The Value of Truth in Transmedia

There are many important aspects to consider when starting out creating a transmedia property. There is creating the mythology, the narrative superstructure, as deep and rich as possible. There is timing all different releases, and making sure the right things get released on the right platforms. There is securing a sound financial basis to stand on – i.e., where’s the money going to come from?

Every aspect is vital, some to the core of the story being told, some to the framework around the story that lets it find its’ audience and gives its’ creators and producers funds to work with to take the story in the direction it is supposed to go.

But since everything about a transmedia project, in my opinion, goes back to the need to engage an audience and give them the best experience possible, I’ve found truth to be the most important aspect.

”Truth” in transmedia, as I see it, is the simple fact that everything needs to fit. The things that do not fit must also fit, as non-fitting parts (carefully planned, naturally) or be re-developed or omitted. We as human beings can tell when things are not as they should be, when they are not true. We might have been conditioned to set aside our beliefs, or willingly believe in certain things, but if we just let our instincts guide us, we mostly have the gut feeling of what’s wrong and what’s right, what’s ”True” and what’s false.

”Truth” in transmedia is keeping in mind that platforms do not matter, OS or programming languages do not matter. What matters is the story and that the users experience it the way you as the creator/producer planned for it to be experienced.

”Truth” in transmedia is a fragile thing. It can be shattered by a wrongly worded tweet from a character in a series. It contains a lot of pitfalls – and I know from my own experience that you, as a developer, will fall into many of them. The trick is to recognize when you’re in a pit and quickly get your ass out of there before anyone notices. You might need help to climb out of the pit. You might experience resistance, in the form of partners, sponsors, financiers, directors. But you know what ”truth” means in your creation. Stick to that.

Tools for Transmedia part three - WireWAX

I first laid my eyes on WireWAX’s technology for producing clickable videos at this years (2010) Pixel Lab in Cardiff in July. Paulina Tervo of WriteThisDown Productions had used the technology for her documentary work on the Ethiopian village of Awra Amba, adding clickable sections that nicely and seamlessly let you know more about the subject at hand, communicate with the people of the village or take you to a shop to buy goods from the village. All in all, really neat and handy.

The really funky thing, technologically wise, is that everything is embedded in the video itself, you can take the video to any site anywhere and all the clickable things are the same. It’s a stand-alone solution that seems really really nice.

Since I talked to the guys and saw the service for the first time, WireWAX has taken off a bit more. No wonder, as the service to me seems like a no-brainer. If you want to show a video online, why wouldn’t you want to engage the audience more? There are so many possibilities, especially with touch screen devices, to bring the audience deeper into your storyworld and engage and excite them.

There is certainly the artistic view to be taken into consideration; one should not tamper with a video created to convey a message or a feeling. On the other hand, if the video (as all transmedia properties should be) is developed with all the different parts, technologies and storytelling devices integrated from the beginning, in this case the WireWAX technology, then that sorts the artistic issue out. The end result is also guaranteed to be better.

As for how to use the WireWAX technology in transmedia storytelling, I can see many possibilities. The creators talk of clicking oneself on to the next video in a narrative sequence; I think that it could be used in online treasure hunts (”looking for clues”) or in deepening the understanding of the storyworld that we want the users/audience to immerse themselves into (think a segment of ”Avatar”, filmed like a scientific / documentary film, with clickable sections that launches explanatory videos narrated by Sigourney Weaver, for instance). Or something much simpler – or more advanced.

I’d have a couple of requests, as a developer – if there isn’t already, there would be nice to have the possibility to ”hide” the highlighted areas, making it more of an exploration mission to find what to click. Also, it’d be seriously funky if the clicks could launch stuff outside the window – this might be a big nono, but if it isn’t, I’d like that.

For some additional comments on the service, please read these insightsful posts. And WireWAX – congratulations!

