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 early 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, [12] 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. [13] 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. [14] 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". [15]

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.” [16]

Current state

Both traditional and dedicated transmedia entertainment studios have fully integrated and embraced transmedia storytelling techniques into entertainment culture. It began as a search for a new storytelling form, native to digital content and communications channels. Developing technologies have enabled projects to include single-player experiences in addition to real-time multiplayer experiences such as alternate reality games such as Fortnite . While the list of current and recent projects is too extensive to list here, some notable examples of transmedia storytelling include:

Scolari uses the example of 24 to show how transmedia storytelling occurs. 24 originated on Fox as a TV series but within a few years, it had generated a complex network of comics, video games, books, mobile episodes, etc. around the main character Jack Bauer and the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU). Scolari writes that 24 creates a complex semiotic device for generating multiple implicit consumers who can be classified according to their relationship with the media.[ citation needed ] At the first level, there are single text consumers or those who just read the comic or play the video game. The consumer can understand the story without having to consume the rest of the texts. On a second level, 24 constructs different single media consumers. Here a viewer can enter the narrative world by watching the TV series every week. Finally, 24 created transmedia consumers because there are different media across different platforms that the consumer can enter into.

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". [20] 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". [21]

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. [22]

Educational uses

Transmedia storytelling mimics daily life, making it a strong constructivist pedagogical tool for educational uses. [23] The level of engagement offered by transmedia storytelling is essential to the Me or Millennial Generation as no single media satisfy curiosity. [24] 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. [23] 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. [25] 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. [26] Transmedia storytelling allows for the interpretation of the story from the individual perspective, making way for personalized meaning-making [23] - and in the case of fully participatory projects - allows participants to become co-creators of the story. [27]

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." [28]

Transmedia storytelling is also used by companies like Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark to train employees and managers. [29]

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." [30]

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. [31]

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

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.

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.

A story arc is the chronological construction of a plot in a novel or story. It can also mean an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story arc is common in sitcoms, and even more so in soap operas. In a traditional Hollywood film, the story arc usually follows a three-act structure. Webcomics are more likely to use story arcs than newspaper comics, as most webcomics have readable archives online that a newcomer to the strip can read in order to understand what is going on. Although story arcs have existed for decades, one of the first appearances of the term was in 1973 by Time Magazine for a synopsis of the movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle: "He accomplishes this with no sacrifice to the pacing of his action sequences or the suspenseful development of his story's arc."

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

<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.

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".

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.

A motion comic is a form of animation combining elements of print comic books and animation. Individual panels are expanded into a full shot while sound effects, voice acting, and animation are added to the original artwork. Text boxes, speech bubbles and the onomatopoeia are typically removed to feature more of the original artwork being animated. Motion comics are often released as short serials covering a story arc of a long running series or animating a single release of a graphic novel. Single release issues of a story arc are converted into ten- to twenty-minute-long episodes depending on content.

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.

A social film is a type of interactive film that is presented through the lens of social media. A social film is distributed digitally and integrates with a social networking service, such as Facebook or Google+. It combines features of web video, social network games and social media.

Immersive Journalism is a form of journalism production that allows first person experience of the events or situations described in news reports and documentary film. Using 3D gaming and immersive technologies that create a sense of "being there" and offer the opportunity to personally engage with a story, immersive journalism puts an audience member directly into the event. By accessing a virtual version of the location where the story is occurring as a witness/participant, or by experiencing the perspective of a character depicted in the news story, the audience could be afforded unprecedented access to the sights and sounds, and even the feelings and emotions, which accompany the news.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creative Impulse Entertainment</span>

Creative Impulse Entertainment is a transmedia production company founded by Jan Lucanus in 2003. With the company mantra "Intrigue, Entertain, Inspire Social Change", CIE bills itself as a home for artists that create content across multiple forms of media. CIE's production portfolio encompasses comic books, film, video, animation, music, and games, with subsidiaries dedicated to each craft.

Transmediality is a term used in intermediality studies, narratology, and new media studies (in particular in the phrase ‘transmedia storytelling’ derived from Henry Jenkins, 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.

Nuno Bernardo is a Portuguese writer, producer and director. Nuno has become recognized for his ability to create innovative stories that are told across multiple platforms. In the last decade, using his unique approach to storytelling, Nuno has created and produced more than 200 hours of entertainment, from feature films and TV shows to videogames and books.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hybrid novel</span>

The hybrid novel is a form of fiction, characterized by reaching beyond the limits of the anticipated medium through the incorporation of varying storytelling methods, such as poetry, photography, collage, maps, diagrams, posters and illustrations. The hybrid novel refers to a broad spectrum of literary work such as the graphic narrative and fusion texts.

<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).

Jay Bushman is an American transmedia writer and book author.

Christy Dena is an Australian writer, game designer, and scholar. Her scholarship and design practice in transmedia storytelling has been widely cited, especially for promoting the term "cross-media storytelling". She is also known for defining the term "transmedial fictions" for The Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Digital Textuality. She created her own studio, Universe Creation 101, where she creates original projects and does consultations and freelance work. She likes to combine live social experiences with online technology, traditional forms of screen and paper-based objects.

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. ↑ Jenkins, Henry (August 1, 2011). "Transmedia 202: Further Reflections". Confessions of an AcaFan.
  13. ↑ "Transmedia Storytelling 101". Henry Jenkins. 21 March 2007. Retrieved 2019-06-16.
  14. ↑ Jenkins, henry (21 March 2007). "Transmedia Storytelling 101". Henry Jenkins.
  15. ↑ 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.
  16. ↑ 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)
  17. ↑ Rittmann, Tim (April 2013). "Wer das Game spielt und die Serie sieht, hat mehr davon". ZEIT Online. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  18. ↑ "SyFy's Defiance: A Gamble in Transmedia Storytelling (and Marketing)" . Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  19. ↑ "Defiance and the challenges of transmedia storytelling" . Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  20. ↑ Pont, S. "Digital State: How the Internet is Changing Everything" (2013) Kogan Page ISBN   978-0749468859.
  21. ↑ "'Ball & Flint: transmedia explained in 90 seconds' (2013) Simon Pont". Archived from the original on 2014-02-01. Retrieved 2014-01-24.
  22. ↑ "Great Examples of Multiplatform Storytelling". 13 March 2018.
  23. 1 2 3 Jenkins, H. "Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment: An Annotated Syllabus", Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24:6, 943-958 2010.
  24. ↑ Wilson, M. E. (2004). Teaching, learning, and millennial students. New directions for student services (106). Summer 2004. doi : 10.1002/ss.125
  25. ↑ 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
  26. ↑ Teske, Paul R. J. and Horstman, Theresa. "Transmedia in the classroom: breaking the fourth wall". Paper presented at the meeting of the MindTrek, 2012.
  27. ↑ 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.
  28. ↑ Pont, S. "The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy" (2013) Kogan Page 978-0749466213.
  29. ↑ "Storytelling for the Netflix age". T+D Magazine. August 2013.
  30. ↑ Gronstedt, Anders; Ramos, Marc (January 7, 2014). Learning Through Transmedia Storytelling (Infoline). ASTD. ISBN   978-1562869519.
  31. ↑ Jain, Saurabh (20 January 2018). "Role of Transmedia Storytelling in Education". Medium.

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