Creating Your Own Multimedia Story World Franchise: What Josef Bastian’s Folktellers Universe Reveals About Developing, Pitching, and Protecting Your Intellectual Property

Storyteller reading a book as lions, dragons, and unicorns emerge from the smoke.

It’s a rags-to-riches story every artist dreams of: Your unknown but brilliant intellectual property gets picked up by a publishing house or movie studio and transforms into a best-selling book series, film franchise, television show, theme park attraction, and merchandising empire. It happened to J.K. Rowling. It happened to Stephenie Meyer. And in this age of multi-billion-dollar transmedia franchises that tell stories across multiple media platforms, it could happen to your story world.

But what if you don’t want to spend years waiting to be discovered by a book agent or Hollywood executive? What if you want to take control of your enterprise from day one, assemble a creative team, and set up your own meetings with movie producers and IP buyers?

Then you might want to take a page from Josef Bastian’s story and learn how he created Folkteller LLC, a transmedia entertainment company that supports his multiple creative endeavors. Through this multimedia content platform, Bastian has launched his award-winning YA fantasy book series Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook. And with help from transmedia partners, Carl Winans,  Stephen Sadler, Amy S. Weber, Patrick McEvoy, and Ahmet Zappa, Bastian has partnered with Hollywood heavyweights to adapt the book series into a live action TV show.

Folktellers Map
Taking the time to craft a solid story world canon enabled Bastian to create two YA fantasy book series, establishing a strong core for his transmedia entertainment enterprise.

Now the creative producer of his own transmedia enterprise, the Folktellers Universe, Bastian seeks to open his story world to other artists, storytellers, musicians, and game designers who can expand his original vision. And while some transmedia franchises develop through chance, the Folktellers Team is building their transmedia story universe intentionally, as they grow their brand and intellectual properties.

But while things may be moving quickly for Folkteller LLC, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, it took fifteen years of planning and networking for Bastian to create his story world. Yet it’s this preparation that makes Folktellers such an attractive property for production companies and gives this creative team an edge in fast-tracking their transmedia projects.

I spoke with both Josef Bastian and Stephen Sadler to learn the behind-the-scenes story on Folkteller LLC and hear their views on how modern stories should be built. Their insights reveal that creating — and protecting — a solid story world canon is vital in ensuring your franchise’s integrity as you build partnerships, establish an audience, and release your transmedia story universe to the public.

How Resurrecting an Old Legend Launched a New Transmedia Franchise

Nain Rouge Red Dwarf
Bastian’s original YA series, Nain Rouge, was born from an old French legend and told through multiple mediums, including novels and comic books. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

In 2008, Josef Bastian lost his job in Detroit, Michigan at a time when the recession caused many people to lose work. During this period, he came across the local Detroit legend of the “Nain Rouge” (Red Dwarf) a supernatural creature from French folklore who appears as a harbinger of doom before bad events. Intrigued, Bastian worked with co-founding partner, Carl Winans, to resurrect the legend as the Nain Rouge, a middle-grade fantasy book series that ties the red dwarf to Detroit’s economic hardships. The stories follow two teens who discover they are linked to a Nain Rouge curse that drains both their town’s prosperity and their lives.

When the books took off regionally, Bastian, feeling the story could attract new readers as a comic book, partnered with Patrick McEvoy, a Marvel Comics artist to adapt the stories into the graphic novel Nain Rouge: The Red Legend. Funded by a Kickstarter program that raised $20,000 and published by Caliber Comics, the experience showed Bastian the possibilities of telling stories on multiple platforms.

Interested in further exploring the power of folktales and the people who keep them alive, Bastian came up with the concept of the Folktellers — dimension-hopping guardians who travel the multiverse to drive back the Shadow People, evil creatures who feed on powerful stories. By reciting stories of power, Folktellers ward off the Shadow People while also inspiring the people who need to hear the tales.

Bastian conceived of an entire series of middle-grade Folktellers stories and grew interested in telling his story across multiple media platforms. Seeking out thought leader and CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment Jeff Gomez, Bastian asked for advice on how to turn his concept into a transmedia story world. Gomez, who’s helped Disney, 20th Century Fox, and other studios develop their transmedia story worlds, agreed that Bastian had something, but urged him to finish creating the canon of his story world before releasing it.

