Transmedia Storytelling Summary – Mark Terry
The Transmedia Multiplatform Convergent Resource Kit website is a bit of a mouthful but it is well-named as a one-stop shop for all things related to transmedia storytelling. Supported by the Canada Media Fund and created by digital artists Anthea Foyer and Siobhan O’Flynn, the website provides a variety of tools and links to resources for those engaged in creating transmedia projects or for those studying it.
The website is comprised of several sections that cover different aspects of transmedia project development, production, and research. Specifically, the website provides these categories: Case Studies, Co-Production, Glossary, Resources, Collaboration and Creative Commons.
For the purpose of this summary, I will examine not all, but many of these sections as they apply to our course and the presentation to be given on Wednesday.
CREATIVE COMMONS:
Under the Creative Commons section, Dr. O’Flynn and Foyer make available their own work for other artists to use and incorporate in their own projects by providing a non-commercial “ShareAlike Creative Commons” license. The founders of the site describe their commons this way:
“Original materials created by Dr. Siobhan O’Flynn and Anthea Foyer are released under a NonCommercial ShareAlike Creative Commons license to be shared, remixed and expanded non‐commercially, as long as you credit the TMC Resource Kit, the creator(s) of the materials, Anthea Foyer or Dr. Siobhan O’Flynn, and license your new creations under the identical terms.”
They go on to say that the new artist using their work will have their own IP and agree to make the new work available in the website’s commons under the same license for other artists to use as well. This is a great example of creative collaboration and trans-participation among artists working in a non-commercial environment.
COLLABORATION:
In this section, a slide show is presented that tackles what is perhaps the greatest challenge of working together in various platforms of a transmedia project: working harmoniously with different professional and creative partners. A filmmaker is very different in vision, approach, and professional acumen than a comic book artist, a novelist, a playwright and so on. Each has different skills sets, even schedules and work flows, and finding a way to work together towards a common deadline and under common themes and creative consistencies can be difficult.
In addition to transmedia storytelling, the process of development and production is trans-professional. While all artists and producers of content in a transmedia project work together from the start, the ultimate method of collaboration comes when the project is actually consumed by its audiences, according to Nathan Anderson, an Australian transmedia producer and COO and Executive Producer of Start VR.
“It’s a fundamental shift in thinking,” he writes in the TMC website. “You have to understand that release means the market is one of the first steps you should be thinking about as opposed to one of the final steps as it is for traditional media.” (“Collaboration”, TMC Website, Slide 4).
RESOURCES:
This section is perhaps the most valuable part of the website for the transmedia artist and producer. It provides a wealth of professional, academic, financial and informational resources covering most of the ground before, during and after project creation. Links to festivals, conferences and events provide places where the transmedia artist can exhibit their work as well as network with other artists and learn more about their craft. Crowdfunding techniques and advice are provided to help the artist raise the funds to produce their project. Links to resources provided by the Canada Media Fund (CMF) also assist the artist in finding funding on a government level. It also provides reports on current trends from the CMF to keep the artist current on transmedia technology, themes and practices. For those of you who may have missed it last week, here is my interview with CMF Communications Director, Maurice Boucher, about these new trends.
The section has too much to cover in this summary, but the sub-section I will focus on during my presentation will be How to Write a Transmedia Production Bible by Gary Hayes. The bible is a crucial element of any successful transmedia project as it ensures consistencies in character, settings, ecologies that audience members will come to expect. For example, if the hero of a piece never kills the bad guy in the film version of the story, like Batman, Superman or Daredevil, he must maintain this ideal in the video game or the comic book. Audiences will lose their devotion to characters, in particular, and the story, in general, when they feel they have been betrayed or “lied to” creatively. I will be discussing in class a transmedia production bible I created for Universal/MCA in 2003 that demonstrates this.
CASE STUDIES:
One of the best ways of familiarizing yourself with transmedia storytelling is to see what kind of projects have been created and how well they “crossed over” to other media. The website provides several examples of projects in this regard, in particular, Inanimate Alice, a transmedia project designed to serve as an educational tool rather than an entertainment vehicle. Erni will be discussing this in our presentation in more detail.
The name of the website – the Transmedia Multiplatform Convergent Resource Kit – contains the three words that are often used interchangeably, but are actually different from each other despite being intimately related to each other.
Transmedia means going “across” various media in the storytelling process. Versions of the same stories or new strands of the story (“spin-offs” to use a television term) present themselves in diverse media. Multiplatform describes the various media in which transmedia stories may appear, but the definition of platform extends beyond that which is generally considered digital in transmedia. These additional platforms include theatre, song, books and graphic novels, for example. Convergence is also a term that needs a specific definition. In his book, Convergent Culture, transmedia expert Henry Jenkins provides this definition for convergence: “The flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation (both creative and business) between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences. (Jenkins, Convergent Culture, 2). I would add that there is an element of creative integration among the platforms where the storylines are inter-related more than simply related as narratives intersect or converge.
We will have the pleasure of having one of the founders of the website in class with us to discuss the website and her transmedia work, Dr. Siobhan O’Flynn. The co-founder of the site, Anthea Foyer, was kind enough to join our class as well, and in true transmedia form, she will be joining us in the form of a video interview I conducted over the weekend. You can screen it ahead of class at this link.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Anderson, Nathan, “Working Collaboratively with a Different Type of Profession”, TMCResourceKit.com. Accessed October 30, 2016.
Boucher, Maurice, “Mark Terry Reporting from Cannes”, YouTube.com. Accessed October 30, 2016.
Foyer, Anthea. “Interview with Anthea Foyer”, YouTube.com. Accessed October 30, 2016.
Hayes, Gary, “How to Write a Production Bible”, TMCResourceKit.com. Accessed October 30, 2016.
Jenkins, Henry, Convergent Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2006.