StoryToGo

Exploring storytelling in its many forms in this digital age

Case Studies

Changing the Face of Courage

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Sarah Redohl is an immersive media journalist who creates social impact VR documentaries such as Changing the Face of Courage, Welcome Home: A Veteran’s Story and Zambia, the Gift of Mobility.

The Immersive Shooter — a resource website containing interviews with experts in the VR industry, and offering tips and nuggets of wisdom that Sarah and her co-founder Robert Hernandez wish they’d known when they were first starting out in VR.

Creators:

Sarah Redohl

Country:

Sarah was born in the US but is now living and operating out of Bohn, Germany.

Interview Date: 

March 26, 2019

Sarah Redohl

Links to Project: 

Immersive Shooter

Funding Methods:

Sarah’s funding model includes direct sponsorship through organizations, and grants from corporations invested in VR content creation. As a journalist, Sarah directly sells her work to newspapers and online journals for publication.

The Project:

Changing the Face of Courage is an immersive 360 film which honours the history of women in the American military service.

Zambia, the Gift of Mobility is an immersive documentary about the PET (Personal Energy Transportation) all terrain wheelchairs that have changed the lives of many Zambian women who live with physical disability.

Welcome Home: A Veteran’s Story is a 360 film focussing on the issue of veteran homelessness and the Missouri non-profit who is tackling the problem. 

The Immersive Shooter: Sarah co-founded this free educational online resource for creating immersive VR work with Robert Hernandez who teaches VR journalism at University of Southern California. This website is full of the resources they wish that they had had when setting out on the journey of immersive, VR shooting, as both are passionate about helping to develop this industry.

The Immersive Shooter is important to Sarah as a resource for other creators. She is passionate about the development of VR journalism and feels the best way for that to happen is to have a lot of great content creators. The best way to do that is to make it easier for newcomers to VR to have access to the resources they wish they’d had, and to benefit from the collective wisdom of VR practitioners.

The Creator

Sarah is the immersive new media journalist behind Changing the Face of Courage and other immersive 360 film projects such as “Welcome Home, A Veteran’s Story” and “Zambia — the Gift of Mobility”.

Anything that I think makes people feel more deeply connected to the world and more deeply connected to the people I’ve chosen to profile — that’s my bread and butter.

Sarah Redohl

You can find many of Sarah’s 360 stories on her website sarahredohl.com

The Road to Sustainable Funding

Zambia, the Gift of Mobility was Sarah’s first project. This project was self-funded and freely released to allow the creators to build an international audience.

Changing the Face of Courage project was commissioned directly by the Women’s Memorial for their anniversary. As the Women’s Memorial wanted the project to be in-house, they did not want the story to be picked up and published by a big name publisher. In the past, Sarah has found in working with non-profits that being picked up by a major publishing company is one of the main goals.

Welcome Home: A Veterans Story is a project about the issue of veteran homelessness in the US. The funding model behind this project was a mix of self-funding along with a stipend from the McClatchy publishing company to include the story in their Facebook series, The War Within.

Sarah notes the funding opportunities provided by companies with a vested interest in content creation: Grant programs and opportunities like these include Youtube VR Creator lab, Google’s Jump Program, Ocular Stories Studios, and Oculus for Good.

For example, Facebook funded content for their series, Love Has No Labels.

And there’s Journalism 360 — a partnership by Google News Initiative, McKnight Foundation, and Online Journalism Association — which Sarah says has given out half a million in funding for VR projects. 

Facebook and Google have a vested interest in 360 content creation. and a lot of content has been funded by them. 

Sarah Redohl

Samsung funded the New York Times Daily 360 for some time — with a 360 video produced every day. Samsung pulled back from this program and doesn’t currently offer funding opportunities for immersive projects. 

Sarah notes that this can’t be the way projects are funded as creators never know when companies are going to pull back.

This can’t be the only way to fund what you do.

Sarah Redohl

Through The Immersive Shooter, Sarah has had the opportunity to interview many different VR creators and she offers some of the funding strategies these creators have used.

For creators who wish to release their work for profit, there are paid apps that can house their VR work. However, even these are not dependable. Sarah has heard that Steam VR has announced that they won’t be supporting 360 videos in the near future, but are considering 180 VR instead. 

Some creators have tried producing 360 Stock to subsidize their other work. Sarah has heard mixed reports on success from this kind of venture.

