transmedia » geniwate.com

Taken for a ride, 2

Mediascapes, movies, Reviews Comments Off

Mar 132013

Got home last night, pretty beat after two days’s intensive teaching, so I dialled up Apple TV, which has a very limited selection of movies to choose from, mainly B grade (but much better for TV). Anyway, I chose, to my regret, Taken 2 (Dir. Luc Besson, starring Liam Neeson). Pretty sure Neeson knows how bad it is. But it’s the editing style, known as intensified continuity, which is taken to extremes in this movie and really got on my nerves. Split-second cuts in the action scenes, which makes you think that the protagonists’ fists aren’t really coming anywhere near each other, so they’re using editing to cover up the gap. I remember one brilliant, breath-taking moment in which a single take is allowed to rest on an air-borne car before it crashes. Completely restful. Then on the with show…

Anyway, it reminded me of this video essay by Matthias Stork.

Stork argues that the techniques of ‘chaos cinema’ extend beyond the editing into camerawork and CGI integration.

It’s a shotgun aesthetic, firing a wide swath of sensationalistic technique that tears the old classical film-making style to bits.

These directors’ bi-word is spectator disorientation, to the extent of narrative break-down. “The only art here is the art of confusion”, Stork argues. Intelligibility – such as it is – is derived from the soundtrack. The sound design saved these movies.

Stork goes on to illustrate how the techniques of chaos cinema extend to other genres, and inhibit the actor’s ability to communicate. I’m wondering whether a lot of the transmedia phenomenon is an extension fo chaos cinema – a profusion of media in which order is threatened, the spectator is meant to piece it together, sometimes rather impressionistically.

Narrative will never be threatened, only projects that fail to strike a balance between the chaos aesthetic and narrative convention. What drives people to wade through the chaos to make sense? It must be the core narrative values of character, drama, location, etc.

myth is a dirty word….

Mediascapes Comments Off

Feb 122013

….but one that is so relevant to transmedia storytelling, argues Peter Usagi in Modern Mythology: Modern Mythology and the Transmedia Revolution, a broad-ranging post with wonderful media. I think the reason why archetypal storytelling might be important to transmedia is that these complex projects must have such a strong story to bring them together, to motivate the user and to given them coherence, given that users will access bits and pieces of the project unpredictably, that their knowledge will only be partial most of the time … what will keep them going? A narrative that gives them a hero, or a quest, or an obsession …

I’ve always loved mythology. Right now I’m reading a rather horrid old Victorian redaction of Greek and Roman mythology called The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch (c. 1855) – all the sex and rape obfuscated under layers of seamliness. Nevertheless, the stories sing… passions and conundrums, the difference between the human and the inhuman, sex and power. Bulfinch ends each chapter by quoting the turgid verses of some romantic poet who has been thus inspired.

The wonderful thing about reading such a book is that you distill the essential stuff of the myth from the shifting sands of fashion and morality. For a text to entertain the myth, the writer needs to have more of the former and less of the latter. It’s the difference between the story of Cupid and Psyche and some Mills and Boons bodice-ripper.

You can watch The Power of Myth, a TV series featuring American mythologist Joseph Campbell online (6 eps).

the gist of experience design

media politics, tv, web Comments Off

Jan 022013

Michael Gubbines worries that transmedia is all hype:

Perhaps underneath all the youthful enthusiasm and vaguely radical language, we are merely talking about—admittedly big—adjustments to the distribution and marketing of film, or any other audiovisual media. Film will learn some new techniques and skills but, ultimately, it will assimilate those cross-media elements that boost the business and all that transmedia revolutionary talk will wither away. Yet transmedia promises something more.

Lotsa writers bemoan that transmedia has gone to the marketing dogs. The best that can be said is that we’re blurring the area between marketing and storytelling – and when it’s done well, it doesn’t feel like marketing anymore. So what more does transmedia promise? Jenna Hannon gives a few examples about how the marketing on multiple devices must enrich the story told in the main platform (eg the TV series). QR codes accessed via your mobile take the product into real world situations. You want to establish fan communities.

The idea is all about experience design, according to David Tiley (‘Transmedia Campaigns: ruthless logic behind social manipulators, but in a good way’, Screen Hub Thursday 29 November, 2012), who interviewed Brian Cain from True Blood:

The very first thing we did was a direct mail campaign where we sent out vials of blood. There was a huge moment with the lawyers where we were discussing can we do it, what’s the wording on the vial, how much like blood will this stuff look like….

