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Property:
THE FUMPPITS Development Page:
Logline:
THE FUMPPITS are taking over the Earth and there is nothing that you can do about it! Well, sort of… they’re trying. More like Three Stooges meets Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Gilligan’s Island.
Synopsis:
The Fumppits (2D-3D Animation) Summary
The Fumppits storyline follows the adventures of a group of 1950s aliens who return to Earth from black hole, determined to complete their mission and dominate Earthlings. Their crash landing finds them in a junkyard—somewhere between suburbia and the wilderness—where they begin to mix it up with the modern-day, suburban locals. While they’ve come to conquer, they begin to realize how hopelessly behind they are. Their plans to dominate Earthlings are constantly derailed by stupidity, misunderstanding, circumstances, and miscommunication.
Our hope is to introduce The Fumppits into mobile and new media markets for the 14-26+ audience. The Fumppits as a show and product concept—if we were comparing to current day TV concepts—would be in competition with The Simpsons, Third Rock from the Sun, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and Despicable Me. It’s a show designed for the adult audience, with family overlap implications for marketing.
Property Type:
This is a situation comedy that happens between worlds, changing worlds that have both direct and indirect influence on each other - space, the dump, and suburbia. The collisions between the inside and the outsiders. Playing the nostalgia card. Westerns are big - the 1950s are big. Keeping up with modern life in and around suburbia and the city. The Fumppits are a frustrated version of us trying to keep up with technology and the changing world.
Character Line-Up
Project Content:
Pitch • Pilot script 22- 23 Pages • Bible 13 episodes - outlines - beginning, middle, and end. • Animation and character bios • Our network - Planned pitches • Toy prototypes • DVD presentation • 2-3 year sustain plan• Storyboards and High Concepts
Development:
We are currently in the process of putting together a pitch package for potential investors and corporate partners. This package includes: • a series of animated shorts, approx 1 minute long each • 12-page comic book • t-shirts • Fumppit toy figure with blister pack and sound module • fully rigged CGI characters • series of interchangeable HD background plates • 2D assets (photoshop and vectorized) • cinema 4D • Fumppit bible The goal of the pitch package is to give a potential investor/corporate partner a taste of what our team can accomplish creatively. The package also includes elements that can be used in other formats, such as promotional pieces (ie, posters and other promotional artwork, t-shirts, etc.), along with ebooks, etc.
Revenue Streams:
Identifying retail products • Identify brand product positioning • What Features and Benefits of the product (what's in it for the retailer and consumer) • Frame your brand around other known brands ( Smurfs, Despicable Me, Angry Birds) • Determine retail action you desire • Identify target audience • Justify shelf space • Determine competition direct and indirect • How will we support the brand • Determine the reason why Buyers will Buy • What types of product support there will be and the concept behind the brand? • Stay within the system of your brand • Good branding; Todd McFarlane and Chris Grimly • We will be personally connected to our brand and work closely with retailer issues. • We will eliminate the middleman - work directly with retailers and consumers. • Work within a small to mid-sized manufacturing process • Personally design and manage packaging. App/Game development • Interactive shorts • Digital ebooks/comic books • Interactive mobile entertainment (ie, leaving a message for someone in "Fumppitese") • Licensing and branding of merchandise (ie, t-shirts, toys, plush animals, etc.) Who are our primary customers for Distribution? We are pursuing two main customers: the end consumer, and businesses. Our primary value with end consumers is entertainment, with the goal of pushing them to ancillary, purchasable Fumppit products (ie, licensed merchandise, digital comic books, apps/games, etc). With businesses, our primary value is to come alongside their goals and objectives and provide them with a creative, and entertaining platform to talk about their product and/or service.
Product Bible:
We are in the process of completing a "bible" for the Fumppits, which will showcase how the storylines within the show will work, summarize the plot lines of a potential series, as well as provide a platform for the stories being told. This bible will also be the source of all character descriptions, create the environment of the Fumppit worlds, and help set the rules for character interaction (ie, human characters are always a little weirder than the aliens). This bible essentially serves as a sales document for the show, helping a potential investor/corporate partner with understanding the direction of the show. We are proposing a prime-time, adult cartoon situation comedy that is distributed via mobile and new media markets for audiences ages 14-26+.
Concept Placement & Comparison:
The Fumppits as a show and product concept, if it were for TV audiences, would be in competition with the Simpsons, Third Rock from the Sun, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and Despicable Me. It is an adult audience, a prime-time show that has family overlap implications for marketing. This is Simpsons for the 21st-century, mobile media audience. Audience Research The Fumppits brand plays to both male and female audiences.*** Current trending shows some edging out in the science fiction brands, with science fiction leading the way in the US box office since as early as 1991*. Many trend followers believe that it will hit its peak in the next 5-7 years.
