The company P was the transmedia consultant on the production, which used social media to invite the audience into a fully cinematic and participatory episode set in the world of the show.

About Endgame

The International Emmy 2012

Press release, 30-03-2012. Read more…

• Shaftesbury & The company P to Co-Develop TREASURES, a New Transmedia Participatory Drama Series
• Created by International Emmy® Award-winning Executive Producer Christopher Sandberg (The Truth About Marika, Conspiracy For Good), with Story by Sandberg and Emmy®-nominated Writer Craig Wright (Six Feet Under, Lost)

CANNES (MIPCube/MIPTV), March 30, 2012 – Shaftesbury and The company P today announced that they are in development on a one-hour original transmedia drama series entitled Treasures, in partnership with the European Broadcasting Union. Created by The company P’s Christopher Sandberg (The Truth About Marika, Conspiracy For Good), with story by Sandberg and Craig Wright (Six Feet Under, Lost), Treasures tells the story of a group of adventurers who are thrown together in a global treasure hunt that could change the course of civilization. Offering a participatory 360-degree experience, the series will integrate scripted dramatic content, interactive online, mobile and social media content, and live events. Shaftesbury and The company P will be meeting with prospective partners at MIPCube and MIPTV 2012 in Cannes.

“Our passion for rich audience engagement is at the heart of this, as much as strong and clever drama,” said Christopher Sandberg, CEO and Chief Creative Officer, The company P. “We are very proud to be pushing the envelope, with the first original international scripted transmedial show of this kind.”

“Treasures represents Shaftesbury’s commitment to innovation and working with strong international partners, as well as the creation of immersive, multiplatform content that meets the evolving needs of audiences around the world,” said Christina Jennings, Chairman and CEO, Shaftesbury.

Treasures follows a young woman named Dev and a group of adventurers as they try to unlock a mystery that has been planted on online maps, and end up part of a global treasure hunt that could change the course of civilization forever. As they unravel pieces of the puzzle, they’re forced to face their own hidden secrets, and the fact that someone else is after the treasures for reasons no one ever imagined. In addition to scripted dramatic content, audiences will participate in the unfolding of the treasure hunt through online and mobile video uploads, which will allow them to communicate with the characters and share information. Online and mobile map games and social media content will also lead to local treasure-hunting events as viewers work to actively solve the mystery themselves.

Creator and executive producer Christopher Sandberg is the CEO and founder of transmedia entertainment production company The company P. He was awarded the International Emmy® Award in 2007 for the interactive drama The Truth About Marika, created with the Swedish public television service SVT, before heading the 2009 production of Dollplay with Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) for 20th Century Fox Television. Most recently, he was executive producer and creative director for Conspiracy For Good, with Tim Kring (creator of TV series Heroes and Touch), which was nominated for an International Emmy® and awarded two Banff World Media Awards.

Writer Craig Wright wrote for the HBO series Six Feet Under, for which he was nominated for an Emmy®, as well as served as a producer on the fifth and final season. Wright served as supervising producer and writer for the second season of ABC’s Lost. Wright and the Lost writing staff won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series for their work on the first and second seasons. He became a co-executive producer and writer on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters in 2006, before working as the creator, head writer and executive producer of ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money in 2007.

The company P and Shaftesbury have both been nominated for 2012 International Digital Emmy® Awards in the Digital Program: Fiction category. The company P served as transmedia consultant on the nominated Endgame Interactive: Facebook Episode, and Shaftesbury has been nominated for Murdoch Mysteries: The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs. The awards will be announced at MIPTV on Sunday April 1, 2012.

About The company P
The company P is a multiple award winning production studio working out of Stockholm. P is specialized in scripted drama with high level of audience engagement. P was awarded the 2008 International Emmy for the show The Truth About Marika (SVT), as well as multiple other international awards. In 2011 P was nominated for an International Emmy Award for the transmedia project Conspiracy For Good (Tim Kring), as well as two awarded Banff Awards and given multiple nominations. P is competing for the 2012 International Emmy, as transmedia consultant for the show Endgame (ShowCase). P is regarded as one of the leading pioneers of new participatory dramas, and has two projects listed in WIRED Magazine UK’s list of most important projects in the genre.

About Shaftesbury
Founded in 1987, Shaftesbury is an award-winning creator, producer and distributor of original content for television and multiple platforms, with programming available in more than 120 countries worldwide. Recent productions include three seasons of The Listener for CTV and Fox International Channels; five seasons of Murdoch Mysteries for Citytv, UKTV and ITV STUDIOS Global Entertainment; and Ken Finkleman’s audacious new comedy series, Good God. Shaftesbury’s slate of programming for kids and families includes the global hit series Life with Derek and the movie follow-up to the series, Vacation with Derek. Shaftesbury’s divisions include Shaftesbury Factual, which is focused on non-fiction storytelling across a broad spectrum of genres; Smokebomb Entertainment, the company’s digital media division responsible for the development and production of original multiplatform series and companion web experiences for Shaftesbury’s slate of properties; and Shaftesbury Sales Company, which manages international sales and distribution for the company’s content. Shaftesbury recently launched Shaftesbury U.S., a new division focused on development for the U.S. market located in Los Angeles, California. www.shaftesbury.ca