The campaign starts with what he calls “deep-diving” into the property, aka reading the books very carefully for hooks. And then deep-diving again into all those communities they can imagine with some interest in the world space. That starts with the readers of the half dozen ‘Southern Vampire Mysteries’ by Charlaine Harris, who had already built an intricate world for the stories, and gardened a significant online fan community.

These people are known in that marketing world as “evangelists”. Beyond that, they were targeting a wider group of vampire tragic, interlinked by fansites and wikis and webpages and cosplay, all those cultural artefacts by which huge international communities can celebrate their shared imaginative world. And step from one to the other, and back again in time for work.

Cain describes himself thus:

“I’m more interested in figuring out how people think, and how I can motivate them to think the way I want – it’s like evil advertising stuff.”

However, this is very different from standard repetition advertising, or even brand development. “It’s not push at all, it is very much community building and experiential. I’m giving people control, and then seeing what happens.”

But giving them control in a very orchestrated way (hey, is that control, or just the illusion of control?):

It is pretty clear that these major projects are driven by a clear, clever intent; understanding the purpose helps to illuminate the strategies they are pioneering. On Game of Thrones, for instance, the producers wanted to reach the existing audience for George Martin’s books. As creative lead – not creative director in this case – he was crafting a campaign “that was very respectful of what they have and what they create as a community.”

He was trying to engage them and their network of wikis, websites and blogs, to “acknowledge them in a way that they understand”. They were demonstrating how well they understand the creative essence of the story universe, and how much it inspired them – that the production came from the fan base in a way.

“And also,” said Brian, “tying that into a more top level audience that perhaps wasn’t aware of the ‘Game of Thrones’ books, and showing how vast and rich the world was.”

“You can’t spend your entire marketing budget marketing to those fans – you’ve got to reach out to a new audience that doesn’t know all those details yet.”

“Personally I love the hard core fans, and we always do something with them but I’m much more interested in going after that top level “skimmer audience” that is not going to be so engaged but are the ones who are going to make or break your property.”

This is why they call the hard core fans the evangelists. They help to build the bridges to that wider community.

As Tiley alludes, the relationships between product, marketing, and real world issues can get pretty murky when social media and UGC is involved.

ROBOTS IMPROVE ALL STORIES

Chuck Wendig offers this slightly tongue-in-cheek ’25 Things You Should Know About Transmedia Storytelling.

For me, what makes true transmedia unique and beyond the buzzword, past the gimmick, is when it carries two corollaries to that earlier definition: first, it offers audience investment and lets them act as collaborators; two, the story was intended to be a transmedia experiment from the very beginning….

Stories are generally a single tree, sometimes grown by a single practitioner. But for me, the transmedia storyworld is far more fertile and compelling when seen as an entire forest growing up together at the same time. The forest for me is the perfect metaphor for transmedia — I live in the woods and I see how all these trees grow together, how some find light and others fail, how it’s all one big organic collision of life that thrives on organized chaos. You can certainly admire the forest for its individual pieces (“What a lovely elm,” or, “Those two squirrels seem to be having crazy methamphetamine sex on top of that turtle-shaped rock”), but you can also gaze out and see a much larger picture: the ecosystem. Therein lies the beauty and elegance — and yes, squirrel-banging chaos — of transmedia storytelling.

So what sort of experience does Wendig seek?

I’m starting to feel that the success of a given transmedia project lives or dies on how much emergence it affords — emergent gameplay being unexpected or unintended game interaction, and emergent narrative being stories growing out of the experience that you did not plan for or anticipate (and note that both are strongly driven by audience). You cannot demand or force emergence, but I think you can cultivate it by leaving room for it, by designing aspects that cede authorial control (or some portion of it) to those who are participating in your story. It also may work if you just hand out buckets of hallucinogens.

and a warning …

The transmedia writer must be like the Swiss Army Knife. You are a many-tooled motherfucker. Screenwriting, game design, flash fiction, belt punch, compass, crack pipe, wakizashi, and so on.

The Halo Effect: On grassroots storytelling and fan fiction – 4D Fiction by Geoff May muses on the relationship between transmedia and fan fiction, as realised by 343 Industries with the Halo world:

Halo Waypoint is a key element in 343 Industries’ efforts to connect with and work with the community. Among its strengths is its existence as a hub highlighting fan-made content; whether in the form of in-game videos, or machinima video series, or other community creations.

