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Forget the Rules is an Australian short form episodic comedy drama cited by many as the first scripted drama in the world to simultaneously broadcast over broadband, mobile phones and TV. It is a good example of the push model of Crossmedia. It was noted as one of the more successful models of an often failed interactive format that included audience input into the script and submitting visual elements as part of a tight weekly production cycle. It was conceived and piloted in Australia during 2004, and on-air October 2005 to January 2006.

Forget the Rules ran on Channel V (Foxtel), Hutchison 3 mobile phones and on the web and consisted of 9 minutes of drama produced every week featuring audience driven story directions. 3-minute episodes were broadcast on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday. Audiences voted on a choice of 3 possible story directions following the Wednesday episode. The 117 minutes of production (39 x 3min episodes) represents the equivalent of 5 x 30min episodes on FTA TV.

[edit] Production

The scripts were written on Thursday based on the most popular audience vote. Pre-production and rehearsal on Friday. All Nine minutes of the show was shot on Saturday and was broadcast each Monday-Wednesday throughout the 13-week season. Because of the rapid turnaround stories were highly topical and responsive to genuine audience input and was limited to an M rating. Forget the Rules was designed to appeal to story literate young audiences through interactivity. Jim, the creator and executive producer is cited as saying young audiences need “more story per minute” and emphasised the importance of fast paced stories with rapid developments, particularly for short form content.

“We didn’t think when we were starting this out that it was going to be the first – we didn’t even think it was going to be on TV, we weren’t even sure about mobile, but that’s the way it’s all come out.” and often talks about the complexity of putting the deals together, attracting investment and coming up with the right business models.

Forget the Rules was created by Jim Shomos and he devised the series format and produced FTR with his partners Paul Baiguerra and Peter Dixon from Catfish. Forget the Rules series two is planned for pre-production sometime in late 2007.

[edit] External links

• Forget the Rules main site
• Laboratory for Advanced Media Production Podcast
• Australian Film Commission Details
• The Age Newspaper Article Dial M for Mobile Movies
• Cross-MediaEntertainment on launch of FTR