Bernie Su

[music] Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder and director of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome back to the FOSS podcast. It's hard enough to try to tell stories in a brand new medium, but it's near impossible to do so in a way that's so successful and compelling that it attracts millions of viewers, critical praise, and prestigious awards. Today's guest, Bernie Sue, has done this repeatedly. Bernie's a great storyteller, but he's also an innovator who can figure out how a new platform like YouTube, Twitch, or Instagram can be used to tell stories that couldn't be told anywhere else. He understands how the raw elements of a story can be translated across different forms and how the unique ways that an audience relates to each medium can be used for maximum narrative effect. This deep understanding of story and technology have led him to create multiple groundbreaking works from his Emmy award-winning Pride and Prejudice adaptation on YouTube, the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, to Artificial, the first ever scripted and interactive show to be distributed on Twitch, for which he won another Emmy, a Peabody, and a Webby. Bernie is that rare breed of storyteller who's not afraid to take risks and push boundaries. And because of it, I couldn't be more thrilled to welcome him to this episode of the Future of Storytelling podcast. So, Bernie, I'm so excited to have you on the FOSS podcast. Welcome, man. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to finally be here. I first learned about you from this amazing project that you did years ago called the Lizzie Bennett Diaries. Tell me a little bit about that project. Yeah, absolutely. The Lizzie Bennett Diaries was a YouTube adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. And we told it as a YouTube series. And a YouTube series meaning that it felt like it was told that as a YouTuber perspective, it was very groundbreaking for its time. We're now approaching the 10-year anniversary of the project, which is kind of scary to me. Crazy. And yeah, I think it was pretty historical. Obviously, you've heard about it. A lot of people so cite me today. It has a great legacy. The first Prime Time Emmy win for a YouTube show, back in 2013. Awesome. It spawned a whole bunch of different versions of people telling books on YouTube. So, very proud of it. And I would fairly say it's the methods and media that it uses a little bit dated now. So, if you were to study it and look back at it, you kind of go, "Oh, that's kind of old-style stuff that people have already due today." But we were the first in many areas. And we were the kind of standard-setters in many areas too. We weren't the first in everything. Very, very excited and honored to have done that project. I just thought of it as something that was so incredibly creative at the time. Obviously, with my background in publishing, I love that you've turned to a classic for your source inspiration of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejus. But that you then completely sort of retold that in the way that was appropriate to a medium that young people or many people were using at the time, right? These were video blogs that were being posted up by Lizzy. And then other of the characters were also having their own social media accounts. And so the story you'd have to find by visiting these different platforms and media and sort of piecing it together in the same way one might as they would spend time in the social media world of the day. Yeah, absolutely. So, the first thing is that we were very indigenous to YouTube. So, we were using the format of the video blogger or the video influencer at the time to tell the stories. Just like how, you know, when you adapt a book to a movie, you have to change some things. You have to do some things differently. When you adapt a book and do a comic book, you have to change some things. You do something differently. So, we were doing the same thing. We're making very, very deliberate choices in the format as a YouTuber. If you know the story of Pride and Prejus, it very much follows Lizzy Bennett's story, her story. It's like pretty much 99% of the book is told from her point of view or narrating her journey. It's like right behind her. And what we did is like, well, that works really well for a YouTuber, right? So, YouTuber is kind of one person's journey, one person's perspective. So, we did that very, very deliberately and said that this is what we're going to do. We're actually going to almost like overly personify from her point of view, right? But, as you mentioned, there are other characters who were having narratives play out in different formats. YouTube, as you said, the sister Lydia had a YouTube channel and then other places like Twitter and Tumblr and Lookbook, which is kind of like the Instagram of its day, had their own singular character point of views of their narratives, going parallel and storytelling. And that kind of expanded the universe event. Like, oh, what is this person seeing from this event's point of view? Okay, so from there, you moved on to, it wasn't exactly a sequel because the novel wasn't a sequel to to Pride and