Transmedia storytelling

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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.

Contents

From a production standpoint, transmedia storytelling involves creating content [1] that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. [2] 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.

History

Transmedia storytelling can be related to the concepts of semiotics and narratology. Semiotics is the "science of signs" and a discipline concerned with sense production and interpretation processes. [3]

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 the early 1960s. [4] [5] 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. [6]

Some works include, but are not limited to:

Definition

The study of transmedia storytelling—a concept introduced by Henry Jenkins, author of the seminal book Convergence Culture—is an emerging subject. Because of the nature of new media and different platforms, varying authors have different understandings of it. Jenkins states the term "transmedia" means "across media" and may be applied to superficially similar, but different phenomena. In particular, the concept of "transmedia storytelling" should not be confused with traditional cross-platform, "transmedia" media franchises, [15] or "media mixes".

One example that Jenkins gives is of the media conglomerate DC Comics. This organization releases comic books before the release of its related films so the audience understands a character's backstory. Much of transmedia storytelling is not based on singular characters or plot lines, but rather focuses on larger complex worlds where multiple characters and plot lines can be sustained for a longer period of time. [16] In addition, Jenkins focused on how transmedia extends to attract larger audiences. For example, DC Comics releases coloring books to attract younger audience members. Sometimes, audience members can feel as though some transmedia storylines have left gaps in the plot line or character development, so they begin another extension of transmedia storytelling, such as fan fiction. [17] Transmedia storytelling exists in the form of transmedia narratives, which Kalinov and Markova define as: "a multimedia product which communicates its narrative through a multitude of integrated media channels". [18]

In his book, You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story, Houston Howard describes transmedia storytelling as “the art of extending a story across multiple mediums and multiple platforms in a way that creates a better business model for creators and a better experience for the audience.” [19]

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". [20]

Shannon Emerson writes in the blog post "Great Examples of Multiplatform Storytelling" that transmedia storytelling can also be called multiplatform storytelling, transmedia narrative, and even cross-media seriality. She also cites Henry Jenkins as a leading scholar in this realm. [21]

Educational uses

Transmedia storytelling mimics daily life, making it a strong constructivist pedagogical tool for educational uses. [22] The level of engagement offered by transmedia storytelling is essential to the Me or Millennial Generation as no single media satisfy curiosity. [23] 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 globally connected world in which we use multiple platforms to connect and communicate. [22] 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. [24] 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. [25] Transmedia storytelling allows for the interpretation of the story from the individual perspective, making way for personalized meaning-making [22] - and in the case of fully participatory projects - allows participants to become co-creators of the story. [26]

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 movies is the most obvious applications of thie concept. Transmedia maintains that there's a 'bigger picture opportunity' to punting a big picture to additional platforms. Transmedia theory, applied to a movie launch, is all about promoting the story, not the 'premiere 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." [27]

Transmedia storytelling is also used by companies like Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark to train employees and managers. [28]

Anders Gronstedt and Marc Ramos say "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." [29]

However, transmedia storytelling isn't used much at lower education levels. Children would thrive using transmedia storytelling worlds in their learning, but many of these worlds have copyrights linked to them. Transmedia storytelling has yet to tackle learning and educating children, but there have been a few transmedia worlds that have begun to show up with education, mostly by Disney. [30]

Transmedia storytelling is apparent in comics, films, print media, radio, and now social media. The story is told different depending on the medium. With social media, the story is told differently depending on which social media platform someone uses (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) The scale in which the impact each medium has differs from medium to medium. Before social media, radio and print media were the primary medium to connect with an audience. With the advancements in technology, social media has become the go-to medium to reach a large group of people in a fast amount of time. In the ideal form of TS, “each medium does what it does best — so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don't need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa.” [5]

Related Research Articles

Multimedia refers to the integration of multiple forms of content, such as text, audio, images, video, and interactive elements into a single digital platform or application. This integration allows for a more immersive and engaging experience compared to traditional single-medium content. Multimedia is utilized in various fields, including education, entertainment, communication, game design, and digital art, reflecting its broad impact on modern technology and media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Role-playing game</span> Game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Storytelling</span> Social and cultural sharing of stories

Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term "storytelling" can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media platforms began as separate and mostly unrelated technologies, but have converged in many ways into an interrelated telecommunication, media, and technology industry.

Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968.

Interactive storytelling is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act "human," alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly.

Ong's Hat is one of the earliest Internet-based secret history conspiracy theories. It was created as a piece of collaborative fiction by four core individuals, dating back to the 1980s, although the membership propagating the tale changed over time. Ong's Hat is often cited as the first ARG on many lists of alternate reality games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Jenkins</span> American media scholar

Henry Guy Jenkins III is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He also has a joint faculty appointment with the USC Rossier School of Education. Previously, Jenkins was the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities as well as co-founder and co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has also served on the technical advisory board at ZeniMax Media, parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. In 2013, he was appointed to the board that selects the prestigious Peabody Award winners.

Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to create and share their stories online. The method is frequently used in schools, museums, libraries, social work and health settings, and communities. They are thought to have educational, democratizing and therapeutic effects.

A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program, or a video game. Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defined the word franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time.”

Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.

Multi-platform television is "a mode of storytelling that plays itself out across multiple entertainment channels". Each medium that the story unfolds across makes a distinctive contribution.

<i>Dreaming in Mono</i> McDonalds advertising campaign in the Nordic countries

Dreaming in Mono is a transmedia storytelling branded content initiative from McDonald's and Perfect Fools, produced by Happy Fiction, in the four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The story combines three principle themes: the Nordic passion for winter sports; the prejudices, rivalries and stereotypes of the Nordic nations; the role of McDonald's as the largest host of diverse people and fun experiences in the region.

Joseph Wayne Matheny is an American writer and transmedia artist who has created works using alternate reality gaming and transmedia storytelling methods. He holds patents for prediction, recommendation and behavioral analysis algorithms and software design. He is a published author of screenplays, white papers, technology, sci-fi, marketing and gaming books. He is probably best known for the avant-garde work Ong's Hat, which has been called the proto-Alternate Reality Game. Ong's Hat is often cited as the first ARG on many lists of alternate reality games.

Inanimate Alice is an ongoing digital novel, an interactive multimodal fiction, relating the experiences of aspiring game designer Alice Field and her imaginary digital friend, Brad, in episodes, journals, social media, and virtual reality. Episodes 1–4 of the series were written by novelist Kate Pullinger and developed by digital artist Chris Joseph as a prequel to an original screenplay by series producer Ian Harper. Episode 1 was released in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multimodality</span> Concept in communication

Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication, to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources used to compose messages.

Transmediality is a term used in intermediality studies, narratology, and new media studies, to describe phenomena which are non-media specific, meaning not connected to a specific medium, and can therefore be realized in a large number of different media, such as literature, art, film, or music. The medium from which a given phenomenon originated is either irrelevant or impossible to determine; it is not an adaptation of a phenomenon from one medium to another.

Convergence culture is a theory which recognizes changing relationships and experiences with new media. Henry Jenkins is accepted by media academics to be the father of the term with his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. It explores the flow of content distributed across various intersections of media, industries and audiences, presenting a back and forth power struggle over the distribution and control of content.

<i>Secret Story Network</i>

Secret Story Network is an online interactive storytelling experience which operates live role-playing games. Hosted over WhatsApp, SSN was created in 2017 by film, multimedia, and transmedia artist Krishna Stott, creative developer at Bellyfeel, and known for the earlier award-winning interactive film projects Crimeface (2008) and Bolton Storyworld: Codename Winterhill (2016).

