Comic Book, Podcast, TV Show & Movie Development Exploration
By: Ami Mariscal

Watch the video version of this blog post here (available with captions for the hearing impaired):

My comedy-thriller, multi-story extravaganza started as a seed in my mind when I decided to get over my nervousness and risk developing my own transmedia stories… It’s such a scary thing to do, I didn’t think I would be ready for another 20 years!

Hello storytellers, artists, and do-gooders 🙂 This blog series will explore the journey of storytelling and making art that goes into comic books, podcast series, TV shows, movies, and more. More specifically my teams and I are making stories that lift our world to another level of awesomeness – stories that are incredibly entertaining and engaging and leave people feeling inspired rather than fearful and curious rather than hateful. We’re making transmedia entertainment – a group of stories that expand the audience’s understanding as they enjoy different types of media. If you make stories or art or want to use content to lift up people this series is made for you!

Have you ever felt a pang of desire to make a movie/TV show, podcast series, comic book, or philanthropic project? Have you ever done so? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below and/or on our social media channels. We’re building this community for you and would love to understand what you want to read and learn about!

For about 20 years I’ve been an entrepreneur making art, film, and volunteering time and resources contributing to a better world. Over that time I’ve developed relationships with so many incredible people that would be great for others on a similar journey to hear from. I’m a producer and talent manager, so we’ll bring in executive producers for film, TV, and podcasting, actors and actresses, comedians, writers, visual artists, and people with compelling stories that pertain to the stories we’re developing – such as people with savant syndome or autism and people who’ve experienced mental slavery. If you want to hear from specific types of people or people with specific characteristics, let us know via our social media channels.

Making great content consistently takes everything you’ve got, then artists are supposed to go out and be entrepreneurs and sell their art and develop teams… It’s a crazy amount of skill sets – really too many for one person. So this blog, video series, and community is intended to help those engaged learn from other’s mistakes and successes. This series explores both traditional processes like the hero’s journey/Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and experimental processes like creating transmedia entertainment and using artificial intelligence to co-develop stories and audiences.

I got over my fear to do this now in a couple of ways that added up into a situation… In 2017, I started the executive MBA program at Pepperdine with hopes that afterward, I would find a wonderful, meaningful job at one of the big four studios or Participant Media. In reality, I had a hard time getting any job in marketing or creative affairs. But I also had hope…

I was doing my thesis project for X Animation – a startup animated movie development and production studio with tons of potential. It looked like I would gain the opportunity to head up the research and development arm for this budding studio… I still hope that will happen, but the timeline keeps growing – as these things tend to do. Because of this situation, I started writing a few story ideas for X Animation and just kept going – developing my own entertainment company and community which is now Lift Your World in the process.

With my audacious goals, I question myself constantly, but I know that grit is the number one predictor of success. I also know that if I had more testosterone, I probably wouldn’t question myself nearly as much – so I try to tap into that mentality, lol.

I press on for the goal in which my higher power is calling me – to make high-quality, incredibly engaging and entertaining content and experiences that lift our world and the people in it up!

In the next post, I will share more details about the stories my team and I are working on and the trials we have faced and will face. We would love to get feedback from you – our community – about what you want to hear in this series. We’d also love to know what questions you have about developing stories and/or art and using content to lift our world up so we can answer them throughout our shared journey.