“Jeff told me that once the canon’s out there, you’re going to give other writers and artists a chance to work on the platform and build off of that — but you need to have your foundational work done,” Bastian recalls. “Because if you don’t, then the story world will lack a center, and  can splinter off in too many directions. You need the canon as your nucleus to ground the world you’ve created.”

Taking Gomez’s advice, Bastian spent the next several years finishing what became the first of two separate book series, each eight books long. He fleshed out the mythology of his story world, adding elements such as Guardians and Travelers who journey alongside Folktellers. The first series focuses on Aaron Anderson, a teenager training to be a Folkteller, while the second centers on Zinnia, a different Folkteller, whose adventures cross with Aaron’s. At one point, the characters enter the universe of the Nain Rouge, connecting all of Bastian’s story worlds into a shared universe.

“Taking my time was good because there were a couple times that I wrote myself into a corner and if the books were out, I would have eliminated my ability to go back and change things in the early parts of the series,” notes Bastian. “The goal was to create that canon, that foundation, but also not to close it off with a happily ever after. I wanted to give the reader closure, and a meaningful pay-off, but show you can still take the story in any direction you want. It’s really that rich of a world.”

Thanks to this approach, Bastian produced a wealth of creative content. Getting that content out, however, would require additional support.

Finding the Right Creative Connections to Develop Folkteller LLC

Original FolkTellers cover art with mystical storyteller
Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook expands Bastian’s interest in folktales into a multi-media story that can be shared through books, television, music, and YouTube videos. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

Once again, Bastian partnered with McEvoy — now Senior Art Director for Folkteller LLC — to provide illustrations and cover art for Folktellers: Excerpts from an Unknown Guidebook. However, finding additional partners to help accomplish his goals proved challenging.

“I was in the wilds of Detroit , which isn’t known as the entertainment capitol of the world,” he states, recalling the challenge of breaking into the entertainment world from the outside. “I needed to get my elevator pitch tight. I needed to talk to people in the publishing industry. I needed to talk to people in the film industry. In television. In gaming. You hear nothing, and then you get a few people who say, ‘Okay, that’s interesting.’ Or ‘Oh, I know someone.’ You’ll get a few leads, follow up on those leads, and sometimes they lead to a dead end and sometimes they lead to another lead.”

One lead who became much more was Stephen Sadler who attended one of Bastian’s investment pitches. A Detroit-based inventor whose digital platform IntensifyDigital has been used in over sixty social media movie campaigns for Hollywood studios including Disney and DreamWorks, Sadler realized Bastian had written enough content to support an entire fictional universe. Seeing an opportunity, he encouraged Bastian to immediately bring his story world to film and television.

“I’ve never seen anyone write like him,” Sadler says of Bastian. “He’s just finished the sixteenth book in the series. This project is a long-term investment of time and money. To do something like this is big. It’s not for the faint-hearted. But the people you meet makes it worth every minute of it.”

Leveraging his Hollywood contacts, Sadler introduced Bastian to figures in the entertainment industry, including musician/producer Ahmet Zappa and Charles Segars, producer of Disney’s National Treasure franchise. They brought other people into their team, including entertainment lawyers, sculptors, screenwriters, and composers who developed additional content for Folkteller LLC, including pitch bibles, TV series treatments, and even a theme song, The Story of Us All, produced by III Worlds Music Group (2 Fast 2 Furious, xXx: State of the Union) and Death By Lipstick Productions.

“When it comes to team-building, I believe the people need to have the same type of mentality and vision for [the project] to be successful,” says Sadler. “With me, it’s a slow process. I meet someone, I spend time with them. I make friends with them and once I’m friends with them, they become part of the team. I won’t just hire someone and go, ‘Hey, let’s see how this goes.’”

Bastian is of a similar mindset. “I have them read my books and then I ask them what they got from the stories. And if I hear the echo from them, it’s ‘Okay, you get it.’”

Gaining a team that can put together so much collateral marketing material enables Bastian to send out the most relevant materials when pitching or promoting his projects. While this multi-media marketing approach is useful for generating buzz online, it’s essential when pitching Folktellers to IP buyers.