Transmedia in 2020 AD

(The background: our third child, a baby girl, was born on the 15th of December. Now, I’ve watched my other kids, born in 2000 and 2004 respectively, take to the new media landscape as if they’ve never done anything else before (which they haven’t, come to think of it ☺ ), mastering iPhones and iPads within minutes, watching VOD as naturally as any tv series and so on. As I watch that little infant live her first days on this Earth, I start to wonder what her world will look like, when she’s of the age of our older daughter. That’s where this post comes from, playing the part of Nostradamus for a brief while. And, yeah, take it all with a pinch of salt (although I WILL take credit for anything that turns out to be accurate :) )

AP / Reuters

As the year 2020 comes to an end, the eyes and ears of the world once again turn to the Annual Transmedia Academy Awards (ATAA). This year the host city of choice was Auckland, New Zealand. In their motivation for the, in many industry people’s eyes, strange choice of venue, The Transmedia Academy had previosly stated that

”… we wish to embrace the principles of transmedia also in our arrangements, showing that the powers of transmedia storytelling can bring the farthest corners of the world together at once, even in connection with a live awards event like this. Auckland, New Zealand, is therefore a natural choice and we are thrilled to meet you all there, live or virtually in late December!”

The award categories include ”Best ARG”, where the innovative LARP / mobile gaming / online adventure ”Natives”, where people around the world take on the roles of their native ancestors in a Sid Meyers ”Civilization” type of world domination game, is the overwhelming favorite.

A new category this year is the ”Collective Creation” Award. The description for the category states that ”for a long time, ever since transmedia became a widely acknowledged term in the late ’00s, the collective effort has been taken almost for granted. Creators have counted on the audience involvement, producers have relied on input and UGC from devoted fans and so on. At the Transmedia Academy we feel it is time to acknowledge the importance of creating transmedia storytelling collectively, with other professionals as well as with the public, and have therefore included this category in the proceedings for this years awards.”

The Awards ceremony will be held on the 27th of December 2020, at 20.00 Pacific Time.

Background: Transmedia became a household term in the early 2010s. Since then, the transmedia storytelling principles have intergrated themselves into all aspects of society, from education to business, from pre-school to university, from entertainment to industry. Although there had been a number of relatively successful transmedia ventures prior to 2011, it was the multi-billion dollar generating transmedia campaign ”Spy Game” that let loose the full powers of transmedia on the general audience in late 2011. ”Spy Game” began as a graphic novel, a book trilogy and a high-profile tv series from HBO, letting the audience take part of the storyline by adding themselves as characters and participating online or via mobile phones. With a 10 million dollar global cash prize up for grabs and a program to support and promote collective efforts over national boundaries, it was the first transmedia project to generate over 200 million dollar in revenue and has up until today grossed more than 400 million. The Transmedia Academy was founded in 2012, and funded partly by donated money from the ”Spy Game” project. The Annual Transmedia Academy Awards have been held since 2012. (Source: Wikipedia)

Holiday hiatus....

.... with holidays fast approaching and a newborn baby girl in the house I will now take a couple of weeks off to concentrate on things that are NOT transmedia NOR cross media or any kind of media at all.

Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a successful 2011!

What makes a good transmedia format?

It is very encouraging to see how quickly transmedia has become a trend that not only is a buzzword or a hype, but rather a phenomenon that seems to grab peoples’ attention and imagination and spur them on to think in new ways, create new things and talk to new people.

There are still probably as many definitions of transmedia as there are people talking about transmedia. These are not necessarily differing all that much from each other, but rather in a nuance here or a nuance there. It’s all good though; we should all fear the day when we have the definite definition of what transmedia is. That’s the day when it’s time to start doing something else.

It’s not just talk either. A growing number of people are starting to venture into the field of transmedia to tell their stories. These range from major multi-million dollar ventures to small dramas or documentaries with next to no financial power behind them. Some will fail, even amongst the colossal ones, but some will succeed magnificently, even amongst the small ones – such is the way of the storytelling business.

As more and more projects are being developed, there seems to be a need to look beyond the ”what is transmedia?” or ”why transmedia?” to the much harder ”should I and this project go into transmedia?”.

From my personal point of view, I know that some of the projects I work on lend themselves nicely to transmedia development. Building the mythology, developing a canon, working on different storylines to be told via different platforms – even if it is a documentary, a music show or even a game show, it is quite possible. On the other hand, I know that some other projects – good projects, in and of themselves! – would not benefit from a transmedia treatment. They are stories that either would not be enhanced by expanding the universe they exist in, or stories that would carry a much too hefty price tag, should a transmedia development and implementation take place.

