This business plan was developed from 1993 to the beginning of 1995. Reading it in 2006, components of this exist and may not sound so revolutionary. But in the early to mid 90’s most peoples’ eyes crossed when Prudence Fenton and I gave our pitch. We worked on this with Peter Hirshberg, Pam Spivak and Elise Bauer.
MISSION STATEMENT
This proposal contemplates the formation of an entity to engage in the development, production, marketing and distribution of “willisville”. willisville, the creative property, is a story driven interface into which multiple platforms, mediums and technologies can be poured. Our mission is to make willisville an integral part of the popular culture of the technologically enhanced new world and to develop this world into a franchise that can be leveraged to maximize the creative and financial opportunities.
WHAT IS WILLISVILLE?
willisville is itself a location with many rich characters interacting in a variety of locations, both physical and virtual, structured to be both its own little world and a community in which anyone can participate. It is designed to be a full entertainment, shopping and communications environment within a story. People entering willisville will be able to interact both with the characters who reside in willisville and with each other in ways that will allow them not only to be part of an ongoing story, play games, shop, communicate and It explore databases in cyberspace, but also to tap into their own creativity and enjoy themselves in ways they never have before.
willieville is organic, conceived from its inception to be interactive and expand with the growth of technology. Via a web of multiple technologies, platforms and mediums, the willisville interface will push its fictional characters out into the real world and other virtual worlds so that a sense is achieved of ongoing life and immediacy – full involvement of the user in the characters’ lives and full involvement of the characters in the user’s life. willisville will be a living, breathing community that will exist 24 hours a day. It will provide an open palette to create new mediums, platforms and art forms. A virtual test lab for technology it is also a working model of creativity and its impact on mass pop culture. willisville is an all encompassing interactive universe and the edge of that universe should never be reached.
CREATIVE CONCEPT
Eager to express themselves in every facet of their lives, the decidedly colorful residents of willisville moved there to create their own world. An experimental cul-de-sac featuring middle class fantasy homes on one side of the street, stores owned and operated by the residents on the other, and the world’s most sophisticated fiber optic network lodged in the middle, willisville looks like The World of Tomorrow meets Graceland by way of Tijuana.
Caught up in the spirit of the upcoming interactive universe and the promise of connecting people to each other as they have never been before, the residents set out to make willisville the brightest little pit stop on the information superhighway and the entertainment capital of the new global village, i.e. the most popular destination in the world. If life is a party with infinite possibilities, willisville is the world’s longest buffet table. Premiere party throwers, taste and style meisters intent on putting their own personal stamp on the Digital Age, these artisans of creativity offer themselves as a lifestyle for the 21st Century. Using easy access to information, knowledge and creativity as the new symbols of power, the residents see themselves and all who come to visit as a giant networked brain and the model community of the next century. Built around visions of a near perfect future, willisville is the dawn of a new civilization.
OPPORTUNITIES AND LINES OF BUSINESS
The scope of the entity would include the creation, development and management of the various platforms of willisville. willisville’s goal is to become an industry, to generate active participation in both the physical and virtual worlds that utilizes on-line real-time interaction, a wide range of entertainment activities via interactive as well as traditional media, on-line as well as historical means of commerce. willisville can be an industry. generating significant revenues for both willisville Inc. and its partners.
In order to create broad based public awareness of willisville, the initial approach is a three-prong roll out a complete on-line universe, CD ROMS (both as support for the on-line and as stand-alone entertainment), and links to and from linear television. These platforms already exist, as do their audiences. They will support, promote and complement each other. This greatly enhances the chances of succeeding in all of them.
In addition to the above, willisville offers innumerable opportunities for exploitation in other new and traditional media, merchandising, product placement and sales and all realms of communication. Subsequent and/or simultaneous venture activities would include interactive television, music. film and advertising (as well as their linear counterparts), location based entertainment, product sales (via on-line, catalog, infomercials, etc., in which t the residents of willisville are the salespeople and/or endorse other products that meet their standards of style, convenience and innovation) video games, a broad range of print media, merchandising and commercial tie-up opportunities, licensing arrangements for the rights to use live, digital and analog representations of the characters, in addition to software developed in connection with all of the foregoing.