Pitching Folktellers to Film and TV Production Companies

FolkTellers Cover Art Main Characters
Pitching books to media companies like Netflix requires a highly visual presentation. Credit: Patrick McEvoy

“When you pitch to Netflix, it has to be quick,” Sadler emphasizes. “It’s not something where you can go into the detail of everything. You have to catch their attention very quickly — and if you do, then you get to the next level. It’s not like one and done. They vet you, and if you’re vetted, you go to the next level.”

Bastian agrees, remembering it was a struggle just to get people to read even his condensed material.

“We’re out in Hollywood and you get your big meeting and they give you five minutes,” he states. “And they’re like, ‘You sent us this beautiful pitch bible, but we didn’t read it. And the books — we’re never going to read those. So, what do you got?’ And you’ve got five minutes to convince them to enter your story world.”

One effective way Bastian found he could pitch his story world was to convey it through a medium IP buyers understand — visuals. This meant showcasing the artwork and character designs created by Patrick McEvoy. It also meant working with film veteran, Amy S. Weber to produce live action trailers of the Folktellers books to show what the stories could look like on television.

“And what happens is, if they like it, they’re like — tell me more,” he says. “So, you tell them more and they’re like, ‘We need to look at your pitch bible.’ And then they read it. And then they’re like, ‘You know what? I’m going to have a couple of my assistants read that first book.’ So, you have to condense, condense, condense to the point where they’re not even looking at what you just condensed because they’re looking at you just talking. But if they are interested, you need to have everything ready. And if they get to the point where they’re actually reading something, you’re pretty far down the road.”

Folktellers Story World Universe
Original artwork of his Folktellers Universe helps Bastian effectively communicate his vision to IP buyers within a short five-minute pitch. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

One thing that gave Folktellers an edge was that the books had already been written. This made the series different from even certain popular TV shows.

“When we met with Netflix, one of the things they asked was, ‘Is this series done? Because we do not want to get into a situation like a George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones where the series isn’t done and we have to figure out how to wrap the series up,’” Bastian recalls. “So, if you’re an author, they want to know if your series is done if they’re going to buy. Because if the book series takes off and the TV series takes off, eventually they got to meet somewhere – the ending’s going to have to be close to the same.”

Bastian finds this desire for completed content is driving producers to purchase and reboot classic TV series for today’s streaming service audiences who will gladly binge-watch entire seasons of a new TV show, particularly one with an existing following. This growing appetite for serialized content is also something Sadler believes Folktellers can satisfy.

Harry Potter is not set up for serialized content,” he states. “It’s set up for long movies. But the way Josef writes his books, it’s more like the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew series. And streaming services are all looking for something that’s lasting. They don’t want something that will end after a couple episodes or even one season. They’re looking for something that’ll help get them more subscribers and make more money.”

Understanding this aspect of the entertainment industry is key to selling an IP. Bastian, who’s written his own article on Netflix corporate culture, reflects on the high-pressure, high-stakes nature of the industry.

“Netflix hires their buyers out of Harvard and Yale — Ivy League schools. These are twenty-somethings with MBAs, and they have a background in data analytics. And [Netflix] will say, ‘Okay, you’ve got a $200 million dollar budget this year to buy properties in these genres. And here are all the data analytics tools. So, you’re making the decisions. But you’re accountable for them too.

And the thing with entertainment is — you don’t know if something is going to be great. You might have a quality storyline or pitch, but it could get produced poorly. So much can go wrong and so much can go right and it’s not in your control. And that’s how the industry is. Everyone is crazy busy and they’re making decisions on the fly even though they have all these tools for data analytics. And whatever happens in the world could push you up the ranks or push you down. And unfortunately, as a creator and someone who’s not in the industry, that’s what you’re up against.”

Nevertheless, as the creative producer of his own transmedia universe, Bastian and his partners also feel adamant about protecting the brand identity of Folkteller LLC, which has led them to make some unexpected decisions.

“We’ve turned down funding,” Bastian admits. “We’ve also turned down projects. Early on, they wanted to make the Nain Rouge into a horror movie. You definitely could — it’s very dark — but Folkteller LLC can’t put its name on an adult slasher/horror film. We turned down a couple million dollars early on.”

Connecting with and Expanding the Folktellers Audience

FolkTellers gathering at attention
The Folktellers Universe is ever-expanding and invites other artists, writers, and creators to add their own content to the story universe using multiple storytelling platforms. Credit: Patrick McEvoy.