Fan-fiction is often promoted as an important element of a franchise’s transmedia strategy – affording the flexibility for a storyworld to expand and explore unique content, telling stories that may have only ever been hinted at, and enhancing the greater mythology conceived by the original creators. Quite often a fan-fiction community can run amok with enthusiastic writers taking characters in directions never initially considered (or desired), or otherwise making extra effort to adhere strictly to established canon. Many writings may only ever even reach the eyes of their fellow writers – but these creators are without a doubt some of the most passionate writers in existence. The Halo universe curators have taken this into account, actively embracing and promoting the creativity of its community – who produce content ranging from machinima, to fanfic, to fine arts, and many other forms of expression.

I think the point is – you need a team, and a lot of coherent, we’re on the same page thinking, to get this right.

More transmedia resources

Creating Transmedia Narratives: The Structure & Design of Stories Told Across Multiple Media

Interview with Anita Ondine

Tribeca

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: On Transmedia and Education: A Conversation With Robot Heart Stories; Jen Begeal and Inanimate Alice’s Laura Fleming (Part One).

Narrative cubed

documentary, This working life, web Comments Off

Dec 102012

Tell a story but link to the historical and other factual elements, such as in War Horse. This seems increasingly to be an approach favoured in transmedia narrative, according to the Sandra Gaudenzi on the i-docs blog.

Another approach is to use transmedia and cross-media fiction techniques to deliver a doco, such as Operation Ajax. A great way to get a new generation into non-fiction content … while also, possibly excluding those stuck in heritage media? The price we pay for such a dynamic media culture, I guess: your technology more or less chooses your audience.

Now that no one has to convince anybody anymore that transmedia is here to stay, the important message is for me to keep being innovative – rather than trying to copy complex, and sometimes unnecessarily ambitious, strategies. As Michel Reilhac (Executive Director, Arte France Cinema – although it was announced that he will step down in the new year!) did emphasize: we are maybe coming out of the over enthusiasm for connectedness and multi-platformity. Now that convergence is not an utopia anymore, we’ll might have to use it for a purpose. Is transmedia compatible with a logic of “less is more”?

Mixing fact and fiction by a strategic use of cross-medium – yeah, but if the innovations don’t seem to have a reason, you’re being a technologist, not a media maker.

existing within the story

Contemporary Media Work Practices, This working life Comments Off

Nov 212012

collapsed story Who does what, and what do we call ‘em? From Sara Thacher:

A transmedia producer has a lot in common with the producer on other storytelling projects. They’re the people who translate a creative vision – the script, design document, treatment, etc. – into something actionable. They figure out answers to: “How long will it take?” and “How much will it cost?” and often “Who will do what?” Answering these questions on any project means having a thorough understanding of how the pieces it together – down to the smallest details – while keeping an eye on the big vision.

On the other hand,

An experience designer is also all about the connections. Instead of looking at these connections from a production point of view, the experience designer puts themselves in seat of the audience. You’re considering how the audience moves between different media. What threads need to be built so that the audience that’s following your YouTube channel will also play your SMS text adventure? It’s also the experience designer’s job to think about why the platforms/media/storytelling mediums are being used to convey different parts of the story.

I like her metaphorical definition of transmedia storytelling – It’s

…about giving your audience a way to exist inside the story instead of peering at it through a window

transmedia storyworlds

Networked Media, web Comments Off

Aug 052012

I’m making a storyworld, of sorts, for my course Networked Media. It’s called Mip and Mop Get Lost, and it stars Mip. And Mop. And a cast of thousands. It’s based on The Pilgrim’s Progress by Joh Bunyan, which none of my students, or even my tutors, has ever heard of. Anyway, it’s meant to be horribly allegorical just the way Pilgrim’s Progress was, and hopefully, the gang does get that. I’m bogged down with creating the pics, however. Most of the episodes are just text.

Here are a few principles for transmedia storytelling from Robert Pratter

Transmedia Storyteller Ltd founder and CEO, Robert Pratten, from his presentation at the European Broadcast Union (EBU) TV Summit in Copenhagen:

PERVASIVE – Available on any device, anywhere and at any time. Blurs real world and fictional world.

PERSISTENT – Story evolves even if you’re not engaging with it. Aggregate audience activity and real-world environmental factors shape story development in real time.

PARTICIPATORY – Allows audience to interact with story characters, locations, things and each other.

PERSONALIZED – Audience members have personalized experience based on past activity and permissions granted to storyworld.

CONNECTED – The audience journey across touchpoints is intelligently managed to create a seamless, integrated experience.

INCLUSIVE – The experience accommodates a range of devices and audience engagement styles such that it’s not only users of expensive smart phones and tablets that get all the fun.

