Transmedia storytelling

In Transmedia storytelling, content becomes invasive and permeates fully the audience's lifestyle. A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme. One of the first documented uses of the term was by Marsha Kinder in her 1993 book "Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". She called them “commercial transmedia superstructures”, and goes on to say “transmedia intertextuality works to position consumers as powerful players while disavowing commercial manipulation.”

Ten years later MIT media studies professor Henry Jenkins used the term in his MIT Technology Review article, "Transmedia Storytelling," where he reflected Kinder's assumption, via analysis of mass-market entertainment, that the coordinated use of storytelling across platforms can make the characters more compelling. Under the mentorship of Kinder, Stephen Dinehart, used transmedia as a production and development mode. Creating the term transmedial play and the VUP (viewer/user/player) for his 2006 MFA thesis paper "Transmedial Play" where he relates this model to Richard Wagner and his concept of "total artwork" ("Gesamtkunstwerk"); an artwork where the spectator becomes actor/player. Dinehart goes on to suggest that unlike crossmedia projects of the past, in which IP crosses the media divide for purely product line diversification (merchandising), true transmedia is designed with intent in predproduction, rather than simply rehashing IP in post for maximum exploitation and ROI.

In his 2006 book Convergence Culture, Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling as storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer/user/player's understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, it attempts to create "entrypoints" through which consumers can become immersed in a story world. The aim of this immersion is decentralized authorship, or transmedial play as defined by Dinehart.

There are two prominent factors driving the growth of transmedia storytelling. The first is the proliferation of new media forms like video games, the internet, and mobile platforms and the demand for content in each. The second is an economic incentive for media creators to lower production costs by sharing assets. Transmedia storytelling often uses the principle of hypersociability. Transmedia storytelling is also sometimes referred to as multi modality, referring to using multi-modal representations to convey a complex story through numerous media sources.

Transmedia Storyteller Jeff Gomez defines it as "the art of conveying messages themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well planned use of multiple media platforms." Jeff furthers this explanation stating the following: "Most of us flow naturally from one medium to the next. Unfortunately most of our content doesn’t. Instead the stories are repurposed and repeated. They do not extend the franchise nor do they build brand equity. With transmedia, each part of story is unique and plays to the strengths of the medium. The result is a new kind of narrative where story flows across each platform forming a rich narrative tapestry that manifests in an array of products and multiple revenue streams. The audience is both validated and celebrated for participating in the story world through the medium of their choice."

Examples

Journey of Jin

"Journey of Jin" is a transmedial play experience centered on mobile media, location-based entertainment, a comic book, and other web-based media. A creation of Stephen Dinehart, this simple transmedia system is intended to invite users into a virtual world with multiple points of entry. Journey of Jin offers a grand adventure in bite size consumables. Unlike properties like Star Wars, He-Man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which lend themselves to transmedia, JOJ was created with the intention of being transmedia universe, and not proliferated into other media formats for simply for merchandising purposes but for enriching the storytelling.

The Matrix

In Convergence Culture Jenkins cites the Matrix as an example of transmedia storytelling. Jenkins explains that, "key bits of information are conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games. There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe."

Batman Begins

Another example that Jenkins cites is from the 2005 movie Batman Begins. DC Comics published comic books before the release of the movie to give further background information for the movie; most of the background information was to give further details about Bruce Wayne's past. This example shows how Warner Brothers, owner of DC Comics, used multimedia sources to convey information about a single story.

Sorority Forever

In 2008, Warner Brothers partnered with Big Fantastic to create Sorority Forever, the first original web series for The WB. In addition to the episodes, a fully interactive metaverse was created and produced to provide an immersive, transmedia experience, with almost limitless entry points into the story. Viewers could interact with characters in real time using MySpace, Twitter, Stickam, and other internet platforms, as well as discover additional story and character elements.

Battlestar Galactica

[Galactica] had webisodes released between seasons provided context and motive for decisions characters. For example, Face of the Enemy, which came on the eve of the final season went back in time to refocus on the character of Felix Gaeta, who had been a secondary figure for most of the run, showing the audience the events from his point of view and revealing previously unknown aspects of his motivation, just in time to set us up for the character to play a much more central role in the series's final year.

Economic incentives

Media conglomerates have an economic incentive to increase their audience base; transmedia storytelling might address this. Jenkins cites Marvel Comics as a company that has tried to increase their fan base by using transmedia storytelling to target different groups. He writes, "...for example, Marvel produces comic books which tell the Spider-Man story in ways that they think will be particularly attractive to female (a romance comic, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) or younger readers (coloring book or picture book versions of the classic comic book stories )." Jenkins follows by saying, "Transmedia storytelling practices may expand the potential market for a property by creating different points of entry for different audience segments."

Applications for social benefit

Nonprofit organizations, social activists and artists using media for social change have an incentive to engage their audiences and stakeholders; transmedia storytelling might address, this, as well. Lina Srivastava devised the phrase "transmedia activism" to describe the possibilities transmedia storytelling holds for social change initiatives. She explains, "...in a crowded field with limited funding or distribution channels, it takes significant resources and expertise to first, create audience awareness and, second, inspire/prescribe action. There is a real and distinct opportunity for activists to influence action and raise cause awareness by distributing content through a multiplatform approach, particularly in which people participate in media creation."

Additional References

• Transmedial Play Defined
• New Media Literacies Website (Project NML)
• Transmedia Developer Starlightrunner
• Transmedia Developer NarrWare
• Convergence Culture Consortium (C3)
• Futures of Entertainment 4

External links

• Technology Review Article about Transmedia Storytelling
• Transmedia Storytelling Defined on Project New Media Literacy
• Henry Jenkins Blog: Transmedia Storytelling 101
• Storygeek Blog Archive: "Heroes, Transmedia Storytelling and a twist"
• "Transmedia Activism"
• Embracing the Multi-Platform Storytelling Universe
• Transmedia Lab This blog is a way of initiating and consolidating thoughts about Transmedia, announcing events, being at the crossroads of different transmedia initiatives
• The Narrative Design Exploratorium An e-publication featuring interviews with transmedia creators and theory
• Public radio host reading from Wikipedia Examples of transmedia content scraping.