How do you think this panel should shape up? What questions should our moderator ask? Go to the comments section to give us your suggestions and vote up your favorites!
Panel Description:
As the production of transmedia experiences becomes more commonplace, this panel seeks to pick apart some of the tensions emerging around transmedia as creative practice. As a narrative form, what is transmedia anyway? How can we keep it from being more than a shorthand excuse for multi- or cross-platform narratives? Is it anything more than that? Need it be?
Focussing around a series of case-studies, this panel digs into questions around genre, interactivity, and franchising? Are there certain genre constraints to transmedia narratives, particular genres — science fiction, drama — better suited to become transmedia properties than others? What might a transmedia event built around a romantic comedy look like? What role does interactivity play in transmedia narratives? Can transmedia narratives be satisfying simply by distributing their narrative in lots of forms, or does an “effective” transmedia narrative require opportunities for the audience to “participate” in a more active way than simply interpreting and discussing amongst themselves? Does transmedia require room for the audience to take a narrative in their own directions?
Panelists:
Frank Rose – Wired contributor and author of Welcome to the Hyperdrome (W. W. Norton, forthcoming); Jordan Weisman – CEO and Founder, Smith & Tinker; Louisa Stein – San Diego State University; Brian Clark – Partner and CEO, GMD Studios; Michael Monello– Co-Founder & Creative Director, Campfire
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbilly/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
How does developing transmedia content for a major television network / film studio differ from collaborating with an advertising company or brand? Are there more challenges/opportunities (economically or creatively) inherent in working with one vs. the other?
I'd appreciate a fundamental primer that differentiates media, platforms and modes of apprehension from one another. Florentine Films rewrote the protocols applicable to the individual viewer's simultaneous perception of still photography by adding a sequential narrative throughline that guided attention from one image to the next. The masterful reconfiguration of old media, still photography, radio and commentary served to focus and synchronize massively-collective attention in very new ways. That's why I'd like very much to understand the definitions of platforms and media (and their differentiating characteristics; relative strengths, apprehension-modalities, and weaknesses) early in the conference.
Hey, Scott — can I poke you a little on that (because I think it is a wise observation that since this panel is so early in the conference it could be useful to lay some groundwork.) Given the huge variety of platforms/media available for people to pastiche, I'm curious what elevation you're imagining that at.
Brian, please pardon the delayed response. About one hour and forty-six minutes into the 2-hour interview (at the other end of this link) Dr. Thorburn expresses skepticism about the ease with which the transition to transmedia entertainment will be managed, the serial reinvention of effective balances between serial and episodic TV, and tantalizingly suggests that the transition to New Media is anything but new.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/538
I have no useful answers, just knots of uncertainty.
Scott, I think those questions strike to the heart of the matter of the whole conference. Would it help to set this up with a "with what different labels tell you about what they think they are doing?" For example, I tend to borrow more language from performance arts than media arts (and you can imagine my labels reflect that). The panel probably won't have any useful answers either, but the conference in sum should.
YES, Brian, absolutely! Transdisciplinary nomenclature is a crucial means to communication, context and insight with/for/into other people's grip on the problem of making the futures of entertainment. When is a platfom a medium, and how to proprietary interests/disinterests skew thinking?
Scott McCloud once mentioned that characters in comics panel are usually depicted as though they were on stage facing an audience. Somehow, performance language exerts incredibly powerful and subtle influence on every single page, mind's eye, world view…I'm just asking for a preview of the consensual lexicon.
Stated, I hope, more succinctly; any resemblance between the original works of Philip K. Dick and their numerous manifestations in other media seems to be largely unintentional.
Do androids dream of A-list auteur/directors or of scrupulously faithful translators?
Or should we just follow the money and hope for the best approximation of immersive story-worlds as expressed on screens as diverse yet similar as those in cellphones, CRTs and multiplexes?
Is user-generated-content/criticism/contribution welcome or a whole new dimension of meddlesome interference?
I'm just looking to get the buzzwords right before we start.
Also transliterated Monkey business;
Neil Gaiman on building value into two renditions of Coraline and intercontinental ballistic media:
http://bit.ly/33GccB
What aspects of designing a transmedia experience change based on specific types of characteristics, such as the intended 'core' medium, the property's fan culture, and the overall goal (and how its evaluated). Do you think the general aesthetics of transmedia storytelling remain the same despite these factors, or are there major differences?
To improve both the theory and practice of transmedia storyelling, do we need a better taxonomy system that would narrow down its wide range of applications? If so, by what criteria might you classify the different sub-categories? (scope, genre, design, narrative form etc or is it more complex than that?)
What are the outer limits for what might be considered a transmedia offerings?
Will we consider a well-integrated advertising campaign that extends the world in a meaningful way as part of the transmedia offering, or will advertising continue to be relegated to a marketing role? To what degree will derivative (and I'm not using that in a pejorative sense) works by the creative community be viewed as contributing to the world canonically rather than as homages to the official works? Given the heightened level of interaction inherent in transmedia offerings, will we see more examples of content creation as collaborative conversations instead of push/one-way monologues?
And keying off Aaron's comment about a better taxonomy, I'd like to see some discussion about systems for planning and organizing the creation of transmedia offerings.
We're clearly in need of getting a general consensus on the definition of transmedia, and defining frameworks and models for creation is the next important step in this discussion.
Does the transparency movement potentiate qualitative advantage for independent filmmakers in the burgeoning relationship between migratory audiences over content creators employed by the alliance of massive studios?
Two interlocking points of reference for my terminally impacted question about transparency in Hollywood:
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/against...
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/winter2009/lance...
How will transmedia production be impacted by Comcast's possible acquisition of NBC Universal?
Would you all agree that these FoE conferences are themselves transmedia experiences on industrial-strength steroids? (Podcasts available, free of charge, at iTunes.)
The One True B!X gives notes on the stealth of networks AND content creators:
http://www.twitchyunreliablelooking.com/2009/11/1...
Nothing monetized attention in the '50s quite like live TV, nor mobilized political action in the '90s like talk radio. Is it feasible to take FoE5 globally participatory in realtime? With what advantages and disadvantages? Is it only a matter of time?
I'm a huge 'Lost' fan and realize the power of transmedia storytelling. However, as a creative director/writer from the advertising world, I'm curious what your creative process is to come up with a transmedia experience. Also, I'd be interested in finding out how an award winning writer can make the leap from a traditional agency to an agency that specializes in transmedia stories.
I'm a huge 'Lost' fan and realize the power of transmedia storytelling. However, as a creative director/writer from the advertising world, I'm curious about the creative process you go through to come up with a campaign. Also, how can an award winning writer make the leap from a traditional agency to one that specializes in transmedia stories?
Live events-based, cross-media branded entertainment — aka Interactive Reality Entertainment (IRE). demo: http://www.fotosonics.com/iredemo/1.html