Prejus, but you went on to do Emma approved. And there was some innovation there, right? Another Jane Austen novel and also using the video blog kind of format, but there were some new changes there as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that series? Approaching Emma as a production, I looked at two things. One, I looked at, okay, what, this character is inherently very different from Lizzie. Like, like so much that like, no Austen fan who knows both characters will ever say that these two leads would ever be friends. Like, they would respect each other, I think, but I don't think they would be hanging out and and and and and being buddies. Okay, so what we did is we turned it turned Emma into like a brand and showcased it from a sense of not just parallel story and like all the characters have from points of views. We kind of showed took this one character and put that character, a fictional character on all these other platforms. So it was a little different. So what I mean by that, so we made a modern Emma, for example, a fashion blogger. It's like Instagram, where you see the very pretty pictures of yourself, Instagram is now a thing. So it's very first to do this. For us, when we designed Emma approved, I specifically wanted to design it where the trans media was generating revenue. And because I pushed her into fashion, because I'd built these fashion brand partnerships where if the more I put the fashion around the show, out in the internet, whatever, on her fashion blog, on her Instagram, on her blah, blah, blah, I could showcase these clothing brands. I could partner with these clothing brands and I can then generate revenue from a fictional character driving back into it. Now, the show itself does not do this. As in like, if you watch the show, she looks great in her clothes and that's it. She doesn't stop the show to sell you clothes. And so what was revolutionary for us at the time, and I still think it is revolutionary in the way, is that Emma is an fictional character. It is transparent that she is fictional. She is playing Emma Woodhouse. She is a modern adaptation of a fictional character, but we've turned her into an enterprise in this case. So I don't know if these numbers are accurate because of memory. I don't have them ready ready apparent. But like, I think though the view count revenue was lower because Emma was just not as successful as a viewer number, the revenue while it was running was actually higher, because we had deliberately built in these mechanisms so that we could monetize the transmedia. Again, for that, you won another Emmy. So you were quite a role there. And then that led to artificial. I will just add a little bit of timeline here. Emma approved finished and won its Emmy in 2015. Artificial didn't start until 2018. So there's a couple of your gaps here. And the reason for that gap, I want to explain it because I think it's relevant to a lot of your listeners is that after you win two Emmys, you're like, oh, okay, what's next? How do I level up and what does level up mean? So at the time, you think level up is let's do big TV shows, let's do movies, let's do traditional development. And I did go through that path. So the couple pilots, MTV, YouTube, Red, and try to do traditional. And I just found it personally, it's not for me. This is in hindsight now years of experience of doing this. I sold a couple of pilots. One that I that was sold multiple times where I got copied to write multiple times, which was nice. Not, you know, saying that was a bad thing. It just didn't feel fulfilling when you're spending years on something and you don't get to see anything. You don't get to share that art in that story with the public. All you're sharing with are like four executives and a couple of people on your teams, right? So that I just didn't, I just couldn't operate like that, especially coming off of a Lizzie Benetire's, which were practically just wilded in existence by just determination and grinding. These are not high budget shows. So I pivoted back out of that. Okay, but let me ask you, so why was that frustrating? And just because it didn't actually make it to air or were you not as enthralled by telling stories in a more traditional way, it wasn't as much of a challenge or maybe just not as much to your sweet spot of gifts? A couple things. So one, I think, and I hope you speak for a lot of your listeners here about storytellers, right? If you're telling a story and no one actually listens to the story, does it matter? Doesn't matter how good, you know, how good the story was or how bad the story was. Sorry, so I'll give you an example of this. The pilot is sold to MTV. So, you know, this is public, by the way, it's in the trade. You can just look it up. So I sold that pilot to MTV and I wrote four drafts of that thing. And at the end of the fourth draft, third draft, fourth draft, whatever. MTV stopped doing shows. But MTV just stopped doing, and TV doesn't do TV dramas anymore, right? You know? And so I'm like, no, I'll be fair. I don't think I wrote it was my best writing for the MTV ones, all right? I'll be fair. I'm not saying that I'm the greatest at this. I think it was actually royalty mediocre as a pilot in