4. “It's funny. All you have to do is say
something nobody understands and
they'll do practically anything you
want them to.”
Transmedia is all a little bit wrong
― J.D. Salinger, The
Catcher in the Rye
5. We are all blind men with the elephant
Are we still so early we don’t really know what it is?
9. Convergence – What’s old is new again
Additional dialogue
Advertise movies
Trivia about Actors
Movie Star is born
10. Hitchcock - The Classic Auteur
Engagement Through Narrative
Subjective Identification -
Expand the first part of the
story of “Psycho”
Feelings of empathy -
Anxiety, Chaos, Guilt,
Suspense and Tension -
Building up the moment and
then the release
12. Rules of Engagement: How Hitchcock made
“Psycho” into a multiplatform experience
13. QuickTime™ and a
JVT/AVC Coding decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Rules of Engagement: How Hitchcock made
“Psycho” into an multiplatform experience
14. Early activities - Books, Oaths
Rules on how the movie would be screened.
Security on hand to prevent riots.
Hitchcock audio recordings played in the lobby.
The first Blockbuster.
Rules of Engagement: How Hitchcock made
“Psycho” into a multiplatform experience
15. Welcome to the Convergence
Telecommunication has gone from scarcity to limitless
abundance.
Audience interactivity morphs the passive audience into an
engaged audience.
Colin R. Blackman
16. Audience Engagement
Marketing has always been part
of the storytelling
Creatives have an opportunity to
explore and continue creating
Guided by user behavior
18. Passive Engagement – The World & Genre
Audience Engagement
Traditional marketing with
community management
Assets created to promote
central component.
“In space no one can hear
you scream.”
19. Casual Engagement - Minor Commitment
Audience Engagement
Games & Apps go beyond
central storylines
Interface requires some
participation
Parallel, mirrors, expands
story of the main component
20. Active Engagement – Story comes to life
UGC, ARG, LARP
Real World & Virtual
Major Release of control
As participation requirement
increases, number of
participants decreases
Audience Engagement
21. The Culture of Participation
“Fans are the most active
segment of the media
audience, ones that refuse
to simply accept what they
are given, but rather insists
on the right to become full
participants.”
Henry Jenkins,
Convergence Culture
22. Culture of Participation
“Participatory Culture”
by Henry Jenkins
1. Low barriers to engage
• Sharing
2. Training & passing of
knowledge from a mentor
• Belief that contributions
matter
3. Social connection with each
other
1. Call to Adventure
• Supernatural Aid & Threshold
2. Challenges & Help from the
Mentor
• Revelation & transformation
3. Atonement & Return
“The Hero’s Journey”
by Joseph Campbell
24. Merchandising (aka Monetization)
The Business Model
Is it a process or a
product?
Each component is:
Unique (Content)
Complete (B-M-E)
Benefit (Value)
32. ABOUT
STORYWORLDS…
Topos - Settings
Physical and material landscape; Social
and temporal aspects; Technological
Mythos - Mythology
Backstory; Timeline / Chronology;
Archetypes
Ethos - Character, Themes, POV
Morality / Codes of behavior; Ethics & Values -
The Center of Good
33. “That a tale shall accomplish something and
arrive somewhere”
- Mark Twain
34. What is point?
If you want to send
a message, try
Western Union.
Frank Capra
36. The Strategy is the road map
The Core is the driver of your story
GET TO THE CORE
37. Strategy Defined:
A plan of action designed to achieve
a particular goal.
A media plan defines the roll-out
strategy.
Driving platform and evolution of
experience.
Always remember your CORE.
PLAN OF ATTACK
Michel & I were talking that when you are at the beginning of a new art form, often there is no language yet to describe what you are doing. It’s a clumsy and inelegant word -- but this field has a lot of awful ways to describe things -- An ARG? MMORPG... Really? The games industry is the worst culprit. user experience and Information architecture. Content Matrix… Facet Map? The tech world, make everything seem so complicated on purpose to turn around and say - hire me to solve it.
