Most independent television producers are starting to get into the cross-platform game, but how many are willing to put their own money on the line? Count Toronto’s The Nightingale Company for one.

The Nightingale Company has been producing film and television since 2000, with credits including the feature Bailey’s Billions, MOWs Chicks with Sticks and Mob Princess, and TV series ZIXX: Level One, Two, and Three. It is currently in production on The Weight, a cop series for The Movie Network and Movie Central starring Linda Hamilton and Ed Asner.

In 2004, the prodco expanded its slate into cross-platform production on its teen travel property Get Outta Town, which started as a television series but then grew with a website, a book series, and now has an in-classroom educational component in development as well.

According to Denis Coyne, who runs business development for Nightingale, its foray into multiplatform production stemmed from president Debbie Nightingale’s ‘desire to remain innovative and at the forefront of a new way of telling stories.’

‘It’s all about storytelling,’ says Nightingale. ‘Our conscious vision is to take advantage of different ways to tell stories, and to give a quality experience by building different stories that appeal to different people – all while being business savvy in a new environment.’

Therein lies the rub. Producers across the country and around the world are still searching for the magic formula for financing and generating revenue from digital storytelling, be it on the web, via mobile, or any other non-traditional distribution method.

For Nightingale Company, revenues right now are driven the same way as on television: through sponsorship and advertising. Fortunately, their projects have drawn large enough audiences that this model is working for them.

However, finding ways to make money off these projects is only part of the equation. First you have to get them made, and that means also finding ways to finance them.

Nightingale Company has made use of some public and outside private funding, including the Ontario Media Development Corporation, Telefilm Canada and the Inukshuk Fund, offered to digital projects with a learning or connectivity focus by Inukshuk Wireless, co-owned by Bell Canada and Rogers Communications.

But what sets the prodco apart from most is Nightingale’s willingness to put her money where her mouth is.

‘We believe strongly enough in multiplatform storytelling that we’re putting our own money into it,’ she says.

Nightingale found her opportunity after she met Nuno Bernardo, creator of the international smash success Sophia’s Diary. Sophia’s Diary originated in Portugal as interstitial-length online dramatic content for teens, and rapidly grew into a local phenomenon that branched out into books, magazines and radio. Regional versions were made in Germany, Spain and Brazil, but Bernardo was having trouble breaking into the English-speaking world. That is, until he met Nightingale.

When Nightingale saw the project, she realized it was exactly what she wanted to do, and after partnering with Bernardo she managed to bring Sony Pictures Television International on board. They eventually sold the idea to Bebo, a popular social networking site in the U.K., where the English version of Sophia’s Diary has met with great success.

‘At first no one was interested,’ Nightingale says. ‘We couldn’t find investors to help us put it together, so I decided to invest in it myself.’

At its launch on Bebo, Sophia’s Diary garnered five million hits in two weeks, attracting an average 1,000 user comments per day.

The enterprise was in profit even before it began production, thanks to sponsorship revenue, as the soap opera typically has five sponsors. It also features product placement, with one of the characters there for the benefit of a hair removal company. In May, the show was licensed for a second season of 64 episodes.

Following the success of Sophia’s Diary, the prodco is currently working on a number of other cross-media projects that, according to Coyne, ‘develop and repeat that success as something more complex than an interstitial online video – something that starts online and expands to other platforms.’

Along those lines, a new project called Do You Believe Me? promises to make good on this goal. Supported in part by the OMDC’s Interactive Digital Media Fund, Do You Believe Me? is a highly interactive online mystery told through short video that also includes games and audience participation. As well, a new season of Get Outta Town is in the works with strong multiplatform components attached.

It’s all part of a broader strategy to position the company as a digital leader. Adam Clare, Nightingale Company’s online properties strategist, says that ‘on the business side, we’re trying to establish ourselves as the people who can viably create professional multiplatform content on an international scale.’ 

So far, Nightingale Company has been doing all the right things to make this strategy a reality. ‘The notion of being in many media at the same time is exciting to me,’ says Nightingale. ‘That’s where the groundbreaking stuff will happen.’