hindsight. And but it didn't matter. Like the point of it is it didn't matter. I could have written the greatest pilot in history or I could have written the worst pilot in history. And I would have had the exact same result because of things out of my control, right? And so going into artificial was the, all right. What's the platform that's, you know, YouTube is now, you know, 2018, that it's been five years since I've done the Lizzy Bandari's for YouTube. And like what is the new platform? And so I identified Twitch as this platform at the time, Twitch had been acquired by Amazon. It was growing. It had all this new technology. It's live. It's really was really hot at the time. And I saw that and I went, okay, how do I use this model? Now I've never done live shows before. Twitch is a long form format, by the way. Like you would have to have longer things rather than Lizzy Bandari's. I'm approved finding it episodes. Now I'm going to do like half hour hour episodes. So back to kind of a traditional format, the lower length rather. And what does that look like? Like what does a Twitch series look like? And this is the same thing with a YouTube Lizzy Bandari's. You just don't take a pilot that just, you know, a failed pilot from another platform and move it on the Twitch. Twitch is this very unique thing. Twitch is owned by Amazon. If you wanted to switch a regular pilot to Twitch, they would tell you to go to Amazon. So figuring out, learning the platform to Twitch, a very different platform from YouTube and designing artificial, which was a, which is a sci-fi, interactive, live, scripted, serialized show. And the audience can change the story in real time. Incredibly challenging and incredibly crazy. Quick, fast forward, we did this. We've done four seasons of it. Okay, so we've done four seasons of it. It won the Emmy for Twitch. So now it's the first Twitch Emmy. Prime time. Okay, I don't know if they've won any of those. And that was in 2019. So it was after the second season that we won. We won the Emmy for that one. And every season has been more innovative than the previous. And I can stand by that statement. And so I can also stand by the statement that too. And I have a happy view of what someone was to prove me wrong here. Artificial season four, because it's the most innovative one, is the most innovative scripted television show ever made. Now, doesn't mean it won't be Pete tomorrow. (laughs) On recording at the state, there is no scripted serialized television show. That's fiction, okay? Scripted serialized. That is more innovative than artificial season four. And before that, it was Artificial season three than Artificial season two. So that our listeners understand, share some of those innovations and help people understand why they're appropriate to Twitch. Well, how come you came up with these innovations? I'm gonna run through each season. And I'll preface this by saying that at every point in each season, the show could only be done in its form on Twitch. And you're like, what does that mean? I'm saying that YouTube does live, Facebook does live, Twitter does live, okay? Instagram does live, but it's not just the live that makes it special or different. It's the Twitchness, let's talk about that. Twitch is a Twitch.tv, okay? It is a live streaming platform. That's what's known as. It's known mostly for people watching video games. You watch people play video games on the platform. And on the platform, you can chat with them in the chat box. But you can also do things in that chat box. You can do polls, you can do tipping, you can do a lot of technology, which I'll get into here that we implement in our show into a scripted sci-fi show. Season one, the show is live. The episodes are an hour long. There are polls during the episode that you can, the audience could vote on and it can change different elements of the narrative, okay? Very lightly. Now to be fair, they're not really big changes. They're not huge character changes. I'm going to be very, very cognizant of that that we do not get to this consequential part really until season two, okay? Right? Now, the polls are consequential because they would be acknowledged and they would be discussed and they would change the dialogue when the scenes were happening while the show was happening live. So you had actors who didn't know what exactly they were saying in scenes until we told them that the poll results were this and that and so forth, okay? You could also ask questions to the actors, the characters of the show and they would answer them in character. At our fastest points, I believe, I think at the reporter from the LA Times timed us on this. She timed a question being asked in chat and us answering an in character on stream in two minutes. So that has to go through a system where you write the question. We identify this question as an answerable question for our characters. We then have to write the answer to the question and we have to send that to the actors from the perform. So that'll happen in two minutes at one time. - Really changes the nature of a writer's room. - When is acting in real time and response to the viewer? - Absolutely, absolutely. - So that's for sure. Season two, so this