Hazel Grian

Hazel Grian, from Bury, Lancashire, previously worked as a writer for the webseries KateModern. This involved her meeting with the team of writers and planning where the story would go in the coming months, then hammering out the details for each week and then each day. Not only did they write out the story and the scripts for the Flash video clips on Bebo; they also wrote out the daily interactivity between the characters and the fans on Bebo.

Hazel considered KateModern an "ideal project" for her because it allowed her to use all the different types of skills she's picked up over the years working in film, animation, radio, music video and theater as a director, producer, writer and performer. She's been an actress, particularly in comedy, since she was a teenager and has worked as a stand up comedian. For many years, she was a "guerrilla street theatre" performer for The Natural Theater Company. This involved traveling all over the world and performing as characters in the street while interacting with people face-to-face. Working in such a manner enabled her to develop extreme team-working discipline, intense improvisational skills, and a lot of nerve. Regarding this experience, Hazel says that "if I learnt two things... they are firstly that presented in the right way genuine truthful characters work all over the world no matter what language you speak. Secondly... there are two types of people in the world, those who know how to play and those who don’t."

Hazel is now the director of her own production company, Licoricefilm.com, which showcases all of the short films, ads, and music videos that she's made. The company has also launched Licorice-media.com to showcase their gaming projects. In early 2007, Licorice produced an Alternate Reality Game called Meigeist, which worked similarly to KateModern in that it utilized websites, videos, live events, and other forms of interactivity to tell its story. The company is now making a brand new game using Hewlett Packard GPS technology. They are calling it an "Augmented Reality Game" because it is played outdoors using headphones and a PDA connected to a satellite.

As a director, writer and actor who loves cinema, radio, live performance and games, Hazel says that she's really excited to be involved in cross-media projects like KateModern. She believes that they're the "entertainment forms of the future."

When asked to compare KateModern to other forms of media Hazel said: "Interactive shows like KateModern are more like theatre than TV because the immediate interaction  between the audience and the show is very important. With an interactive show the audience are more directly and actively involved than they are with a TV drama."