Transmedia Storytelling Unveiled

Transmedia Storytelling Unveiled

The television audience is changing from merely connected to participative. As Rupert Murdoch said, people want to control their media, not be controlled by it. As Henry Jenkins (MIT) said : “in the erea of convergence, consumers become hunters and gatherers pulling info from multiple sources to form a new synthesis”

Nicoletta Lacobacci from European Broadcasting Union announces a paradigm shift : a movie isn’t a story anymore, it is a situation, a plateform regardless of the media. We, the audience, are the story.
Participarory TV, Crossor transmedia is a story that is not replicated onto multiple plateform but that is concieved to do so. It is pervasive. The users do it themseves, therefore it reaches them more deeply.

She gives several exemples of films that use different levels of cross media.

1/ CBS 1st interactive cartoon in the 1960’s, called Winky Dink and you encouraged kids to draw on a plastic sheet struck to their TV.

2/ Pokemons was the first anime that was really about the experience away from the show and not so much about what it makes you read, watch or consume.

3/ Croos media is also used in advertising. The Blair Witch project movie marketing plan started two years before the release spreading information and stories in horror film magazines, faking bios of characters, police declarations, missing person posters...

4/ The BBC show Spooks was a first experiment with interacting with the actual narrative in the movie. With a remote controlled, the audience was taught how to become a spy, spot details, resolve enigmas. After completing a “trining”period, spectators were given a mission to resolve.

5/ Fiction can interact with readers and viewers lives even as Sofia’s diary, Lonely Girl 15 and Kate Modern projects on You Tube illustrate.

6/ And spectators can even create the actual narrative of the movie as it has been done in Australia in 2004 with the 3 days/week Forget the rules TV, Broadband and mobile drama. After the broadcast, the audience was invited to imagine the three following episodes which where then written properly, shot, edited and broadcasted the following week...

7/ The talk finished with the project of Christopher Sandberg, from Company P which created a TV series based on the idea that “in the erea of convergence, consumers become hunters and gatherers pulling info from multiple sources to form a new synthesis” ( Henry Jenkins, MIT). Each entry point or media brings a contribution and becomes a plateform, a franchise of content. The audience augments the content which creates an excess that feeds the show.
The truth about Marika, by SVT and the Company P is a experimental TV show with clues online, fake blogs, forums and events... it is a fiction without limits except for the fact that it can’t be replicated or reran ...