References

  1. ↑ Pratten, Robert (2015). Getting Started in Transmedia Storytelling: A Practical Guide for Beginners (2nd ed.). London, UK: CreateSpace. p. 224. ISBN   978-1-5153-3916-8.
  2. ↑ Bernardo, Nuno (2011). The Producers Guide to Transmedia: How to Develop, Fund, Produce and Distribute Compelling Stories Across Multiple Platforms (Paperback). London, UK: beActive Books. p. 153. ISBN   978-0-9567500-0-6.
  3. ↑ Scolari, Carlos A.; Bertetti, Paolo; Freeman, Matthew (2014), "Conclusions: Transmedia Storytelling and Popular Cultures in the Twentieth Century", Transmedia Archaeology, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 72–77, doi:10.1057/9781137434371_5, ISBN   9781349492961
  4. ↑ Steinberg, Marc, Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. p. vi
  5. 1 2 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, p. 110
  6. ↑ Prior, Karen Swallow, The New, Old Way to Tell Stories: With Input From the Audience , The Atlantic, October 18, 2013
  7. ↑ Kinsella, Michael. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat University Press of Mississippi, 2011
  8. ↑ "Dreadnot". SFGate. Archived from the original on 2000-02-29.
  9. ↑ Brindley, Charlotte (2019-11-25). "Harry Potter and the power of transmedia storytelling". Medium. Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  10. ↑ Tvorun-Dunn, Maxim (2022). "'I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together' Transmedia convergence of the Beatles' psychedelic years (1966–1969)". Popular Music History. 14 (3). doi:10.1558/pomh.19863. S2CID   257647587.
  11. ↑ Palmer, Landon (2020). "All Together Now: The Beatles, United Artists, and Transmedia Production". Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 58–95. ISBN   9780190888411.
  12. ↑ Rittmann, Tim (April 2013). "Wer das Game spielt und die Serie sieht, hat mehr davon". ZEIT Online. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  13. ↑ "SyFy's Defiance: A Gamble in Transmedia Storytelling (and Marketing)" . Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  14. ↑ "Defiance and the challenges of transmedia storytelling" . Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  15. ↑ Jenkins, Henry (August 1, 2011). "Transmedia 202: Further Reflections". Confessions of an AcaFan.
  16. ↑ "Transmedia Storytelling 101". Henry Jenkins. 21 March 2007. Retrieved 2019-06-16.
  17. ↑ Jenkins, henry (21 March 2007). "Transmedia Storytelling 101". Henry Jenkins.
  18. ↑ Kalinov, Kalin (2017). "Transmedia Narratives: Definition and Social Transformations in the Consumption of Media Content in the Globalized World" (PDF). Postmodernism Problems. 7: 60–68.
  19. ↑ Howard, Houston (2017). You're gonna need a bigger story : the 21st century survival guide to not just writing stores, but building super stories. [United States?]. ISBN   978-0-692-84900-2. OCLC   1122543816.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  20. ↑ "'Ball & Flint: transmedia explained in 90 seconds' (2013) Simon Pont". Archived from the original on 2014-02-01. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  21. ↑ "Great Examples of Multiplatform Storytelling". 13 March 2018.
  22. 1 2 3 Jenkins, H. "Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment: An Annotated Syllabus", Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24:6, 943-958 2010.
  23. ↑ Wilson, M. E. (2004). Teaching, learning, and millennial students. New directions for student services (106). Summer 2004. doi : 10.1002/ss.125
  24. ↑ Warren, S., Wakefield, J.S., and Mills, L. "Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: Transmedia Storytelling", in Laura A. Wankel, Patrick Blessinger (ed.) Increasing Student Engagement and Retention using Multimedia Technologies: Video Annotation, Multimedia Applications, Videoconferencing and Transmedia Storytelling (Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Volume 6), 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.67-94 doi : 10.1108/S2044-9968(2013)000006F006
  25. ↑ Teske, Paul R. J. and Horstman, Theresa. "Transmedia in the classroom: breaking the fourth wall". Paper presented at the meeting of the MindTrek, 2012.
  26. ↑ Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo; Dabagian, Lilit (2016-10-01). "Transmedia dynamics in education: the case of Robot Heart Stories". Educational Media International. 53 (4): 232. doi:10.1080/09523987.2016.1254874. ISSN   0952-3987. S2CID   63575976.
  27. ↑ Pont, S. "The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy" (2013) Kogan Page 978-0749466213.
  28. ↑ "Storytelling for the Netflix age". T+D Magazine. August 2013.
  29. ↑ Gronstedt, Anders; Ramos, Marc (January 7, 2014). Learning Through Transmedia Storytelling (Infoline). ASTD. ISBN   978-1562869519.
  30. ↑ Jain, Saurabh (20 January 2018). "Role of Transmedia Storytelling in Education". Medium.

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