THE TEAMS AND THE TECHNOLOGY
The initial stage of willisville will be to put in place the technical. management and creative teams necessary to develop and implement all of the various avenues of exploitation and to build that entity in response to changing technologies, the vagaries of regulatory and other policy making, and rapidly changing competitive and consumer marketplaces.
Willis and Fenton will actively collaborate with and coordinate a full range of creative teams addressing everything from writing, directing, scoring, production designing, animating and filming willisville in both its live as well as virtual states. A team will also address the creation of virtual actors and coordination with their live counterparts. Willis and Fenton will oversee the creative integration of the on-line, disk based and television platforms.
The technical teams will cover a wide range of areas involved in the development of a new era in on-line services and CD storytelling and game play as well as the integration of those two forms with each other and traditional linear media. As willisville will develop across a broad base of platforms, both linear and interactive, the entire system must be built to interrelate and internetwork with all networks. The expansion must be managed from the beginning. Technology impacts the environment and the environment will evolve as the technology grows.
The technical teams will cover a wide range of areas involved in the development of a new era in on-line services and CD storytelling and game play as well as the integration of those two forms with each other and traditional linear media. As willisville will develop across a broad base of platforms, both linear and interactive, the entire system must be built to interrelate and internetwork with all networks. The expansion must be managed from the beginning. Technology impacts the environment and the environment will evolve as the technology grows.
Software tools which will be used include but are not limited to interface design. rules based software, relational databases, speech synthesis, overall system integration and control, audio tools, MIDI interface, text parsing tools, object oriented grammar, graphics development tools including image compositing and manipulation applications, real time graphics rendering, motion capture, data input from all film, video and computer sources, as well as other enabling technologies, cross platform CD Rom development, transactional processing, and transport protocol.
RATIONALE
willisville offers unique creative and business opportunities in that it does not come laden with perspectives and limitations of properties developed for 20th Century one way technologies which may restrict both the strategy and tactics of willisville as a “new vision”. It is virtually impossible to develop an entirely new mass medium of entertainment and communication – surely the promise of merging technologies capable of two way information flow with entertainment developed specifically for that challenge – carrying the baggage and expectations of previously developed and exploited ideas. willisville has no preexisting negatives. Rather, it allows great flexibility to pursue new directions as opportunities present themselves in a rapidly changing business and technological environment.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
– willisville is multi platform entertainment with broadband networking and disk based capabilities. Cross promotable stand alones tie into, feed off of and promote each other.
-willisville is a living, breathing community that expands not only before the public’s eyes but with their help into every viable interactive and linear platform, as well as all those yet to be created.
– In order to create broad based public awareness of our new world we want to take a multi path approach via a four-prong rollout – television. Online universe with disk based support, stand alone CD Rom(s) and music videos. The roll-out platforms are understandable, the resources exist to create them, a large portion of the technology exists to develop them, and a wide audience and marketplace is already established for any and all of them. The fact that the platforms are internally additive from a promotional standpoint mutually increases our chance of succeeding in any of them.
– The mushrooming of commerce is inherent in the willisville plot – nineteen fictional characters seize the spirit and spectacular technical innovations of the Digital Age to thrust their culture out into the consciousness of the real world. Among their goals is to establish willisville as the brightest little pit stop on the information superhighway and entertainment capital of the new global village, i.e. the most popular destination in the world.
-The willisville residents are the world’s first characters developed to be exploited first run in an interactive environment. They are entertainers, smart agents, salesmen, product endorsers, teachers, technology guinea pigs and model citizens of the 21st Century. They are real’ people in this new networked world with massive licensing and merchandising potential. willisville offers opportunities for multiple tv series, cable channels, advertising, books, theme parks, more specialized location based entertainment sites, infomercials, all interactive platforms the possibilities are infinite. The objective is to become a cultural signpost in the new world.
Our immediate goal is to partner with the technical and financial resources to develop the creative entity further.
