Foreword: Since Steve Jobs ‘retirement of sorts’ pretty much every Mac-Head has had the desire to write about the great man. I thought I would add to that with a recent article which was published ‘pre-announcement’ which highlighted just how his innovation has directly affected myself as a creative, and my company as a whole.

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Galvin Scott Davis discusses how advances in Digital Media Platforms and Steve Jobs saved his Story:
(From ‘Storyline’ Magazine 2011)

I can vividly remember the phone conversation as I waited for the delay to kick in from Los Angeles. “I’m sorry – the deal fell through… your script is dead”. The words that every writer dreads, words designed to destroy your ambition, your will. It took a few seconds to register what my agent was telling me.

Forget the three years of drafting, the twelve months of polishing on the final submission. Come again? – “What do you mean, it’s dead? How can a story be dead?”, I heard myself mumbling back down the line.

“We’re sorry. That’s just the way it is. You should just forget about it”.

As all writers can attest, forgetting about your labour of love is an implausibility. It doesn’t work like that – you don’t incubate, give birth and nurture a script only to be told that it should be farmed off to the nearest orphanage.

To put some context around the phone-call that I had received – 12 months earlier I had the good grace and fortune to have had my short film ‘Brother’ (NSWFTO YFF Funded) win two US film festivals (Beverly Hills Film Festival and The Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival) back-to-back. Call it lucky timing, kismet or plain jam buggery – but they both landed in the same week, and I’d spent my hard-earned to be in attendance.

Within hours of the award ceremony I had secured a Hollywood agent and began the rickety climb to the top of the first peak in a very bumpy roller coaster ride. Within months I had returned to Los Angeles on a whirlwind trip of spec meetings for my feature film screenplay – “Stricken”. A supernatural gumshoe detective thriller – a modernised Raymond Chandler fable with horror undertones (or “Lethal Weapon meets Constantine” as my unyielding agent liked to pitch it).

To cut a long story – the pitches went really well, a deal was set up and a mini-major came onboard the project. I was flabbergasted that this, my dream, could actually happen so damn fast. But then two weeks is a lifetime in Hollywood phone-calls. Ironically, as with all Hollywood stories – they rarely have a Hollywood ending. And so we need only skip forward a mere two weeks and we return to that fateful phone-call that changed the way I looked at producing content forever.

The deal had fallen through – one key person had left the studio and that had put in place a chain of events that would result in the script being shelved. The script was hot; Now, it was not. It seemed to me to be as callous and as simple as that. I took a moment to consider the lead character that I’d developed for ‘Stricken’ – Connor Mew, a pugilist anti-hero that never quits, refuses to stay down. What would he do? Would he let his story die? Or would he dust himself off and go back for more punishment?

CONNOR V/O: “The heavy head of the vintage phone handle rattled on its cradle like a deathwatch beetle foraging for food. Let it ring… ignore the call. It’s bad news. It’s always bad news…”

Okay – so Connor lives in movie-land and talks like he has a mouthful of quarters but I like his sentiment. As writers, we have to deal with rejection at many stages. This was the first time that I had actually found rejection to be the catalyst with which to keep moving forward.

Case in point – The rejection was obviously an oxymoron: how can a story be ‘dead’? A story doesn’t die, does not wither – it simply isn’t read. A story is ‘alive’ the second it meets the page, and lives on from the moment one person absorbs it and commits it to memory.

The defining moment from that phone-call actually came when I hung up the phone and placed it on the table in front of me. As I sat and stared down at my iPhone for the next ten minutes – I realised that the key to taking control of my Story had been in the palm of my hand all along.

Everything about the iPhone screamed “Let it Live”. This was a device that refused to work within the boundaries of normal thinking. It wasn’t a phone, it was determined to be so much more than that. I’d already had some experience with iPhone’s (I am also Director of Protein, a Sydney Digital Agency), having developed some successful Apps, and was accustomed to the thrill of releasing digital products.

So why not “Stricken”?

I stared at the heavy, uneven stack of scripts that wobbled on my shelves which were destined to a life of dust and wanton glances. And I began to look at them in a different light. Were these simply cursory diversions on the way to selling ‘the one’. Or were they actually just waiting for someone to resuscitate them in a different format? The dormant tower of unloved manuscripts on my shelf suddenly began to look like products on a purveyors window display.

