A curation of the blog over at simonstaffans.com, together with interviews with some very sharp minds from different areas of the multiplatform storytelling field - Brian Clark, Christy Dena, Jeff Gomez, Ian Ginn, Andrea Phillips, Robert Pratten, Inga Von Staden, Nuno Bernardo, Michael Monello, Chantal Rickards, Steve Stokes, Yomi Ayeni, Scott Walker, Lance Weiler, Liz Rosenthal and Nick DeMartino.
Patient Counselling. Definition of patient counseling; steps involved in pati...
One year in now media
2. INTRODUCTION 7th of January 2013
————————————————————————————————
Last year I published a curation of my blog posts from that year, combined with interviews
with some of the sharpest minds in the field of transmedia. The publication – ”One Year In
Transmedia” – is available for free on Slideshare and as direct download, netting some 2.500
downloads all in all so far.
This year I thought I’d try something a little different. The title is one thing. My main
profession is creating new television formats – always with a social media strategy, second
screen implementations and / or multiplatform strategy – which means that the international
television industry is the one field I know intimately. That’s why I decided to go with ”Now
Media” instead of ”Transmedia”; I’m enough of a purist when it comes to transmedia to
recognize that some of the things I’m writing about are not specifically about transmedia, but
rather multiplatform, cross media or sometimes even single media. I acknowledge that this
might be a knee-jerk reaction, especially as most of the articles still are about transmedia
from one angle or another. Still, I like the term “Now Media”, so I’ll roll with that for this
publication. What’s “Now Media” then? It’s my term for describing all of the media available
to the audience and to creators at the date of me writing this book. It is a term that evolves as
time evolves, which I kinda like.
The second thing is that I’m doing this a dual release. On Slideshare, most of the publication
is available for free, just like last year. Later on - think February, looking at my work load at
the moment - a Kindle version featuring the same content plus some added analysis focused
on television and multiplatform storytelling will be available for 2.99$. If it’s that version
you’re reading now, thanks. If it’s the free version, an equally big thank you for your interest
and time.
While thanking, I’d like to thank all the people that have inspired me, challenged me and
supported me during this year. There are so many of you, the tribe of transmedia people, the
producers and creators and friends and foes that I love to talk to, argue with, listen to and just
generally be around. Finally, a very special thank you goes out to the brilliant people who
agreed to participate and be interviewed for this publication. You all rock.
So, here goes. One Year in Now Media. Enjoy!
Simon
3. CONTENT
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Introduction 2
Television and Now Media 5
How to develop TV shows for a social and multiplatform world
Transmedia and fiction in television
Four criteria for evaluating IP and transmedia potential
Transmedia – knitting brands and television together
MIP Blog posts 13
Why transmedia is a no-brainer for television
Five things we learned from MIPTV 2012
What transmedia lessons can TV learn from video games?
Five transmedia myths debunked
The keys to transmedia success
The audience is your channel
TV and cross media - it’s getting there!
The Philosophy 25
The five pillars of transmedia
The transmedia translator
Transmedia - does anyone care?
Transmedia - the ketchup effect
Time to create transmedia
Interview - Brian Clark
Interview - Christy Dena
Interview - Jeff Gomez
The Development 46
Starting out in transmedia - five points of advice
The transmedia beat
Planning for success in transmedia
Trust in transmedia
Transmedia and response
Clarity in transmedia
It’s about what you leave out
Interview - Ian Ginn
Interview - Andrea Phillips
Interview - Rob Pratten
Interview - Inga von Staden
The Business 74
Marketing transmedia
4. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 4
Transmedia for companies
Getting funding for transmedia - a comment
Brands and transmedia
Interview - Nuno Bernardo
Interview - Mike Monello
Interview - Chantal Rickards
Interview - Steve Stokes
The Audience 96
How to get your transmedia project in front of people
Closed or open participation in transmedia?
Transmedia and the audience
The audience conundrum
Interview - Yomi Ayeni
Interview - Scott Walker
Interview - Lance Weiler
The Events 113
MIPTV 2012 - thoughts and comments
Nordic Game and Nordic transmedia meetup
Cross Video Days wrapup
Pixel Lab 2012 half-time report
Reflections on transmedia - Nordic Panorama edition
MIPCOM 2012 - it’s getting there
London Transmedia Fest 2012
Future Media 2.0 - some thoughts
Interview - Liz Rosenthal
The Future 133
A future for transmedia
Interview - Nick DeMartino
Resources 140
Ten Transmedia People - Spring 2012 edition
Five transmedia projects to follow - spring 2012
Five transmedia projects - May 2012
Five transmedia projects - autumn 2012
5. CHAPTER ONE
TELEVISION AND NOW MEDIA
Although I started out in publishing and radio back in the days, the best part of the last
decade I’ve spent in the realm of television. It’s a fascinating world with a multitude of
genres and a stunning breadth of scope. It’s a venue for taking on the world and an arena
where anyone with a great idea can flourish, while at the same time being an industry with an
extremely competitive streak and a fierce struggle to rise to the top. It’s also a great way to
reach an enormous mass of people, but that mass of people lie beyond a select few
gatekeepers and some very set production budgets.
It’s an interesting area when it comes to trying new things, like integrating social media,
multiplatform solutions or transmedia storytelling . On the one hand the potential for even
getting a go-ahead is pretty slim. On the other hand the pay-off is potentially huge, especially
in comparison with online-only projects. I’ve written a number of posts on the matter, some
of which are included below, highlighting possibilities, challenges and possible solutions. At
times it’s a difficult path to forge, but the audience is already in a state of multiplatform
existence, and television has never been afraid to take the big leaps; only hesitant, until the
benefits are clearly laid out and verified. I believe that day is not far away. In fact, it might
already have arrived, and we will look back in decades to come and see that it was in the 10’s
that TV finally changed from a single platform to a multiplatform storytelling vehicle.
6. 26/1/2012
Developing TV shows for a social and
multiplatform world
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The other day I spent 23 minutes watching a video from the BBC. It was 23 quite well spent
minutes, as the journalist in question – Rory-Cellan Jones – had devoted quite a lot of effort
to his subject, that of the future of television. The video features interviews with people from
Microsoft, Google, Dijit, even Robert Scoble. The talks are all about how to harness the
allure and the pull of television in a social and connected context, and in the end of
course how to make money from it all.
What the video shows, is that there are a lot of interesting ventures out there; Google TV,
connected TV sets, lots of apps for iPads and iPhones and Android gear and so on. But it also,
quite clearly, shows that no one has really ”gotten it” yet. When, for instance, talking about
connected tv sets, the challenge is to get the masses to actually connect the sets, to see the
benefits of doing so and have the benefits outweigh the discomfort of actually having to go
through the hassle of connecting the sets and using them for something else than plain
viewing.
Here is where I see that tv program and format developers have quite a challenging task
ahead of them. Content is King is the old rallying cry for the creative industries. Context is
even more King, is something that has been argued lately, especially if talking about
multiplatform, cross media and transmedia. Now, what we need to do, is create compelling
content in the right context and infuse it with that sprinkling of magic that will make it
near impossible to resist as a connected, social experience.
Peter Cashmore of Mashable wrote a piece for CNN the other week, where he talked about
today’s television hits not being ”Must-See” television, but rather ”Must–Tweet” television;
i.e. the sort of television show that craves interaction – if not with the show itself, then at
least with other people experiencing the same thing right then. This works fairly well with
large live shows; the final of Idol, Champions League games in football, the Eurovision Song
Contest and so on. The challenge then, is how to create this craving to interact, comment,
laugh and scowl (which admittedly sometimes is more interesting than the show itself) for
other types of shows? Well, I propose – admittedly from my limited point of view but
nevertheless – four points to take into consideration when designing, re-designing and
developing television shows for a social and connected world:
1. Create the foundations for success. For many companies the first step will be to pull
down the silos between different departments and make people talk to each other and actually
make an effort to understand each other and see everything in the same light. For a successful
multiplatform tv-based project to work, the program development people must make
themselves understood to the tech people and the marketing people, and the tech and
marketing people must make their realities stick with the development people. All else is
simply counterproductive.
7. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 7
2. Do a lot of research and build on success (or failure). Andrea Phillips is quite
rightly adamant in insisting that one does oneself a disservice by not looking at what has
already been produced and distributed. There is absolutely no shame in standing on the
shoulders of others; indeed, many of the best innovations, also in the media and television
business, are projects inspired by earlier failures or successes. From my own experience I
know that almost whatever you try to create, someone has already thought of it. Which is all
good and well, as you can use this to make your own project better…
3. Consider applying transmedia storytelling methods. Not every show should go
transmedia, not every show should even be true multiplatform. They can still generate a buzz,
still build a hype, but do not need to go all the way. But for the ones that do go multiplatform,
applying transmedia storytelling methods will be of use to everyone involved in the
development and production and distribution parts of the process. As transmedia is based on
developing a thorough background, storyworld, mythology and narrative superstructure, this
will help immensly when trying to implement point 1 above – getting everyone to see the
same project and understanding the same thing and work together towards a common goal. It
will help in the development process of any kind of television show, it will give pointers to
where entry points can be implemented to invite an audience to participate, it will assist in
developing story archs and characters, it will help when keeping multiplatform content
coherent and logically connected between all parts… it’s all good, basically.