As the Folktellers Team work to develop the Folktellers TV show, they’re also focused on reaching out to and expanding the target audience of their story world — middle grade readers and fantasy fans. The first two books in the eight-book series, Phases of the Moon and Cave in the Rock have been published and are available on Amazon with a third book, Shadows on the Silver Strings, set to be released in Fall 2021. To help promote the books, Folkteller LLC has put together a Storytelling for Literacy Program that allows Bastian to go into schools with a unique transmedia educational program.

“We had special ‘Folkteller Kits’ with little Oscar trophies, runner-up Oscar trophies, a rolled up red carpet, and all the books packaged inside,” Sadler states. “They went to the classroom and the students would read the books and at the end of the books they’d create a YouTube video and give themselves an alternate ending based on whatever character they liked out of the book. And then we’d do a contest and we’d walk them down the red carpet.”

By providing the tools that enabled young readers to create their own Folktellers stories in a digital video medium, Bastian and Sadler make their audience active participants in their story universe, while encouraging both literary and digital literacy. The student-produced YouTube videos promote greater engagement between author and audience while expanding Folktellers Universe content and creating greater brand awareness. Such strategies will become more important for Bastian as he makes the move from content creator to creative producer.

Moving forward, Folktellers has created a free, homeschool version of their “Folkteller Kits” to address the needs of at-home educators. They also plan on creating more digital platforms to help other artists learn the steps for creating additional digital content and sharing stories. This includes Folktellers LLC’s plan for resurrecting obscure folklore and legends or “Cryptofolk” through multiple transmedia platforms and sharing them with a global audience. Visitors to the Folktellers website are encouraged to share stories and local legends that they’d like to see in the Folktellers Universe where characters regularly travel to different countries and worlds to experience myths and legends firsthand.

Owning Your Story World and How to Protect Your Intellectual Property

Folktellers balancing precariously on a disc
Owning and protecting your IP is essential when building your story world.

During his visits to schools, Bastian offers a key piece of advice to students on the power of storytelling:

“Every day you get up in the morning is an opportunity to tell your own story because that’s what life is – the story of us all. It’s up to you to decide: What will MY story be? What story am I going to tell? We are all the makers and tellers of our own stories. And as human beings,  we need to own it, and be accountable for ourselves, while respecting the stories of others. Because if you don’t, someone else will tell your story for you. And you won’t like it.”

It’s a powerful message — and one that Folktellers are heeding as they take ownership of their own intellectual property.

“We own all of our IP,” states Bastian. “Everything that we have is copyrighted and trademarked. We’ve paid the intellectual property lawyers to secure all that. We own our name — Folktellers LLC — and all before any dollar was made. It’s not cheap to do, but it’s really important. Otherwise, someone could just take your creative work. As a writer it’s easier to protect your copy because those protections are more apparent. But I feel that when you’re looking at intellectual properties and franchises, it shows you’re serious about what you’re doing.”

Sadler agrees, adding that it’s particularly important to take ownership of how a brand is promoted on social media.

“We have ‘Folktellers’ with an ‘s’ locked down on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, everything. Why? Because we want that to be our digital footprint and we don’t want another brand to hijack that. And I think that’s the most important thing these days. You have to lock down everywhere because you don’t know where your audience is or where it will be in the future. And as new platforms come out, you should be looking for those and immediately lock down your name because if you don’t then someone else will do it and what ends up happening is that they start controlling your narrative — and it’s your narrative.”

It’s a considerable investment of time, money, and manpower. But as the Folktellers Universe continues growing, it’s also another step in this entertainment company’s mission to maintain its own vision.

“There’s nothing wrong with being patient and making sure the opportunities you’re taking are the right ones for that intellectual property,” Sadler emphasizes. “Because if some group decides to pivot and go in a different direction and all of a sudden, your IP becomes something not in line with what your story is, it stops being about what you’re creating. So, be patient. Control the narrative. Control the digital footprint.”

Your Shared Universe on a Budget: What The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace Teach Indie Filmmakers About Building a Successful Multimedia Franchise

Blair Witch Project Poster

Multiplatform story worlds and transmedia storytelling have helped franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars dominate the entertainment industry. The strategy of getting their audiences invested in a massive narrative told through movies, television shows, comic books, video games, and other media, has allowed for the Walt Disney Company to earn 94.9 subscribers largely thanks to two programs, The Mandalorian and WandaVision. Likewise, the MCU shared universe has enjoyed a worldwide box office revenue of 22.56 billion U.S. dollars from its films alone.