** These worldwide trends toward science fiction, environment/ futuristic eco-design, and science coupled with global interest and a good-natured poking of fun at nostalgic Americana make the Fumppits a good bet for a new prime-time style, animated situation comedy, as a global release in new media. With the possibility of actually producing lower-cost animation in China, The Fumppits could be a very strong industry in both the U.S. and abroad for the 14-26+-year-old age range.
Background Concepts
How do we intend to reach the market(s) Social Media outlets (including YouTube):
Our intention here is to use these outlets as a means to seed the market with the Fumppit, brand, story, and characters. Mobile broadcast: We have a budding relationship with a Transmedia company that will distribute our content through various mobile channels. Our hope is that this distribution will help develop a popular audience that will sustain and grow the Fumppit brand.
We are also looking at new alternative distribution networks through Netflix, Fox, and new media channels like Mashable. Business clients: Developing solid relationships with business clients will help us cultivate a following. While our work will provide added creative value to these other brands, our ultimate goal is to create a recognizable Fumppit brand, to help grow a popular audience. Toy and merchandising, as well as digital comic books and print art for fan-based audiences. Begin relationships with trending platforms, such as Kickstarter, Comic Fury, and Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy for introducing audiences to specific aspects of the project. Comic-Con, Wonder-Con, APE shows, and conventions. Sending representatives and fans to these large international shows and trade conferences to gain audience exposure. Specialty transmedia publishers and distributor relationships.
There are two audiences that we plan to pursue. The first is the end consumer. Our goal is to build a popular audience around the Fumppits as an entity itself. Initially, our plan is to seed the market with Fumppit shorts to help end consumers familiarize themselves with the characters, concept of the show, etc. This would help pave the way for additional content pipelines including, but not limited to:
• App/Game development
• Interactive shorts
• Digital ebooks/comic books
• Interactive mobile entertainment (ie, leaving a message for someone in "Fumppitese")
• Licensing and branding of merchandise (ie, tshirts, toys, plush animals, etc.)
The second audience is businesses.
To reiterate, our primary goal is to create a popular audience around the Fumppits, however, we strongly believe that we can build relationships with corporate entities to where our content can help enhance their brand with a creative and entertaining mindset. We feel that there may be significant opportunities with mobile companies, who are looking for creative avenues to introduce their product to the marketplace. With any of these channels, we feel there are also significant opportunities to introducing the Fumppits at comic events such as Comic-Con.
Our top competitors:
Cosmic Toast Studios (cosmictoaststudios.com): located in Burbank, California, is a full-service animation and production studio skilled in all aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production. CTS houses a fully equipped facility and staff all under one roof so that every step of the production process can be completed within the studio, including animation (both 2D and CGI), writing, storyboarding, animatics, shooting (CTS has its own green screen facility), editing, sound design, music scoring, and song and voiceover recording.Their IP is currently airing in over 176 countries worldwide, and as for our list of clients, we have worked with notable companies such as Hasbro, Vin Di Bona Productions, Skechers, Clorox, Zynga, MGA Entertainment, Andy Licht, Maker Studios, Moonscoop, Fishbowl Media, Steve Waterman, Kickstart Entertainment, and Jane Seymour. Rovio (rovio.com): Rovio Entertainment, founded in 2003, is an industry-changing entertainment media company and creator of the globally successful Angry Birds franchise. Angry Birds, a casual puzzle game, became an international phenomenon within a few months of its release and is now the number one paid app of all time. Rovio has launched eight blockbuster games so far for different platforms: Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Friends, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies and Angry Birds Star Wars.Following this success in mobile gaming, Angry Birds has expanded rapidly in entertainment, publishing, and licensing to become a beloved international brand.
Bento Box Entertainment (bentoboxent.com): Bento Box Entertainment is a leading producer of primetime animation for broadcast and cable networks, along with home entertainment and multimedia platforms. While working on a variety of special projects, Bento Box has four series currently in production: the Emmy-nominated “Bob’s Burgers,” “Brickleberry” (executive produced by Daniel Tosh), “Out There” (soon to be seen on IFC), and “The Awesomes,” co-written by SNL’s Seth Meyers and to be airing on Hulu this summer.
