Irish company Campbell Ryan Productions Ltd have been selected by Sony Pictures Television International and social networking site Bebo to produce the first UK/Irish interactive teen drama entitled ‘Sofia’s Diary’, due to start this autumn.
BAFTA-winning Irish writer Danny Stack, who penned last year’s children’s animation ‘The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers’ has written the Bebo version of ‘Sofia’s Diary’, in association with Melanie Martinezs and Marta Gomes. World wide rights to ‘Sofia’s Diary’ are held by Sony Pictures and Television International.
The move follows the success of Bebo's first interactive drama ‘Kate Modern’, which debuted this summer and attracted three million views in just eight weeks.
‘Sofia's Diary’, started life in Portugal in 2003 as an experimental web and mobile service created by Nuno Bernardo and BeActive and now claims some 200,000 visitors per month online, plus 19,000 mobile subscribers.
The interactive teen series shows in real time the day to day life of UK teenager Sofia and will include daily videos and text updates posted on her Bebo profile. The show will combine real events with fictional stories, and keep viewers attention with real-time interaction with characters, in order to help direct the storyline.
Portuguese state broadcaster RTP2 has aired three series of the show on TV and the format has since been revised via SPTI for the US, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Turkey and Vietnam.
"It's not enough for a piece of content to exist on a single medium – broadcasters, producers and writers need to consider the potential of telling multi-faceted stories using multiple media," said Bebo international president Joanna Shields. "For an audience that's spending less and less time in front of traditional media, ‘Sofia’s Diary’ presents a new form of entertainment that makes the audience an integral part of the show."
“This production is a big step in the history of the company,” said Triona Bernardo, CEO of Campbell Ryan Productions. “Our goal is to become the leading European production atelier for Cross-media content and digital storytelling.”
Campbell Ryan Productions Ltd, established in 2001, produced feature film ‘The Crooked Mile’ which was the first Irish / Jersey Channel Islands co-production and the first feature outside of North America to win the Tribeca First Look Award. The company has since produced programmes for TG4, TV3 Ireland & RTE and sold programmes to ARTE France, YLE Finland and SBS Australia. Since 2006 the company is expanding its activities, producing content to new platforms with an extended cross-media approach.
