From the beginning of the series we have seen how the actual process of documenting their lives has itself changed the lives of these characters. We see it when Lizzie and Lydia are in a fight and don’t see each other’s videos, or when Darcy and Gigi catch up on Lizzie’s videos. Was that an active decision, and what do you think about that concept?
It was always an active decision. As we were going through the creative process every month part of what the creative team thinks about it what is their online presence. What has to happen with their online presence to make the story work? That’s why we have a transmedia team that works with the writing team to make sure that these two things are working in harmony, because always from the beginning there was a social media plan with each of the characters.
Knowing that, if Lizzie is following Lydia, you have to assume that they are reading each other’s stuff. There has to be a logical reason why they wouldn’t be, and if they’re in a fight – I’ve had this happen before where I’ve been in a fight with a friend and I’m like, “Oh, I’m not following your Facebook page anymore because I don’t care about your feelings.” It’s a real thing that happens so they wanted to reflect that in the storytelling.
So yes, it’s always been something that has been part of the creative plan from the beginning. It became more complicated as you added more characters. The more characters we have, the more accounts we’re juggling and it’s more to keep mapped out.
And there’s a fine line where the actual fans get involved; we had in the Lydia video where she was angry with the fans themselves, and I saw there were some fans on Tumblr saying they wanted to get the LydiaBennetTape site taken down, and Bernie and Jay had to both say “Please don’t do that.”
Well they actually did. Someone succeeded in taking the site down. The fear was if we couldn’t get it up in time, how that would affect. And that’s a single case where if we hadn’t already shot the few episodes following that, there may have been a possibility that last minute we could have gone in and changed some things to make it work, but it was already shot so the fear was we could really ruin the fourth wall here, if this were the fall through, because it doesn’t match with what we have already shot.
That was just a reality, that Jay [Bushman, transmedia producer] and Bernie made the decision to say “Hey guys, sorry to come out of the curtain, we don’t like to do this but just so you’re aware, try not to do that. We’re not going to tell you why, but just try not to, just this once.” And it ended up working out and it was fine, and as you saw the site did go down and everyone was very excited. I think at the end of the day, they do feel satisfied with how it turned out.
But at the same time I have to say, I find it very endearing that a group of fans would care enough about Lydia to attempt to do that. To just say, “This isn’t right, what can I do?” and actually try to take actions.
[Author’s note: You can also read Hypable’s interview with Jay on all things transmedia]
Are you planning on being involved in the next book adaptation that Bernie and Hank are doing?
I always say that whatever Bernie and Hank want, I will absolutely do, 100%. I would love to. Bernie has already said that when he knows what is going on we will all sit down and talk about it, and it’s really hard – I’m never going to be the type of person to say with 100% certainty that something is happening until it is actually happening. Working in the industry, you learn that because so many times it’s like “Yes! It’s a done deal – Oh, no. It’s not a done deal.” So all signs point to yes. Me, Bernie and Hank I like to think love working together so I would love to continue to do that for as long as possible.
Have you been involved in any of the discussions about what the next book might be?
I have.
Can you give us any hints, apart from it will be out of copyright?
It will be out of copyright. I can say that much.
Are there any books that have been ruled out, maybe because you couldn’t get the copyright to them?
I will tell you the book I would love to do someday is Lord of the Flies. I think Lord of the Flies done as ‘found footage’ after the fact, and somebody got a hold of it. Oh god, I hope I now haven’t put that idea out there and somebody is going to take it, but hey, if somebody wants to do that, call me. It’s a rights issue, Lord of the Flies is not out of copyright, but I would love to do that someday. I think it’s just brilliant, it is one of my favourite books – again, my dark childhood, I was like “Yeah little boys killing each other, cool.”
I could see it done that way, something about Lord of the Flies does lend itself to that, it would be cool.
Yeah!
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