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Christopher Sandberg sprinted down the tunnel, terrified. He'd been waiting under a subway bridge outside a Thai kick-boxing club in the outskirts of Stockholm when a huge, black-haired man ran at him. He chased Sandberg and his three friends along the open sewers, through the tunnel, until they spilled on to the snowy kerb of a motorway. "So we ran and stumbled in the snow to dodge the cars and get out of the situation," says Sandberg.
It was a set-up: Sandberg staged the event last December as a blind test of the script for a new transmedia project,
Conspiracy For Good. His pursuer was an actor -- "he had to fall down a lot so we'd have time to get away".
CFG is a participatory drama that will play out this summer, with a cast of more than 400 spread over five countries.
The plot centres around a secret society whose aim is to change the world; the society has decided to go public and CFG is the recruitment campaign. The narrative will be played out over web videos, interactive puzzles (including clues hidden inside real MP3s such as tracks on the White Album by The Beatles), mobile apps and real-life events. The project is sponsored by Nokia, and a website went live on May 17. This features a video from Tim Kring, who asks visitors to participate in a movement to drive real-world change through interactive storytelling.
The creative team at The company P, Sandberg's transmedia production business, staged several tests last winter and spring.
The Stockholm event ironed out kinks in the mobile technology used. More importantly, it honed the team's storytelling. "We learned how to spread people out so as to have the sense of being at the mercy of a big adventure."
Not only does CFG stage live events as part of the story, it has an actual impact on the world. The project is funding Room To Read, an education charity, to build schools in Zambia. But a British oil company, Blackwell Briggs, threatens their construction. The oil firm is not obviously a fake: Karl Rove is following its Twitter account. "Everything is designed so you don't believe us when we say it's fake," says Sandberg. "It's a mindfuck."
To keep track of the free-screening narrative, P has developed an "orchestration engine" with the help of the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The engine logs participants' activity, tying the strands into a consistent narrative. Scheduling is crucial.
Still, Sandberg isn't sure what will happen. "The project is a pilot -- a live crash-test to see if we can do it in São Paulo, Tokyo and Paris next year." He is in discussion with Channel 4 about continuing the story, but perhaps not for TV. "Television is dead, but drama will never die."
Learn more about transmedia in our cover story, Transmedia: Entertainment reimagined.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
