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Projects In Search of Gordon Lightfoot
In Search of Gordon Lightfoot is the television component of a transmedia project created by Christopher Bolton. Gordon Lightfoot is a legendary Canadian folk singer and we're going in search of him – sort of. Yes we're looking for the actual guy - because he has something that belongs to us - but what we find on the ensuing journey is a deeper narrative tapestry revolving around our country, creativity, and an interactive creative process. Christopher Bolton (RentAGoalie) buys an island on Georgian Bay and wants to build a dock. But it turns out Gordon Lightfoot owns the shoreline, won it off Diefenbaker in a poker game in '57, and Bolts can't build until he buys it back. Research reveals that Gordon is relaxing in Killarney for the weekend so Bolts calls his best/worst friend Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies), who has a floatplane, and asks to be flown up to the North Channel to make things right. So it begins, Lightfoot comes to serve as McGuffin and muse. In each episode The Boys get in Ed's plane to fly to Gordon's last known whereabouts but Gordon has just left or was never there or is in hiding or The Boys run out of gas or crash into the tundra or get intercepted by the military. Canadian Icon Gordon Lightfoot will never be found, just pursued, through the archetypal landscape of the Canadian North by two Canadian celebrities in a stamp-worthy Canadian floatplane. Mayhem ensues. Odd Couple meets Curb Your Enthusiasm crossed with Fishing With John and Survivorman. And, for shits and giggles, we'll glance in the direction of Waiting for Godot. In Search of Gordon Lightfoot is a buddy show, a character driven, situational comedy set in the planes, bush, and towns of the Canadian North. Our heroes bicker their way through their travels, the goal of finding Mr. Lightfoot consistently waylaid by a 'classic', albeit atypical, Canadian misadventure. We haven't seen these stories before but we're oddly familiar with them anyhow. Transmedia, in brief, is a single vision, non-linear narrative where integral elements of the fiction are systematically dispersed across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. It synergistically capitalizes on a fractured media landscape to build a world with multiple points of entry for different audience segments + a more consequential market for all. Each platform must be a successful stand-alone property but, taken together, the narrative is a robust meta-narrative set in a rich, discoverable world. The mythic underpinnings of the ISOGL experience are search and creativity. Our point of identification is a man at various stages of his creative life. He morphs from fictional to real and back again, engaging in the process and with collaborators in an attempt to make sense of his lot in life by learning to tell his story as influenced by and integrated into Canada's. Through music, drama, comedy, documentary and game he immerses in and reflects on the Canadian experience in an effort to develop a deeper contact with his own. At the heart of the project is a creative portal that serves as hub, a place for our guy to engage with his collaborators and the public in the creation of the six platforms of content. By lifting the veil on the creative process and empowering participation, a sense of authorship is promoted in the audience member too and the portal's interactivity renders the creation and consumption of entertainment one in the same. This interactivity and it's long lead time is a business design as well - ample time to build a social network around the project so there is a marketing and promotion base in place when it's time to distribute the platforms with revenue streams. The platforms, in approximate chronological order, roll out as follows: the open source and interactive website ("The Hub"), the television series, a feature documentary, an online graphic novel, a video game (Bush Pilot 2.0), a feature film, and an album of music. Club Fed Sue Lochner is a progressive 3rd generation jailer who prefers rehabilitation to incarceration and a good chat over solitary. She is doing a bang-up job as warden at Arbola Penitentiary, just as her daddy and granddaddy had done before her, with a recidivist rate substantially lower than the national average. Iron on one hand, a velvet glove on the other, both wrapped up in a killer pedigree makes Sue a well-respected warden's warden. But now she finds herself between a rock and a hard-time place. An architectural anomaly that keeps the entire south wing out of sight has made Arbola the Feds prison of choice to give their wealthy, white collared 'friends' a cushy ride while keeping up appearances that they are doing their time like everyone else. Sue is under strict orders to keep them happy and the Feds threat of closing Arbola, her family business, to make room for a 'supermax' prison – the scourge of the penal system in Sue's humble opinion - prompts Sue to toe the line. She puts a Berber carpet in the common area making it a little less common, pays off the neighbouring farmer to put in an airstrip and a golf pitch, and installs a stock ticker in the boardroom and CNN in the exercise room. A motley crew of CEO's, traders, and lifestyle corporation masterminds moves in and start running their Fortune 500 companies from behind bars while living the life of Riley. But these guys may have met their match. Sue may let the inmates think they're running the asylum but it's all part of a master plan: rehabilitation – her modus operandi as a prison official. These guys might think themselves pretty special, that they're going to get the royal treatment and then leave, but she's got other ideas. She starts by anonymously leaking the existence of Club Fed to two of her most prized general pop inmates. When one nasty-ass mobster and one serial psychopath 'catch wind' they exchange their silence for the good life. The white collared and well pressed must turn to washing down braised veal tongue down with '64 Lafite Rothschild's while ensuring their own tongues aren't cut out and braised by their new roommates. Sue Lochner will find a way to do her job come hell or high water, matching every federal or Richie Rich move with one of her own. Yup, if she can just get past falling in love with the south wing's grand poobah and the fact that her ex-husband is the psychopath's new bitch and will be moving in too, she'll have this nightmare situation turned on it's ear and tamed in no time. Club Fed, created by Christopher Bolton, is a 1/2 hour, one camera satire that, well, think Hogan's Heroes meets Arrested Development and you're on the right track. |