Sydney-based native aged story design and management platform Othelia Technologies has expanded to the US, with former CEO of Bento Box Entertainment Scott Greenberg on board with the company as executive chairman.
Greenberg joins the company as both a strategic investor and advisor, overseeing corporate strategy and industry partnerships.
The Los Angeles headquarters will be run by Alexandra Houven, who has been appointed Chief Growth Officer for Ocelia’s product development and deployment to creative communities around the US and around the world.
Hooven previously served as director of BCL’s product strategy, where he worked with Greenberg. There, she led the development of Tubi’s Stubios platform and oversaw the product strategy for Fox’s verification tool, a blockchain protocol for AI usage rights and content authentication.
Othelia was co-founded in 2019 by CEO Kate Armstrong-Smith and Chief Technology Officer Joe Couch, and will focus on developing intelligent technologies to help human storytelling in terms of story development, refinement and scaling.
Each has a background in the arts and screen industry, Armstrong is a producer, Dramaturk and Couch are VR engineers and theatrical directors.
Othelia’s early supporters include lead investor Aliavia Ventures, a California-based venture capital firm, and producer Deanne Weir, former Sydney Film Festival chair, Screen Australia vice-chairman and Clarence Capital Partner.
The company’s flagship tool, Storykeeper, will be released in beta in Australia’s Spring/U.S. Fall. Its unique semantic model treats narrative texts as structured data. This brings story elements such as plots, characters, themes, timelines, and world rules to one platform. As stories grow in size and complexity, storykeepers are designed to track narrative connections, contradictions and revisions throughout the evolving draft.
All creative data housed on the platform is entirely owned and controlled by the user, and Othelia promises that it is not reused to train generative models.
Last year, StoryKeeper was involved with Alpha, serving as a leading studio and global streamer who has served as a collaborative design partner. The hope is to grow Ocelia into a “basic platform” with additional tools that further promote the management of creative data through the complete production lifecycle.
This is the second time Greenberg, who will also be appointed as a co-founder of the company alongside Hooven, is hoping to partner with creatives, leading the international expansion of Bentbox, by teaming up with Princess Pictures in Melbourne to launch Princess Bent Studios in 2021.
“Throughout my career, I have seen firsthand how the right systems and technology can transform efficient production without compromising creativity,” Greenberg said in a statement.
“In Ocelia, Kate and Joe have built a powerful platform to complement the human creativity, intelligence and emotions needed for storytelling and world building. Ocelia provides the infrastructure for creatives and studios to help audiences nurture, expand and protect most stories.
Armstrong-Smith and Couch added: “Everyone wants to create great stories, but despite increasingly digitalising production workflows, the creative team is still facing countless story decisions and challenges, from ideas to distribution. We are excited that storykeepers will help the industry surprise audiences with their vision. Creativity.”
Users can apply for early access to StoryKeeper beta on othelia.co.