RESULT: It’s also a word that isn’t used very much in Hollywood or Silicon Valley and when it is can be met with an eye roll... My problem with it is that it is confusing by it very nature…
NOT HERE TO DEFINE IT — Talk about the revolution and then I will now tell you the rules… all became a bit silly
Trying to understand why there is confusion and how this help us understand a bit more about it.
Because it may be very clear to
Bad films and TV shows are turned into Transmedia projects… It doesn’t help.
The story of the Blind men with the elephant — each one feeling a different part perceive it to be what it is…
IT IS ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION — But is this dues to the fact that we are really just so early —
Hollywood is Franchise — sucking the life out comic book heros..
Or is branded content — trying to sell coffee while also making an artist statement
Arts house cool installations so you get to hang out with BOB
Some look as far back as christianity…. Some say it goes back to the 19th century and tory printing press movement -- the oral tradition of sharing stories from town to town...
Greek myth through various artistic media—sculpture, architecture, drama, epic--
Driven by Technology — A convergence
Tendency for different technological systems to evolve toward performing similar tasks.
This is why I consider the first true transmedia to be Cinema.
-100 years ago the first cross platform Experience was created Fan Magazines for new medium extended the experience while at the same time marketed the movies.
- Additional background dialogue and details not in the film…
“Fan magazines gave audiences a way to experience the magic of the movies beyond the theatre. The magazines also gave producers a way to promote their stars and coming films.
Shift in emphasis - first ones reproduced the stories of films, the late-teens and beyond focused on the most important audience draw — the stars. You can argue that the whole idea of a movie star was and still is a trasmedia concept…
1. a book about a series killer is altered to include an additional 30-35 minutes of another story of a woman who steals money so she can run away with her boyfriend. And we are with here the whole way as she takes the money, leaves town and goes on the road -- being questioned by a police officer, trying to not act suspeicous as she buys a car, getting cuaght in rain storm that causes her get lost and turn off the main road to a old motel.
What hitch is doing here is creating intense feelings of empathy in the view -- building the anxiety, the guilt, the chaos mounting... it’s all going to hell. All the way using suspense and tension until we hardly bare it... And just when Marion decides she is going go back to Phoenix, retunr the money and bring order back to the chaos she created...
This happens.
This is what I call the what the hell do I do now scene -- I have been watching this movies through these eyes and now she is dead.... The lead of the movie -- the big movie star has been killed before half the movie is over. And so I must enter the POV of the only other sane person here, the poor guy who’s mother keeps killing young woman... Noran bates.
Issues with the impact of TV - changing behavior of Movie viewers — come in the middle of the film.
Everything was riding on it for him. He needed to make it work. HAD TO WATCH FROM THE BEGINNING.
Hitchcock was the producer -- put everything one the line -- this would make or brake his career.
A film trailer was released to theater owners.
Preview parties, Buy all the books, oath on the set
Could not enter the movie after it started, rules on how tickets were purchased. Waiting lines for ticket holders.
Instructing the theater owner how to make the audience a partner – The care and handling of Psycho
in how to watch the film It was almost going to end up as a tv movie
It’s all really about Engagement.
NOW WE HAVE Digital convergence — separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications), and video that now share resources and interact with each other synergistically.
Open your eyes to certain things that only you will know as creators that is unique and powerful about your work.
Marshall Mcluhan Hot and cold Media
Each level tells the story – each media invites a different level of participation.
First on is Narrative Engagement - Great Story!!!!!
Not what people think but it is the starting point for anything.
When I pitch a story in Hollywood, the producer will often ask… What is the poster… This sets the expectations
Think about how movie posters are actually helping to tell the story… What you think about being in outer space… and something horrible happens to you… and no one can you hear you scream…
Most popular and little can go a long way.
Gets to the idea that interface is the story…
This is about building experiences around IP...
This goes back to my experience when I came to Hollywood in the 90s and the internet was still just an infant...
Dark skies -- my first job in hollywood.
Websites appeared for a TV show that I was on and I wasnted to engage the fans... I was told not to...Luckly one of the creators of the show was willing to reach out and we began doing line online sessions with fans.
