Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies, not to be confused with traditional cross-platform media franchises, sequels, or adaptations.
Henry Jenkins, author of the seminal book Convergence Culture, warns that this is an emerging subject and different authors have different understandings of it. He warns that the term "transmedia" per se means "across media" and may be applied to superficially similar, but different phenomena. In particular, the concept of "transmedia storytelling" should not to be confused with traditional cross-platform, "transmedia" media franchises, or "media mixes". The transmedia storytelling exists in the form of transmedia narratives. Kalinov and Markova define the term as: "a multimedia product which communicates its narrative through a multitude of integrated media channels".
From a production standpoint, transmedia storytelling involves creating content that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. In order to achieve this engagement, a transmedia production will develop stories across multiple forms of media in order to deliver unique pieces of content in each channel. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together (overtly or subtly), but are in narrative synchronization with each other. In his latest book, Nuno Bernardo shows TV and film producers how to use transmedia to build an entertainment brand that can conquer global audiences, readers and users in a myriad of platforms.
Video Transmedia storytelling
History
The origins of the approach to disperse the content across various commodities and media is traced to the Japanese marketing strategy of media mix, originated in early 1960s. Some, however, have traced the roots to Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) written by Samuel Richardson and even suggest that they go back further to the roots of earliest literature.
By the 1970s and 1980s, pioneering artists of telematic art made experiments of collective narrative, mixing the ancestors of today's networks, and produced both visions and critical theories of what became transmedia.
With the advent of mainstream Internet usage in the 1990s, numerous creators began to explore ways to tell stories and entertain audiences using new platforms. Many early examples took the form of what was to become known as alternate reality games (ARG), which took place in real-time with a mass audience. The term ARG was itself coined in 2001 to describe The Beast, a marketing campaign for the film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Some early works include, but are not limited to:
- Ong's Hat was most likely started sometime around 1993, and also included most of the aforementioned design principles. Ong's Hat also incorporated elements of legend tripping into its design, as chronicled in a scholarly work titled Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat. ISBN 978-1628460612
- Dreadnot, an early example of an ARG-style project, was published on sfgate.com in 1996. This ARG included working voice mail phone numbers for characters, clues in the source code, character email addresses, off-site websites, and real locations in San Francisco.
- FreakyLinks (link to archived project at end of article), 2000
- The Blair Witch Project - feature film, 1999
- On Line - feature film, 2001
- The Beast - game, 2001
- Majestic - video game, 2001
The Macaulay Honors College, part of CUNY, New York, established a New Media Lab focusing on Transmedia Storytelling and content, under the direction of Robert Small.
Maps Transmedia storytelling
Current state
As of 2011, both traditional and dedicated transmedia entertainment studios are beginning to embrace transmedia storytelling techniques in search of a new storytelling form that is native to networked digital content and communication channels. Developing technologies have enabled projects to now begin to include single-player experiences in addition to real-time multiplayer experiences such as alternate reality games. While the list of current and recent projects is too extensive to list here, some notable examples of transmedia storytelling include:
- Slide, a native transmedia experience for Fox8 TV in Australia.
- Skins, a transmedia extension of the Channel 4/Company Pictures TV show by Somethin' Else in the UK.
- Halo, a video game series created by Bungie and currently developed by 343 Industries that has evolved to include novels, comic books, audio plays, live action web series and an upcoming live action television series from Showtime.
- Cathy's Book, a transmedia novel by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman.
- Year Zero, a transmedia project by Nine Inch Nails.
- ReGenesis, a Canadian television series with a real-time transmedia (alternate reality game) extension that took place in sync with the episodes as they aired.
- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a web series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Twitter and Tumblr accounts.
- Pandemic, an independent film and event created by Lance Weiler.
- JFH: Justice For Hire from Creative Impulse Entertainment, a martial arts-themed transmedia comic book series created by Jan Lucanus that integrates live action films, a web series, animation, and music to tell stories across a universe timeline.
- MyMusic, transmedia sitcom by Fine Brothers Productions as part of YouTube's original channels initiative, one of the more robust transmedia experiences.
- Clockwork Watch, an independent project, about a non-colonial Steampunk world, told across graphic novels, live events, online and a feature film created by Yomi Ayeni.
- ZED.TO, a crowdfunded Canadian ARG that simulates the rise and fall of a futuristic Toronto "lifestyle biotech" corporation.
- Defiance, a television show and video game paired to tell connective and separate stories.
- The HIVE Transmedia Project, by Daniel D.W. is a sci-fi novella series incorporating QR codes within the text to multimedia and a simulated reality story.