4. Listen and respond. This is one strength that, say, a weekly game show has over a multi-
million dollar drama series from HBO. It is possible to listen to what people say and discuss
on social media and use that to tweak the show. Also make sure there is staff dedicated to the
job – if someone has a great idea for the show on Twitter, respond! Drop a line to say ”hey,
can we call you to hear you out on that idea?”. No one knows what gems might be
unearthed…
8. 16/4/2012
Transmedia and fiction in television
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I read an interesting article on the success story of Game of Thrones a couple of days ago,
over at Lost Remote. GoT has been one of the transmedia marketing success stories I’ve
pointed to in talks and articles over the past year, what with their ”Smells of Westeros” and
”Food of Westeros” campaigns. I was very happy to see that HBO were rewarded with an
audience for the first episode of the second season that was 73% up on the first episode of the
first season.
Now, the social media buzz around GoT is indeed remarkable. HBO are evidently doing all
they can to maintain and grow this buzz, and it would seem it is paying off handsomely.
In the article I read, no one was speaking about ”transmedia” per say. Still, the principles of
transmedia storytelling are what made all the social buzz possible. George R.R. Martin has
created an enormously rich story world, he already has a great number of story archs up in
the air and the mythology and the narrative superstructure are both firmly in place.
This is what I would recommend anyone thinking of transmedia and television, in a drama/
fiction setting, to take note of and even replicate. Making a mythology as rich as that of GoT
might seem excessive, but look at the possibilities it generates for entry points, character
interaction, fan art and fan fiction and so on!
If you’re working on a fantasy story, build it all as eloquently as GoT, or at least strive to. If
your fiction is more of the contemporary kind, make your own jigsaw puzzle out of facts
from the world around you, glueing the pieces together with just the right amount of fiction
from yourself and your creative brain.
Above all, plan for the audience to join in. The HBO example in the article above is getting
there. I do believe there are new routes to explore and new ways to implement, to tie the
audience even tighter to your content.
2 comments:
Sara Thacher said...
Simon,
I actually think GoT is an interesting case when you're talking expanded
narratives, because (as I understand it) Martin strictly disallowed any
additional growth/exploration of narrative not explicitly covered in the book.
This makes the potential for thing that take advantage of the richness of the
world – like direct character interaction almost impossible.
What I think is remarkable are the ways that Campfire has found for fans to
'join in' without directly working with the narrative. You're right, they do take
9. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 9
advantage of the richness of the world – but strenuously avoid the actual
narrative/characters within that world.
Instead of finding ways for the characters to make the leap out into our world
and surround us (by communicating on twitter, blogging, calling the 'Talk to a
Targaryen' Hotline), they invite people to enter into the world of GoT (by
choosing an affinity for a particular house, eating their food, empathizing with
their weather, etc.
Simon said...
Sara,
thanks for your comment, and yes, I agree. I was not aware of the fact that
Martin had made such demands, although it makes perfect sense from his
point of view. But yes, with something as rich as the foundations on which
GoT is built, the very soil of the world can be an entry point into the world of
the story - as Campfire have proven.
I actually like this better. Having Daenerys actively updating her Twitter
account would be at odds with the feel of the story itself; better to let the
audience immerse themselves at their leisure
10. 5/10/2012
Four criteria for evaluating IP and
transmedia potential
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A quick post on one thing I’ve been looking into lately; with all the rage around
multiplatform storytelling, transmedia storytelling etc, many of the examples and projects up
right now are ”fresh” transmedia projects, fairly recently developed and released. At the same
time, there are countless great narratives already in existence that could work
wonderfully if looked at from a transmedia angle.
A lot of these will be on display in Cannes the coming days during MIP, but often not even
the IP owners will have realized the transmedia potential inherited in their property.
Here are four points that matter when it comes to evaluating a TV IP and its transmedia
potential:
Story
There’s no contest here, at least not for me. Story is everything when it comes to transmedia.
Is it a compelling and immersive story that has the weight and the bones to stretch to
different platforms? Does it have a story world already in place, or is it easily conceivable
how such a world could be designed and developed? Are the protagonists and antagonists
(and side characters) suitable for a deeper mythology? Is it possible to sense the existence
of a narrative superstructure somewhere along the road? If a project’s Story supports
transmedia, you’re halfway there. If it doesn’t, don’t bother.
Context
I’ve heard several people arguing that in today’s world, context beats content hands down.
While I don’t agree, I can see that they have a point – context matters. When assessing an IP
for transmedia potential, very much so; if transmedia extension does not make sense in the
context of your IP, there’s absolutely no need to go there. ”Not making sense” can mean
that you realize the ROI on developing a full on transmedia experience would not justify the
expense. Or it can mean that you come to the conclusion that your property is better exploited
by extending the narrative on the original platform, without going into apps, online ARGs,
graphic novels or whatever. Don’t get swept away by the hype, basically.
Audience
It’s quite simple really; even if you’d be hard pressed to find members of the potential
audience harrassing you for not implementing a transmedia strategy for your IP, the fact is
that they – especially if they belong to a younger demographic – already ARE
transmedia, multiplatform, 2nd screen and all that. To NOT create and extend with that
fact in mind is simply not realizing the full potential of ones IP. Even the older demographics
are increasingly up for some mulitplatform niceness. But always analyze your target
audience; perhaps the young niche demographic you’re targeting is the one, that single one,
that is actually averse to online existence?
Financial / business models
11. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 11
Seldom do we get the luxury of having a budget split into fair parts for the different parts of
the transmedia narrative. Mostly it’s about cannibalizing other parts of the project, or finding
ingenious ways of funding online and mobile and live events. But transmedia can work the
other way around as well. Say that you have no way of getting sponsors to fit into your
television series. A spin-off or parallell narrative on YouTube, however, might be the
perfect fit for a sponsor to enter. One good thing about having to be very creative with
financing when producing transmedia, is that it has a spill-over effect on the original IP as
well. We just have to go find money in strange places!
If you would like to add to this – and I know the list could grow a lot longer and a lot more
specific and detailed (I haven’t covered issues with demands from collaborators, or marketing
needs, or the need to tap into existing audience behaviour, or….) – I’d be quite happy to hear
what you think.
12. 1/11/2012
Transmedia – knitting brands and
television together
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At the London Transmedia Fest at the end of October – an event put on by DMIC, Ogilvy and
other parties – the power of brands was readily apparent. As commissioning budgets dwindle,
producers worldwide are looking for new ways of funding content, and one of the more
attractive options is brand integration. The challenge is to succeed with such an integration in
the best way possible, so that the brand connection doesn’t detract from the content on offer
while it at the same time gives the brand value for money.
One effective method in such a case is to utilize transmedia storytelling methods for the
design, development, production, distribution, marketing and audience engagement phases.
By diving deep into the values of a brand, the history of the brand and the particular product
at hand, the people who had developed said product, the people in the history of the brand
and so on, we will be able to design campaigns that not only immerse themselves totally in
the fabric of the brand, they also have a number of entry points into the narrative, spread out
over a number of media platforms, and a logical way of piecing all of this together.
What I feel in the aftermath of LTF2012 is most of all a change in attitude. It might not be
readily apparent, but it is there. If ”storytelling” is the answer to the question ”what next for
the marketing industry?”, then ”transmedia methods” is the answer to the questions ”how on
Earth are we going to accomplish that then?”.
13. CHAPTER TWO
THE MIP SESSIONS
Tying in to the subject of television, multiplatform and transmedia are a series of blog posts
I’ve written for ReedMIDEM and their MIPBlog. I’ve included a selection below, since I feel
they represent a slightly different angle than my usual one. ReedMIDEM arrange, amongst
other things, the MIPTV and MIPCOM events in Cannes every year. These are the biggest
events of the year for the television industry with billions of euros worth of TV and other
content exchanging hands over the course of a couple of days.
The television world is a strong world still, commanding the attention of an impressive
amount of people, for hours every day, every week. But the world is changing and so could
and should television. In the posts I write for MIPBlog I’ve made it a mission of sorts to look
at transmedia storytelling through the lenses of the television industry and try to look at when
it actually makes sense in the scope of things. There are television content that does not lend
itself to transmedia storytelling, for sure, but there is a lot more content that does. In my
book, it should be in the interest of anyone working in television to look at new philosophies
and methods to engage with the audience, co-create with them, increase immersion and
loyalty and move from silo-filled ivory towers (or broadcast masts) to a living, breathing
content-organism focused on integrating and immersing with the audience.