Of course, in order to earn such massive profits, the studios had to put up a substantial investment—the production budget for an average MCU movie is $190,350,000, and Disney+ invested between $1.5 to 1.75 billion in its content in 2020. While this seems like a lot, it should be emphasized that Disney spent relatively little on its programming budget compared to businesses like Netflix that spent $16 billion on original content in 2020. This indicates that transmedia success does not rely on big budgets but the skillful use of transmedia projects that connect well with audiences.

Indeed, one of the greatest (and earliest) examples of transmedia storytelling came not from a major movie studio but a group of independent filmmakers promoting a low-budget film that became one of the biggest media phenomena of its time —The Blair Witch Project (1999). Through their creative use of multiplatform narrative, this $60,000 indie project went on to earn nearly $250 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent films in history.

The success of indie transmedia projects like The Blair Witch Project aren’t isolated incidents either. In 2018, Blair Witch filmmaker Michael Monello and producer Nick Braccia created a new low-budget transmedia story world in Video Palace, a “media horror” saga told through scripted podcasts and prose stories. Its success reveals that, thanks to the variety of storytelling platforms available today, producing transmedia projects on a budget is not only possible but an ideal way for storytellers to build their audiences and test the viability of their stories.

I spoke with both Monello and Braccia, who shared their thoughts on The Blair Witch franchise and how independent creators can leverage transmedia techniques. Their insights reveal that a keen understanding of audience sensibilities, and not big budgets, is the actual deciding factor in developing profitable media franchises.

How The Blair Witch Project Launched a Transmedia Viral Phenomenon

The Blair Witch Project Transmedia Storytelling
While it began as an independent film, early reactions to the Blair Witch Project inspired the filmmakers to make it a transmedia storytelling project that immersed audiences in its story world.

The Blair Witch Project was conceived in 1993 when indie filmmakers Michael Monello, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, and others developed the mythology of the Blair Witch, a Maryland woman found guilty of witchcraft in the late 1700s who reappeared throughout the centuries to murder multiple victims. Their fictional legend evolved into a 35-page screenplay which became the basis for a “found footage” movie (one of the very first) about three student filmmakers who hiked into the Black Hills to interview residents about the Blair Witch, only to become her next victims.

To create the story’s documentary style, the filmmakers shot the movie on home video cameras and relied on improvised dialogue from the actors. This enhanced the film’s gritty, realistic tone, and when clips of the unfinished movie wound up on television, the positive response inspired the storytellers to take their project in an unexpected direction.

“We found ourselves in the unique position of having people interested in our work before it was done,” recalls Monello, who now works as the creative director of his own transmedia ad agency Campfire. “And so, it became – how do we keep them entertained so they don’t lose interest? For us it was about exploring the story with fans while we were still editing the film.”

This led the filmmakers to create The Blair Witch website, a proto-transmedia extension of the film that delved into and expanded on the mythology in ways the film did not. Visitors to the site found a detailed timeline of the Blair Witch’s alleged activities over the last two hundred years. They could view taped interviews of family members who discussed the “disappearance” of the film’s main characters. And they could even watch news clips of anchormen reporting on the search for the missing filmmakers.

The result was a narrative more gripping than the movie on its own. Since the website was presented not as a marketing device but a “real” record of the Blair Witch legend, it became a new platform for audiences to experience this story world. Some visitors weren’t sure if what they were seeing was real or fictional and began sharing the website with others while building their own fan sites. This created an immersive experience that encouraged audience participation while building anticipation for the movie – which was now seen as just part of the greater Blair Witch story.

“People think what excited the audience was the mythology,” Monello states. “And I think that was a big part of it. But I think what really excited and energized the fan community was the fact that they were a part of building and creating the mythology and spreading it. And so, they owned it.”

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Blair Witch Project storytellers created websites, mockumentaries, and dossiers that let fans participate in the mythology through multiple transmedia properties.

While Monello emphasizes the transmedia aspect of The Blair Witch Project evolved organically, the enthusiastic response to the website shows the power of transmedia storytelling lies in audience connection, not big budget marketing. In fact, according to Jeff Gomez, CEO of transmedia production company Starlight Runner Entertainment, The Blair Witch Project stands as one of the greatest transmedia marketing case studies.

