LR: How do you distribute online?
BG: Each week, we take clips from the best videos and edit them into a two-minute compilation that sort of catch’s viewers up on the story. We do post these to many video outlets online. And the actors of course can post their videos wherever they see fit. But in terms of seeing how the individual videos relate to the main story, there is no place better to watch it than theatrics.com.
LR: How do you think this is the future of television?
BG: We have some very specific ideas, but generally the world is getting more involved in social entertainment. Engaging viewers to the point that they feel like they are actually in the story is what it is all about. We expect this concept to interact with linear television in a huge way.