Some people in the transmedia field were kind enough to give me their opinion on the matter, and there is a pattern, at least so far. Tyler Weaver – do check out Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a project I’m looking forward to seeing more of – was of the opinion that the story was the most important feature. As he said:

- The most important thing - a good story. I just want a good story well told. If I want to welcome the characters into my home (good or bad), it's a good story that I want to revisit.

We all probably agree with this. It has to be a good story, for there to be anything to build around. It also needs to be a story that can have a mythology, a universe of its own (even if it is our own, real universe we’re talking about). If it’s a thin story, or unengaging, or linear withour the possibility of other storylines touching it, there’s just no way it would ever make a good transmedia entity. (I do, btw, love that definition of a character in a story – ”if I would want to welcome them into my home” – and will happily start using it to gauge the characters in my stories).

Sparrow Hall, of Nightworks and Two Blue Wolves fame, shared his beliefs:

- What attracts me to transmedia: the ability to inhabit the environment/vibe of a story, to see deeper into characters. What engages me with transmedia: seeing how consistent art direction and tonality is achieved over multiple mediums. Subtlety. High production value even with little to no budget. Authenticity of feeling/language. Also the multiplatform aspect needs to feel compelling/enriching, not just a device to continue.

Many things to agree with. Also, naturally, the possibility to offer many entrypoints, as well as exit points, to and from your story universe, to let the users/viewers/audience participate, either freely or via the Swiss cheese model and to, through all these actions, find new stories where you thought there were no more stories to be told.

So, to apply this on what one should do when assessing a development project; if there is a reason for there to be more than one platform involved, and the content on these platforms are unique but can be and is being developed together, that is a good sign for a transmedia property. If you can see how the audience can participate, and to what degree, and if you can see this ”spread” of the story happening even without big bucks behind it, you’re even further on the road to a transmedia winner (or at least a doable project :-)

I’ll leave the last word of this post to Stephen Dinehart, who commented on the current hype around transmedia:

- I think perhaps the best way to see through the hype is not to listen to it. Just create.

So, let’s go out there (or, stay in here for that matter) and create. I'm really looking forward to the next few years.

Transmedia - destroying or enhancing franchises?

I just read this excellent post on how a transmedia take on expanding a franchise can ruin the franchise beyond redemption. It rings absolutely true and is a danger that we all should be aware of.

From my point of view, which then would be the point of someone who has been developing formats for interactive television, cross media and transmedia since 2005, we need to make a distinction between transmediating an existing franchise and developing a transmedia property from scratch. That is what we found very quickly with the first interactive tv formats we developed, amongst them The Space Trainees, a childrens cross media language training game show set in space (Emmy-nominated this year, yay!). It started out as a show for interactive television, via set-top-box interactivity. While trying to integrate interactivity into the flow of the show, we found that we had to take several steps back to be able to integrate the interactivity in a logical way that did not disrupt the story we were trying to tell.

The same goes for any transmedia venture I can think of. As discussed in the post linked above, there is often a major danger of the ”cashing in on the success”-factor taking over. We used to call it ”slap-on interactivity”, when interactive services had been implemented in a late stage of the development and just slapped on as an extra layer on top of the show or the story. That was what it felt like as well, an extra layer that hindered you more than it enabled you. With any sort of existing franchise going into transmedia this rings true; make sure what new things you offer are integrated into the mythology, the storyworld, make sure they add to the canon of the storyworld and do not detract from it and make sure it all fits in a very logical way.

Now, the best thing is of course to start a transmedia property from scratch. In that way, as we ourselves quickly realized, you can let the different parts influence each other to create a logical and engaging whole. And I absolutely agree with the points about keeping the creative(s) in the loop - they know the story and the story world, and are the ones best equipped to see if a new addition fits storywise or not. So, just to find the proper story then, I guess!

Posting elsewhere

As I have written about earlier, I'm blogging over at ReedMIDEMs MIPBlog as well. Just did a short piece showcasing interesting transmedia projects, past, present and future. I guess I could post a copy here, but that wouldn't feel fair to them, so here's the link instead :)

Funding transmedia - a comment

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the debate in the comments on Simon Pulman’s post commenting on the presentation of the ARG Perplex City at the NYC Transmedia meetup a couple of days ago. Andrea Phillips presented the work they had been doing on the ARG, which in itself is an impressive and inspiring talk. The live stream is still up here.