What is interesting is seeing how these rules for developing a story for cross platform look in comparison to this 0=--
I have come to see The 2100? These are the three vectors for most if not all Transmedia projects —
Business model/Product –
Thinking very much in terms of Product. Or at some kind of ROI…
Can have a social/educational value which can stand in place of monetization or Value
Star wars, Marvel, Pixar not to mention the … DIsnery.. Now Disney Star Wars… IT is a merging of great franchise that may collapse un its own weight and become a black hole?
But this is because only disney has a product development group - Disney Consumer Products???
Driven by Content
Advertising… Marketing (trans)
Many of the techniques that we are using..
they processes and approach and strategies all come from advertising.
Television grew out of this…
So as a result I am noticing that what were once Digital Marketing Companies are now calling themselves Transmedia. My favorite: A transmedia Franchise content company.
DRIVEN BY VALUE
When you create a component that isnt’ so good — it becomes a withdraw — so you don’t do everything.
The worst withdraw of a major brand and one of the best.
Socialization is Driven by story or subject
For Monetization - Content is king
For Community - credibility is king
all about Authenticity
Each social media platform has its own personality.. it’s time and place... IT’s purpose.. You see this all the time in children’s content – an uneven
Facebook is no longer cool for a 17 year old… mom and grand mom are on your feed…
Fragmentation of social media
It is context collapse: an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of expression. The images, actions, and words captured at any moment can be transported to anywhere on the planet and preserved (the performer must assume) for all time. The little glass lens becomes the gateway to a blackhole sucking all of time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in upon itself.
Foundation of integrating narrative... the World.
1. pitch a story
2 pitch a character
3 pitch a world
Cat nip for Academics… maybe a bit too much is made of it…
You need a story before you need a world... and what is that...
What is a story... I go back to this guy... A hero of mine and a great storyteller.
The first rule for writing... This was a sarcastic response to another writer of his day... but I think it is bad for all of consider. But as is the case he observed most stories accomplish nothing and arrive nowhere
GAME -- SHOW THE QUOTE.
e in air.
This is my WHAT IS POINT slide – which is a reference to my Russian Film professor at NYU who after screening out 3 minute projects would come out and say – what is point.. Which is a more efficient way of saying it… Who needs articles?
Elegant — speaking of elegant…
The clarity of children… She Knows exactly what she wants… she can express it very clearly…
Be careful of being too on the nose… Don’t send a message…
CLARITY OF INTENTION.
Frank Capra talked about it in two ways.. One is don’t make it so obvious… But the other one is to know in yourself what your point is… you will need it. It has to be clear, it has to be simple and it has to be important enough to you to do all this to make it work.
It is something that we all struggle with – One the one hand you need to be clear in your own mind --
The core is the everything... the meaning, what you are saying... Please try to hone this as it get very messy to try and find the core later... particularly when work across platforms... If your project is complicated and confusing as a film, it will not get any better when you start building it out on different platforms...
But as is the case he observed most stories accomplish nothing and arrive in air.
Some say start with the audience... some say it is the story... it is both. Like they say about a film... it begins with a great script.. WIth a cross platform project it is strategy.
User experience is very much about storytelling — Like story is it about the flow of information
Judith made this point — UX and experience design. Very important.
But as is the case he observed most stories accomplish nothing and arrive in air.
This is a war -- a battle and you need a plan of attack...
Transmeida bible or COntent matirx and UX --
SET A GOAL —
A great Film or Television program starts with a great script… A great transmedia project begins with a great strategy.
SCRIPTS — the structure, the characters, the flow of ideas… This is how I see strategy for Multiplaform.
It is the MEDIA PLAN
Narrative Integration – this is how it all comes together. FIND: CENTRAL (DRIVING) component and finding the touch points that are valuable to build from. So this is both about breaking down and analyzing and then putting together
Remember CORE to create a unified experience. You can have the many touch points out there but it can all seem messy and uneven.
Narrative Integration – this is how it all comes together. This is also about taking the core component and finding the touch points that are valuable to build from. So this is both about breaking down and analyzing and then putting together to create a unified experience. You can have the many touch points out there but it can all seem messy and uneven.
You see this all the time in children’s content – an uneven