Convergence Media Teamwork - Transmedia Storytelling

In this lecture we focused on transmedia storytelling and the ways in which it has been used in the past. we also eventually made our own transmedia tale.

Greek culture used transmedia stories of their gods throughout their history on various things such as temples, pots, they even acted them out in the amplitheatres. People would travel far and wide to read/see these stories and so the stories travelled.

Films, games, websites and more are used for transmedia storytelling in the modern age. Films such as The Blair Witch Project, A.I, Prometheus, Ted and The Dark Knight Trilogy have all used various forms of transmedia storytelling.

Prometheus had a marketing promotional video that focused on one of the characters and their back story. Here is the example of that video:

This video gives an enhanced version of the information you find out about 'David' in the film Prometheus. Die hard fans will have found this and had extra information going in to the film than others who did not; changing the movie experience.

There are many examples of transmedia storytelling in our world today, and sometimes without even noticing, we are using the media to access the footage, images and information add ons that the production companies create.

We were then introduced to the models of traditional storytelling and transmedia storytelling. Here they are:

The models illustrate the differences between a normal storytelling experience and that of the transmedia storytelling. You can also see the different in user generated content and how much this is a key feature in some transmedia storytelling.

After the lecture, we were asked to re-imagine a fairly tale suing the transmedia world. So images, text, Tweets, Facebook, Tumblr, games, apps, videos, YouTube, Google, Flickr, books, illustrations.

Our group got together and decided we wanted to tell the story of Repunzel. We began by choosing a character each to portray. I was the witch in the story. Once we all had a character, we went off and decided to make purely online content. For my character I made a fake blog on Tumblr which would reveal the true identity of the witch to actually be the mother of Repunzel herself. Being the witch I talk about general day to day activity of a witch such as making potions, but then more layers of Rapunzels story is revealed through some emotional blogs.
Other people in the group used Facebook and created fake profiles, they also used Flickr to upload photographs.

I found this task interesting because it allowed me to create a whole back story for a character that doesn't really have many layers in the real story. We totally reinvented the idea of Rapunzel locked in her tower and brought it in to modern day.

My Reflection
So I thought that today's lecture was a bit repetative with the slides just giving example after example of the same sort of transmedia ideas. However, I did really find the diagrams helpful for me to understand how the transmedia storytelling world works. I liked the activity that we did because I was able to go online and create a whole fake blog about someone who doesn't even exist. To me this raises questions about fake people on the internet and how we are supposed to know who we are talking to, reading about or listening to. We don't really think about who these people might be. If anyone see's this blog about Rapunzels witch/mother who has a nack for Tumblr, they might think that a psychopathic weirdo is on the other end of the keyboard. But who knows!

You Learn Something New Everyday
Today the biggest thing I learned was just to let my imagination run wild, because not all the ideas are good, but some of them are just wacky enough to get peoples attention...

Speak Soon!

Credits:

www.youtube.com/user/prometheus6812