Now, if you read the discussion, you can see two slightly conflicting points – the need to create great content and thus gain a loyal following that will interact, and the need to have someone stump up the money to pay for all that great content and the work you put into it. I think this is more and more the case now; back in the days a tv show could be bought straight up by a television channel, who paid what it cost to produce it. Nowadays you can’t make much of anything without a sound business plan as the foundation.

This is how it should be, I think. Yes, there should be creative freedom. Yes, there should NOT be intrusive ads that interfere with the story being told. But creating a viable business plan is as challenging creatively as creating the content itself, in many cases. It just juggles other parts of your brain, which can only be a good thing.

I also find that there is a shift going on in how people experience brands connecting to content they are attracted to. It is not about making people realize that they have to pay for great content, it’s simply about making people realize that great content can’t be made for free. The currency that your audience is paying you with for access to the great content (be it tv, ARGs, comics, webisodes, whatever) is not €€ or $$, it’s their time. This time of theirs, willingly given to you as the creator as payment for your work (strangely enough, even though their time is the only currency they can’t get more of in any way. Your content must be great!) is something that you can then sell onwards, to get the necessary funding in to make your project a financially viable one.

The trick is, of course, to do it with taste. I find for instance the writings on Propagation Planning quite interesting in this aspect, resonating well on a number of points with the workings of a transmedia producer. I also think a near-brutal honesty will work in many cases. Openly state that ”hey, we’re doing this, but we’ve only got funds up until three weeks from now. We’re working to bring in a brand, so don’t be startled if you see everyone changing to Toyotas all of a sudden, ok?”. If they like what you make – and they will, right? – then they’ll like you making more of it as well.

Users, meet Story. Story, meet Users.

Disclaimer: some of my posts are down-to-earth stuff from a developers point of view. Others, like this one, are more of the rambling-philosophically-late-at-night kind of stuff. In those cases, this acts more like a notebook to jot down thoughts I'd otherwise forget. If someone else also finds something of use, that's brilliant.

There are two levels to it. On one level the stories are made up. But they're made up for a reason, and the reason has to do with a different kind of truth. It has to do with emotional and spiritual truths. It is a way of trying to use a lie, which is the story, to approach some deeper, more spiritual sense of truth. I don't mean truth with a capital T; I just mean small kinds of truth.
-Tim O'Brien

When creating a transmedia property, no matter what kind – be it drama, be it a documentary, be it a music property or just about anything else – producers (me included) tend to think of their target group. What will they like? What will excite them? What will turn them on, engage them and make them jump into the story? We perhaps even conduct research into the target groups to glean more information on what they really really think, what they’d like and which solution they’d prefer over all other solutions.

Then we tweak our stories, our worlds, our properties, so that they fit, thus creating a transmedia property in the same way as people in the industry have been doing traditional media for decades.

What strikes me as a transmedia truth of sorts, is that we are not only talking of the Users meeting the Story. In a transmedia setting, it’s as much, or more, about the Story meeting the Users.

Now, this can be very stressful for a newly–launched, young and insecure Story. As I think we all know from school, Stories don’t reach their full size until well into the third season. Until then, they easily fall prey to larger Stories or succumb to over-hyping, low ratings or the No-Hit Syndrome that has been plaguing many of the latest herds of Story-younglings.

Attenboroughisms aside, and again as in so many of my posts relating back to what I’m working on myself, I feel many transmedia projects forget this. The Story needs to be influenced by the Users, and the Users must feel that they have influenced the Story on a fundamental level, for there to be genuine trust and commitment.

Re: the quote at the beginning – I believe that we can use the lies (or the creative stuff) that all good stories are made up of to approach our audience, our users. I believe that in a transmedia setting, the small truths Tim O’Brien talks about are all the more apparent, allowing an audience to see or sense the truths embedded in the content and engaging them more. That’s also how I view the need for a Story to be able to change after meeting the Users. The truths at the core should stay the same, but the story, the lies, around – they can change.

