I recently attended my five-year high school reunion. As expected, the standard first question (other than the generic, 'how've you been?') was, of course, 'what are you doing now?' Never have I been met with so many blank stares as when I responded, "I'm a transmedia writer". I got plenty of polite nods followed by "trans-what?"
In the interests of simplicity in an environment where the people I was talking to were getting progressively more intoxicated as the night went on, I simplified the concept of transmedia by just responding, "I wrote internet stories and content for Heroes". But transmedia is certainly not that simple. It's bigger and much more complex than just 'internet content'.
So what the &#*% is transmedia?
Transmedia is the process of telling a story over more than one medium. Now you might think, well there have been tons of films adapted from/into books or graphic novels or video games or even theme park rides. Is that transmedia? No, it's not. That's the retelling of a story. What transmedia aims to accomplish is to add to a story in a way that cannot be done by simply watching a television show or a film.
The goal of any good transmedia team should be to create a layered experience. That's the key to the entire project. Transmedia is about multiple platforms and multiple stories. Sound complicated? It's not.
Think about any good television show or film. The story is told with multiple settings, characters with varying connections and separate plotlines. Each piece guides you towards the final goal of the story.
In most of these, you can understand the main character and their story even if you missed a scene or two from the B-story or subplot but knowing what happened in those scenes enhances the main story. The characters lives become more full and real because you can see more of the fake universe that they reside in.
Transmedia takes this concept to the next level. You get one story from the movie or show but you know that each one of those characters has a feature length story of their own to tell (if not an entire series). There are a million different ways to tell these side stories and here is where the transmedia team comes into play; to fill in the gaps in the story that viewers never even realized were there.
Each extra piece of media adds a little bit more to the story. Not every piece is necessary to understanding the story either, allowing fans to decide how much they want to be involved with the show. The casual viewer can check out a couple of 'in-universe' sites and not feel like they're missing anything from the show. On the flip side, a truly hardcore fanatic can watch the webisodes, read the fake character blogs and get involved in as many aspects as the producers want to throw at them.
Each of those two fans gets an experience equal with what they wanted from the storytellers. Since the simpler layers do not require delving into the more intense pieces, the first fan does not feel cheated. The second fan however, feels more connected to the story and the characters because they understand things about the show universe that the first fan doesn't.
That second fan gets many more hours of entertainment and will enjoy the product that much more. At the end of the day, this is the goal of any producer, transmedia or no.
To sum it all up, transmedia is the process of telling a bigger story than what one film or show can do in the time it has or in ways that it simply cannot do. Interactive games, graphic novels, webisodes and so many other methods producers now have at their disposal; these are the building blocks of a new method of storytelling.
So thanks for reading my first musings as a blogger. I hope that in this blog we can explore the way that transmedia is adding to and changing the way we think about story. Check back in a week or so for my next post.
NEXT TIME: An example from some transmedia Heroes…
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