TRANSMISSION #10 //HOW WE BUILD A FRANCHISE

How are you planning to spend your summer?  We’re spending it building our second original franchise (and fitting in a bunch of mtn biking and kayaking when we can…).

Our first journey into creating an original franchise was with DOMAIN ‘The cold war between Heaven and Hell’ project.  Our tale of Special Forces troopers battling elements of the underworld unfolds across six chapters: movie – graphic novel –second movie – video game – third movie – and ‘something else’…  We learned a lot in crafting this linear narrative across multiple mediums and found it helped solidify our studio’s process of filtering our original projects through the READ WATCH PLAY process.

So we’re at it again.

This time around we decided to kick it off with a novel.  THE LEGEND OF TY: BOOK 1 features two reluctant (more like hopeless) heroes who undertake a series of adventures in a very epic, very unexpected world of sword, sorcery and sarcasm.  Sort of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER meets LORD OF THE RINGS (or something like that…).  Our first challenge was how to apply READ WATCH PLAY to this project.  What we came up with is a format that I wish more narratives would do.

The first project of TY is a novel that will be supplemented by pages of character art and visual snapshots from the fiction.  Part two is a video game – very much in the vein of the very cool WALKING DEAD game by TELLTALE GAMES.  What we’re doing is taking a point in the book where we find our ‘heroes’ Ty and Vittus spending a couple of weeks travelling to the port city of RAS KAZAR.  Instead of telling you that part of their journey – the book simply states ‘TWO WEEKS LATER…’  TY is suffering from severe allergies (werewolf fur) and Vittus is missing part of his beard (fireball mishap).  If you were to PLAY the game you would find out exactly what went down (and learn a few things that may later affect plot points in the future).

But what about WATCH?

Personally I wanted a break from writing another feature length film script and wanted to explore what could be done with TV.  In BOOK 1 Ty and Vittus run afoul of some pirates going through union issues (amidst other things).  These bandits of the high seas – particularly the hot headed and impetuous Pirate Princess and her overly aggressive band of female friends – would be a great group to follow in an animated series.  It allows us to further experience the universe of TY, explore characters that are introduced as a side story and satisfies our WATCH requirement (CLONE WARS anyone?).

So that’s how we are spending our summer along with some outside gigs (always fun to mash brains with others).  Check our Facebook (/planetfictionstudios) and future blogs for updates on Ty – and keep your eyes peeled for a sample chapter sometime soon.

END TRANSMISSION.

–       SEAN