- Ingress by Niantic Labs in 2012.
- Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu is an ongoing webcomic since 2013. The narrative is supplemented with a Twitter account of the main protagonist.
- Endgame: Proving Ground, a web, phone, book, movie & live paid actor campaign of transreality gaming by Niantic Labs beginning in 2014.
- Simon Wilkinson has created several transmedia shows, including Beyond the Bright Black Edge of Nowhere (2014) and The Cube (2015), which both tell the story of a mass disappearance in 1950s America. After seeing the performance, audience members investigate the disappearance online through a series of websites.
- The Man with the Jazz Guitar creates the portrait of jazz musician Ken Sykora, across music, film, radio, print and digital.
In 'Digital State: How the internet is changing everything' (2013), author Simon Pont argues that transmedia storytelling is a theory that is at last starting to find its practical stride. Pont cites Ridley Scott's Alien-prequel Prometheus (2012), and specifically the three viral films produced by 20th Century Fox as part of the advance global marketing campaign, as vivid executional examples of transmedia storytelling theory.
Where Robert McKee (Story, 1998) argues that back-story is a waste of time (because if the back-story is so good then this is surely the story worth telling), Pont proposes that storytellers like J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have "pretty much lined McKee's argument up against a wall and shot it". Pont goes on to argue, "Parallel and non-linear timelines, 'multi-verses', grand narratives with crazy-rich character arcs, 'back-story' has become 'more story', the opportunity to add Byzantine layers of meaning and depth. You don't create a story world by stripping away, but by layering".
In 'Ball & Flint: transmedia in 90 seconds' (2013), Pont likens transmedia story-telling to "throwing a piece of flint at an old stone wall" and "delighting in the ricochet", making story something you can now "be hit by and cut by".
Educational uses
Transmedia storytelling mimics daily life, making it a strong constructivist pedagogical tool for educational uses. The level of engagement offered by transmedia storytelling is essential to the Me or Millennial Generation as no single media satisfy their curiosity or lifestyle. Schools have been slow to adopt the emergence of this new culture which shifts the spotlight of literacy from being one of individual expression to one of community. Whether we see it or not, Jenkins notes that we live in a transmedia, globally connected world in which we use multiple platforms to connect and communicate. Using Transmedia storytelling as a pedagogical tool, wherein students interact with platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tumblr permits students' viewpoints, experiences, and resources to establish a shared collective intelligence that is enticing, engaging, and immersive, catching the millennial learners' attention, ensuring learners a stake in the experience. Transmedia storytelling offers the educator the ability to lead students to think critically, identify with the material and gain knowledge, offering valuable framework for the constructivist educational pedagogy that supports student centered learning. Transmedia storytelling allows for the interpretation of the story from the individual perspective, making way for personalized meaning-making.
In 'The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy' (2012), Pont explains, "Transmedia thinking anchors itself to the world of story, the ambition principally being one of how you can 'bring story to life' in different places, in a non-linear fashion. The marketing of motion pictures is the most obvious application, where transmedia maintains that there's a 'bigger picture opportunity' to punting a big picture. Transmedia theory, applied to a movie launch, is all about promoting the story, not the 'due date of a movie starring...' In an industry built on the conventions of 'stars sell movies', where their name sits above the film's title, transmedia thinking is anti-conventional and boldly purist."
Transmedia storytelling is also used by companies like Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark to train employees and managers.Gronstedt and Ramos argues: "At the core of every training challenge is a good story waiting to be told. More and more, these stories are being told across a multitude of devices and screens, where they can reach learners more widely, and engage with them more deeply."
References
Further reading
- Azemard, Ghislaine (2013), 100 notions for crossmedia and transmedia, éditions de l'immatériel, p. 228
- Bernardo, Nuno (2014) Transmedia 2.0: How to Create an Entertainment Brand Using a Transmedial Approach to Storytelling
- Bernardo, Nuno (2011) The Producer's Guide to Transmedia: How to Develop, Fund, Produce and Distribute Compelling Stories Across Multiple Platforms
- Phillips, Andrea. (2012) Transmedia Storytelling
- Pont, Simon (2013) "Digital State: How the Internet is Changing Everything". Kogan Page. ISBN 978-0749468859
- Pont, Simon (2012) "The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy". Kogan Page. ISBN 978-0749466213
- Pratten, Robert (2015) Getting Started in Transmedia Storytelling: A Practical Guide for Beginners 2nd Edition
Source of article : Wikipedia
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