Below is a selection of the posts I wrote for MIPBlog, starting from the beginning of the year.
14. 16/2/2012
Why transmedia is a no-brainer for television
————————————————————————————————
There’s no denying it. The audience has moved on. It’s no longer a question of whether a
show should be developed for second screen action, forinteractivity and for a socially
connected, proactive audience. It doesn’t matter whether anything in television is developed
with this in mind or not,it’s happening anyway.
If your content evokes any sort of feelings in anyone, they will Facebook it, tweet it, blog
it and talk about it. What we’re experiencing right now is a whole industry which is trying
to find coherent best practices to address the challenges and opportunities that this situation
brings.
Some productions have taken to this beautifully; Glee have been doing this for three years
already, shows like True Blood, Game of Thrones andDexter (the above image is from a
‘transmedia timeline‘ of the show) are very much proactive in this area and just last week the
2012 Grammy Awards saw over 17 million social media messages in one day, coming in
second only to the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago (which achieved nearly 17,5 million
messages).
When developing a television show – be it a live show, a documentary, a drama series or
something else – with social interaction, audience engagement and interactivity in mind,
using transmedia storytelling methods make very much sense.
These methods:
- help creators and find logical, engaging ways to give the audience tools and reasons to
create and interact
- help marketing people find logical entry points for an audience to connect themselves to the
stories told
- and will give birth to new ideas and highlight new possibilities when it comes to using
technology, apps and software in connection to a given show.
These are some of the points I raised in my publication late last year, One Year in
Transmedia, where I curated one year’s worth of blog posts and combined them with
interviews with some of the brightest minds in transmedia today.
Looking ahead at the coming years, Andrea Phillips, the award-winning transmedia writer
and game designer, sees great possibilities for television:
“I think we’re going to see tremendous shifts happening in television. It’s the medium best-
suited to anchor an interactive transmedia narrative right now. It’s episodic, very often entire
communities consume the work at the same time, and it’s fairly nimble compared with feature
films and print publishing. I think we’ll see such a volume of work that the transmedia
element of a TV show will become a no-brainer. It won’t be special; it’ll be expected, and a
show that doesn’t do anything will feel like it’s missing a beat.”
15. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 15
Nicoletta Iacobacci, Head of Multiplatform at EBU, acknowledges that television faces
serious challenges as well:
“We are in a transitional phase, where TV is increasingly considered to be just a bigger
screen. Those able to use space and layout (and by space I mean the “living room” and the
power of family aggregation, and for layout, the user experience of Smart TV) will win the
game in the coming months. I agree that Transmedia is impacting TV, but TV needs to
become one of the screens in a multiplatform ecosystem.”
Finally, I also interviewed transmedia guru Jeff Gomez, of Starlight Runner, and asked him at
the end how he envisaged the discipline in three years’ time. His answer was encouraging to
say the least:
“By 2015, transmedia narrative will have taken root as a form of artistic expression unto
itself.”
There is much more food for thought in the publication, which is available for free on a
Creative Commons-basis.
With these encouraging examples and discussions in mind, I’m thoroughly looking forward
to experiencing MIPCube, MIPFormats and MIPTV 2012 and all the brilliant new ventures
that we can take part in there.
16. 4/6/2012
What transmedia lessons can TV learn from
the gaming industry?
————————————————————————————————
The international game industry is currently worth something in the region of80 billion
dollars annually. The TV industry by comparison is worth more than 200 billion dollars
annually. It could be argued that these two industries would benefit from looking at what
synergy effects could be had from collaborating over IP and development. In this,
transmedia storytelling methods can help a lot, when getting everything to synchronise
logically to create a greater whole.
At the recent Nordic Game Conference (NDC), television came to the fore on several
occurences. Yves Bordeleau from Cyanide gave an interesting insight into the challenges of
working with the upcoming Game of Thrones game (photo); challenges such as keeping the
same tone and feel as the HBO hit series, while at the same time build a great game
experience. He revealed that the development team had to put up two different wikis – online
dictionaries – one for the game development and another for the IP itself. These had to be
constantly mirrored against each other to make sure that everything stayed logically
synchronised.
Another example is the rapidly increasing number of services offering second screen
solutions for TV shows, where companies like UK’sZeebox are opening up for producers to
integrate own play-along apps via their platform. Another prominent company at the
conference was Rovio, the creators of the blockbuster Angry Birds game franchise, who, as
was reported at MIPTV, is moving into television with a 52-episode weekly animation series,
premiering in autumn.
At NDC, I had the opportunity of talking to Andrea Phillips, a transmedia writer, designer
and producer who has worked on projects like the Maester’s Path and marketing campaign
for Game of Thrones. She held a talk entitled ”Why Gaming Needs Transmedia”, where
many of her key points could be related to the television industry as well.
She agrees fully that television and transmedia can be a perfect match, especially when
looking at some of the core characteristics of television:
- “Television is brilliant, not only when it comes to storytelling but also since it has the great
trait of being scheduled. You know when a television show will be aired and you know how
long it will be until the next episode. That means that any producer or broadcaster has the
possibility to use transmedia methods to keep the conversation and engagement going
during the span between episodes.”
One solution would be to add what Andrea calls a ”B Plot”:
- If the ‘A Plot’ is the story told in a television series, there exists the possibility to add a
‘B Plot’, something that a character could conceivably do in the meanwhile leading up
17. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 17
to the next episode. This can keep the audience engaged and talking about the programme,
not only the day after a episode is aired, but the next day as well, and the next day, and the
next.
An example could be one character riding off at the end of an episode. His or her
experience could be shown as webisodes or blog posts or social media posts during the days
leading up to the next episode, furthering the plot or acting as a separate plot, while still not
contradicting the ‘A Plot’.
The possibilities are many, while the challenges are almost as numerous. Still, fusing
television and games in a transmedia context has the potential to engage an audience on an
even deeper level than merely a great TV series, provided it is done well.
18. 9/7/2012
Five transmedia myths debunked
————————————————————————————————
As with any new trend, a lot of falsehoods are banded about on the nature and potential of
cross-media storytelling. So I thought it was about time to debunk some transmedia myths.
Ready?
1. Transmedia is the newest of the new!
Actually, no. It might be a new term for a lot of people, yes. But stories moving over different
media have been around for ages, from storytellers combining with cave painters and
onwards. People have argued that the Bible was the first great transmedia campaign. It
is, admittedly, a pretty long-lasting project. Just goes to show what you can accomplish if you
properly budget for community management and get the word-of-mouth going!
2. Everything will be transmedia and you’ll get bypassed by your competitors in a
heartbeat if you don’t do transmedia!
Actually, no. This is a line that can be used to try to tip a sales pitch in a favourable direction,
but it holds no truth whatsoever. There is no need for a successful novel to think about
transmedia components… unless they make sense and fit the needs of the story or the
distributor or the publisher, obviously. Accepting this statement for a fact would lead to a
lot of creative minds shutting up shop. From my own experience, I know that you can spend a
LOT of time creating story worlds and narrative superstructures, without actually ever getting
down to the point of MAKING THE ORIGINAL STORY into something that will appeal to
the audience. If transmedia doesn’t make sense in the context of a story – if that story is
better as a stand alone novel or film or graphic novel or TV series – “going transmedia on its
ass” won’t improve the overall experience.
3. Today’s audiences crave transmedia!
Actually, no. I have met many many members of “the audience”. Not a single one of them
have told me they’re explicitly CRAVING transmedia. It’s not oxygen, or food, or funny
pictures of kittens on the web; you know, all those really essential things in life. On the
other hand, of course, a well-crafted transmedia project will give participants and audience
members a richer and more fulfilling experience. So while they might not crave it, not in the
”give us transmedia or your dog will die!” way, most audiences appreciate it when it’s there,
it fits the concept and it adds value.
4. Transmedia is really really complicated and only the gurus can get it right!
Actually, no. If you can tell a story well, you can do transmedia. If you hear someone
shopping the “go to the gurus”-line, chances are they’re basically looking to get hired
(as they are inevitably ‘gurus’ themselves, of course). Now of course, you should get
collaborators aboard, people who are better than you at coding, marketing, filming…
whatever it is you need to do. But in essence, it’s all about telling a great story in a great way,
utilising any means that make sense.
19. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 19
5. Transmedia is just a buzzword!
Actually, no. Even though it’s not the newest of the new, it’s not something that is
inevitable for all content in the near future, it’s not something that an audience craves and
gets upset about if it isn’t present and it’s not something that need a batallion of self-
proclaimed gurus to get right, it’s still some pretty awesome stuff.
Living in a world filled with social media, online interaction, dissolving barriers between
different types of media and a growing acceptance that stories actually matter, utilising
transmedia storytelling methods when developing, designing, producing, marketing and
distributing makes absolute sense. It’s worth remembering though, that just as with
everything else – if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Go transmedia, but when it
makes sense in the context of your content. And if someone sells you the above lines, well,
just point them here!