“By spreading the word about this site, you were getting a charge out of letting someone else in on a weird secret,” states Gomez in his 2007 post The Internet Explosion. “You were validated and celebrated for your participation in the Blair Witch happening, right there, on the fly, in real time. You and your friends could connect, theorize, and explore this world to the point where the movie became far more than a self-contained piece of entertainment. It was simply a component in a greater experience, and that made it magical.”

Today, Gomez’s studio helps major companies like Coca-Cola and Sony Pictures develop transmedia story worlds through movies, comic books, television series, video games, and other media. However, he’s never lost sight of the way modern digital technology allows storytellers of all backgrounds to create affordable forms of transmedia entertainment that reach massive audiences.

“In 1999, the Internet was still mysterious and compelling. There wasn’t a sense that so much on it can be fake news. The Blair Witch visionaries, in a very Orson Welles War of the Worlds kind of way, hijacked media platforms of their day to position a fictional story as real,” notes Gomez, referencing a 1938 radio drama where multiple actors, including legendary filmmaker Orson Welles, narrated a series of fake news bulletins about an alien invasion based on H.G. Welles’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds. The broadcasts allegedly caused panic in some listeners who believed what they were hearing was real.

Likewise, Gomez finds the Blair Witch Project filmmakers tapped into similar techniques to create their own phenomena. After film studio Artisan Entertainment bought the distribution rights for The Blair Witch Project, they continued building on the transmedia marketing campaign by producing a realistic mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, which aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, continued to play up the “real” legend of the Blair Witch, and massively amplified audience awareness. The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier was published by Onyx books soon after, offering an additional way to experience the story through faux newspaper clippings, police notes, and journal extracts, and a series of comics called The Blair Witch Chronicles was published by Oni Press, further delving into the history of the cursed forests of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the film took place.

Much like Welles’ broadcast, the Blair Witch website, film, mockumentary, comics, and books used multiple media platforms to tap into audience fears about the supernatural and unknown, enhancing the story’s appeal (although once the movie was released, most people likely knew it was fictional). But where Welles’ radio broadcast was an isolated event that did not allow for much audience interaction, the Internet now allows audiences to become active participants in these story worlds by immediately interacting with the filmmakers and other fans online. This, Gomez emphasizes, is what transmedia storytelling is really about—and why transmedia marketing is such a powerful technique.

The Expanding Blair Witch Transmedia Story World

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Later Blair Witch transmedia storytelling developed new mythologies that did not mesh as well with the original filmmakers’ vision.

The original filmmakers helped craft the first Blair Witch transmedia campaign with a focus on how their audience resonated with their mythology. Once the movie became a hit, however, the Blair Witch franchise was taken over by new moviemakers who had their own ideas for how the story should evolve. This, Monello feels, caused the story world to evolve in ways that weren’t consistent with the original mythology, resulting in a less effective transmedia story.

“When the second movie [Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000)] came out, that was clearly a version of Blair Witch as that filmmaker perceived it – as an outsider, as someone who wasn’t involved in any of this,” he states. “They lost sight of what the story was because they were only looking at the movie. And there’s all this other stuff around it, and a lot of it was audience participation. And none of the other films had audience participation in any form.”

While the Blair Witch franchise continued offering new stories through other transmedia storytelling platforms such as young adult novels and video games, Monello feels the franchise as a whole lost sight of the storyline the original filmmakers developed and the fans felt they owned in favor of new stories that were only tangentially related to the Blair Witch legend.

Monello’s observations reflect an issue with other transmedia projects such as the DC Extended Universe. Where other shared movie universes such as the MCU rely on a producer like Kevin Feige to conduct the overall direction of their transmedia properties, creating consistency throughout the movie and TV series plotlines, the DCEU divides control of its franchise among multiple creative visionaries. The result is an assortment of work that can offer cinematic masterpieces like Todd Philips’ Joker, but do not offer any real consistency among the divergent storylines.

The numbers back Monello up. While the Blair Witch sequels all made money, they don’t come close to the success of the original. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows grossed $47.7 million against a $15 million dollar budget. Likewise, the 2016 follow up Blair Witch grossed just over $45 million against a $5 million dollar budget. Audience response was generally unfavorable, with Book of Shadows gaining only an 18% approval score from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics citing a formulaic plot as opposed to the innovative participatory route taken in the original movie.

