@Dhughesy @ Twitter, Australia well Warnabool's Funny Man on Twitter.

So the cue to get out of bed this morning was listening to the met via Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade couple - @andrewsayer + @lilylauren - schooling Nova100’s Hughesy on how to use Twitter. And after selfimposing bans on himself for MySpace first up, and limited public exposure to Facebook, @dhughesy appears to be jumping in to twitter, and doing it himself. Which is a welcome change for celebrity. Let’s see if it can last as he’s rocketed to over 100 updates + 170+ followers. Wouldn’t take much for him to grab the low hanging 140 character fruit + hit the Top 100 Aussie twitterers being covered by Shifted Pixels.

Fiction vs IRL

If we do a little Twitter celebrity segmentation - We have 2 types of users;

1. In Real Life celebrities like Hughesy, esp radio that are Twittering their life. Some tweet themselves, while a larger number utilise ghost tweeterers. For example Prime Minister Krudd’s staff appear to be tweeting for the PM a large percentage of the time, sometimes upon what appears to be quoting the PM other times it has the feel of made… So the hybrid Self/Ghost tweet is very popular for celebrities.. and the

2. Fictional characters that are drawn from popular TV shows and other media (BTW havent seen many film characters have twitter accounts, but that reflects more slow moving digital agencies and their clients - Jointly not seeing or being able to implement the opportunity) So to date (often premium cable) TV shows like Mad Men, Damages and True Blood are the most popular of the ‘made-up‘ celebrity twitterers. (along with politicians, music acts, crossover film stars involved in blah internet biz, not to mention the resurgence of hammer pants on catwalks, techcrunch startup judging + the twittersphere public timeline)

Met Via Twitter Couple @andrewsayer @lilylauren were both on Nova this morning skooling new to twitter Hughesy. Now lily is providing tweetlessons so hughesy can reply. Hopefully Holly wont ban him or that it's just a stint by Nova's digital agency!

Where the Gaps Are

TV show characters on twitter suffer from some pretty major identity crisis. When the Sookie Stackhouse character @sookiebontemps twitters for example are we getting :

A.  Sookie from the TV show at the same point of time where the TV show is at. So when there is a cliffhanger at the end of Series 1 is this where the Sookie twitterer is at…or is it…

B. Sookie from the book which consists of 7-8 titles + thus totally different relationships, points of views etc

C. Anna Paquin, The actor, who plays Sookie, could provide a more behind the scenes Sookie insight…

Mad Men which is acknowledged as prob the leader in TV show twittering while overall good/a winner, had some NQR (not quite right) dynamic in that esp Season 2 there would be a huge blowup between Don Draper and his wife Betty where they were basically estranged/brokenup/not talking.. but their twitter activities weren’t consistent.. This actually took away from the tension in between episodes as u wondered what would happen and whether Betty would get back with her husband or continue on her single pathway.. It needed to be played more as an extension of the script and characters not like a cutesy project by a digital agency.

In short, the screenwriters of the tv show need to write/guide/instruct/provide_parameters/approve the developments on twitter. No TV show has done this..  but if the script/stories were actually added to, rather than being a glib excercise in multiplier marketing… then the impact would be powerful.

It's Sookie or Anna Paquin from True Blood or is it the fictional character from the books of which there are 8. Is it Sookie that goes out with Bill or the Sookie that goes out with Eric in later books ? Or is it the actress not going past where the TV series is at ?

What Could be Done

In Australia currently (tonite is Series 2, Episode 4) the (click4latest_tweets) #Underbelly franchise as the creators call it (cast for series 2 is totally different being a prequel set 30 years earlier where some of the underworld gang wars commenced) Underbelly is the highest rating TV series Australia has seen. And series 2 appears to be much closer in quality to The Sopranos and The Wire. (Series 1 was gr8 but more a standard Criminals vs Police Law + Order/CSI type standard) It has a Life on Mars/Swingtown feel being set 1977-1985 : So we get all those great Aussie cars alot of us grew up with - Toranos, Kingwoods, the original Commodore, Falcons etc. How good would some twittering from a Painter n Docker in Richmond 1982 driving around in the Brock HSV Commodore be ?