CONNOR V/O: “Pick yourself up. Better shift gears, work the angles before I drag you kicking and screaming into the new century”.

It was time to start thinking about my writing in the same way that I approached my business – move with the times, keep ahead of the trends. What the iPhone (and iPad to come) has presented to us as Creators, Authors, Illustrators et al, is a window of opportunity. A digital platform with which to bring our stories to life, to our audiences as we intended them. And more importantly, without prejudice. I’m not stating for one moment that every Tom, Dick and Harry should start releasing digital Apps with their back catalogue – more-so, that at least now, there is the option to invest in ones own work should you feel that passionate about it.

There is a significant investment to be had, I won’t kid you. Partnerships, resources, late nights and cold hard cash. Yet with every fleeting pang of regret along the process I simply reminded myself that I had already invested more than three years of my time in something that would mean nothing to anybody unless it saw the light of day. I would never get that time back, but then that was never the point in the first place, was it? We write for others, not for ourselves. And if there is no channel for others to read our work then we are simply hobbyists with ‘one more great idea’. Lost in a sea of ambitious scribes.

CONNOR V/O: Wake up. Time is running out for you my friend – shadows weigh heavy in your midst tonight. Listless cloaks of nothingness that cling to your limbs  – pulling you down into uncertainty”.

Why is it that our Characters always speak up when we least expect it? That inner voice which manifests itself on paper, only to be heard late at night amidst ‘the noise’ of lost sleep. Listen up – they usually have some rather good advice…

I had found the platform – now I needed to compromise. I had to let the Feature Film Script ‘sleep’ (Not die) and concentrate on building an audience in a different medium. Create a bigger monster – and then bring it back to life with a larger heart than it ever had before.

I had already toyed with creating ‘Stricken’ as a Graphic Novel (the world was written to be firmly set within a comic book world). And had already been exposed to some of the pitfalls of trying to compete in the traditional print world. The biggest hurdle to overcome was the Publishers.

I joined forces with an illustrator (Alexis Hall), formerly of Rising Sun Pictures, with whom I have a strong relationship. He initially mocked up some character sketches which ignited a fervent flame to task. I cannot place enough importance on the impact of seeing those initial drawings. It was the first sign that we had taken something that others had told us was buried, and we had resurrected it beyond their expectations.

Alexis and I worked back and forth over the next year (Across continents as he traveled from one VFX house to other) – often parlaying over late-night emails, drafting reviews of his sketches and colourings. We would work one page of the script at a time, converting it to ‘frames’ for each beat and compiling single pages. The process seemed to take forever, but it was never anything less than compelling for both of us.

His work was so impressive that we decided to have a stab at the traditional route – and presented his crafted illustrations to the major print comic-book publishers. Yet we were met with derision – “Beautiful Graphic Novel… but we’re not interested in finished properties. We need to develop internally and own them ourselves”. Initiative, it seems, is not for sale.

CONNOR V/O: “Three years of wasted blood. The frays of my fingertips are wasted and spent like those of a vagrant, and for what? The toss of a dime and a ‘have-a-nice-day’ from passers-by in privilege and power”.

Fortunately for us – in the interim, the goalposts had changed. Along with the iPhone, Apple had just announced the launch of the iPad. The perfect platform for our Graphic Novel. This was it, we could now take full control of the potential and revenue stream of our story. No publisher commission, credit card fees, print production costs, warehouse storage fees, distribution fees and postage to be taken from our chunk of change. Only one fee – a percentage to Apple Inc. for helping us realize our dream, (and one that was still 20% less than traditional publishers).

The iPhone and iPad also offered a way of delivering my Graphic Novel in a much more cinematic way than traditional print. The story was born as a movie – so I made the decision to work once again with renowned Composer, Hylton Mowday to develop an original Soundtrack for the pages that immerses the reader in the world of ‘Stricken’.

By creating a soundtrack, we could immediately establish that the format offered more for the reader than traditional print. We had the opportunity to let the music and sound FX become a part of the storytelling process – by designing ‘themes’ for each scene in the script. Hylton, a most eclectic composer, drew on the dark setting of ‘Moss Town’ and created music that peaks and troughs as the pages move from one scene to another. The experience is enhanced when the reader wears headphones – as the frame-by-frame mode introduces synced sound FX with the scenario in-frame.

