In November, the Orange Vallée Transmedia Lab held its first workshop, aimed at supporting five transmedia creation projects selected by a jury made up of audiovisual and internet professionals.
These transmedia initiatives are creations whose development, production and consumption are thought out on a genuinely multimedia basis. These five projects are being supported in terms of writing and development by the Transmedia Lab and the various experts brought on board.

Transmedia initiative to invent a new kind of creation

How audiences consume media is changing. Naturally switching from one media to another, they are following their favorite content worlds across all screens. With its ambitious transmedia project, Orange is looking to accompany this transformation and drive forwards the development of new programs that meet these new demands for consumption. New technologies and the growing popularity of these practices must become a new source of inspiration for authors who can now devise and develop projects “experimenting” across several media.

The Orange Vallée Transmedia Lab aims to get this new creative spark going and promote these new forms of creation combining television, web, mobile or video games. The first call for transmedia projects, issued in July 2009, represents the founding initiative for this collective, bringing together two of the Group’s structures: the Content Division and Orange Vallée. “We have come together in order to meet this challenge, make it an opportunity for imagination and enable everyone to see the digital world as a vast playground for creating, for inventing by breaking old boundaries down”, concludes Xavier Couture, Executive VP content at Orange.

Creation professionals rallying around the transmedia initiative

From July to September 2009, 300 creation professionals presented 72 transmedia creations. Over and above the figures themselves, which were far higher than initially expected, two qualitative phenomena have confirmed this approach for Orange:
The quality of the projects presented clearly shows that transmedia is an important source of creativity for authors.
The 72 projects spanned a wide range of expressions (fiction, documentary, game, event) and used all the new media (web, mobile, television, cinema or video games).

Five winning projects illustrating this transmedia variety:

“Because the night”: a romantic comedy thriller (Production: Bridges Films – Author: Julien Capron)
“L’enfant perdue”: a fiction blending intrigue and digital information (Authors: Emilie Tarascou, Simon Kansara, Pablo Sala Hourcadette)
“L’oeil américain”: a detective series plunging viewers into the heart of a robbery (Production: La Générale de Production – Authors: Gregory Magne and Stéphane Viard)
“Numerus Clausus”: a comedy thriller set in the hospital world (Production: Mascaret Films – Authors: Brice Homs and Alexis Nolent)
“OuiKi TV”: a fun and totally different news program (Authors: Catherine Cuenca and François Cora)


Kick-off for transmedia workshops: taking stock and expert presentations

09:30-12:30: Presentation of the support process, then pitch for each project to pool ideas and establish relations between the project teams
14:00-14:30: Sociology (Fabien Granjon - Orange)
14:30-15:00: Alternate Reality Games (Michel Reilhac - Arte)
15:00-15:30: Transmedia blueprints (Jean-Yves Lemoine and Nicolas Bry – Orange Vallée)
15:30-16:00: Web benchmark + player functions: (Christophe Cluzel and Amaury Boulanger – Orange Vallée)
16:00-16:30: Browsing interfaces in history (Speaker to be defined - Upian)
16:30-17:00: Mobile (Esther Adler – Orange)
17:00-17:30: Community (Charles Liebert – Orange Vallée)
17:30-18:00: Participation (Sandra Albertolli, formerly-Dailymotion)


The make-up of the jury, chaired by Xavier Couture, Orange’s Executive VP for content, represents the various creation businesses and professions, and includes leading figures renowned for their expertise and their openness to innovative formats:
Frédérique Dumas (Studio 37), Michel Reilhac (Arte cinéma and Pixel), Eleanore Coleman (TF1 Jeunesse et Nouveaux Médias), Harold Valentin (France Télévisions Fiction), Philippe Bony (M6 Fiction, Jeunesse, Cinéma, Sport), Vincent Solignac (Scriptwriter), David Tomaszewski (Director), Martin Rogard (2.0, Dailymotion), Patrick Eveno (CITIA, Festival d’animation d’Annecy), Liz Rosenthal (Power to the Pixel -UK) and Jean-Louis Constanza (Orange Vallée).


Find out more at www.transmedialab.org/fr/