Applied Media Research - Digital Fiction Factory

In this module we are going to aim to solve some pressing questions from big names in the media industry. Today we had our first question asked to us from Digital Fiction Factory. Here is their website profile :-

The Digital Fiction Factory is a creative partnership between the BBC, Channel 4, Creative England and Conker Media.

Conker Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lime Pictures and part of the All3Media Group.

The BAFTA, Rose d'Or, Emmy-nominated and RTS and double-BANFF winning Conker Media team have played a leading role in the development of multi-layered storytelling in the UK; the achievements of which have been recognised internationally.

Ian Wareing, Digital Producer for Digital Fiction Factory, came in and shown a presentation about DFF and what they do. One of the first slides had this quote - 'Completely new kind of development and production center' Peter Salmon, BBC North. This made DFF sound exciting and so I wanted to hear more. Throughout the presentation I learned what projects they have been involved in, such as 'Hollyoaks - The Morning After the Night Before' which is a multi-platform, digital fiction event. DFF are all about using multiple platforms for their media productions; using more than one platform makes the media item much more exciting to the audience. To explain what he meant by multi-platform; he used these diagrams.

Digital Fiction Factory are all about audience participation and allowing them to become involved in the media products. This is happening throughout the media as we speak and so DFF want to know more about this.

The question set by Digital Fiction Factory was:

The internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content (UGC), crowd sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences without treading on the toes of the author?

From this question the key points are:

Audience Participation

Storytelling Experience

Author

My Reflection

I think that the question set by Digital Fiction Factory is very interesting because audience participation is something that is expanding and increasing all over the media. The question would allow me to explore the possibilities of audience participation and find the limits of where it can go before it intrudes to much on the authors work.

This being the first question that we have been set I am thinking very positively and I feel that choosing a question might be difficult if they are all of this standard. I liked the presentation that was used but I would have liked to maybe been more hands on with something they had made or even just examples of audience participation through other media products.

I look forward to the other two questions and figuring out my choice!

You Learn Something New Everyday

Today the main thing that I learned was that the media is developing faster than producers thought it would and so now they are playing catch up with their audiences to keep things exciting and interesting!

Speak Soon!

Images courtesy of Digital Fiction Factory