Some good posts that made me think of these things - Andrea Phillip's post on ARGs and dancing with audiences, and Robert Prattens slides on Transmedia audience angagement and content strategy. Good reads!

Tools for Transmedia part two – ThingLink

There are so many services and tools out there that could be used to enhance a transmedia property, enable creators to implement new solutions or just plain make it easier to do what you want to do with your story. A service that could be a good tool to implement for producers and creators alike is ThingLink, a venture from Ulla-Maaria and Jyri Engeström (of Jaiku / Google fame).

ThingLink is a fairly simple tool, allowing you to tag photos. As the ThingLink ppl say themselves, it’s ”a product identification tool that makes it easy to add clickable tags to any image on the web and share the tagged images on social networks.” What it means is that it enables you to use elements in pictures to help you tell more of a story in a quicker, better streamlined and more logical way than for instance hyperlinking stuff.

It looks something like this:




ThingLink is mostly geared towards advertisers and brands, which might want to have an easy way to forward interested customers to “more info” or “webshop”. But as I see it, it is a tool that can and should also be used for transmedia storytelling.

It’s a very handy tool if you as a creator want to keep a part of your story that you publish online to be based on, for example, just one full screen picture, ThingLinking your audience to different aspects, different storylines etc. It’s also possible to get a mass-tagging version of the tool, although I would feel the impact of one high-res, full screen, detailed image would be more attractive than a number of pics. It could be the entry point to everything you're offering online, or just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle - the ease with which you can implement it makes it a good tool.

I just have one small favor to ask of the developers - please include some sort of stealth mode, so that you can implement the tagging but without the spots on the picture. That would turn it into a great big Easter Egg hunt, which from a storytelling perspective is oh so much more fun!

And, yeah, it’s free to use btw. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination and creativity.

Tools for Transmedia part one - Storify and Shadow Cities

There are a growing number of services and tools available for people who want to create transmedia projects, tools that not only give creators a new way to get their stories out to people but also juggles the creative parts of peoples’ brains (in a good way, I might add!) Here are two quite different ones, Storify and Shadow Cities.

Storify is a ”real-time curation service” that lets a user build his/her own story from a number of sources (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc) and insert own comments to create a kind of a story around a subject. It’s easy to handle – what I found is that the most time-consuming part is finding the most meaningful content and arrange them so that the pieces fit together nicely and logically. In a way, it’s very much like writing a blog post, but more handy in many ways – not bothering with embedding, searches possible through the same interface etc.

A brief video explaining the concept:



As for using Storify in a transmedia project, a couple of the things that immediately sprung to mind were, for instance

• curating the storyworld, by being able to in one place give people access to the different narrative strands in a logical and informative (and why not entertaining!) way
• encourage users to use the service to glean new information from seamingly non-connected pieces of content (could be as crude as the classic ”take the first letter of every sentence in the five articles written on the subject and see what they combine too” or something more elaborate)

There are, I’m sure, a number of other ways to use Storify in a transmedia setting. It’s an easy tool that gives quick results that can be easily distributed to a huge number of users/followers. That in itself should be attractive to transmedia creators!

The other service is from the other end of the spectra. The iPhone game ”Shadow Cities” was launched by Grey Area of Finland a little over a week ago. It’s a game that uses OpenMap as the basis, and then puts a magical layer on top of the real world, a layer where the user participates as a wizard of sorts.

You sign up as a wizard for one of two sides; the Animators (or ”Hippies”, as the opposition usually calls them) or Architects (affectionally called ”Drones” by some of the Animators). Then the battle is on, to conquer Gateways that give you energy, to fight and catch Spirits, to Research new Mana Potions, to advance in levels and gain new Spells, and so on. Through Beacons you can jump anywhere in the world, even though the game is only realeased on the Finnish App Store as of yet. (It’s GPS-based, so where ever you are in the real world, that’s where you are in Shadow Cities when you log on. Turning on the app in a crowded place in a big city can very well land you in the middle of a serious magical fight… which is great fun! )

Now, the background story is flimsy to say the least. I do not think anyone has any idea about why we do what we do (yes, I’ve been playing it since it was released, addictive it is, yes!) apart from the need for there to be a struggle between two opponents for there to be the necessary competition. There are also some flaws in the game mechanics, but these are being corrected (hopefully) continously, so there is bound the be many improvements over the coming months.

