CONTENT / THE YELLOW TENNIS BALL

CONCEPT
A worldwide collective transmedia storytelling project.
This is the story of a single yellow tennis ball that had always been on a tennis court and never seen anything else. That was her prison. She couldn't imagine life outside the court, but she had heard there was a world to visit out there. And that was her dream. One day, after a tennis player's error, the ball found herself outside the court, all alone. She was happy, but without the help of a person, she was unable to move. Then someone noticed her. A man began to play with her, kicking her along the grass. The tennis ball was so happy. Suddenly, the man throws the tennis ball with great strength. And, her story around the world begins... Help the yellow tennis ball to make her dream true! Bring her around the world and tell your story. This is a worldwide collective storytelling project. We hope will involve many along the journey...

COLLECTIVE GOAL
Make the yellow tennis ball dream true. Let her discover the world and never stop her journey.

CREATIVITY AND STORIES
The project has the goal to switch on creativity and imagination. Helping the ball to discover the world must encourage us to develop the capability to observe and to look at things and the world from a different point of view. What show to the ball? What let her discover about our places? It will be a puzzle of emotions, glimpse, little secrets and surreal, funny, romantic, melancholic, playful and meditative situations. The ball is the continuity element that creates a link between places and stories.

A BOOST TO CREATIVITY
Put the ball in a strange place from which discover a new point of view or a secret angle. The ball bounce off, is small, is round, is colored, is funny, smell good, is woolly, is alone, is out of context. She could be used as a bowling ball or used by a juggler. She has her own personality with different shades. Can be a friend to share with a drink at the bar or a stranger. She makes people play together or makes fall in love two unknown person. Use her appearance for funny and interesting perspective view. Put her on the top of a skyscraper or replace sun with her. If she is in a dangerous situation, save her, so she can continues her journey...

CHARACTER
The tennis ball is like a kid that would love to discover the world. She is curious but at the same time coward. She doesn’t recognize dangerous situations but she is attracted by beautiful thing. She need to be guided and protected but she want to be free to bounce off everywhere. Sometimes she is a bit crazy and hysterical because she had been unjustly hit several times on the tennis court and she doesn’t know why! Anyway she is funny and good. If she hurts somebody is because of her thoughtlessness and not because of her malice. If she see some tennis ball in a sport shop windows, she cry!

RULES
YOU CAN
1) Develop ball’s personality
2) Play with the ball and your imagination. Create non sense situations or a surreal world.
3) Use the ball as the element that switch on an introspective emotion, thoughts, story.
4) Give the ball touristic info or show her secrets about a city.
So, totally freedom in creativity but be polite.

YOU CAN NOT
Show any brand of the ball.
Insert the ball in post production.

PROPS
Get a yellow tennis ball!:-) Must be a little bit used

WHERE
Each story must be contextualized and developed within a specific place/area that must have a recognizable identity.
1) district (ex. The village in NYC)
2) monument (ex. Sforzesco Castle in Milan)
3) zone (ex. Hide park in London, Alexander Platz in Berlin, Zabriskie Point, etc.).

WHEN
This is a never ending stories. So you can create your stories whenever you want.

TITLE & #
THE YELLOW TENNIS BALL STORY
/ COUNTRY / CITY / AREA
Author - episode (optional)
#theyellowtennisball

PLOT STRUCTURE
Plot develops in 2 ways:
1) main plot - horizontal line, station by station and city by city
2) sub-plots - vertical line, in each station everyone may tells his own story in "social stories area".
For example the main plot goes from the Village of New York to The Castle of Milan while in the same place/station (the village) develops different sub-plots.

Horizontal plot is developed only by video (the ball will always enter in the shot from the left side and go away from the right one). Following the ball we will pass from one place to another.
Vertical plots (or sub-plot) are developed by single photo, single video or better, Steller stories (An App that allows you to create stories mixing photos, text and videos).

STORYTELLER TYPOLOGY
Publisher storyteller - who makes the main video about horizontal plot through cities and station by station. He becomes responsible of the station of his own video. He can access to the station backend in order to menage content and info. He has also to check social stories content and has the power to eliminate inappropriate contents.
Social stories storyteller - everybody that participate to the project uploading his own story in the social stories area.

WHAT: VIDEO & SOCIAL STORIES
Main video of each station
- Video must begin with the ball entering in the shot from the left side and must finish with somebody that throws it away from the right side of the shot.
- In the middle the publisher has to develop 2/3 short actions. We need a time lapse between each actions in order to make credible the fact that other stories are developed between the arrival of the ball and its exit. So it’s like the story in the video take place in one day long or even more.
- Each action begin with the catch of the ball from the grass and end with the ball that goes again on the grass. Only the last action show somebody that throws the ball away on the right.
- Video duration: No more then 1’30”.
- Video can be shot with any video recording camera (reflex, smartphone, compact, etc.)
- Quality requirements: shot must be done in a professional way without blurred and defocused images and paying attention to the image composition and editing.
- Music soundtrack: it’s publisher responsibility obtain music right of use (paying, getting from a free library or from a musician friend).
- Numbers of video: Publisher can decide to create more then one video but it must be shown alone.

Social stories
In Social stories area storytellers users can upload several stories. Stories must be related to the place of the station. Each story must begin with the ball catch from the grass (or anywhere in the area) and end with the ball left on the grass/place. A story can be a picture, a video or a Steller story. Possibly in english.
See example below.