This week you will be reading about transmedia, a very hot topic over the last few years. Transmedia speaks to the heart of contemporary content distribution because it describes materials that are cross-platform and usually participatory. These are two characteristics that many media theorists agree are the future norms of storytelling and content delivery: Cross-platform and participatory.
For those not familiar with the idea of a transmedia storytelling, it’s essentially content delivered through multiple media outlets. More specifically, it’s when a variety of content from a story universe or overall project are delivered through multiple media outlets.
For example, a thesis film made available through VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray is not transmedia storytelling, though there are multiple media outlets. If your thesis film was available through those outlets AND for example, there was a cell phone app with behind the scenes footage or a Twitter account featuring tweets from a fictional character in your film, that would be a variety of content from your film’s universe, delivered through multiple media outlets. Major studios utilize this idea all the time to create buzz for upcoming films.
As independent content-creators, the concept of transmedia is important because it provides us with creative and cheap ways to market our work and reach a variety of audiences. Furthermore, it can be a way to sustain an audience beyond just using social media or regularly updating a blog.
Here is a graphic for what is used for trasmedia storytelling and how:
For a look at how transmedia storytelling has been used successfully thus far by the Indie Industry, read this Variety article by Gregg Goldstein, “Indie Pics Gaining Spinoff Success,” which I sourced from Randy Finch’s blog
In addition, please read the following on transmedia storytelling. The first, dispels a few myths about the concept of transmedia while clarifying what it is and how it is used. The second article explores transmedia and its broader reaching implications about storytelling in the digital age.
Your homework this week is to continue your research on VOD or merchandise uses, but I’d like everyone to comment on this blog post briefly as well.
HOMEWORK: Comment on this post with a few sentences, in response to these transmedia readings, about your work or your current project. If you plan to utilize transmedia in some way on your thesis project, tell us about it! I look forward to reading your reactions.
AND DON’T FORGET: Blog posts are due next week. Here is the assignment.
Blog posts are due by 6pm October 28th.
Further reading (optional) on transmedia and its implications for storytelling and media theory:
The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet H. Murray
“Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” aka
“The White Paper” by Henry Jenkins http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262513623_Confronting_the_Challenges.pdf
I plan to use transmedia in my thesis project by making further information about my characters available on the project's website. Since I am making a documentary (albeit one with fantasy elements), most of the people that will appear in my film are real people who exist (or existed) outside of my film. I plan to include "where are they now" type stories where appropriate--for instance, several of the individuals who will be featured in my film have various related artistic pursuits of their own that I would like to cover via news blurbs, written profiles, and video links. I also want to include further information about Harry Wise, my main subject, as well as information about the two Sanford museums with exhibits dedicated to him, and information about the autobiography he co-wrote with local author Charlie Carlson.
ReplyDeleteFor transmedia storytelling, INTERIOR has a number of opportunities for some interesting spin-offs. For one, the most recent ending of my feature (spoiler alert) has to do with posing the events of the film as "True", opening up a world of possibilities in perpetrating this wonderful lie. Additional websites, fake Facebook pages, fake interviews, and various blogs will be created to make this "real." If anyone asks, of course I won't lie, I just love the aesthetic of "true stories"and reality shows. I also want to mount a campaign to get an interview with the "real" version of our main character, who after the events of the film, went into hiding.
ReplyDeleteI actually think transmedia storytelling is a interesting avenue to explore, but for the most part has been successful for mostly already established brands. Perhaps because it is a bit too much of a commitment for the average viewer. Still, I think the transmedia storytelling for this film would only be successful if it perpetuated a certain mystery about the project, much in the same way The Blair Witch Project did. Then again, they had a team of advertising and PR people working on that. Still, its not impossible, but quickly becoming the equivalent of making a second feature.
I've been a little slow to embrace this aspect of the modern filmmaking process, but creating another world for Testament certainly allows for a lot of extra opportunities in this area. One thing we've already been doing is trying to create a sense of the world on the film's website (testamentfilm.com), with details about the Commonwealth, the key players and photos that are evocative of that world. Further possibilities, albeit ones that I admittedly haven't looked into too much, are maps of the Commonwealth, mock ads, timelines, etc. I'm not sure how much I'll get into all of that. I'm a little old-fashioned in believing that all the elements a viewer needs can be found within the work itself, and extra add-ons risk diminishing or making too literal the content of the film. But I'm not ruling them out yet, either.
ReplyDeletePart of the plan for the Blivits website is to treat the all of the content I have acquired like it is material that might belong in a museum and I am treating the film's website like it is a museum for the the stories the Randolph's survivors. I believe the film is my perspective on the stories that were shared with me, but I also believe that the stories without my perspective are just as important. This is why I have put all 30 of the interviews that I have shot on my website in their entirety. I have also added rights free materials from the era that of the carrier. Here you might find anything from the rest of the interview that was in my film, to a training video about how to land a plane on the runway of an aircraft carrier made by the Walt Disney Company in the 50s. This is the heart of transmedia, because it expands the universe of the film and creates a way to further engage fans.
ReplyDeleteI don’t agree with some of the points in Wade Johnston’s, 7 Myths article. If anything the whole piece does a good job of illustrating that Transmedia is quite literally a buzzword that describes a trend. The trend is always motivated by artistic volition or money. This trend always follows successful intellectual properties in their post-success development. Star Wars is the ultimate example wherein a film blew up into innumerable amounts and types of additional content among different mediums. It’s not fair to say it is simply a distribution of licensed products and that’s it. Myth 1 in his article is wrong. I think he’s correct that licensed products have been produced for many years before we identified swaths of publications as transmedia but Johnston says that none of those constitute transmedia. Transmedia storytelling is literally the development of additional and sometimes tangentially shifted material in a new medium. The result is often whole universes that exist through comics, trading card games, movies, novels etc. All such universes are full of retroactive continuity, conflicting plot points and sometimes whole different universes that exist paradoxically side by side. This type of conflict can polarize fans into two actual different universes wherein each thinks the other tangent is a violation of the real and true universes. I suspect this a reason why the many worlds theory described in quantum mechanics is a popular and acceptable plot point by many sci-fi and fantasy fans. The new Star Trek movies used this. It allowed them to excuse their violations against the previously existing universe. In addition I challenge the idea that transmedia isn’t high budget. It may not cost allot of money but publishing across more than one medium is difficult and comes at a cost in some form or another. Not many people can publish in several mediums. For indies it can be daunting to tackle a core body of work.
ReplyDelete