This game does juggle the transmedia creative brain quite a lot, I must say. If the game engine would be licensable, there is no end to the fun we could have with this app. Think of being the Harry Potter of the real world, throwing ”real” spells as you move through the physical world, fighting monsters and evil stuff along the way (or be a Death Eater, if that’s your thing). Or connect it to something like TRON or The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or suchlike; why not the Underworld property or just about any story where there already is implemented the idea of a ”layer” on top of our regular world.

Do check Shadow Cities out, when you get the chance. Here’s a short explanatory video to give you an idea of what it’s about (mind you, playing it for a week, there is a lot less running around and a lot more farming Gateways....)

Transmedia - the jigsaw puzzle

From the first time I laid my eyes on Robert Pratten’s picture defining transmedia (slide 6 here), it made sense. When we started out creating formats some five-six years ago, interactive television was the rage. In Finland, where I work, MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) was the chosen platform for set-top-box interactivity. What baffled me from the beginning was the limits imposed on creators and users by that platform. It was like being taken back in time to the days when, as a teenager, I was excited about installing Windows 3.1 on a 386. The possibilities were not only decidedly not endless, they were very few to start with.

From the outset, we have worked along the principles that what we create and combine should make sense. Much as a narrative in any regular tv series, movie or documentary, the human mind is used to stories being told in a certain manner. You can tweak this manner of telling; if you do, however, you’d better have it thoroughly planned and tested from the start, and know what you’re doing. The end result might very well turn everyone away from the story you’re trying to tell otherwise.

The same applied (and still applies) to interactive television. What is created must fit logically with all other parts of the narrative, so as not to deter anyone interested in the story. With MHP-interactivity, this was nearly impossible. The slow connection, the weak processors, the slap-on effect… all added up, so that in the end we had to compromise the story, in order to be able to implement the interactivity. The end result? Working interactive television, yes, but nothing to write home about in terms of exciting end result.

Going back to the jigsaw analogy, I can see that what we were trying to do back then was to make a jigsaw puzzle with an axe as the only tool. End result? Four square pieces that a 3-year-old could fit together in under ten seconds. Yes, it was a puzzle. Yes, it fit together logically. No, it was not exciting. No, it was not what we wanted to do.

Looking at transmedia and the state of interactive platforms and possibilities today, not only do we creators have access to a multitude of tools that give us the possibility to make the most intricate jigsaws we can imagine (while of course risking that 90% of the populace give up halfway through the 10.000 piece puzzle, leaving the jigsaw in a box in a closet somewhere), we can also choose material to work with almost freely – heavy materials for stories that should stay put, light materials for stories we want to be spread. We can also hire the best artists possible to paint our jigsaw to be an absolutely beautiful creation. And it is increasingly possible to send some tools to the users themselves, letting them play around with the jigsaw and create their own pieces, or paint pieces we deliberately left unpainted with pictures of their own.

There’s never been a better time to make jigsaws!

Transmedia - the Story, the Experience and the Needs

When Paul Burke commented on a post of mine a week ago he mentioned that there is a subtle difference between the story and the experience. That thought has been nagging away at the back of my head for a bit, so I decided to elaborate slightly on the matter.

At MediaCity, we have a number of very competent people working at our UX laboratory, doing research into user experience. Looking at stuff they put out is always enlightening, even when it doesn’t touch on your project directly. They’ve been talking a lot about the Needs of people and these Needs connection to User Experience. In my mind it feels very true, that taking these Needs into account while developing transmedia will result in a better User Experience in the end.

The Needs in question are six different ones (out of ten, developed by Sheldon et al); Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence, Stimulation, Influence and Security. My colleagues did a study last year, available here, that looks into these different Needs with regards to using interactive products and media. It’s a good read!

So, to look at these Needs and how to apply them to a transmedia development process,:

- Autonomy. This is a Need closely related to ”being real”, being oneself. Also to the flexibility of the product – can I use it anywhere, as it suits me? One good example right now is the as-of-yet only available in Finland iPhone social game Shadow Cities; I can play it anywhere at anytime over my iPhone, connected to the real world via OpenMaps, and it really enhances my Autonomy IMHO.

