THE POWER
INSIDE
Topic 1
Premise and purpose
This project is about invasion of moustache aliens on the Earth. They are turning people into zombies. The main character Neil and his friends must fight them. The way they can do that is to show aliens the video of shaving the moustaches. This video is shown on the screen of new ultrabook by Toshiba. The main characters of the video are fans, which are involved in audition on the official website “thepowerinside.com”.
The fundamental purpose of “The Power Inside” is an advertising campaign of the new ultrabook by Toshiba, based on Intel processor. Billie Goldman, Partner Marketing Manager at Intel says: “We are always looking at new ways to engage and entertain consumers in a brand experience – in particular younger consumers – and this idea is a good way to do that”.
Topic 2
Narrative
The serial consists of 6 episodes, each is 7 minutes long, and the last one is 15 minutes long. The story unfolds online with added content and character interactions on Facebook happening in between episodes. So the plot is fictional, even absurd and runs like this: moustaches and unibrows takes over the upper lips and eyes, gaining the access to people’s brain. Theme can be described as fighting with aliens.
The story takes place nowadays including flashback narration, unfolding the history of the invasion. The two adversarial groups are Uricks (means aliens) and Guardians. Viewers can choose the wanted side and enjoy it with the help of computer and the internet. If you choose Uricks group you try on unibrows and moustaches, make a picture of yourself and send it on the website. Then you can be invited to shooting in crowd scenes. If you choose Guardian group you make a home video of shaving yourself and also send it to the website. Then the best ones will be showed in a serial. So, the project involves gaming elements and at last the Guardians will win. Billie Goldman: “Social, real-time co-creation with the audience gives us the opportunity to push the boundaries creatively and tell immersive stories that the audience is truly invested in”.
To sum up, the main strategy for expanding the narrative is using the Facebook, involving people in auditions. Negative capability (it means uncertain ending of each episode, provoking mystery) gives viewers an opportunity to migrate between website and Facebook and to fill these gaps.
Topic 3
Worldbuilding
The central world where the project is set is a real world. But the project also presents a fictional world. These both worlds interacts with each other. The storyline is an interactive game, in which characters are confronted with difficulties from series to series: save friend from taking down by moustache and unibrows, catch up the running away moustache and kill it, stop the invasion of Moustaches’ Queen and so on. But there is a huge delight against a background, Neil conquer a girl, whom he likes and we realize that he has cool friends.
Topic 6
Media platforms and genres
In terms of platforms the project consists of it's website where a visitor would find episodes, see the products advertised in the series and take audition for the episodes. On the YouTube channel not only episodes are posted but also additional videos connected to the story, some of these videos are animated. Animation we can see also at the end of each episode as a selection of viewers's photos with mustache and red eyes. So, you should have any device with webcamera to become the character of The Power Inside.
Facebook is another key platform of the project since we can take a lot of extra videos from the pages of Neil and Ari there or even chat with them. Facebook extentions help the project to keep the attention of the audience between episodes. But as we mentioned characters' conversational activity on their pages could be better. In the project the features of adventure, fantasy and detective can be found.
Topic 4
Characters
The board of the main characters consists of so-called Guardians:
Neil (feat. Craig Roberts) is a protagonist. He looks like ordinary 20-years old guy. But it appeared he was choosen to sacrifice his life to save the world from the invasion of alien mustaches and unibrows. Also he is the person the audience can directly contact with on the Facebook page of the project.
Ashley (feat. Analeigh Tipton) is a beautiful girl who likes cool guys and doesn't like guys like Neil. Unfortunately for him Neil fell in love with the girl. But the destiny will give Neil a chance to prove he is not so simple. And Ashley won't be able to stand.
Devin (feat. Reid Ewing) is Ashley's boyfriend.
Ari (feat. Zack Pearlman) is Neil's friend.
O’Mansky (feat. Harvey Keitel) is the only elder character in the group. He was the man who introduced Neil into the mystery of mustaches and his mission.
Mustashes are another characters of the series. They are personified also in a character of Mustaches' Queen who tries to take possession of Neil's soul in the final episode.
Finally Toshiba Ultrabook is a character of the movie. At a critical juncture it helps Neil to defeat the Queen of Mustaches and save the world from aliens.
Topic 5
Extensions
The story unfolds through the series on official web-site and YouTube. Between series the audience keeps in touch with the project with Facebook page of the primery character. Sometimes he asks users to give their oppinion on some issue, posts videos with himself or shares those launched by Ari to extend smth mentioned in episodes (like animated story of Uricks or Neil's last words befor the day he had to sacrifice himself), supplies readers with additional info connected to the main story (fake documents about Neil's father in O’Mansky's laptop) etc. Also there is Ari's Facebook page called "Ari Is Awesome" where he shares Neil's posts, post his own videos etc. The project has its Twitter account but its contribution to the project is quite small. No any fan-videos were found by us. But great FB activity of the characters provoked good sharability of the project, especially in the beginning.
Topic 10
Aesthetics
In this project we can see the mix of visuals: video, animation, graphics (3D modeling & animation, 2D animation)
The overall looks realistic because of the professional composing of video, 2d animation and 3d models & effects.
Project consists of high quality 3d-2d modeling and small percentage of comic book styles.
High quality soundtrack and ambient sound library were used in this project.
Topic 9
Structure
This film consists of 6 episodes. The first episode was released at 14th august 2013. Right after the release the audience could connect and follow characters' facebook pages and search for additional info about the story.
The story of the project is proactive as it was desinged to be transmedia from the beginnig. The Power Inside became the lest film in a trilogy of Inside Films.
Inside the trilogy or as a single product The Power Inside is closer to a transmedia franchise. Facebook extention gives the audience an additional experience but the episodes can be watched separately without any loss in understanding the story as a whole. At the same time characters' FB pages can be considered as another entry points of the project.
The structure of the project can be described in the next manner:
1. Video is released.
2. Audience has one week to find all the possible additional information about characters(video, photos, notes etc)
3. Next video is released.
4. Another week to find additional information...
In the structure people migrate from YouTube/Web-site to Facebook and backward each week.
Topic 8
Engagement
In the project people could connect to the storyworld in several ways. As viewers they could watch episodes on YouTube. As users they could use all the possibilities of the Facebook extension. Moreover anyone from the audience could try and audition for The Power Inside on its website. Before audition there was on option to choose the side of aliens or the Guardians. If chose the side of aliens a VUPer had to take a photo with red eyes and mustache on the website. If chose Guardians then a VUPers had to upload a video with him shaving his mustache.
Topic 7
Audience and market
According to the platforms choosen, plot and characteristics of the characters the target audience of the project might consist of young people, active Internet users, interested in the products of Toshiba and Intel. These VUPers must be real-time viewrs mostly becausу the stori itself is not so complicated and the its genre seems suitable to enjoying the story as it goes. Despite the fact that the problem of mustache is quite uncommon for women, it would be wrong to identify the audience as only the male one.
The Power Inside hasn't been the first movie on the adventures of Toshiba laptop. As the storyworld of the project can be extended to the previous Inside Films (The Beauty Inside (2012) and Inside (2011)) substantial part of its audience might consists of the viewers of those two Inside Films. The first episode collected about 2,5 millions viewers on YouTube, but then an attention had been declining. People's activity on Facebook pages of the project could be better too. It can be that the problem was in a lack of engagement.
