TWITCH – FILM – SCREENWRITING
TWITCH
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It was like day 4 when the SWAT team kicked the door in. That’s when the pranks started – they wanted to see it live on JustinTV. They came in guns drawn, we were going, ‘Don’t shoot us please.’
Justin Kan
THE IDEA
Chris Nelson and Demi Taylor were commissioned to tell the story of the emergence and subsequent impact of Twitch in a 25 minute documentary that blends a high octane VO with astute and perceptive talking heads.
Directed by Peter Hamblin
Produced by Hamblin Imagery x Red Bull Media House
THE RESULT
Twitch documentary premiered as S02 E01of the award winning The Ripple Effect Series to a global audience on Red Bull TV written by Chris Nelson and Demi Taylor.
THE APPROACH
In June 2011, Justin Kan and Emmett Shear launched Twitch, a website that would become the platform for eSports and live streaming, driving a revolution in how consumers use the Internet.
We spoke with Twitch founders Justin and Emmett to learn how a series of pivots and an attempt at 24 life streaming sparked the idea for Twitch – the platform that turned computer games into eSports, driving an industry that now out performs both music and movies. We also integrated the tales of key players involved in the journey, posing the questions that would bring the story to life.
Bringing together a fast paced and insightful voice-over with multiple talking heads, we created a script and guided the narrative from paper edit to completion.
Gideon Yu came and said, ‘Your business is fucked. It had grown and grown and grown and then it was flat and anything that’s flat on the Internet is fucked, because the Internet is growing… so you’re shrinking in terms of market share.’ That gave us the kick in the pants we needed.
Justin Kan