- Relatedness. The Need to feel connected to a bigger whole, a group of friends, the place where you grew up… basically, your place in the world and in the story (and in the storyworld, of course!)

- Competence. The Need to master stuff, to feel that you can handle what’s thrown at you. No matter if it’s cracking a code on a website or just finding the website in the first place; it’s the feeling of being competent and up to the task. (I.e. don’t make it too hard for people to master your challenges!)

- Stimulation. The Need that is most closely connected to creativity – the interaction with others or with media (or with the challenges you pose them in your transmedia narrative) spurs people on and stimluates them. Given the opportunity to express oneself brings out hte creativity in people. (Leave sandboxes for people to express themselves in!)

- Influence. The Need that is about reaching out to others, to communicate, to feel connected. Your users will want to be part of a whole, but also be able to influence that whole in some way.

- Security. This last Need is closely connected with experiencing that things work the way they should. A coffeemaker fills this Need, as it always works. It also fills the need in a different way, as it is a familiar machine, thereby strengthening the feeling of Security. The feeling that everything is as it should be. Conclusion: you might very well include things that don’t work, or hoax people, or make things be NOT as they should be – but plan for that and be aware of this need, Perhaps your users need a sancturay somewhere?

Feel free to expand on these ideas – I know many of them are applicable to our work right now, so I would imagine they could help some others on the way as well.

Creating a Transmedia Symphony

I re-read the article in Wired on transmedia today, and found it as good a read as the first time. Coming to the last paragraph I read Jeff Gomez’s comment about transmedia and the birth of a new Mozart, ”We are going to see visionaries who understand the value of each media platform as if it’s a separate musical instrument, who’ll create symphonic narratives which leverage each of these multimedia platforms in a way that will create something we haven’t encountered yet.”

This rings true for me as an analogy of what many of us are trying to create. The question that popped up in my head was, however, “but hey, how do you create a “normal” symphony?”. Lo and behold, a Google search later I found this wikihow on, yes, how to create a symphony. After reading it, the analogy rings truer still. So, to translate the creation of a “normal” symphony to the creation of a transmedia symphony, these would/could be the steps to take:

1. Before considering creating a transmedia symphony, you most know a lot of the theory behind the storytelling and the structure, as well as the analysis of audiences and the different media platforms. If you have done this, follow the next steps.

2. Be inspired. Take some time, relax, bring som inspirational material with you somewhere and create. Wherever you are, when the ideas suddenly pop up in your mind, write them down, no matter how small. Keep letting life inspire you until you have a bunch of these ideas. Try to make your ideas connect with people on an emotional level.

3. You’re going to need some good writing and scheduling software. Set up your project thoroughly, with all the different elements in place from the beginning. In this way you can see how they fit together, and where strengthening is needed. The base of the project is the story and a couple of platforms. Unless you’re taking on a massive Hollywood project you shouldn’t need to worry about every possible platform and outlet. It’s all up to you, what you want your project to look like and how you want it to be perceived.

4. When you’ve selected the platforms you want to work on, go back to your ideas. Expand on them, build the world around them, put them in the middle of some context and think about how you would like to introduce them, and how you will digress from them as the narrative rolls on. Which ideas would be best at the beginning, or in the middle of the narrative? What should be the grand finale? Slowly add onto these ideas and interlink them. Make sure to stay within logical boundaries and watch for errors that would throw an audience off. This is of course unless you really feel you want some of these. Many creators throughout history have sought out theoretical guidelines, but if you encounter an opportunity to do something which breaks the rules but really feels right to you in the context of the piece, you might want to leave it in.

5. Eventually you will have a number of different, fleshed-out ideas going on. Try to get them all work in the same context, yet have their own unique style. You will use this to develop the different movements of your work. Keep expanding on these ideas, adding subplots, side characters, and so on. Watch and study other great transmedia projects to hear, see and feel how they progress, to help give you ideas of your own.

6. Eventually each idea will become a decently long plot. Do a walkthrough of all the different parts of your project. Does it flow right? Change and fix anything that does not feel right. Remember the interlinking of the different parts and how they should exist in the same story world and fit logically in the same context. Keep refining your project until it is complete.