is where it starts glowing crazier, okay? We systematically think of all the polls as consequential, right? Like they have to be massively consequential. They can't just be a coffee beer poll. Like hey, you want coffee, you want beer? That's not consequential. They have to change massively, change the narrative some way with it immediately or down the road. What's our relationship going to be? Am I going to like you or hate you? Okay, these are big, big consequential changes. So that became our ethos of the audience is consequential in artificial. We add an element to that poll where you as a viewer can buy votes with Twitch bits. Twitch bits is the currency on Twitch. You spend cash, you get the bits. This is all, every Shimmer does this. It's not just us, but we make the poll where you could buy bits or buy votes with bits. So inherently, someone who wants to change the poll can drop in a lot of votes to shift it one way or the other. Hey, should I kiss you or should I punch you? Oh, now we're talking. Now that's drama, right? Those polls need to be consequential so that the audience cares about the poll. Otherwise they're not gonna care. Okay, so let's just talk about that for a second, though, because again, I think that there's a real desire now for people to have agency in their stories, right? Because it's possible, right? I think we wasn't possible when stories were fixed and the only option was to pass the consume them. But you're creating a format, a story that uses a platform that has the options to give people real agency in the direction of the narrative or the development of the characters. And so now they care, but they also get the opportunity to invest themselves in almost the co-creation of those stories. One thing that I was asked this by the Academy, when I presented this technology, the TV Academy, and they asked like, where's the supply to television? It drives live viewing. You wanna save your character? You wanna kill your character? You gotta be there and watch it, okay? And the hilarious thing is that no matter what the results, the creators are absolved from the results because they could go, not my fault. This is what you wanted. Cool, done. I may have wanted something else, but that's not the choice here. It's what you guys wanted and that's what plays out. So that's the big innovation there. So season three was the biggest crazy thing there is that that was during the pandemic. But Twitch, do their credit was like, hey, we want you to go forward with this because we need programming during the pandemic anyway. Can you make the show remote? It was like a live scripted sci-fi show remote. All right, let's figure out how to do this. And we did it. So season three artificial, I had not met half the cast even when the season ended. We did the entire show remote. The second thing we did was we also added a, we partnered with this company called LifeScore which does adaptive music. LifeScore, to their credit, to give the figure to them. They built a system where they would listen and read chat, Twitch chat in real time and determine what the chat was feeling and then pivot the music in real time to the chat. So if the chat was going yelling, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, the system would read that as the chat is excited and then switch the music intensity and have it go up intensity as an example in real time. Oh, and then the last thing I say, Twitch requested this, and I did the credit, I thought this was a really good idea. And this idea where could you have Twitch chat create characters and design scenes and potentially cast characters, okay? And I'm like, that's insane. Okay. Twitch chat is going to create characters. I was like, I mean, I get, why don't we, let's try it, let's try it. Let's go, right? So Twitch chat created characters in season three of artificial. They created three characters, I believe, draw a quarter over the course of the season, two of which are still in the show in season four. So they're not like throw away characters, who were just there for a scene or a scene, these are like living, breathing, consequential, dramatic characters. One of the actors we used for this, Dante Bosco, Rufio, Hooked, Hooked and so forth. So he came on the show, and basically, I pitched the silence at the concept of it, where like, hey, Dante, I don't know who you're gonna play. He's like, what are you gonna buy that? And I said, I'm gonna have Twitch determine who you play. And he's like, oh, interesting. A couple of questions that come to mind, Bernie. First of all, you know, incredible in your innovation and willingness to continue to push the envelope and try new things and incorporate technology into your storytelling. But I have to believe that the question I'm about to ask is one that many of our listeners would have, which is at a certain point, are these too many gimmicks? Is a certain point, is this too much trying to play with the new shiny object and at the expense of the quality of the storytelling? Yeah, absolutely. It can be. Yeah, I'll take the criticism potentially, if that's criticism. No, it was a question, but those of you who actually want to look at Twitch as a portrayal to the platform and working