CONNOR V/O: “The sounds of Moss Town haunt me in my dreams. Sirens, gunshots and the occasional cry for mercy are commonplace here. Their desperate voices are a part of me now, buried beneath the constant ache of my eyelids”.

Writing for the screen can be an arduous process at the best of times, fraught with paranoia, self-doubt and the constant quest for ‘that perfect draft’. By revisiting the story in Graphic Novel format – it was almost a cleansing of the soul. A rare second-chance to strip the story down and cherry-pick instances for a talented artist to draw from.

We referenced other comic-book publication platforms that had dabbled with the iPad – all of which had created comprehensive renditions of the print versions to digital. Yet none of which appeared to have captured the heart of the media with which they were being displayed. Rather than simply mimic a page-turner of a comic-book, we emulated the storyboard style of a movie animatic. This afforded the reader of the novel the option to read in full-screen mode, or switch to storyboard mode and truly enter the world we had created.

As we developed the Graphic Novel into the actual Application platform, it occurred to me that we were storyboarding each scene and every shot as if we had moved ahead into preproduction on the very feature film itself. The blending of one media platform into another had never been so tangible or apparent. We were creating, by osmosis, a cinematic bridge between the words on the script and the intended feature film.

As a Director, this was a dream come true. When a script languishes in the final draft and spec pitch period, the writer can often feel as though the story is becoming stale (as other, more assertive ideas spring to mind for the next script to write). In this case – I could visualise each of the boards as they came to life and reacquaint myself with the story.

Once the App was complete I was left with at least two options open to me: Create a property and release it through digital media streams as both a sales tool for the end product (the Feature Film), and secondly, as a standalone marketable revenue stream (the Graphic Novel).

I now had two avenues with which to explore the interest in the Story. I could leverage the App purely as a sales tool to take to production companies and talk them through the complete storyboards of the film. Or, I could remain an independent publisher and author – and simply market the story as a product. With some savvy marketing, this is something that is both viable to a writer’s investment and a clever way to scale the product. Finally putting the story in a win-win situation out of what was originally a terrible position.

The experience for me has been enlightening in many ways. We Writers toil away and peddle our wares only to face the inevitable reality that many of our stories will be still-born at the hands of others. With digital media, we have a choice to give life to many of our disregarded tales and “drag them kicking and screaming into the new century”, as my old friend Detective Mew would put it. Will it bring us the financial return that we hope to see? Who knows? But it will at the very least keep us rich in heart that our labours of love have not gone unnoticed.

For now, we have adapted the first act of the feature film screenplay as ‘Chapter One’ of the world of Stricken. And we hope to release the following chapters as interest dictates (There’s that savvy marketing strategy I spoke of).

CONNOR V/O: The road that I took seemed to last an eternity. The scent of bitumen burns my throat. I finish this journey a shell of the man that I used to be. Yet there is one last thing that I ask of you… Let me live.

Thankfully for me, the noir genre is accepting of (welcoming even) melodrama and angst. My character’s voice making the most of every situation I threw at him – his overwrought answers keeping me up at night until I silenced him.

The future is here. By embracing digital platforms, unencumbered content can live a life less ordinary. If the content is good and the audience speaks up, who knows where we will be in another ten years from now.

Will writers have the ability to reverse-engineer the audience through iTunes. Build a loyal following for their material online (much like bands such as The Arctic Monkeys did for their music) and provoke interest from studios in already proven properties?

Writers often need to know when it’s the right time to let their story go. But for now, at least, it can be on our own terms.

In January 2011, our Graphic Novel ‘Stricken’ was re-born in beautiful retina display and available as an amazing immersive experience for a new audience. And we are now fielding interest in the movie rights.

Stricken is available exclusive to iPhone and iPad – http://www.strickenapp.com or search ‘Stricken’ in the iTunes store.

One tweet I received from @LoopForward went a little like this: “#omt @omtconf question for the protein guys, what do you do as the inventor role exactly and how do your colleagues see your role?”

The question was a direct response to a (somewhat gut-driven) referral to myself as a “one-time designer, one-time developer but now resigned to being an inventor in my role at Protein.”

Unfortunately the question was not asked on stage, but I had the fortune of chatting with LoopForward after the event and it was a welcome opportunity to really sit back and assess my role as a Director of a creative business.