Liquid Cinema is an authoring tool and CMS for immersive content creators which allows creators to provide clients with a fully customized app experience for for-profit release of content.

Free Educational Resources

The Immersive Shooter is funded by a mix of advertising revenue, along with Sarah and her co-founder Robert Hernandez’s free offerings of  insights they have gained while on their own journeys of VR shooting. Funding this site was a lot easier when they started it in 2017. Sarah thinks this is because the industry has seen a pull back from VR that people in the industry are calling, “VR winter”.

Sarah is also co-founder and co-writer of the Immersive Shooter, an educational website for learning how to create immersive films. Adding new interviews depends upon the amount of advertising support they have from time to time. She continues to add tips from her own learning journey regardless of funding as this is her passion that she is driven to share.

Into the Future: Model for going forward

Self-funding projects has been hit or miss in terms of selling and placing these stories. Sarah now plans

to make sure to have those funding partners and publishing partners nailed down in as early part of the process as possible so they have buy in.

Sarah Redohl

VR Facebook communities have been talking about agencies that aim to match content creators and their ideas with prospective interested clients. This would be good.

“I’d love to see more ideas coming from content creators that don’t have to be self-funded.”

Sarah Redohl

Shifting Mindset — One of Sarah’s key tips was to take advantage of the freelance community culture, making bigger projects more sustainable and feasible through freelance relationships. This project to project approach is similar to the movie industry and is more sustainable than forming studios. The benefit of these kinds of collaborative groupings is the sense of community that has formed amongst immersive content creators. Sarah remarked that the industry is formed of a small, positive community of creators who know each other, who are excited to share best practices with each other, whose relationships are built more upon collaborating than competition and that

there’s good energy coming from the collaboration.

Sarah Redohl


Revisiting Storyworlds from Your Childhood Self

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This article was originally published in Reel West Magazine, and was republished here to archive it, after the close of the magazine.

These days there’s always a new buzz word when it comes to storytelling and technology. Admittedly these usually make me groan, as, as they gain in popularity, they bring with them the so-called gurus and prophets, who spend more time talking about them tha they do actually creating. Part of my eye rolling comes with the fact that by the time it’s a buzz word, and people are dropping it left, right and centre in conversation, it is no longer cutting edge and people start over using it (if I never hear the word ‘selfie’ again, I will be one happy gal). Oh and please stop using the term ‘new media’. It stopped being ‘new’ ages ago. Then there’s the infighting between groups of media makers – using different terms for the same thing, as they aren’t fans of some of the ‘so called prophets’ – really are transmedia and convergent storytelling all that different? But mostly I cringe at these terms and the posturing to be seen as a leader of them as none of these terms describe new concepts. Think about it.  The only thing new to storytelling are a few of the platforms in which we tell our tales on now, but conceptually people have been doing things like transmedia and convergent storytelling all throughout human history.  We’ve just become a little precious about spotlighting ourselves as trail blazers.

One term that you may have heard if you’ve been attending conferences like Storyworld Quest, Merging Media, and Storyworld, that is becoming a buzz word with media makers is ‘storyworlds’ or ‘storyworld creation’. This is one term that admittedly I love, but again is not new.  The concept of storyworlds is the idea of having stories that overlap with each other, that have different platforms in which people can experience aspects of the story on and allow the audience to engage within the story and take a personal stake in it.

I suspect most of you at some point have created a storyworld as children.  One that standouts for me from childhood was created by my siblings, cousins and myself at my grandparent’s place. This storyworld involved our rooftop ‘Dairy Queen’ (which was a place of imaginative play and theatre – rather than ice cream), another rooftop Star Wars play zone (for creating our own brand of fan fiction), magical beasts (as we watched the shoreline for the Cadborosaurus), mysteries to be solved (in the form of a coy pinching otter), our own Olympic Summer Games resided over by my grandfather in top hat and tails (for our gaming component), the ‘how-to’ project of the tree fort we were constantly rebuilding, and our own foodie adventures in homemade fruit leather creations.  

Think about it.  I bet you too can remember storyworlds that you were a part of as a child.

