Finding a creative career that is sustainable

5 Questions with Sparrow Hall

What will you be doing at DIY DAYS?

I’ll be talking about the business development side of transmedia, and how it can support our work (and growth) as artists. I’m interested in looking at ways to collaborate with brands and agencies to create stories that are both emotionally fulfilling and financially sound.

What is your background?

I graduated from an art school in the mountains of New England where I wrote plays and drew pictures and danced to a lot of 80s music. I moved to New York, kept writing, got sick of being broke, and bluffed my way into a job at one of the top branding agencies in the world. Suddenly it was the Dot Com boom, and I was making gobs of money – for what, I’m still not sure – but I did learn the ins and outs of all things digital, as quaint as that was back then. The bubble burst, I hated my life, and I fled back to the mountains where I took care of my grandmother (Alzheimer’s) for a year and basically had a come-to-Jesus with my own mortality. I then moved back to New York, reset my brain, published a few stories, wiggled my way back into the agency world, and worked on some killer campaigns (sort of the dawn of transmedia), which allowed me to buy a house (again in the fucking mountains). I started my own tiny publishing company, published a couple transmedia books that major publishers just couldn’t wrap their brains around. “What do you mean it comes with a soundtrack?” So I stopped fighting the late adopters and decided to create a market of my own. I now approach brands the same way I do my own art. Emotionally. I get super fucking emo on that shit. The publishing industry is dead. So is music. And so is film, although no one wants to admit it. And then on the other side of it, you have these major brands that just wish someone interesting with a good idea and some real heart would come along and take them to a party. So that’s what I do now. Get paid to party – with brands that like to make it rain. And I want to show other artists how they can change the game, and actually create stuff they love while making enough money to sustain their livelihoods.

What do you see as the most exciting development in storytelling today?

The fact that everyone is talking about “story” these days. Even if they don’t know what they’re talking about. It means they’re ready to receive what we’re doing. They’re ready to go somewhere new. In the history of advertising and business development there has never been a better time to pitch our projects as creative storytellers. Brands are getting wise to the fact that there are better things they could be spending their marketing budgets on – and that the best way to captivate an audience is through a story. Now, it’s just a matter of which ones do we tell.

What’s your wish for the future?

That we, as a species, will live in a more emotionally intelligent way. That we’ll welcome joy into our lives. And that our work as transmedia storytellers will serve a greater purpose, allowing audiences to connect with their inner selves and see the magic in this ever-expanding world.

If you could share a book, film, album, and experience with the future what would each be?

The diary of a thirteen-year-old girl. Bad poetry and all. The search for love and identity. It’s been there since the dawn of time. And it’ll be the same story a hundred years from now. There’s something incredibly sobering (and heartwarming) when you unearth a time capsule like that.

WHAT SPARROW WILL BE DOING AT DIY DAYS

Measuring Success – new values, models and possibilities for funding

A multi-faceted creative career that’s actually sustainable? Today, creators get to tell their stories in a multitude of ways, over a variety of platforms – each with their own revenue stream. At the same time, major brands with deep pockets are looking for new, refreshing ways to engage their audiences. For the afternoon discussion, we’ll be looking at ways to collaborate with brands and agencies to create stories that are both true to the creator’s vision and champions of the bottom line.

Sparrow Hall is a transmedia storyteller and new media innovator expanding our experience with entertainment and brands through immersive storytelling. He has created multi-platform initiatives for a variety of global brands and nonprofits, including Citibank, Motorola, The State of New York and Bono’s Product Red campaign, helping to eliminate AIDS in Africa.

Hall is the creator and host of the show MORE TO THE STORY, dedicated to the craft of transmedia storytelling, and the editor-in-chief of The Silver Thread, an online journal focused on art, innovation and business development. His groundbreaking transmedia stories, Two Blue Wolves (2009) and Nightwork (2010) expand the experience we have with literary fiction through music, video, art, live performance, and web-specific content.

LINKS

www.sparrowhall.com
@sparrowhall
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sparrowhall
https://www.facebook.com/pages/SPARROW-HALL/174036195988436