Livewire Mobile (livewiremobile.com): Livewire Mobile, Inc. is a mobile internet powerhouse with a comprehensive end-to-end managed service solutions for network operators, consumer device manufacturers, media companies and content providers. With a broad suite of mobile entertainment services, Livewire Mobile transforms everyday mobile communication into a fun, exciting and personal experience for consumers and a profitable opportunity for our customers. Sprite Animation (spriteanimation.com): Sprite Animation Studios is a boutique CGI animation house internationally known for its unique, funky style, creativity, and high-quality work that has been featured in feature films, trade shows, and television series, as well as at festival venues such as Annecy, the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater, Ottawa, and Pictoplasma. In addition to our service work, Sprite specializes in the creation and development of exciting new properties for television, film, and gaming, as well as mobile and online content. Animalada (animalada.com): ANIMALADA produces world-class computer graphics animation. They specialize in the development and production of high-impact commercials with memorable animated characters. They also develop, produce, and license their own properties for entertainment and advertainment purposes. Whenever possible, ANIMALADA teams up with customers and business partners to create appealing and engaging stories that align perfectly with the customer's target, message, and goals.
Ships & Props
How are we different?
We are not a service bureau, like most of our competition. Instead, think of Walt Disney in 1929. He was a small studio producer who was interested in inventing, developing, and releasing characters and products from his own studio. He licensed out the use of characters and ideas to other businesses, but he invented and owned them internally. Other popular studios started out the same way.
Jim Henson in the 1960's made exactly the same type of move. Although he created strategic alliances with businesses interested in selling products or creating industrial commercials, Henson invented and controlled the creative content. He did the creative work for them and they licensed the use of his work. Neither Disney nor Henson sought work as a service bureau until much later in their studio development. We take the position that we have an enormous amount of talent and ideas in our small team. It is a team that has brought large projects to fruition and market in many other forms.
We can generate marketable products that can be leveraged via trans-media conduits to create many different kinds of revenue streams, without devolving into a service house or rental studio. This approach allows us to focus on every aspect of bringing a product into the market, allowing incredibly high-quality control, as well as utilizing US labor in non-traditional ways that cut down costs without going overseas. Furthermore, working in collaboration with strategic distribution and marketing alliances, we can maximize our product offerings to audiences, while cutting down and often cutting out the middle man - such as licensing houses, etc. By focusing on content that we develop and own with our strategic partners, as well as working diligently on developing diverse distribution models and sales streams for revenue, we believe that we can maximize our profit margin by as much as an additional 20-30% compared to traditional models while maintaining quality.
Marketing:
The Fumppits specifically targets a broad part of our culture - our frustration with ever-changing technology and the way that screws up our lives. This strategy gives us enormously fertile ground for recurring show themes, as well as providing a focused marketing and licensing campaign that can attract the broadest possible audience. The Fumppits is a Simpson-esqe comedy that comes from the conflict between our impotence with new technology and our longing for comfort in simpler bygone days, which our frustrations often elicit. Every level of the Fumppits product line is informed by the juxtaposition of technological impotence and nostalgia: from the feel and look of carefully crafted artwork that is a modern homage to golden age animation studios of UPA, Hanna Barbera, and Warner Brothers, to the focus of humor and storylines that hit home for the everyday, modern person’s frustrations with constantly morphing and changing technology. Once again, current brand trends show a new general proclivity toward interest in science fiction, aliens, and futuristic fantasy. This is a general trend movement away from the vampires and monsters of the early 2000s. There is also a current rise in the popularity of animation for prime-time audiences, with the Simpsons in their final season, 2013. Fox Studios is currently opening a new animation/ film branch focused on science fiction-based animation.
Select Bibliography :
*(see: Genre trends at the US box office, 1991 to 2010; Author: Redfern, Nick, Source: European Journal of American Culture, Volume 31, Number 2, 31 July 2012 , pp. 145-167(23); Publisher: Intellect) **(see also: Science Fiction Studies > Vol. 39, No. 3, November 2012 > What Do We Mean When We Say “Global Science Fiction”? http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.5621 sciefictstud.39.3.0478?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101863188421) ***(see also, Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A Critical Study, By Carlen LaVigne, 2013; http://books.google.com/books hl=en&lr=&id=1gOPZ_AQl5gC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=marketing+trends+toward+scienc +fiction&ots=GqYCYblRgs&sig=a9Gb4JFlN08c4JP8KfWzus7004k#v=onepage&q&f=false) This is becoming particularly true in Asian markets, where the trends toward science fiction are directly linked to interests in science in general. A trend that is highly valued in current Chinese culture. (see: Science Fiction Studies > Vol. 40, No. 1, March 2013 > Science Fiction for … the Nation: Tales of the Moon Colony and the Birth of Modern Chinese Fiction http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.5621/sciefictstud.40.1.0033 uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101863188421) In Asia, this trend toward science and science fiction permeates all ages, finding it’s roots in positive attitudes toward science and science fiction in school. That love of science grows through adulthood. International Journal of Science Education, Part B: Communication and Public Engagement Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012; An Investigation of Taiwan's Public Attitudes Toward Science and Technology; http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21548455.2011.613643 The trend toward science and science fiction is not only occurring in the US and Asia, but Eastern and Western Europe, as well. We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity, By Anindita Banerjee