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Katherine Wolfgang
VP, Communications, Shaftesbury
kwolfgang@shaftesbury.ca
Mobile: +1-416-669-2823
MIPTV Stand R27.12

Tanya Koivusalo
Communications Coordinator, Shaftesbury
tkoivusalo@shaftesbury.ca
Office: +1-416-363-1411
Mobile: +1-416-575-4671

The transmedia experience pulls you and your Facebook friends into a hostage situation, which you solve by talking to characters from the show and solving puzzles and casual games. The company P was transmedia consultant, developing the script and game design as well as the social media tie-ins, together with the Canadian production company Secret Location.

Content 360 nomination
The company P is also a finalist for the MIPCube Content 360 competition this year! At MIPCube Content 360, digital creatives pitch new ideas in cross-media content and next-generation audience engagement through TV, Internet, social media and mobile applications, personalisation, viral content, social games and other digital applications. See the nomination here!

Digital media is rapidly restyling the landscape of children’s media across a multiplatform ecosystem. Children lives orbit increasingly around gaming, online communities, social networking and video portals. It is not anymore a matter of trends or experiments, it’s a fact: kids expect content across different platforms; and if they don’t get it, they won’t experience the story you are creating.

The day is moderated by Nicoletta Iacobacci, Head of the Multi Platform division at the European Broadcasting Union.

Read more…

P’s Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Sandberg speaks about transmedia over video from Stockholm. Link to the lecture here.

In the fall of 2011, the Digital October Center for New Technologies and Technological Entrepreneurship, in conjunction with the telecommunications company Rostelecom and with the support of the Russian Venture Company, launched the distance-learning project Knowledge Stream.

Knowledge Stream is a nonprofit educational project; its main objective is to acquaint the Russian audience with the latest global advancements in science and business. The project involves distinguished researchers and experts who are willing to share their knowledge with a Russian audience, but who are unable to travel to Russia in person. The lecturers instead appear via videoconference; every presentation and subsequent discussion is broadcast live on the Knowledge Stream website.

Among the productions are several of P’s projects, including Emmy nominated, two time Banff Award winning Conspiracy For Good with Tim Kring and Nokia. The book opens with Three Villages (1994), an event that brought many of the practices that still define larping. Three Villages was created by P Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Sandberg, with the production outfit Ett Glas. The event is referred to in the book as “the Woodstock of larp.” Other events listed with P people behind them are notably Dragonbane (where a robotic dragon was the main attraction), Momentum (where a nuclear reactor room was refurnished into a headquarters 100 feet below the city), Inside:Outside (pushing the boundaries on pressure-cooker narrative) and Hamlet (redesigning the play for 80 people living in the Elsinore castle dungeons for two days).

The book is a beautiful and inspiring insight into the passionate culture of larping, which in P’s humble opinion has set the bar for what transmedia needs to aspire to.

Read more and buy the book here!

Christopher Sandberg: Create for people! from Power to the Pixel on Vimeo.

P’s founder and creative chief, Christopher Sandberg, is dedicated to the exploration of drama with massive audience involvement. With two decades’ experience, ranging from TV drama to social applications and games, he was invited to talk at last month’s Cross-Media Forum, about the design and production of participatory narratives for mass audiences. Sandberg also sat in the jury for the Pixel Prize.

Click the video link to see the presentation!

Mike Pohjola (Co-founder, Creative Director at P) published his latest novel, Son of Man, in September this year. The literary agency Stilton is currently selling the translation rights globally. The movie rights to the book are optioned in Hollywood by actor/producer Ron Gilbert (known from movies like The Usual Suspects, and a long string of prime time series).

Son of Man is an autobiographical novel about a young man who thinks he might be the Second Coming of Christ. The book follows his life from his birth in the late 70’s to the early 2000’s.

Apart from Jesus, some other topics in the Son of Man are Dungeons & Dragons, sex, heavy metal, political activism, communal living, the Second Intifada, gay priests, larp, corrupt politics, strange Christian cults, graffiti, and goth clubs.

P has a full presentation schedule during Autumn. Engagements include lecturing at Swedish media school Hyper Island on designing and producing transmedia drama. Christopher Sandberg (CCO) is also holding a keynote on participatory drama at the Swedish Mixed Media conference, and a keynote at the X-Summit in Canada.

X-summit is a two-day business intelligence conference in Toronto. With hands-on workshops, dynamic panels and thought-provoking presentations from speakers world-leading in their fields, X-summit aims to embrace innovations and explore the future of cross-media.

With two awards at Banff World Media Festival for Conspiracy For Good with Tim Kring, something of a love affair has started between Canada and P. The waters were tested with a transmedia consultancy around the ShowCase series Endgame. Currently P is exploring several venues for new original productions.