CLOUD-BASED – Network intelligence communicates with peripheral devices to deliver the other six tenets

(7 Tenets of Future Storyworlds – Transmedia Storyteller.)

Lance Weiler, doyen of transmedia storytelling, suggest these principles:

Take time to evaluate the story you want to tell
Ask yourself the hard questions – why will anyone care? Is this the best way to tell the story?
Let go of a single POV
consider how you can show not tell
Make it easy for your audience to become collaborators
Don’t let the world get in the way of the story

I’m not going to claim my little effort meets all, or even many, of these principles. But I do think presenting information using narrative encased in a ‘world’ structure gets your audience more involved.

[Image from Mip and Mop Get Lost c. geniwate]

A few new job descriptions – and skills

This working life Comments Off

Apr 162012

[Image from Edupics]

Really good summary of what we should be trying to impart to the bright young things queueing at our doors by Educational Technology Guy. Some of the terminology might be a little alien – read the description. The skills are:

Sense-making. The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
Social intelligence. The ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
Novel and adaptive thinking. Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
Cross-cultural competency. The ability to operate in different cultural settings
Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
Design mind-set. Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
Virtual collaboration. The ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

And now for this season’s new professions:

Narrative Designer:

Narrative for games, but not as you know it, according to Narrative Designer Stephen Dinehart. In this interview with Christy Marx – Transmedia Writer & Narrative Designer, he says:

I consider my role as a Narrative Designer to be two-fold: a) as a game designer specializing in how to integrate storytelling with gameplay; and b) as a writer who carries out that integration. By “storytelling”, I mean all aspects of storytelling, not solely text or dialog — the full spectrum of audiovisual storytelling.

Yet another aspect is working with the design of the UI, as the UI is crucial in how story will be delivered. Likewise, it helps when I have significant input on the Tools side of things, so that implementing narrative is easy and timely to accomplish.

Or to put it more simply, you could say that a Narrative Designer is a writer who understands game design.
Social Media Manager, according to Mai Overton:

Give your social media marketing manager leeway to be creative. Challenge them to come up with new ways of interacting with your fans and followers. Give your social media marketing manager time to learn and develop their skills and knowledge. Social media and digital marketing is a huge, constantly changing arena. Keeping up with what’s current is half of the battle. It’s pointless to think that your secretary can update your status on Facebook because, contrary to opinion, keeping up with the evolving digital technologies is a full time job.

Business insider supplies a few more, complete with the cutest list of average salary ranges (eg, $30k-$90K !!)
Social Media Strategist:

in charge of the whole game—planning what strategic moves to make next, deciding on which platforms to grow communities, and giving your stamp of approval to the content your team shares online.
Content Curator:

scour the web and bring back viral videos, articles, infographics and images to feed your company’s social platforms. Some products will be created in-house, but no matter where it comes from, you look for content that’s contagious.
Social Media Analyst

track the numbers and establish metrics to determine which social media campaigns are flopping or flying high. Your quantitative brain sees the big picture as you advise your team on their next move—all based on the numbers.
Online Reputation Manager

focus on filling social platforms with positive reviews, answers, and posts to drown out any negative stuff.
Community Manager

As your company’s resident social butterfly, you develop campaigns or spaces to grow and nurture these virtual connections.
Social Media Customer Service Rep

tweet instructions to a confused client, or help pro-actively resolve an issue someone has posted on Facebook. No matter which platform, it’s your job to keep consumers happy.
Social Media Consultant

help organizations get their social media efforts up and running.

Tweet

directions in transmedia documentary

documentary, Transient Spaces Comments Off

Apr 162012

Storyboard image from Sands of Silence (see below)

Presentation from the Tribeca Film Institute at The New School called ‘Transmedia for Social Documentaries’. Panel includes Megan Cunningham from Magnet Media, Caitlin Burns from Starlight Runner Entertainment, and Vladan Nikolic, from The New School and producer of ‘Zenith’.

Here are my salient points from some of the Q&As – sorry I haven’t attributed them to the different speakers – probably just as well since they’re not verbatim:

What is transmedia?

Multiplatform storytelling, with a relationship between the content creator and consumer

A transmedia producer works with ‘multiple narrative within the same story world on different platforms’

The way that you expand the story world of an idea … you take a narrative and have the opportunity to tell the story on a wider canvas.

We’re in an environment where one medium is broken up onto various different platforms. What transmedia opens is another way to tell stories and for independent filmmakers its very important to open up other opportunities.

Transmedia is still a very fluid term, it really depends on what your project is. EG, social media is necessary for what you do, but if you repeat the same information through all different media you’ll turn people off.

