Five tips for transmedia storytelling. With readers juggling their tablets, mobile phones, laptops and more as they consume the news, journalists have an opportunity to create a new kind of story. Transmedia storytelling means dividing chunks of a story across multiple platforms to form one cohesive narrative. Transmedia stories often have audience engagement as a key goal. Creating an online component to your documentary film, hosting a live event to complement a recent profile on a needy cause and pairing an interactive website with your book release are ways of building audience engagement across platforms. The term “transmedia” has met its share of controversy, as it’s often used to describe the techniques marketing and entertainment industries use to promote new films and TV series (and rake in money).
But whatever you call this form of storytelling, it lets you take advantage of multiple media in unique ways. If you give it a try, keep these tips in mind: Keep content unique. Provide a seamless point of entry. Partner up. A History of Transmedia Entertainment | Spreadable Media. As embraced by industry professionals and media consumers alike, transmedia storytelling promises to bring greater institutional coordination, added narrative integrality, and deeper engagement to the various pieces of contemporary media franchises. Comic books, video games, and other markets once considered ancillary now play increasingly significant and recentered roles in the production and consumption of everyday film and television properties such as Heroes, Transformers, and the reenvisioned Star Trek in ways that only very few innovators (such as George Lucas and his carefully elaborated and expanded Star Wars empire) had previously conceived in the twentieth century.
Yet, while contemporary convergence culture has set the stage for a greater embrace of transmedia entertainment, the processes by which stories have been spread across institutions, production cultures, and audiences from different media have a much longer history. References Bluestone, George. 1957. ———. 2010. The Future Of Storytelling: Immersion, Integration, Interactivity, Impact. As technology becomes more advanced and more accessible across multiple platforms, it’s only natural for consumers to expect increasingly higher standards of creativity and engagement from content creators. However, with social media, apps, tablets, smartphones, websites, TV, etc. all part of the audience’s viewing habit, learning how stories should be evolving and how to make narratives work across platforms is a complicated matter.
A new study offers some perspectives on what audiences may be looking for in their stories. Research consultancy Latitude recently released phase one of a two-part study titled "The Future of Storytelling" that looks to uncover trends and audience attitudes about content. Overall, the study revealed that audiences are looking for a blurring of barriers between content and reality in a layered yet cohesive execution. Based on participants’ responses the study zeroes in on "four I’s" that will continue to shape storytelling: Other findings from the study: What is the Future of Storytelling? As consumer technology evolves at an ever-quickening pace, opportunities for new forms of storytelling are emerging. Experimentation is all well and good, but what do audiences actually want? To answer this question, research group Latitude has interviewed 158 early adopters and compiled a report that forms the first phase of its The Future of Storytelling project.
Unsurprisingly, these early adopters are keen to take advantage of everything that technology has to offer. Their key demands are summarized in Latitude’s report as ‘The 4 I’s': Immersion, Interactivity, Integration and Impact. Goodbye, passive consumption? The two-way dialog made possible by the Internet appears to have affected early adopters’ expectations when it comes to influencing the direction of stories, with 93% of participants expressing interest in submitting story ideas to producers. . ➤ The Future of Storytelling report (phase one) PDF Header image credit: Pond5, other images Latitude (Creative Commons) Transmedia Storytelling. Several years ago, I asked a leading producer of animated features how much creative control his team exerted over the games, toys, comics, and other products that deployed their characters. I was reassured that the distribution company handled all such ancillary materials.
I saw the movement of content across media as an enhancement of the creative process. He saw it as a distraction or corruption. This past month, I attended a gathering of top creatives from Hollywood and the games industry, hosted by Electronic Arts; they were discussing how to collaboratively develop content that would play well across media. This meeting reflected a growing realization within the media industries that what is variously called transmedia, multiplatform, or enhanced storytelling represents the future of entertainment.
Let’s face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable. And it also makes economic sense. Transmedia will revolutionize storytelling as much as the printing press, says expert. If you’re a moviemaker whose primary focus is creating the best movie you can imagine, the current movie industry has some bad news for you: That’s not enough anymore. Speaking at this year’s Cross-Media Forum in the United Kingdom, Sean Stewart – whose Fourth Wall Studios has worked on creating interactive marketing for movies such as The Dark Knight Rises and AI: Artificial Intelligence – said that what is needed now are more filmmakers who want to create the best worlds they can imagine. The reason for the increased focus on creating immersive experiences that go beyond just the cinema screen, Stewart says, comes as a result of the increased spending studios are forced to make in order to create the next big blockbuster of the year.
“Back in 2001 when I went to the studios to pitch, it was very different,” he told the Hollywood Reporter following his keynote address. Why Blogging Is Dead--And What's Next. The blog is dead. I don't say it lightly; I've been blogging since 2000, moving from an email list I started in the '90s to Blogger to TypePad to Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org. My blog is now directed off my Stealthmode blog domain to SVBTLE, where it lives under an alias. I couldn't decide what to do with it, because I was originating posts in Google+, Facebook, and Evernote more and more often. And I can't really "blog" on my phone; so when I am at an event, I'm more likely to live tweet, and then convert those tweets later into a Storify. And then I heard yesterday's discussion on The Gillmor Gang and spoke to my Business and Future of Journalism class. All of these are incredibly different from traditional blogs. This underscores a discussion being had among journalism professors like Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen, who are arguing on Twitter about whether the "article" is still a viable form of journalism.
Nothing. That's why I know blogging is dead. Have you gone "digital first"? Believe Entertainment Group Pioneers New Ways To Connect Users To Brands And Talent. Even Rupert Murdoch, the world’s foremost champion of old-school print, can no longer deny that media has moved to a digitally-enabled world. A world where audiences are just as likely, if not even more, to watch their favorite TV shows on their computer, Xbox, or mobile device as they are on their TV. Unlike before, the television and digital worlds are colliding in a battle for ad dollars, eyeballs and original content that can effectively break through in this new paradigm of user-controlled content.
Not only are audiences in the driver's seat, they are also no longer passive. They share, comment, and interact with content and their favorite celebrities directly via a range of social media outlets. And now, the tremendous task of creating the next generation of content, and ever more meaningful ways for audiences and brands to engage this new world order is giving rise to a range of new entertainment pioneers. Among these pioneers are Dan Goodman and William (Bill) H. ARIS - Mobile Learning Experiences - Creating educational games on the iPhone. Investigating Cross-Channel Consistency.
The gestalt principle of consistency has served designers well for generations. But today, the designer’s canvas is expanding to include entire ecosystems where digital channels such as web and mobile must work in harmony with physical channels, from print media to the natural environment. As our remit expands, we must revisit the principles that have made us successful in the past, and reinterpret them for the future.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines consistency as the “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.” As designers, we have an intuitive understanding of how to achieve consistency. As we move from designing simple to increasingly complex systems, however, our intuition must be bolstered with a more systematic approach. I suggest that consistency can be divided into two dimensions, which I call the realm of consistency and the nature of consistency. The Realm of Consistency The three realms of consistency: internal, local, external.
Design Guidance.