with Twitch corporate, again, they're not Amazon. Right? They're, they're, Amazon's Amazon. Amazon is owns Twitch. So if you want to do a regular TV show, do you just do a pitched Amazon? So for Twitch, when, when they look at a new season of artificial each time, as I say, it's more innovative each time, that's what they're looking for. They're, they almost like don't care about the story. The green light stipulations for Twitch artificial, we're not, hey, do you have a really good story of your pitch in the season four, or season three? But they don't ask that question. They're asking, what's more innovative this time? What Twitch technology are you showcasing this time? Right. One of the things that I see so strongly in your work is that you are constantly finding ways for the people formerly known as the audience to have a more active role. How successful is that for the storytelling, for the, for the success of the piece? Are you feeling that when you give some role to the audience, or formerly known as the audience, is it messing with the story? Is it making terrible decisions? And the whole thing goes downwards. Would you, traditionally, as a, as a writer or creator, you'd be thinking, I know the best way to craft this story. If I give up some control, am I, am I really compromising the quality of the piece? What's your take on that? Every storyteller is different. I'll say that. So I know that there are the, I don't know, Stephen King, but the way I've met Stephen King writing is that he goes, I have a great idea. I'm going to go to my cabin in the woods for six months. I'm going to turn in 2,000 pages later, and you're like, it's going to be the amazing thing. Amazing. Good for you. No feedback. Right? Yeah. Yeah. GTFL, right? Like, it's my story, right? So we respect that. I am not that personally as a storyteller. I just, I worked in teams and feedback and, and, I think, it's fair to say I have a lot of technology in my background. As a collective audience of technology and smartphones and stuff, this is what we're seeing. This is what I'm seeing. And this is just where I'm playing yet. So I'm going to be very, very cognizant in all my work in building the audience in. Now I'll go first and I'll like, you know, craft and write an outline and maybe write a good pilot and those so forth. Because I got to go first, establish. But building the audience in, yeah, I don't see, I don't see me going away from that anytime soon. Well, this is a perfect segue into Web 3. So tell us a little bit about what you're working on now. Yeah, absolutely. So right now I am the chief content officer of this company called Meta Theory, which is a Web 3, I call it a Web 3 franchise company, like interactive gaming animation and stories, right? The best way I can describe this is if you were going to build a Star-Five franchise today versus a 20, 40 years ago with Star Wars in 1977, they just made a movie. And then kind of the more recent ones are more like, hey, that's right, a book first, that's right, comic book first, let's do something that doesn't cost $200 million to make. That's what you would do. But in a Web 3 world, I would say if you have the resources to at least do the technology wise, you would build it as a Web 3 NFT. And that's what we're doing. And why? One is the ability to build audience in. And it can always wise the ability to raise money very quickly and the proof interest in the IP with direct dollars, right? So if you do a comic book, you have to write the comic book, design the comic book, and then publish a comic book, it's a big lift. And a lot of time that has to go by before that sees, right? So for an NFT, though, there are successful NFTs and there are unsuccessful NFTs. With Web 3, something that a lot of people don't know about, artists Web 3, the royalties is tied into the contract, meaning that if I sell you the NFT, and then you sell the NFTs to someone else, I actually get a eye as the original creator, will get a royalty from the transaction. If you buy a van Gogh today, van Gogh's the state doesn't get any royalty. That's a problem, okay? Van Gogh's the state, theoretically, should definitely get a royalty. And now it's all tied into the Web 3 contracts and so forth. So it's very transparent in that sense. - The thing I'd love to explore here is, what are the opportunities for people who buy into this world? So I buy a character and can I go and develop a storyline around that character? Can I go make a comic book or an album? - Yeah, so the one you probably heard of, Bordecait Yacht Club, okay? Not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if you own the Bordecait Yacht Club, are the NFT, when the single NFT that you own, you have full rights on it. So like a teetus has one of them, and so let's put their NFT on a shoe, okay? They have full rights, cool, awesome. So they could do whatever they want with it. They could animate it, they could do whatever they want, okay? And they can sell it. They can sell for profit. And then that person would then own all the rights to it. So that's one thing. What I'm seeing a lot of NFT spaces, at least what the people are trying to do is trying to provide utility to the token, the token being the