Each platform has its own dynamic, how you tell a story that engages. You can have an audience that feels like its part of something. You need to create a following for your film by engaging them.

MTV’s study on digital natives and their consumption patterns illustrates how the audience has become enabled. There is no longer such a distinction between audience and amateurs and professionals. There has been a huge uptake in coviewing / second screen experience, 60% of broadcast audience does it.

This means that all content is competing with all other content, on all platforms and in all mediums. That’s the sort of thinking you have to build into what you’re creating. You have to build in all the medium/medium possibilities for different parts of the story.

How can you use transmedia to create change via documentary?

Doco filmmakers have always fostered change, but now you can get you message out in different ways. You don’t have to depend on the best 90 minutes of film.

A word of caution: just pick 2 or 3 platforms to build community in, don’t try to do everything. Best to do 2 or 3 properly, respond to comments, create a substantial presence with a volume of community members you can engage with sincerely and consistently. If you know your story well, that’s your focus, focus on the most compelling execution of that, its very easy to get overwhelmed.

How to effectively use transmedia with your narrative?

Vladan: Zenith is a fiction film but is appealed to a specific cultural moment + clever social media marketing so it went viral. Many different entry points into the story. Transmedia also incorporates the method of distributions. EG, with Zenith, they released the first 30 minutes of the film on bit torrent and got donations to make the rest.

People have a lot of shared stories, and those stories become the rallying points to find ppl who are similarly interested. UGC, collabs between producers / writers and UGC. The more you can build trust and relationship with the community, the more loyalty you will accrue for future projects.

The question is how do you reach your audience? Other question: what is your particular angle?

My observation: it’s interesting that the default product is still the 90 minute stand-alone film. All paths still point to this. Hopefully one day we can have a stand-alone Tumblr site. Maybe the film can be the marketing to drive people to the Tumblr site?

Situated Documentary via Augmented Reality

Have just done a little investigation of the documentary possibilities of Foursquare. In sum, you’d have to use it in conjunction with other tools — a still and a line of text doth not a doco make, even if you repeat the trick many times. The posts need to be strung together. Whack the whole lot in Tumblr with an introduction and you might be nearly there.

Project examples

1. Walker–combining storytelling and social causes.

“WALKER is a new “Social Benefit” TransMedia Entertainment Property produced by The Legacy Productions. We invite you to become a part of the experience in this rapidly expanding new genre of entertainment which combines narrative, significant social and environmental causes, with mobile interactivity and commerce. YOU, our audience is given the opportunity to affect real world changes: from the environment — to education — to health – to the economy . . . all by applying your unique abilities, talents, networks and passion as an active part of the story. ‘In the fictional TransMedia StoryWorld, WALKER is a solo journalist . . . a SOJO . . . WHO JUMPS OUT OF HIS FICTIONAL WORLD AND IS NOW PARTICIPATING IN OURS. He’s alone in the world investigating stories which have global impacts environmentally, socially and economically. In the fictional story, many of the hidden puppetmasters behind WALKER want to “silence” him AND ANYONE WHO HELPS HIM. WALKER is not good for business . . . their business.’ WALKER develops and encourages a global movement for change driven by a series of webisode stories he begins and posts on-line.’
…
Blog entries provide further back story and additions to the story. Fiction and reality are blurred. The audience becomes a part of the story and a participant in it. Clues are provided integrating augmented reality, SmartPhone capabilities and QR Codes across multiple digital platforms , twitter, facebook, foursquare and other social media portals. The audience participants have the ability to become a SOJO with WALKER and impact the outcome of these stories . . . and enhance the dialogue on the stories. Currently Climate Hacking, NanoTech in the Food Chain, and Water Wars are the focus.”

2. Sands of Silence

Trailer (embedding not permitted)

A cross-platform project which includes a video clip for SANDS OF SILENCE documentary, a visual overview of SOS_SLAVES: Changing the Trafficking Game, and interviews with the SOS_SLAVES crew. Produced by BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies.

Sands of Silence machinima

sandsofsilence.org
facebook.com/sandsofsilence
twitter.com/sandsofsilence

Sound of my voice

Reviews, Uncategorized, web Comments Off

Mar 082012

SOUND OF MY VOICE is a cinematic release with a really wonderful online teaser, which has hotspots linking to other media. I’m usually so impatient with slowly paced storytelling, but this one has drawn me in. A beguiling mystery. Clever of them to give us the first 12 minutes, just enough to have us hooked, and asking questions.

4 stars