But does Underbelly have a set of twitter accounts ? Of course not, this is Australia. So with a clean slate, let’s recommend what the shows creators could do :

- Each Underbelly : Tale of Two Cities character to have a twitter account. Within the alpha period the twitter messages should be sent to both the relevant actor (who really knows methodwise what that character would or wouldn’t say) as well as the screenwriter. It should not just be in the hand of the traditiotnal agency’s copywriter or digital agencies junior producer (how many digital agencies have decent writers in them - hardly any esp downunder….) Before beta you would be able to establish a true turn of phrase that is consistent with the character on TV. Matthew Newton’s Heroin Kingpin role for example is a kiwi, Sociopath, Charmer, Painter - who doesnt use drugs or like any of his staff to. And cross him, u will end up going for a ride with him and not returning. He also has a Sydney penthouse apartment for his mistress. Now tell me that isnt a gr8 recipe for some awesome twitters. Ch9 and Ian Law - is it just too obvious for Underbelly cast to have twitter accounts ?

- The Underbelly twitters should be scripted in accordance with the (I assume) 13-ish episode series that I guess will show over 3.5+ months. With a large cast there needs to be some top level outlining, and actual fleshing out of certain themes, and flesh out some of the character’s motivation which is hard to do with so many characters. Last week for example there was no Melbourne/Richmond scenes with Painters/Dockers and The Kane brothers. So twitter could have been used to remind the audience that there is some action brewing in Melbourne. (which is the focus of the episode this week) And again, the pathos of the characters needs to be emphasised to the extreme. Mad Men the show is extremely tense, and much is unsaid. There are some amazing lines. But not on it’s Twitter. It’s like  a bad episode of Desperate Housewives. So use twitter to go to the extreme and focus on the little things like the Kane brothers have a boxing ring, they should twitter about their training sessions. In between some of the more violent acts, which like in film do not even need to be explictly mentioned but the background acts come to the fore. U know what I mean. Any1 listening at nine ?

- Twitter isn’t just a text medium. TV shows like Underbelly should utilise ancillary media like Twitpics, behind the scenes/extended shots Video which can be dumped onto Vimeo, even Ustream after the show etc. Heck they could almost go as far as custom branding one of the Twitter air apps like Twhirl - I’m sure Loic would love to do a bus dev deal - and do an Underbelly branded twitterreader, that had all the characters automatically powering the tool with content. U could leave it open and watch the characters unfold in between the weekly episodes. This is why again a script, or at least outline would be needed so there is a narrative, and that it adds to the main story, not be inconsistent like every TV show on twitter.

U cant tell when Kanye does a post as he likes Cap lock, gets emotional and has spelling errors. But these authentic posts r the ones which make the blog authentic/compelling/real/2C the person behind the bravado of the gr8'test artist of this generation. "I am the best I tell you!"

Just my 5 Cents

As u can tell I’m pretty pumped about Twitter and how it can be used for creative projects. It’s potential for “ensemble use” for TV shows and movies (pre and post buzz) with proper scripting and involvement with the actors and screenwriters is pretty bloody exciting. Shows like Underbelly and Mad Men could really add to the storyline, flesh out characters between episodes, rather than having inconsistent cute traffic generation projects by the digital agency. So I wonder what will be the first TV show to use Twitter correctly ? Ping me etc.

It's not a TwitterJam but this is the type of traffic I could handle getting stuck in; Lambo 560s and Ford GTs - These are the creme dela creme of everyday drveable supercars. Gr8 snap by BrandonPerdeck on Flickr. The BMW M5 the best saloon in the world for years (Although with Porsche Panamera vclose that mantle is going to be under challenge, big time) The M5 looks positively boring which is pretty hard to do!