“More modest or independent franchises like Blair Witch are driven by hardcore fan bases,” said Gomez. “They’ve fallen in love with the minutia and the cosmology of the story world, inclusive of the transmedia extensions. As a filmmaker, if you don’t observe this lore, this canonicity, then you are disrespecting it. If the filmmakers don’t care, why should the fans? Even if the films are profitable, the appetite for anything more is diminished. It’s all downhill from there.”

Given the direction The Blair Witch Project went, what lessons can indie creators learn from this early transmedia case study on how to approach modern independent storytelling? Monello and Braccia both offer insights based on their most recent transmedia story, the horror podcast Video Palace.

Video Palace: New Transmedia Entry Points

Video Palace transmedia storytelling art
Monello and Braccia’s new horror project, Video Palace, shows that transmedia storytelling can be accomplished through new low-budget mediums like podcasts.

Born out of a concept pitch to AMC Networks’ horror streaming service Shudder, Video Palace is a ten-part scripted podcast about a young couple’s investigation of the mysterious “white tapes,” vintage video cassettes linked to a series of disasters and the otherworldly figure known only as “The Eyeless Man.” Funded by Shudder, the project used professional SAG actors, making it, in Monello’s words, “a hybrid between an indie podcast and a studio production.”

The end result earned an enthusiastic fan base that promotes the story through online reviews and discussion threads on social network sites like Reddit. Reviewers regularly ask for a second season (which may happen) and Monello indicates there’s also interest in making a Video Palace film.

“Every day new people are coming into podcasts, which is really interesting because, unlike a film where everyone pretty much knows about it, it seems like people are discovering Video Palace for the first time because they didn’t get into podcasts until one really grabbed them in and they go exploring,” observes Monello. “So, even though we made the podcast almost two years ago, it still feels new, because there are new people finding it and talking about it much later. So, it’s a little bit more evergreen.”

The podcast’s success confirms what Monello stresses to independent storytellers – that investing in a potentially expensive feature film is not always a direction that creators need to take to build an audience these days. Sometimes, a less expensive set of launch platforms for your transmedia property offer a better entryway into your mythology.

“Dollars to dollars, the production of the Video Palace podcast was less than what it cost to get Blair Witch from an idea to premiering at Sundance,” he states. “To create a franchise, I never felt like you had to have a movie. The podcast is almost like a test – if an audience takes to it, we can expand on it. And if they don’t, well, we still made something we’re proud of.”

In the case of Video Palace, the positive response convinced the creators to building their story world – this time with a short horror story collection, Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man. Released in October 2020, the book earned positive reviews and helps expand on the mythology by incorporating the creative visions of other horror storytellers. Although set in the same world as the original Video Palace podcast, the new stories deepen the story world by offering tales that explore the universe from a nostalgic or feminist viewpoint, allowing their shared universe to become more inclusive.

“We gave these established horror authors more information about the mythology of the Eyeless Man than we revealed publicly,” Monello shares, noting both he and Braccia intentionally gave the writers the freedom to develop their own stories within the constraints of their mythology. “Because we needed these stories to be consistent when we do reveal things and people can understand how everything fits together. So, now what you have are people who read the book and go, ‘Oh, now I want to listen to the podcast!’ And people who listen to the podcast who say, ‘Oh, I want more so I’ll look at the book.’ And they feed off each other.”

This symbiotic relationship re-emphasizes that modern transmedia projects can be built from low-budget platforms like books, comics, podcasts, and social media. This also gives you the power to guide your transmedia story world in the direction you want it to evolve in as new transmedia opportunities come up – particularly if you do eventually get the chance to turn your story into a film.

“I’d like to think the stories that we tell would augment the stories in the book and in the podcast, but not necessarily replicate any of them. In a film, I’d want to start from the perspective of, what’s the best story that will appeal the most in a film format?” Monello states. “We have some great stories that I think would make amazing movies – one is set in the 1950s and 1960s that’s not necessarily an origin story but gets to an early experience of the Eyeless Man. And we have another story that takes place in the 1980s.