20. 28/8/2012
The five keys to transmedia success
————————————————————————————————
So, transmedia. The buzzword that alienates creators, producers and buyers alike. The term
that is almost impossible to define in a way that would go down well with everyone in
the media industry. The oldest of the old that at the same time is the newest of the new.
Confusing? Yes it is, but it is also the direction that everything is moving towards, more or
less willingly. See, the audience is already there. It’s just a question of who manages to
make the best out of the situation.
I would liken transmedia to the encores at a concert. Whatever band you go to see,
everyone knows that the last song is by no means the last song. After the band has struck the
final chord and smashed a guitar or two on stage and left, all you, as the audience, need to do
is clap your hands and shout ”ONE MORE SONG!” and lo and behold, the band re-enters the
stage and does at least three more songs.
Transmedia is the encore of the media industry, minus the clapping and the shouting; when
the television programme or series is finished, transmedia storytelling gives the
audience an encore to go to, to immerse themselves further into the world of the story. A
good example might be the continuation of the Avengers-franchise, which is now reportedly
branching out into television, opening up untold possibilities for brand extension, mythology-
building and revenue-reaping.
With this in mind, here are five handy tips to keep in mind when travelling to MIPCOM
this year, to maximise your chances of transmedia success with your IP:
1. Can you extend it?
This is key if a property is to be considered appropriate for transmedia storytelling methods;
there needs to be an underlying foundation to draw on and build from in order to create and
produce meaningful transmedia extensions or parallel storylines. For fiction this is almost
always a given, but when you start looking at game shows and quiz shows, for instance, the
challenges become more pronounced and demand thorough development work from the
outset.
2. Can you integrate an audience into it?
While not an absolute necessity, the possibility to interact with the audience and make them
part of your narrative and property is one that should not be overlooked, and one that
transmedia lends itself very nicely to. By engaging the audience in a logical and immersive
way you foster loyalty, which is a very valuable commodity in the fickle media industry of
today.
3. Can you format it?
Transmedia formats – possible to sell as packages to different territories – are relatively few
and far between. But if you can get your hands on one that works, you might just have a
21. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 21
winner. If you can see a transmedia property that has worked in one territory, and one
that does not rely on hoaxing to succeed (since the hoax in that case would have been
revealed in the initial territory and not work in others) you can localise it for almost any
territory and use the experience garnered from the first territory to make it an even
better experience in another, ensuring the all-important revenue stream. Which leads me to
the next-to-last point, namely…
4. Can you monetise it?
Don’t get me wrong, I love art projects. I love properties that are created for the love of
creating stuff and I’m in awe of many of the transmedia producers out there who manage to
fulfill their visions, often with very limited budgets. But coming from a television
background, I know that if you can’t make the financial side work — i.e. get revenue in
from sponsors or ads or the audience or somewhere — you won’t get to make the second
season of that show. So when looking at different possible transmedia properties, always
check to see if they include financially viable solutions.
5. Can you get it?
The perhaps most important aspect is that you actually get it. In a multi-platform world, it is
quite easy to get mixed up in definitions, challenges, solutions and opinions. If you feel you
don’t get it, don’t buy it; whomever is selling it should be able to get anyone to understand
the property on offer. At times I can testify that it is a struggle, but any project, no matter how
big, needs to be able to be elevator pitched to anyone and convey the essence of the project.
Otherwise, the end result runs the very real risk of turning into a shambles.
22. 5/11/2012
The audience is your channel
————————————————————————————————
Are you looking for an audience for your content? Or are you perhaps looking to expand the
audience of your TV channel? Or are you trying to reach a new demographic, a new
audience? You are more than welcome to try achieving those things in the traditional ways,
but one thing you have to take into account is a whole new channel that has opened up
for everyone – the audience itself.
The beauty of looking at the audience as your channel to other members of the audience, is
apparent when looking at the equivalent in marketing –propagation planning. The art lies in
creating not only for the people you want to reach, but the people you want them to
reach. Namely catering for “friends of friends”, in social media parlance.
This is where transmedia storytelling principles can come effectively into play. By
creating interconnected stories at the foundations of your content, it is possible to offer the
audience content and experiences that could cater to many tastes and become the stories
– with inherent tools –that your audience will spread to new audiences.
When setting out creating and developing, producing and distributing with propagation
planning and utilising the channel that is your audience in mind, the following three things
are good to remember:
- Make the experience transparent. Let the audience experience your content through and
with other members of the audience. The audience’s best reactions can be had if the
members of the audience can ‘see’ each other. In today’s world this doesn’t mean that they
literally sit with each other to experience content, instead they connect, comment, debate and
laugh with each other online. Make sure to give them the proper tools though, such as for
instance a clear and concise hashtag for Twitter conversations around your content
- Plan for success. No matter if you subscribe to the 1-9-90 rule of audience
participation (1% actively contribute, 9% intermittently; and 90% simply consume) — or the
BBC’s assertion that it’s actually now a question of the 17-60-23 rule — you will need to
plan for there to be quite a substantial amount of content, challenges and so on available
for a more inquisitive audience
- Make it easy. No one likes a headache. Take your audience by the hand when necessary,
and lead them in the direction you would want them to go.Create content so that they are
always led back on track should they stray. And be sure to celebrate their participation;
make them feel utterly and greatly appreciated.
All in all, the audience is your channel. You hold the remote control. Now you just have to
find that red ON button…
23. 10/12/2012
TV and cross media - it’s getting there!
————————————————————————————————
After MIPCOM last October I wrote a blog post entitled “It’s getting there“. That sentence
perfectly summed up my sentiment about the television industry; the media world right now
IS a multiplatform world, and people and companies left and right are starting to get
creative around this fact. This includes all aspects of television, from initial development to
script writing, from marketing to distribution and from technical implementations to audience
interaction.
The one thing that is not necessary getting creative enough yet is the funding. At the
Future Media 2.0 conference in Riga, Latvia, Triona Campbell from beActive
Entertainment talked about beActive’s take on crossmedia, especially with regards to
funding. According to her, there has been a clear change in how broadcasters approach
crossmedia proposals:
“I feel that the broadcasters increasingly want projects to have a clear
crossmedia or transmedia angle. The problem is that they are not prepared to pay
what it costs to develop and produce that kind of content.”
This in turn means that the producers need to get creative, not only when it comes to
developing content, but also when it comes to finding the fundsto actually produce the
content. Tishna Molla, COO of Power to the Pixel, another speaker at the Future Media 2.0
conference, has observed an increasing level of maturity among producers:
“We’ve seen a clear change in how producers approach cross media at our
Pixel Market since we launched the event three years ago. Back then it was very much a
film focus, while last year we saw an upswing in factually-driven TV series. This year, for
the first time, we’ve seen people coming in with native transmedia projects, both fiction
and non-fiction. On the other hand, it’s getting harder to define the term ‘producer’, as the
one fronting the project no longer necessarily is the one owning the IP. Still, if you want to
take a look at a good example, look no further than “The Incredibles”, a great project
meshing TV / film and comics.”
But if you’re a producer and you’re faced with the need to go crossmedia, multiplatform
or transmedia in order to get your project produced, and you know that you need to start
looking at the audience in a different way, where should you start? At the beginning, of
course. Here are three handy tips to keep in mind:
1. Look at your project from all angles from the outset, without prejudice, to find out
which platforms are necessary, which platforms are unnecessary and which platforms hang in
the balance. A platform can be needed for financial reasons (SMS-votes or suchlike) but be
totally unnecessary story-wise. In such cases, story always takes preference.
24. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 24
2. Find your audience… and BE your audience. You can never research your target
audience too much. As soon as you know what your story will be about, you should find
where the people from the target group exist. If many of them are on an online discussion
forum, you should be there too, and not just when your TV series is coming out, but way
ahead of that. Building credibility in the circles where your content ought to be received the
best can have very long-reaching implications. These can stretch from viral marketing boosts
to actual co-creation together with the audience.
3. Be creative at all times with all aspects of the project. This is admittedly not what
television does best; releasing the hold of the IP is seldom what comes first to mind for
producers or broadcasters. In a constantly fluctuating world, with an audience that has a
multitude of choices competing for their attention, any crossmedia project needs to be
quickly adaptable to deal with demands, challenges and opportunities. Such an agility is hard
to achieve, but possible, especially by applying transmedia storytelling methods from the
outset of the development process.
25. CHAPTER THREE
THE PHILOSOPHY
There is a lot of thought behind most aspects of Now Media. Scores of articles and books and
talks and presentations and slideshows and discussions and arguments, all - or at least most -
helping to move the knowledge about and the relation to Now Media just that little step
forward every time. It’s very easy to get caught up in the tangle that is the interaction and
integration between all media platforms and all media practices today; while we are spoiled
with possibilities, those very same possibilities can at the same time become our downfall as
creators.