So what is that magical ingredient that makes some people more successful in creating storyworlds, than others, in this age of social and mobile media?  Building community!  This means engaging, listening, empowering others to feel a part of the story and engage within it, and letting go of the reigns and not trying to control everything.  As media makers, this means remembering that lesson we learned in Kindergarten – it’s not all about us!  While you can still broadcast – also ENGAGE – let your audience feel they have a stake in your story and it’s success. And remember we can’t do it all alone – just like I needed my cousins, siblings, and adult family members to help create that childhood storyworld, you need to build community – both within your audience and with other creatives – and allow them to take a stake within your story, without micromanaging and trying to control everything.

Give yourself permission to embrace the kid in you again and begin building storyworlds around your projects.  Once you do, please tell us about it at @AhimsaMedia or via the #StoryToGo hashtag, and invite us into your storyworld.

Crowdfunding – Creating New Possibilities and Sidestepping Gatekeepers

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This article was originally published in Reel West Magazine, and was republished here to archive it, after the close of the magazine.

Whether you laughed or exclaimed “WTF!” that a dude jokingly posts “I’m making potato salad. Basically I’m just making potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet.” on Kickstarter and he raises $55,492, it does make you sit up a little straighter and think maybe, just maybe, you should be paying crowdfunding a little more attention.  What was Zack Danger Brown’s intention with his potato salad Kickstarter campaign, aside from a good chuckle?  He’d publicly hoped to raise $10, while secretly his goal was $60.  Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to raise $55,492.  Who would?!?

As a creator, this excites me.  Whether you’ve long been a fan of crowdfunding or have been skeptically watching from the sidelines, this past year has carried some telling examples with it for us creators. Examples that suggest crowdfunding may indeed be a viable alternative to play with in the Canadian film and TV funding game, opening the playing field up to those creators who are willing to put in the work to experiment with a new model of funding, sidestepping traditional gatekeepers.

After all, it is not just potato salad that is getting funded. 2013 saw a revival of the Veronica Mars stories, as after 7 years of being off network television, Director Rob Thomas, in a last ditch attempt to raise financing for the film started a Kickstarter campaign.  He admittedly was skeptical if it would work.  You see he needed $2 million to go to camera, and at that time the highest raising Kickstarter campaign had been $900,000.  It would seem Rob need not have worried. He raised the first $1 million in the first 4 hours!  By 12 hours in, he’d raised the $2 million that he needed to shoot. The campaign continued on to raise a total of $5,702,153 from 91,585 backers, unlocking a variety of the campaign’s stretch goals.

Many pondered whether this was just a one time phenomenon, but since then Reading Rainbow has been revived too, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign raising $5,408,916 (it’s goal was $1 million).  Then this summer Coolest Cooler took over the torch of Kickstarter’s highest raising campaign yet raising $13,285,226, while it’s goal was only $50,000.

I hear a few mutters of “Well … those are big American entities, with pre-existing fan bases.”  True enough, at least in the case of Veronica Mars and Reading Rainbow, but our Canadian creators’ campaigns are nothing to scoff at.  Take for example Indie Game: the Movie, by Manitoba filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot – with two Kickstarter campaigns they raised $94,676 for the documentary.  Their goal had been $50,000.  They most certainly considered this a success, and in the process they had inadvertently marketed their documentary, creating a fan base and anticipation for it’s release. Win – Win!

Interviews with Canadian Creatives on Crowdfunding

In interviewing a number of other Canadian creatives who have successfully crowdfunded their own projects, here is what they learned in the process:

Steve Dotto

Past: Radio and TV Producer & Host, Now: YouTube Publisher

The Campaign: 

After spending many years on network TV, I moved my product to YouTube. When I was in traditional television, my customer was the sponsor, my customer now, is my viewer, the purpose of a crowdfunding campaign is to create a direct connection between the viewer and content creator. Ideally I was looking to recapture some revenue, from my community. I have nearly 40,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel, a small contribution from each one would make for very healthy income. Community support allows me to create more compelling content that isn’t focused on pleasing advertisers instead of viewers.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

The crowdfuding platform I am currently using is called Patreon (patreon.com/dottotech), It was designed to bring audiences and content creators together. By becoming a patron, an individual can choose to support an individual content creator, musician, artist, writer, or in my case YouTube Publisher. Crowdfunding closes the gap, and removes the middle man, so you don’t have to deal with networks or other publishers in order to reach your audience.

Patreon is one of the first on the market offering this sort of service. I think it is an outstanding option for any content creator. One caveat is YouTube is looking at offering similar services, and if they get into the game it could make for a compelling option.