“But when I think about film, I think you have to deliver something that makes sense for someone who hasn’t listened to the podcast or read the book,” he adds. “It’s got to be interesting on its own. The genre of Video Palace is media horror which gives us the freedom to play in any form of media. I think we all had ideas of how a transmedia franchise should be developed and this was our chance, devoid of clients and people telling us what to do to put our theories in action.”

How Modern Indie Storytellers Can Approach Multimedia Franchises

Video Palace In Search of the Eyeless Man book cover art
Monello and Braccia continue conducting their expanding transmedia world by inviting established horror writers to build their own visions within their established Video Palace mythology.

Both The Blair Witch Project and Video Palace fall into the horror genre making them particularly effective stories to share through podcasts and independent films that are popular with horror fans. However, Monello stresses that independent transmedia producers with projects in other genres need to connect with audience sensibilities in order to communicate the story on the right platforms and in the most effective ways.

“Look at where your audience is and how they like to consume media,” he states. “For us, podcasting made sense because we wanted it to be in the horror genre. If your transmedia story franchise is in the fantasy genre, a tabletop game might be a great place to start because a lot of tabletop gamers are fantasy fans, so that’s where your initial core audience is. And you can put something out there and see if they’re taking to this story world well – do they want more games in that world, do people start writing their own stories in that world? Look for the signs – are we building a fan community?”

Monello’s partner Nick Braccia notes that audio platforms like podcasts offer excellent low-cost ways to start building transmedia stories, similar to how self-published comic books and graphic novels helped earlier creators build their audience. He also feels that prose work, particularly micro fiction, can help build an audience – provided a creator knows where to share such material.

“So much of it for a young creator is calling your shot in respect to timing. And I guarantee this is going to happen – whether it’s an improv group or a live theater or whatever, whoever is thoughtful and subversive and creative enough to do fiction on Clubhouse is going to make major waves,” he states, referring to the increasingly popular audio-chat iPhone app that lets users have conversations on diverse topics in virtual rooms.

Ultimately, both Monello and Braccia emphasize that the key to developing a successful transmedia franchise, particularly for independent creators, is to let it develop organically.

“There are no people out there looking to buy a transmedia universe,” cautions Monello. “It’s very possible that when you put out that first piece of media for your transmedia universe that it’s the last piece of media for your transmedia universe. And that’s why you can’t have your mind on eighteen different pieces of media and where you’re going in the future. You have to focus on one piece and make sure it works as an individual story by itself.”

Likewise, remaining open-minded and flexible about your audience, where they prefer to receive their stories, and what types of stories they want to consume, is vital to the continued health of a transmedia universe.

“A successful transmedia narrative, by its nature, is participatory,” Monello states. “When you release your first transmedia property, you may suddenly find that a completely different group of people like it and get their stories from a place that wasn’t in your plan. But without the audience, there’s no value in the next extension unless they’re there and they’re asking for it.”

He cites a story from the Sundance premiere of The Blair Witch Project when he saw a long line of high school and college students who had become so immersed in the Blair Witch mythology, they had driven through a snow storm just to see if they could get standby tickets for a sold-out screening of the movie. Realizing how well their transmedia project had connected with such a prized demographic, he understood that they could negotiate a larger deal with the distributors – or make the money by simply screening the film themselves.

“One of the most powerful things about transmedia is your connection as a storyteller to your audience,” he says. “A script that’s just sitting in your drawer and being pitched to money people isn’t doing anything for you. But that story being put out into the world, even if it’s for free and costing you a bit of money, could potentially do something for you if you build a big enough audience. Now, you can walk into any room and pitch something that’s worth getting funded and take the next step. And that gives you power.”

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This is the fourth installment in a transmedia storytelling series being written in tandem with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment, one of the industry’s foremost transmedia producers. Starlight Runner consults with multiple companies from Disney to Sony to Coca-Cola to help establish their story worlds and produces transmedia content including graphic novels, videos, books, animated series, and web sites. Learn how your company can use them to produce your own full transmedia story world through narrative design, content production, licensing, merchandising, and fan cultivation.

The Transmedia Storytelling Series:

#1: How Disney+ Uses Star Wars to Dominate Digital Entertainment

#2: Ultraman: Translating a Multi-Billion Dollar Japanese Superhero Franchise for American Media

#3: Disney Marvel vs Warner Bros. DC: How Do Shared Universes Succeed or Fail?