A lot of great minds have shared their thoughts and paths of reasoning over the past year. I’ve
tried to contribute some myself, when I’ve encountered something that I’ve felt I should
share, that might help someone else take that next step forward, hopefully in the right
direction. One thing I am absolutely convinced about is that we should never stop discussing,
debating and arguing. Even though it’s not the same as doing and making, it’s a great way to
hone the arguments for one’s position and one’s reasoning. It’s also a great way to find flaws
in one’s own reasoning - something that I’ve personally found happens with almost alarming
regularity.
26. 11/2/2012
The five pillars of transmedia
————————————————————————————————
Again this past week I find myself impressed by the amount of thought processing that
people put into thinking about transmedia and its’ impact on all kinds of media (and other
kinds of art expressions, such as theatre for instance, (which admittedly was from last year
but popped up on my radar only now).
Reading through a number of posts and articles on everything from social
television to transmedia in marketing, I think one thing stands out very clearly. Everyone is
looking at transmedia from their own angle. This is very natural and exactly as it should
be, as everyone have their own area of expertise, everyone have their own skillsets and
everyone have their own projects in mind when deliberating using transmedia storytelling
methods.
What this means, however, is that on many occasions a full-fledged transmedia project
cannot be successfully developed and implemented – at least not one that would realize the
full potential of transmedia storytelling – without there being people representing all these
different areas of expertise present in the project. This, in turn, points to what was
discussed over atTransmythology earlier, the need for translators between different possible
parts and people in a transmedia project. These translators – or a very comprehensive
glossary that everyone would be required to memorize – are crucial in order for everyone to
understand everyone else and pull in the same direction.
Basically it is very easy to get lost in the myriad of storytelling, technical and other
possibilities and connections outlined in the picture above. We need to remember that it is
actual people who will design, develop, produce, distribute and market the content that is
created; these people need to gel, at least in the context of the project, or else we'll have
something worth less than the sum of its' parts, instead of the other way around.
27. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 27
Five people we need to get to talk to and understand each other,
if a transmedia project is to be a success
The five pillars
As I see it there are five pillars that a successful transmedia project must strive to get to work
together and understand each other (disclaimer: there are transmedia projects where the same
person sits on two or more of these chairs, as well as projects that differ in some other way;
this is based on projects I've worked on, where for instance tv has played a big part).
The creative part.
First off, this is not to say that any other part is not creative. They are, more often than not.
By creative I mean the people responsible for creating the story, the content. They build the
storyworld, fill it with characters and plots and stories and plan how these can extend over
different media. They write the scripts, they plan the overarching story arc, the narrative
superstructure and look at possible entry points via seeded storylines on different media.
One thing that the creative people sometimes miss are the technological aspects of what
they want to create. It’s comparatively easy to say ”…and then we’ll tell the story of XX via
a casual game on Facebook”. I mean, there are TONS of casual games on Facebook, right?
How hard can it be? In reality, it’s a little trickier – a Facebook game can cost quite a bit (try
100k€ and upwards) and you need to find someone who knows how to program it as well.
And get them to GET your idea… and so on.
It’s also often hard for a creative (I know, I count myself as one as well) to relinquish hold of
their story or characters, whether it be to other people in the development or project team
or in the end to the audience. But if this is what makes sense, then this is what needs to be
done; we must try to keep a certain distance, while not letting go of any of the passion.
The technological / production part.
28. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 28
Now, for tech people (of which I am not one, so any techies reading this and feeling hard
done by, blame me) other challenges exist. Programming is an art form – you can write
beautiful code or ugly code or anything in between, that much I’ve learnt from my
programmer brother – but lives bytotally different constraints than the creative
storytelling part. Deadlines in the programming world are often not the same as deadlines
in, say, the television world. There is no ”putting forward the release date” of the
programming part of a project, if the television part of it is supposed to air at a certain date
and time.
This is a minor problem though; a greater challenge for tech people can be to immerse
themselves in the story to the extent that they actually try to enhance it with technical
possibilities, not just make the stuff that the creative team asks for. There are a lot of
possibilties with apps and web portals and HTML5 and what have you, that creatives simply
do not know about.
If the tech people can immerse themselves in the story, they will start to see possibilities
that the creative people then need to be able to take in and understand, in order to work them
into the story. This all takes some time and a lot of trial and error – believe me.
The financial part.
These are very important men and women. Not only because they are the ones who will get
you the funding you need to be able to do what you are setting out to do, but also because
they will be very close and intimate with your project.
See, money very seldom comes without any strings attached. It’s your financial people that
often will broker the deals that say which strings will be attached where and why. The
creators will have their say, naturally, and so will the tech people. But in the end, if there is
no money, nothing gets made. That’s why it is so very important to integrate these people
into the story and the story world, using transmedia storytelling methods to tell the stories to
them as well to ensure they see the same project and the same content and the same
stories as everyone else. Only then can the financial people properly care for the project in
talks with possible partners.
(Or you can crowdsource on Kickstarter etc; that again brings its own challenges (unless
you’re producing Double Fine and start a Kickstarter campaign, of course, then it's all cool
sailings :)).
The distribution part.
The distribution people are the ones that ultimately will be in charge of making
sure everyone can take part of what you’ve created. If you’re a small indie (or you've
created something that doesn't need any bigger and more costly platform) you might simply
distribute your story on YouTube (if that is an applicable platform), via an e-book or by some
other means, depending on your content. If you’re relying on television you have your
broadcasters or IPTV providers, if it’s a film then you deal with the theaters and the DVD
distributors, and so on. A lot of this is technicalities; follow the set of rules for submitting
content and the end result will be as projected.
What distribution people increasingly need to pay heed to is the fact that they too are a part of
the bigger story. Distribution (and this goes very much for the ”old” media, such as
29. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 29
television) need to adapt to fit into a bigger picture; for instance, the television part of a
story can no longer dictate all other parts of a transmedia project, or everything will
suffer.
Distributors need to take into consideration the instructions from the creative people about
the story and the storyworld as well as the possibilities and demands the tech people might
offer and have. This in turn means that the distribution people need to look beyond their core
area of interest – distribution – and be prepared to take in the whole of the narrative
superstructure, the mythology and the story world, to make sure the distribution models
ADD to the overall experience, not DETRACT from it.
The marketing part
I know many people scoff at marketing when it comes to transmedia. And yes, a cause can be
made for transmedia marketing not being a ”true” form of transmedia, but since no global
organization has established a single definite definition of transmedia yet, I guess you can
call transmedia marketing ”transmedia” if you want to. In this post though I would look
beyond this and focus on the role that marketing has for any transmedia project.
As I wrote last week, there should be no ”build it and they will come”-thinking when it
comes to transmedia. You have created compelling content with groundbreaking use of
technology, good funding and distribution secured. You even have a set target group as
intended audience. Now you need to put it in front of them, and here’s when the people at
marketing come in. They are – if they are worth their salt – usually very good at getting
things in front of people. The more people you can get to take note of your content (and
providing your content is good enough to measure up) the more chance you have of your
project turning into a breakaway success.
What marketing people need to ponder and understand is that transmedia most often has a
participatory nature. It’s not marketing in the sense of ”show them this can of soda enough
times and they will buy it!”, it’s ”tell the story of the content, give them a reason to tell it
– or their own connected stories – onwards and the tools to do it”. There’s quite a big
difference that needs to be understood and adhered to, in order for marketing to work for a
transmedia project.
The sixth part - the audience
All of this leads to one thing; the need to create a transmedia experience that will engage,
excite, enable and enrich an audience. This, while all the people representing the five
pillars above need to communicate fully and thoroughly with each other, communication
which may or may not include the use of translators and glossaries to assist with the
understanding. What it all boils down to is that everyone must strive to understand
everyone else and open one's eyes to the possibilities and challenges that will arise.
Or, rather, open one eye to possibilities and challenges, as the other eye needs to stay
constantly fixed on the audience, ready to adapt, respond, re-develop and communicate.
The audience is the foundation that all these pillars need to be grounded on, else we’ll
just have a heap of rabble in the end. More on them in another post.
30. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 30
2 comments:
Kevin Beamer said...
The ultimate goal of these five pillars of transmedia is to please the audience or consumers. It
should find ways on how to excite, and effectively communicate to the audience its products
and services. The gauge of a successful transmedia can be determined whether the content has
been fully relayed to the consumers and whether they fully understood and appreciate the
message.
12:20 AM
Marc Binkley said...
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the link to my article. I thought your post was very insightful and I do agree that
my position is taken from my own frame of reference namely - marketing.
Cheers, Marc
31. 29/3/2012
The Transmedia Translator
————————————————————————————————
A brief post from Helsinki Airport, as I’m off for six days of the craziness that is MIPCube,
MIPFormats and MIPTV. As I look at the people and companies congregating on the Cote
d’Azur, I’m once again struck by how difficult many of these will have when it comes to not
only talking to each other, but actually understanding each other.
I’m not talking about a language barrier either, but rather a barrier that arises from context.