Advice:

First, mature the product you are offering to the community. I think it is important to establish your brand and offer before asking people to invest in you.

Also I “primed the pump”. I did a small private campaign to get some activity in my account before asking the general public to support me. I think if people visit any online product and hear crickets, you will have a difficult time converting them into supporters.

Sarah Keenleyside

Inkblot Media (& Joseph Clement, Producer / Director of Auratic Media)

The Campaign:

I am helping produce a documentary about Integral House, one of the most architecturally significant homes in North America – and its owner Jim Stewart, who is the world’s most published calculus mathematicians. The house is remarkable, not only because of its stunning architecture by Shim Sutcliffe Architects, but also because it functions as a concert space and has hosted such celebrated musicians as Phillip Glass, Misha Breuggergosman and The New Orford Quartet.

After hitting a few frustrating dead ends while pursuing traditional financing, we quickly decided to fundraise the budget ourselves offering experiences within the house (concerts, an art event) as rewards for interested investors. So far Joseph has successfully hosted three events in the house, the proceeds of which have kept the production afloat.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

We used none. Instead, Joseph created a site for the film where people could purchase tickets: auraticmedia.com/tickets. So far, all of the events have been well attended through word of mouth, but we will be doing a final, major concert or event in the house to complete our production funding, and then we’re hoping to go back to the traditional sources to help us finish it off. 

Advice:

I think it’s important to ask yourself, why should people care about your project? What are investors getting out of the investment? Even $5 and the time it takes to donate $5 is a big ask based solely on your word that they will enjoy the film when it’s finished. 

I think our campaign is highly unusual, because we can offer such desirable rewards, and because the rewards are so connected to the film itself. In a way, we didn’t need to prove that the film will be good – visiting the house is reward enough! 

But I have given money to many campaigns in the past, and looking back, they all drew me in for very specific reasons – i.e. I was familiar with the person/people behind the campaign and I admired their previous work; I cared about the cause or subject matter featured in the film; I was curious about the subject matter; I liked their technical approach and wanted to see it realized; or the rewards were just so rewarding that I couldn’t resist (in most cases, the reward was a book that was being presold).

Daniel Baylis

Writer and Adventurer (and Digital Editor at Air Canada’s enRoute Magazine)

The Campaign:

A couple years ago, I turned 30 years old and decided to mark the occasion by travelling around the world for an entire year. The objective of my travels was not simply to drift, but to find meaningful ways to engage with the communities I visited. In some cases I succeeded. In other cases I did not. Upon returning to Canada, I began the process of writing a memoir about my journey. I decided to independently release this book, and crowdfunding became an integral (and obvious) step in the process of sharing my story with the world. 

Now, you can see the book at thetraveller.ca: The Traveller: Notes from an Imperfect Journey Around the World.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

I used Indiegogo and would absolutely use the platform again. They’ve got a support team in place that was responsive to any concerns. In fact, they provided unsolicited coaching tips that proved vital in my campaign. For example, I hit my $5000 goal within three days and Stephan from the service team encouraged me to set “stretch goals” to communicate how I could take my project further with more funding.

Advice:

Don’t rush into it. Take the time to plan out your attack, communicate your goal clearly and then make a stellar video.

Kemp Edmonds

Part-Time Filmmaker Kemp Edmonds (cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2303020192) advices that “its like politics: for success you need to ask anyone who you can to take part. You need to sell yourself and your campaign 24/7 to ensure success. Also build partnerships and have others feature what you are doing. Think PR. Think unique hook. Why does your story matter to the greater audience? How can you get a newspaper or radio reporter to jump on the story? Then use every social media channel you can you reach, engage and converse with folks, especially those with places to amplify your message, about your campaign.”

Doreen Pendgracs

And novelist Doreen Pendgracs (doreenpendgracs.com/?s=crowdfunding) suggests you study the algorithm of the crowdfunding platform you are on, so that you benefit from their help in marketing your campaign.  She also advices you keep the video that you are using to promote your campaign short.  She created one 8-minute video, that should have been two shorter videos.

Final Words

Just remember, don’t become greedy with your crowdfunding campaign, but do be realistic in your budgeting. Make sure that you are not overselling and can deliver what you are promising.

When you start your crowdfunding campaign, do be sure to tell us by tweeting us at @AhimsaMedia and / or using the #StoryToGo hashtag.  We love seeing what our Canadian creatives are up to!