This programme ran from 2008-2010 at the Pervasive Media Studio. For more projects like these please visit the Studio website.

Projects 2009

Company Profile

U-Soap Media was a Bristol based production company set up to ride the leading edge of change in the broadcast industry. It was founded by Rik Lander and Jon Dovey who were partnered by South West based film producer Greg Browning.

Journal Authors

Rik Lander

Viral Spiral

by U-Soap Media

U-Soap Media researched a number of live cross-media game show formats, in which studio contestants competed with members of the TV audience to solve clues that had been hidden around the Internet.

There was a gap in the active way we used laptops and mobile devices (sending messages, buying, exploring) and our passive television consumption. In gaps lie opportunities and the demand was apparent. U-Soap developed three new TV formats - one of which was taken up by Leopard Films.

Journal Entries

Journal Entries

Never Mind the Interactivity

Thu 16 Apr, 2009

For the first month or so I've been coming up with format ideas aimed at different demographics, various levels of interactivity for home audiences and dealing with things like TV's aversion to liveness. The more I have thought about the task I've set myself, the more I realise how far out most of these ideas seem. TV is hardly doing interactivity and I'm constantly tempted to make the formats less interactive and more 'televisual'. So for our testing regime were concentrating on individual games rather than the bigger picture. We're going to reverse engineer this one.

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Interactive TV Shows

Thu 26 Mar, 2009

Our Sandbox project is to create a TV gameshow format which audiences can play along with on their laptops - kind of like the pub quiz you're allowed to cheat in. Sandbox provide 'industry advisors' and I had my first meeting with one this week. Gavin Henderson is from RDF media with particular interest in cross media production. I outlined some of our ideas so far to him and got some very valuable feedback from a TV perspective. I'm starting from the point of view of wanting to create a new form - a collision of TV and web or passive viewing and active participation.

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Viral Spiral... the unravelling begins

Mon 9 Mar, 2009

Or are we ravelling? I had my first day in the Pervasive Media studio and it is going to be a great environment to work in. So far all I've done is create a logo, always a good place to start - no idea what viral spiral is, but do have a logo. Jon, Greg and I have our first blue skies session this week.

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