This is all perfectly natural, as tv producers will talk another language than for instance 2nd
screen app providers, in much the same way as someone working in publishing would have a
hard time grasping the fine details of a corn farmers professional life and vice versa.
The difference there is that the publisher and the farmer seldom would have anything to do
with each other. In a transmedia world, everyone have to collaborate with each other, to a
certain degree at least. And just as the farmer would have needed a person who understands
both farming and publishing in order to explain publishing to him, and understand which
questions he is asking and why he is asking them, in the same way transmedia projects need
someone who understands it all, at least up to a certain level, and is able to facilitate
discussions and collaborations by greasing the wheels of conversation and information
exchange.
Christy Dena touches upon this issue in her post ”Do You Go Both Ways”. People want to
excel in one area and leave the rest to others (some practicioners apart, who enjoy leaping
over the boundaries). And, precisely because of this, I feel the Transmedia Producer end title,
or Transmedia Director or whatever, should be accompanies by one more – Transmedia
Translator, responsible for getting everyone to talk to each other and UNDERSTAND each
other.
32. 23/4/2012
Transmedia – does anyone care?
————————————————————————————————
I’ve had a blog post sitting on my computer, half-written, for quite some time. The essence of
the post was that there are only about 200 people around the world that actually care if your
project is a ”true transmedia project” or not, the 6.999.999.800 others either don’t care or will
never hear of your stuff.
Brian Clark beat me to it though, and in a much more profound and challenging way, in his
follow up to last years debate-post over on Facebook; this time, the title is ”Transmedia is a
lie”, and it, and the comments, are well worth a read.
I feel the need to write something here on the subject as well; I, contrary to Brian (I think?)
still believe there is a use for the term ”transmedia”. Granted, there has not been a definite
definition over the past 12 months, and granted, there has been a severe dilution of the term
(if I could get 10 cents for every new ”transmedia producer” I met at MIPTV this year, that
was a ”cross media producer” only 6 months earlier, I’d have…. about 50 cents). As a term
for working together with other professionals in the field, it has therefore probably outlived
it’s purpose – much better to take a longer route and explain the concept thoroughly,
including platforms, interaction, plot (if applicable) and so on. Other professionals will see
where they can slot in quite easily, while not being confused by differing definitions of the
33. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 33
”transmedia” term.
Also for pitching purposes the term has become next to redundant; what you’re selling is the
story. Everything else only serves to confuse. This goes for upwards of 75% of the
commissioners, producers and buyers I pitch to. This in turn is quite healthy for you, even
though it means harder work: you need to a) make the story good enough to stand on it’s own
legs and be sellable, while b) you need to have the transmediated parts lined up so you can
answer any questions about them should they arise and preferrably c) have a next-to fool-
proof financing plan for these ”extra” parts.
Now, the discussion over at Brian’s note is quite existential at times. It’s a ”what is this and
why do we do it and really there is no such thing as transmedia and NO YOU SHUT UP
and….”. I.e., it’s all great fun, and something of a necessity. I believe people will float in and
out of the term ”transmedia”, while still continuing to create and tell stories interconnected
over multiple platforms, under different headings. Nothing wrong with that.
I will, however, continue to use the term transmedia. For this I have two reasons:
It keeps my mind straight when developing and producing content. I have my own definition
of what transmedia should be and what I aspire to, and keeping this in mind really helps me
brainstorm, create and refine content.
For anyone entering into this which perhaps is transmedia and perhaps isn’t transmedia, it can
be a confusing world. I’d like people to come into it the way I did – with a solid background
in storytelling and media, then getting your mind blown away by extremely inspiring people
and projects, then gradually starting to pick up on nuances and relevant discussions,
implementing the methods into my own work, experiencing what works and what doesn’t,
stretch my mind and my imagination and get better at coming up with engaging and doable
stuff. This is something I would not have done without a term – ”transmedia” – to hang
everything on, to keep my mind focused. Only by embracing a term can we truly understand
the critizism of it (wow, that sounded profound :P)
Rant over. Now off to evaluate some transmedia projects….
8 comments:
Lucas J.W. Johnson said...
Simon, well put. I agree with you 100%. I find the term useful in organizing a community and
in organizing my thoughts, and as long as it *continues to do so*, it's useful to me in that
regard.
Thanks for the post!
Simon said...
Lucas,
thanks for your comment. Yes, I believe the term will remain useful for quite some time...
Simon
34. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 34
ihashimi said...
Well I think transmedia will always inspire people and how the social media environment will
be. It will be the impetus from nothing to everything.
Unknown said...
I'm beginning to wonder if the mis-use of the term is just an American thing. It does seem to
me that most of the European community gets it, and generally doesn't confuse it with
marketing/franchising. Hmmm.
Simon said...
I don't know either - even if there are differences between the US and the ROW (Rest Of the
World) I find quite a few real and genuine transmedia people in the US as well as in Europe,
and also quite a few of the other kind.
Doro said...
Simon, great post. I try to focus on the story and decide then how we're going to tell it. In this
way we're trying to avoid becoming to narrow-minded because of definitions. But the term
helps to create communities of like-minded people, and that's great! Thinking about wether a
project is transmedia or not helps me to improve my own work - so the term is still useful,I
think.
Simon said...
Doro,
absolutely! And in that sense I, as I've said, agree that the term needs framing; it'll cut a lot of
corners when collaborating with other transmedia-minded people... but if it becomes an
excluding term, then I believe the gain to be had from it will diminish substantially.
35. 8/8/2012
Transmedia - the ketchup effect
————————————————————————————————
Transmedia, as we all know, originated some 20 years ago. As a practice it has existed way
longer, depending on how you define it. The Bible has been quoted as one of the first
instances of transmedia in practice.
For several years a lot of talented people around the world have been working on transmedia
projects, producing transmedia projects, promoting transmedia practices and lobbying for
transmedia as a way of thinking, creatively as well as financially and from a marketing
perspective. Right now, I have the feeling that the long-awaited ”ketchup-effect” has finally
arrived.
I hear of a new exciting transmedia project almost every other day, ranging in scope from the
fairly small, like the ARG ”Miracle Mile Paradox” to the fairly big, like the Avengers-
rumours about interconnected tv-series and films, from the areas of theatre to the areas
of gaming – transmedia, world building, narrative superstructures and mythologies are all of
a sudden found everywhere. Simply brilliant to witness. And I think I can see one shift
happening already, one that only six months ago seemed like an impossibility, but now not
only looks probably but even quite inevitable – the lessening of the importance of the term
”transmedia”.
There are quite a few people tired of the term, which has become readily apparent in
discussions over the past couple of years. I know myself that I hesitate to use the term in
certain discussions; at the Pixel Lab, for instance, there was no problem using the term, but
talking to possible sponsors or buyers I prefer to explain the actual setup of the transmedia
project rather than branding it ”transmedia” from the outset. But now I believe the shift is
happening. ”Transmedia” is rapidly becoming a term as common as ”television” or ”media”,
and is starting to represent the notion of ”something more than just a movie, a book or a tv-
series” in the minds of people. The fact that this ”something more” can be just about anything
in scope and size is of lesser importance. And it is increasingly being taken for granted; just
as the mantra has been that the audience wants to access their media anywhere, anytime, now
they want to access the continuation of their stories, anywhere and anytime.
It’s a bit like going to a concert. Everyone knows that the band goes off stage, the crowd
shouts for a bit and then it’s time for the encore. The same thing is happening with the
audience with regards to media now, except they don’t have to shout – when the book or the
movie is finished, it’s time to explore the encores.
36. 17/8/2012
Time to create transmedia
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On Wednesday the research company Latitude released a pretty interesting study called The
Future Of Storytelling. I highly recommend it as essential reading, and I’m thoroughly
looking forward to the second and last instalment in the study series.
There are a lot of good points in the study, and in my mind they all clearly point to one thing.
”Transmedia” might have been a buzzword for a while. It probably still is, in the minds of
many. But the term is of infinitely lesser importance; of greater importane is the fact that the
audience – anyone we wish to target with our content – is already inherently geared towards
transmedia.
For us as content creators it can only mean one thing. Kicking and screaming, or willingly
and eagerly, we will move into the world of content transcending media platforms, or story
worlds and neverending narratives, of co-creation with users and co-distribution with others,
of using technology to weave stories to evoke feelings and induce experiences. There is no
turning back, and we do ourselves a severe disservice if we do not acknowledge this with
open eyes and strive to make the very best we can of this fact.
At the same time, my ”old-media-developer-and-producer”-character raises its head and
highlights the fact that while all of this is very nice, someone also need to pay for everything.
Just developing the mythologies and / or story worlds needed comes with a cost. As does
producing for different platforms, as does distributing content to different platforms. Will we
just end up doing a helluva lot more work and paying a helluva lot more money for the same
return?