There is nothing more fulfilling in this world than being challenged, and nothing more challenging than having to answer the question “who do you think you are?”. It forces you to take stock, pull up stumps and look at what you are contributing to your role in the day-to-day company that you keep.

On challenging the misconception that I was an ‘inventor’ I immediately identified that it was actually a poor choice of words on my part. To some degree – yes, as the director of a business I see my role as being an inventor. As with anyone that takes the reins of a small business and steers it toward the inevitable Grand Canyon of failure or success, at certain junctures you simply have to become an inventor. That is the only rational way that you can succeed… by re-inventing the business.

The more appropriate choice would have been to describe my role as “an author or director”.

It is my opinion that every creative business, at its core, requires an author. Someone who conceives then writes the very ideas (and ideals) with which the business stands upon. And becomes the story-teller to adequately translate that to the team around you.

The day that I accepted that role was the day that I admitted to myself that I was not necessarily the best designer, or developer for my business (or for that matter within my business).

Realising and accepting that you are not as good as others is an extremely important value in creating success with your company. [This is adequately stated in 'The E-myth' by Michael E. Gerber', only addressed in a different way.]

What I found imperative, was to accept that my role was not the same as I had given myself when ‘creating’ my business. But that the newfound role was actually more creative and required more development skills that I had initially employed.

The trick is to utilise this strength and surround yourself with the very best talent to replace you. Yes – I said it… you need to replace yourself in your business in order to excel in your role. It was difficult, but at some point in my business I actually sacked myself as the designer and developer and hired people that were better.

To elaborate, I’d always considered myself a ‘good’ designer and a ‘capable’ developer. I’ve dabbled. And given a wealth of time and a wonderland of slack – I could produce pretty decent results. But that’s not good enough to build the business, the brand, or the stories which I’d like us to tell.

In order to bring my ideas and stories to life, I had to employ the best resources and admit that I could not do it all myself.

At the One More Thing Conference it was suggested by many of the speakers that ideas are worth nothing, unless they are actually created, unless they live.

And that’s the key – get shit done. Create. Invent. Bring your ideas to life rather than let them languish in a well of ‘what-ifs, buts and maybes’.

There is a skill to pulling an idea together, to dragging it out of your brain into the ether, and then seeing it through to the bitter end and watching it form its limbs and walk on its own two feet.

I love coming up with ideas, concepts, stories… but I revel in watching them grow. And I live to see them live.

And that can only happen in a reasonable time when you accept the help of others.

So next time you feel you can do it all. Take a second and look at the team around you – I guarantee that you employed them for a reason… because they are better than you. Not in your role, but in theirs which is no doubt where you started yourself.

Every business needs a director, an author – someone to invent and someone that will guide the team around them to bring those ideas kicking and screaming into the arms of its parents.

Trust me, it’s a beautiful thing.

So… Who do you think you are?

** Footnote: I’m currently sitting on the esplanade in Venice, Italy – where I’m reminded that the most beautiful buildings in the world came from the minds of creative authors. However, they were built by better masons than the inventors would ever dare to be.

I use the ‘E-word’ because there was no doubt that each of the speakers were not simply Devs or Creatives.

Each of them had a story to tell which went beyond keyboard punching and pixel-pushing. Each had taken risks, whether in business, leaving existing jobs, chasing an idea or simply ‘having a go’. Every speaker had in some way shape or form been the instigation and inspiration for a singular goal. To create Apps which we were proud of.

I was a little shocked at the company I was keeping. (It was no surprise that I was the last of the bunch to be asked to speak. Though happy to be a hole-filler when the line-up was this lucrative).

Amongst the speakers were such luminaries as Matt Comi (@mattcomi), the visionary behind the runaway game ‘The Incident’, Russell Ivanovic from Shifty Jelly (@rustyshelf) who was smoother than a peanut butter puree on stage, Alex Johnston from Apps Perhaps (@alexjston) whose OzTV App is the most beautifully crafted guide I’ve seen and Jason Morrissey from Alien Blue fame(@jasemorrissey) who gave a passionate and Codral-fuelled talk which left most in the audience with man-masked sniffles.

* I’ve put a link at the end of this article (and here) to the full Speakers list on the One More Thing website. If I had the energy I’d praise them all individually but best you take the time to look into their work – it says way more than I ever could.