NFT, the T and the NFT is token, by the way, just to be clear when I say token, okay? So what does holding the token give you? Bordecait Yacht Club, as example in the name, says Yacht Club, so you're part of a Yacht Club, if you own the token, theoretically, okay? You're part of the membership. You have abilities to make decisions and what the group does, governance, stuff like that. That's something that's very common in a lot of these tokens. For us, going to dustpakers, this is where I feel that I'm doing my thing and trying to push, okay? The 10,000 breakers, the dustpakers that are NFTs right now, to me are 10,000 potential characters in the world of dustpakers. So if there's a Star Wars, these are 10,000 potential jet eyes in the Star Wars universe, okay? Do I know what all 10,000 characters are by name, by Balala, the everything, can you create all of them? Absolutely not. The innovative idea here is that the idea that the character, the characters are owned by the community, super fascinating, right? Especially if you get to the point where the actor playing the character owns the NFT, then it's a whole different game, you know? Because no actor I know, who's a part of a show, owns the character of that show. Even though they're most associated with that character, and that character could do very little things without them being involved. You can't do much with Luke Skywalker without Mark Hamill. Theoretically, I know we have all the CG stuff now. But you know what I mean there, right? There's very little you can do with that character with you don't have Mark Hamill's signature or something. Hey, use my likeness to Balala, Balala. So I find that interesting. There's a lot of areas that I've not answered yet here 'cause I don't know the answer. And we don't know the answer. And we'll find out together in the next few years hopefully. Bernie, when you describe yourself to other people, what term do you use? How do you talk about what you do? 'Cause it is so layered and multifaceted. There's different answers to this question, okay? So I go, if I'm at a party, and people ask, "Hey, Bernie, what do you do?" I answer very simply, "I'm a writer/director/producer." Okay? If people understand that, people understand that. Like it doesn't lead to this whole like, "Wait, what? (laughs) Situation." And have to go into a massive conversation about that. When I'm talking to someone like yourself or my contemporaries, I actually like to use story designer. And because I think that what I do is just, there's a lot more to it than just what's on the page or what's on the screen. There's a lot of like design into it, like the grafting and how does the faction system on artificial work? How does the economy on our officials channel points just to work? You know, like these are things that, like no screenwriter is thinking about that. They're not going, what's the economics of the viewer that they're gonna have to go through in order to have a good experience here in the story? Like these are things they're thinking about. So I like you story designer. And I like design from the standpoint of like, I mean, I grew up in Cupertino, so I do have this kind of thing. Like the apple kind of ethos of design experiences. So I like that. Tell you. - All I can say is I am a huge fan. And as a huge fan, I look forward to collaborating with you on all your future story worlds and story adventures. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you for spending the time with us today. This was super fun and can't wait to go out there and get my dust breaker. (laughing) But thank you. This has been an incredible honor. I've been a big fan of what you guys have been doing at Fost for years. Now it's sad to, when the pandemic happened, where we couldn't be all mean in person. So hopefully one day we could do that. Still, hey, at the core of this, I'm a storyteller first. Like I talk a lot about technology and economics and innovation and so forth. But at the core, storytelling is what I do. And that's what I continue to do. And just that, I think the awareness in other areas is important in what I do. Well, great. I look forward to seeing you soon. And thank you again for being here. And we'll speak soon. You're welcome. And thank you for the honor. This was amazing. [MUSIC PLAYING] My sincere thanks to Bernie Sue for joining me on Today's show. You can check out all of Bernie's projects that we discussed by visiting the link in this episode's description, where you'll also find a full transcript of our conversation. Thank you for listening to the Fost podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, I'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a review. Every single one helps. Fost also produces a monthly newsletter that's filled with valuable information for storytellers of all kinds. As well as recommendations for cool immersive stories, you can experience in person and online. You can subscribe for free by visiting the link in this episode's description or on our website at fost.org. The Fost podcast is produced by Meltzer Media in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts and Leisure. I hope we'll see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]