I may be naive and I may be overoptimistic, but I am convinced that financially viable
models will appear, more and more frequently. Crowdfunding is one way to go, working with
sponsors another. My firm belief is that – just as with Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and other
ventures no one had envisaged five years ago – we will see new financing models come to
the fore that will make us all go ”oh, ok! Yeah, that’ll work! How come I didn’t think about
that?!?”
In the meantime what we can all do is create. Create, create, create, and then create some
more. Create magical worlds and stunning characters, create enchanting narrative arcs and
riveting interactive possibilities. Create more and better (and why not harder, faster and
stronger while we’re at it). Exciting times indeed!
37. 27/11/2012
Da Vinci on Transmedia
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I’ve been reading a bit about the genius that was Leonardo Da Vinci these past weeks; his
life, his innovations and his pure brilliance. I will admit this might have something to do with
me playing AC a bit over the past few weeks, but I find it fascinating to think whatsomeone
with a mind like his would be able to create, were that person alive today. Still, even
though we’re closing in on half a millennia since Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, so much of
what he thought and taught is applicable today. It’s even possible to directly relate some of
the truths he spoke to the multiplatform transmedia cross media world of today. Here are five
great quotes from the thinker and my take on their application today:
Life is pretty simple. You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. And that’s the trick, the
doing something else.
Amen to that. There is no other way to succeed than to be prepared to fail and learn. The
learning part, especially when it comes to something as volatile as the media industry, is
crucial; what works and what doesn’t, and being able to identify why something works or
doesn’t and how that applies on other projects. This is something that naturally becomes
easier with experience… and again, you will not get that experience by anything else than, as
Da Vinci put it, ”doing some stuff”.
I would also recommend people to not copy. Let yourself be inspired, without a doubt.
Learn from what other people have done, of course. But be original, don’t copy outright, and
you will learn so much more. Building on that…
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Planning is great. Reading up on stuff and projects and case studies is important. Discussing,
debating and defining is essential. But at the core of it all, it’s the ”doing” that gets us
somewhere. I find myself frustrated when projects do not move ahead for one reason or
another; not only because of the projects themselves, but because I don’t get to actually DO
what I feel I need to be doing. This goes for most of us, I assume; I have, however, gone
increasingly towards the decision toalways have at least 2-3 smaller side projects running,
without any strict deadlines, that I can apply my skills to when other, bigger projects are held
up. And quite often, through work on these smaller projects, I gain knowledge or come up
with ideas that can be directly translated into something that will be a gain for that bigger
project. We must do.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let
things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
I love that sentiment. I want to be a person that goes out and happens to things; preferrably
38. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 38
the media industry, the art of storytelling, an audience and so on. As another of my favorite
sayings goes: ”It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right track; you’ll get run over if you just sit
there”. I firmly believe that transmedia needs to be this as well; a movement that goes
out and happens to things. It’s already getting there, of course. But from a transmedia POV
it could be happening even more.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
As someone who has created a lot of content for publishing, radio, TV, online, cross media
and transmedia, I can vouch for this. The hardest part, as I think you all know, is to keep
it simple. Keep trying to simplify whatever you’re doing, over and over again; when you feel
it’s too simple, it’s probably just about right. And whenever you feel like something will
require that you spend more time explaining it than what it would take to just experience it,
you should seriously consider to re-develop that part.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for
there you have been and there you will long to return.
For me, the moment happened some years ago. I was developing a kids show for the Finnish
Broadcasting Company, developing physical games to be played on the show and
synchronizing them to similar content online, knitting it all together through a narrative that
took place on a gigantic Space Cruiser. We went to the studio to test it all with kids from the
target audience, not really knowing what to expect. Watching the kids do it all, with an
eagerness and an engagement that transcended anything I could have hoped for, was
awe-inspiring.
For different reasons, the final product was limited in comparison with the blueprints we had
drawn up, but that feeling – of integrating media, physical stuff, online interaction into
something that made that Willful Suspension of Disbelief feel like a given – led me to the art
of transmedia storytelling. I might have to do a lot of toiling down here on the ground, to
cater for customers and get the job done. But my eyes are steadily turned skywards, towards a
world where platforms have ceased to exist and all there is are the narrative and the story.
39. INTERVIEW - BRIAN CLARK
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Founder and CEO of GMD Studios, experimental media theorist and experience design
producer. @gmdclark on Twitter.
You held a brilliant talk at Storyworld this year, a talk which also is online, basing it all
on phenomenology? How did that come to be?
I had a chance this year to really dive deep into the theories of experience design lurking in
each design discipline and started to recognize some common threads. Then I realized that
dead German philosophers had beaten me to the insights by at least 100 years and that I
wasn't even the first artist to dive into that question.
The core ideas - that meaning is created by the audience and that the experience of a thing is
different (but related) to the thing - seem like exactly what we've been dancing around in the
transmedia community, but are suddenly freed from the messy language of practice by
centering the conversation on the audience experience. So Storyworld was the first time I
tried to talk about these insights publicly, but I hope it is just the beginning of a larger dialog
(phenomenalwork.com/manifesto).
You have a knack of lifting the cat on the table so to speak, be it about transmedia or
anything else. How do you find the discussion climate when it comes to transmedia?
Defensive? Too narrow? Just about right?
I swear that cat jumped up there all by itself! I think like many communities (especially ones
as intimate as ours) if we aren't careful it could become a self-congratulatory Tony Robins
cult. We also suffer from the curse of the Internet era where we feel a need to be inventing
something instead of building on what's come before. We can certainly tie ourselves into
knots if we're not careful.
But on the other hand, the community is exceptionally open to new voices and new
perspectives, much the way the independent film community loves new talent and first-time
filmmakers.
There’s been some upheavals, looking at what happened to 4th Wall etc; what would be
your predictions for 2013? And wishes?
Entrepreneurs are risk takers and not all risks are going to pay off, but those kinds of cycles
seem less like upheaval and more like research & development to me. I certainly wish for
more risk taking in 2013, not less. My other wishes (and predictions) are that this community
is going to start looking like the American independent film movement of the late 1970's. If
we look at that model as inspiration, the roadmap of what we need to do seems clear: create a
marketplace for financing, build systems of hands-on peer education, and move from a
patchwork of regional communities into some larger organization we could all pour our
energy into.
40. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 40
When I started my career in early 1990s, the organizations filmmakers had built in the U.S.
were fifteen years old and provided a roadmap and instant community for new artists. We
need to start now building that legacy that we want to leave behind for artists just entering
this field in 2026.
41. INTERVIEW - CHRISTY DENA
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Transmedia PhD, Director of Universe Creation 101, writer, designer and director. Follow
her on @christydena.
Are you keeping tabs on the academic part of transmedia? If so, is there anything
happening there that you’re excited about?
I don’t actively look at academic publications and so I can’t give an overview of what is
happening. I was an internal assessor for Markus Montola’s PhD “On the Edge of the Magic
Circle: Understanding Role-Playing and Pervasive Games” (http://www.markusmontola.fi/),
and Silvina Bamrungpong’s PhD “Stories in Motion: Inviting immersive possibilities through
the chimera of transmedia and chameleon of mediatecture” (http://gradworks.umi.com/
35/24/3524003.html). As for upcoming events, I’m really excited to see what comes out of
“Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds” in Finland (http://networkedblogs.com/Fs93g) – there
are great speakers and the topics look spot on. Last year’s “Storyworlds Across Media” was
equally interesting, and the videos are online (http://www.storyworlds.de/). Another
upcoming event is “Transmedia Storytelling and Beyond” in Sydney. It is a mix of
practitioners, academics, and educators and I’ll be the opening speaker! (http://www.inter-
disciplinary.net/research/research-nexus/digital-nexus/global-project-on-transmedia/
transmedia-storytelling-and-beyond/)
Did 2012 turn out as expected?
Ummm. Not really I think. For myself and many of my colleagues, it was a difficult year. We
did see some cool and meaningful projects come out (which is good), and we also saw some
indie projects funded. So more coming!
Tell a little bit about what you’re working on right now; as much as you’re allowed to
tell, I guess - AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS for instance?
And speaking of forthcoming things – my project (http://
www.AUTHENTICINALLCAPS.com)! We did a playtest at the beginning of last year, then
developed it and did an iPad prototype. The prototype was actually nominated for a “Best
Writing in a Game” award for the Freeplay Independent Gaming Festival – so very happy
about that! Now we *just* need the last bit of funds to finish the project at the beginning of
2013. We’re very excited about getting it out in the world soon, along with the Creator’s Log
I’ve been working on (which is diary of my writing, design, directing and producing
decisions). Stay tuned for our crowdfunding campaign for a chance to make this unique web
audio adventure happen! :p
What are your wishes and predictions for 2013?