I had decided early on that the subject of my talk was going to be “Discovering the Geek in the Designer and the Artist in the Developer” – something which I have been passionate about for many years whilst building Protein from the split milk that it was in its early days, to the full-bodied milkshake that it is now.

My notes were extensively outlined to give the audience a ‘shake-up’ of how the gulf between Developer and Designer is a pointless one. A gulf which we need to bridge in order to create digital content that is born through symbiotic relationships and not a divorce-settlements.

At the event, early in the day, it dawned on me that I might be a little late to the party… could it be that the very subject I was about to talk on had already been addressed by all and sundry in the room? It seems that the mobile crowd may have already learnt a valuable lesson from the online community. I’ve struggled for many years to address the issue in the online space that Design and Development should not be exclusive. They are cognitive to each other, they work together – but not apart.

My theory has always been this – A designer, by osmosis, should absorb as much about code as possible without becoming a fully-fledged developer. If, as creatives we study the code, we will see the tapestry which creates clean engineering and in turn see the developer as a fellow artist. Likewise as Developers, we should absorb as much about good design as possible and see the ‘formula’ in the design – in turn understanding that a designer is also an engineer.

The best results (in my humble opinion) always arise through both sides working as one. For sure the best work we have produced at Protein and previously at Blind Mice have been when the company as a whole have enjoyed the experience. You can see it in the work, it bubbles to the surface like a spring that has to flourish. Bad experiences, teams in turmoil, caustic clients always result in work which is turgid, stale and broken. It’s as if software inherits the DNA of its parents.

I was preparing myself to address this at the OMT conference. Pacing the location in Kensington where One More Thing was starting to buzz. (Incidentally the venue itself, Revolt Melbourne, was a treat. A lonesome art gallery in the back end of town, like walking into a Ghost Train Ride which led to a smoky jazz hideaway. A perfect atmospheric setting so much more enticing for the audience than a coiffed auditorium).

As each Speaker took the podium, it was evident that the company with which I was keeping had all, without fail, produced works without the issue I was about to address. Each company and App which was presented was perfectly balanced… Every UI on-screen was polished within a pixel of its life. Each App engineered with more thought and care than a Botticelli.

Each App was a success in its own right and each had a story to tell. A story that the creators labours of love were born through a respect for both art and code.

By the time I took the stage I had reworked my dialogue. Could it be that the mobile community were already aware of this issue? Was I preaching to the converted?

Once on stage and past the first five minutes of ‘cotton-mouth’ I found some sort of rhythm (albeit modern jazz), and took some time to let my eyes adjust to the audience beyond the glaring lights.

The more I spoke, the more I could see that the room already knew what I was talking about: Lots of nodding heads, I can only presume that they weren’t dozing off or listening to the Chemical Brothers on their iBuds.

At the twenty minute mark as I rounded up my plea for iOS designers and developers to rally together in a holy war against the plethora of dysfunctional Apps that are available on the App Store, I felt a sense of elation. The room at One More Thing did not need me to repeat myself – Rather, they were one step ahead of me the whole time.

I came away from Melbourne with a spring in my step, we live in exciting times. The iOS scene in Australia is brimming with a talented community that want to collaborate and create innovative and engaging Apps. I only had to look around at the faces in attendance to see that there were any number of people in the audience that could just as capably given a speech as I did (and I am sure more eloquently).

The rest of the night was spent conversing with my fellow speakers and the audience. There was no competition, no sway, no power play on show such as I’ve experienced at other digital forums. Just a genuine excitement about what the future holds. A community that aspires to build new teams and content through advocacy and collaboration.

Exciting times indeed.

One More Thing had the following inspirational pixel preachers – do yourself a favour and become a devoted Follower to all!

http://onemorething.com.au/speakers.html

Mark Tanner (Protein’s lead designer) took his debut shot at Dribbble with the RMK Voices iPhone App design – highly anticipating some serious peer review action… within 24 hours over 1,300 people had viewed it and over 170 people loved it – making it the most popular debut shot of the day, which was a great result!

Check out the Dribbble page by clicking here

Check out the RMK Voice iPhone app in our portfolio section by clicking here

View the RMK Voices iPhone app in iTunes by clicking here