INPUT / … / … / The Vertical Canvas: Making Programs for Phones

No piece of modern consumer technology has been adopted as rapidly by as many people as the smart phone. Handheld devices - with their vertical-oriented screens and thousands of apps - have fundamentally changed the way we communicate, produce and consume media. Public broadcasters are scrambling to catch up, tailoring their content and story treatments to these devices and the social platforms that dominate them: Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. What works? What doesn’t? How do you measure success? What’s the return on investment? Why bother putting so much work into something so ephemeral? And what’s the endgame for public service broadcasters? This session will look at several examples of innovative ‘phone-focused’ storytelling, from experiments with drama and news coverage, to historical fiction, chatbots and a satirical news program built for Instagram. Leave this session with a useful checklist of do's and don'ts from some of the producers in the field.