Gosh. I wish for things to be a bit easier for all of us. I would love to see more people
at peace with what transmedia is for them. This great article about UX and craving external
42. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 42
validation sums up my wishes for transmedia practitioners in 2013: http://uxmag.com/
articles/stop-explaining-ux-and-start-doing-ux#. I would love to be pleasantly surprised in
2013. As for predictions? I foresee being pleasantly surprised!
43. INTERVIEW - JEFF GOMEZ
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CEO of Starlightrunner Entertainment, evangelist of transmedia. Follow Jeff on
@Jeff_Gomez.
You participated in "One Year In Transmedia" last year; did 2012 turn out as expected
back then? What were the highs and the lows in a transmedia sense?
From the perspective of Starlight Runner Entertainment, the year has been fantastic. Though
everything has always moved a bit more slowly than we'd prefer, there were a number of
significant moments that reflect both advancement for the company, and by the fact that these
were firsts, advancement in the transmedia space.
As noted in Variety this past June, our involvement in the Men in Black III project, and
development of the Men in Black Universe for ongoing transmedia implementation has
evolved into the very first ongoing major studio-level transmedia consultation and production
contract in history. This means that our attorneys and Sony Pictures had to hammer out an
agreement that incorporated the new terminology of transmedia and entirely new models of
engagement, credit and compensation. It took over six months to create, but it kicked in
immediately and I feel that all parties are deeply satisfied with the results. This was a year-
and career high for me.
You premiered the Ten Commandments at Storyworld; I know even the word
”franchise” is touchy for some people but you’ve never shied from it. What’s your view
of franchise and transmedia?
Lets put this to bed once and for all: the goal of Starlight Runner has always been to promote
global adaptation of narrative techniques that have been enhanced by new technologies and
distribution methods. We have never been in a situation where we have the time or financial
wherewithal to make our point from the "bottom up" through independent art projects or
small scaled creative endeavors.
The success I experienced in the 1990s with Turok and Magic: The Gathering allowed me to
leverage what influence I had to larger companies and C-level executives. Why not speak to
them about multi-platform narrative? I wanted to keep doing what I loved, and I wanted to
build a business and career doing it, not just sit around as a freelancer waiting for the stars to
align and give me another opportunity to tell stories that way. But the problem was that very
few of those executives understood what I was talking about, and it was enormously difficult
to get them to understand how this seemingly radical approach can make them any money.
My personal style has always leaned toward populism. One of my biggest heroes is Bruce
Springsteen! I was the kind of storyteller who cared about who was in the audience, and I
will always customize what I have to say to whom it is I'm speaking with. In this case, my
audience is Hollywood, my audience is Madison Avenue, my audience is comprised of the
top executives of Fortune 500 companies. The whole rest of the world may not be
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Hollywood, but most everyone understands the language of Hollywood. So those are the
words, words like franchise and brand and property, those are the words I've used.
At the same time, I'm not precious about words. Words are just sounds in the air, subject to
your interpretation. You don't like a word I'm using, well all I ask is that you get the gist of
what I'm saying and if you find it useful, fantastic! If you despise the word "transmedia,"
plug your own word for it into my sentence, but know that the word stands for a combination
of concepts that is unique and meaningful. It took a while, but people are getting that, but I
still run into people who look like they ate something bad when I use it.
As for "franchise," all I mean when I use that word is that the property that you own, the
story world, is capable of being extended across multiple platforms in a way that generates a
family of products. Each one of those products is distinct and adds meaningfully to the story
world. Some of these are used to market the narrative (even though they are part of the
narrative), and many of these products can be sold for cash on an ongoing basis to a large and
engaged audience. Collectively this is your transmedia franchise. It's a story that makes you
money in different ways across different media over an extended period of time. Who doesn't
want that? Suffice to say, the language I'm using is working, not just for me but for many in
the field.
You have a knack for igniting the core in people; looking back, what ultimately ignited
your core? And what keeps it burning?
What truly ignited my core this year has been the magnificent evidence that you can take a
concept like transmedia narrative and affect change in the world. No one in Hollywood is
asking me to define transmedia storytelling for them any more. Journalists are dropping the
air quotes around the word and using it casually. Conferences and meet-ups are cropping up
all over the world to share ideas about best practices and how to communicate it to local
industry. Mayor Bloomberg in New York City discussed transmedia with the leaders of the
business incubator we're advising. That Made in New York Media Center will be the first
transmedia entrepreneurial incubator and education facility in the world. How cool is that? So
what ignites my core? Stepping foot into fresh snow, into spaces where few have tread. Lots
of that in 2012.
What keeps it burning? Waking up before dawn! By that I mean coming into projects earlier
and earlier. With Avatar, production was already under way, but with Men in Black III, the
script was still being written. The impact we could have is more powerful. On our next major
project, which we're negotiating now, we would be coming in at the concept stage. We're
showing everyone involved how big the canvas can be. It's not just two hours on a screen, its
dozens of hours across everything! That's not licensing, that's a new storytelling art form, and
we can help you think about how to do it beautifully. That hasn't quite happened yet at this
scale, but it will, and I want to be there for it!
What would you want for 2013?
More please! It's only just beginning, isn't it? In 2013 I will be watching eagerly as
45. ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA / 45
transmedia practitioners come into their own. People like Andrea Phillips, Lucas Johnson,
Ivan Askwith and our own Caitlin Burns are going to show us some amazing work. And just
as important will be that credit for this work is going to be attributed. The Fast Company
piece on Starlight Runner's work for Nickelodeon on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the
most detailed and explicit about our contributions.
The derivation of brand essence for the purpose of transmedia spreadability, how best to
leverage aspects of a story world on different media platforms, and best practices in 21st
century franchise production are all going to be criteria that companies will be proud to talk
about. Each of these require skill sets embodied by writers, designers and producers of
transmedia narrative. This coming year we're going to see significant (and far more public)
advances in this space.
46. CHAPTER FOUR
THE DEVELOPMENT
The hardest part of transmedia is not surprisingly the art of actually getting it all done. Done
in time, done in the fashion intended, done according to available resources, done in a way
that will make sense to an audience… done, and done as well as possible. From my own
experience I know what an uphill struggle it can be, even when resources are available, to get
whatever project you’re working on to turn out the way you envisioned it when you started
out.
There are as many ways to develop a transmedia or a multiplatform or cross media projects
as there are projects, but some general guidelines (and some quite a lot more specific) can
still be of use to people in different stages of the development phase - the development phase
of their projects as well as of themselves. These are points I’ve tried to address in the posts
below - from what to think of when you start out in trying to create something that will move
and exist on several platforms, to the nitty-gritty of killing your darlings and actually having
to think about an audience. And as stressful and painful a development and production
process can be, most often it’s a hundred times more rewarding in the end. Here’s to a great
many more brilliant projects in 2013!
47. 6/2/2012
Starting out in transmedia - 5 points of advice
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I was approached the other day by someone looking for a bit of advice on transmedia. Her
situation is one that I believe is similar to a lot of people’s. With the growing
acknowledgement of transmedia storytelling as a possible way to tell stories and engage
audiences, drive brands, foster interaction and generate revenue, many have started to look
at incorporating these methods in their own work.
This is all well and fine if you work at a company (although this has its’ own challenges,
what with tearing down silos etc) or if you have a proven track record as a producer, designer,
writer or developer, a record and a network of contacts that will enable you to get traction for
your idea from the start.
But what if you don’t have a company? What if you don’t have a track record or a network
of contacts? What if what you have is a brilliant idea for a transmedia project, and
nowhere to turn? The situation differs, naturally, depending on where in the world you are
situated. Here though, some points that can help a bourgeoning transmedia storyteller on the
way:
Write down your idea in as much detail as possible. Include everything, from story to
characters to story world to technical specs to possible revenue models to… well, everything
you’ve developed so far. Also use this to work on a 30 second pitch (the so called ”elevator
pitch”), as this will help you hone your idea considerably. If you can’t explain your idea in a
sellable manner in 30 seconds, it’s probably too complex. You can, if you want, take a look at
Screen Australia’s template for a Transmedia Production Bible – if nothing else, it will give
you some pointers on the areas people will have questions about.
Do some research (which is a point that has been mentioned before) on what else has been
made that is similar to your project. Whatever it is that you’ve come up with, chances are
someone, somewhere has done something vaguely similar. Study and learn as much as you
can from these examples and tweak your idea accordingly, to simply work better. There is
also quite a few case studies that can give valuable information – take a look at the Game of
Thrones case study or … well, just do a Google search and pick the ones suitable for you!
Look at entry points for collaborators from the outset. If you’re creating something where
a novel or a graphic novel (physical or online) is a major part of the property, perhaps
approach a publisher or someone connected to a publisher? If a game is an integral part, look
at how a game developer could come into your team, and which developer that would be. If
it’s an online treasure hunt (as at least 60% of transmedia ideas are wont to be (don’t quote
me on that, it’s just a feeling I have ! )) then a web agency or suchlike might be the right
one to approach. Try to think of the project from their point of view – how can they apply
what they know and get the most possible out of it? (This is me guessing you do not have the
funding to hire them outright; if you do, call me ;)