7. This creative process may take a while, but by this step you should have a fully developed transmedia project down on paper. Take it to a group of people you know closely, or perhaps a group of students, and narrate the project to them, or ask them to partake of any material you have produced so far, like written text, graphic novels, online portals etc. Observe them partake of your idea. Did they experience it like you expected? Were their reactions the desired ones? Make sure you have the possibility to write down comments and reactions on the spot.

8. Go back to your transmedia mess and make a second draft with the comments and reactions taken in. Repeat these two steps until you are satisfied.

9. Take it to someone in the industry. It depends on your idea, but could be anything from a broadcaster to a production company, from a publisher to a telecom operator, depending on your idea and the platforms you’re concentrating on. Rehearse your pitch well, and reel them in with your great story and magnificent execution.

10. If you get traction and commissioning (or at least adequate funding) - Voila! Time to unleash your transmedia symphony on the world!

...and after writing this down, the analogy still rings true. Granted, there might be a lot more involvement from different sources from the beginning - brands, partners, tech etc - but if I start developing a new transmedia idea, this could work pretty well! There is also other aspects, like the need for a viable business plan etc, but we're talking symphonies now, so I omitted those :)

(Credits go to the Wikihow users who wrote the original post: BoldStepFixer, Gewg, Johnny, Nicole Willson, Maluniu, BR, Sarah Eliza and KP, wikiHow user(s) Isabelle C, Getmoreatp, Geena04, J424, Tryme2 and Anonymous.)

Pitching transmedia

(disclaimer: there are as many pitches as there are ideas, and as many ways to pitch them as there are people to pitch them to. With that in mind, I hope you get something out of this post.)

I’ve met a number of people who subscribe to the notion that what people do for a big part in their life is pitch ideas. It doesn’t matter what you’re thinking of – marriage proposals, what to cook for dinner, where to go on your next trip, when your kids should be doing their homework, what club to go to on a Saturday night – it’s all about how you pitch it.

Part of my job description (well, actually not part of my job description, but anyway) is to pitch; i.e. the ideas and the projects we work on have to be pitched successfully to get the necessary funding in for development work, the developed ideas must be pitched to participants, partners etc to go into successful pilot production, and the finished format must be successfully pitched to get a commission in the end. Lots of pitches, lots of different targets and goals.

What I have found challenging is pitching transmedia concepts. There is the issue that transmedia is a relatively new concept and hard to grasp. The people I mostly pitch to are executives and commissioners from more traditional media, television predominantly. Many of our projects have a strong TV connection still, as there is a still a lot of funding to be had from that area, and also, of course, because it's still a powerful media to tell stories in. These people know their line of work very well; they can ”see” the idea executed in their mind, they have an innate feeling for revenue streams, they know what would make a good show and what would require work, sometimes too much work. But ”seeing” transmedia is different, and I belive it needs a different approach to pitching the ideas as well.

The challenge is to tell just enough of the brilliant transmedia project for everyone to feel that they're hearing something unique and thrilling, that they simply have to be a part of and take part in. As transmedia projects often are complex workings, dependent on careful planning and execution, the full explanation is a lot to pitch and a lot to grasp. Personally I am a big fan of the elevator pitch - getting the idea down to a 30 second pitch that'll explain it to anyone. If I can't manage that, my idea needs working on.

This post is an attempt to gather some thoughts on the subject. Better pitching leads to more great ideas being commissioned, which we all want, methinks.

(There are a great number of other aspects as well, like for instance how to get in touch with the right people to pitch to, how to follow up on pitches etc. For some run-downs on pitching in general, have a look here, or here. I'll stick to the transmedia part for this post though.)

I’ve polled some people on their thoughts with regards to pitching transmedia, people from slightly different corners of the transmedia field. I asked about what they regard as the most important aspect when pitching a cross media/transmedia property. The thing they, and I, all agree on is the importance of getting the story through in a compelling and exciting way. Mike Monello, of Blairwitch Project and Campfire fame, told me that for him, it’s ”always the story through user experience. Technology only in the context of a specific tactic, and only if necessary. The storytelling that interests me the most isn’t complete without the audience/user, therefore it’s their experience that brings it to life.” (Q:s and A:s were done over Twitter, which explains some omitted words ☺ )

I will most definitely agree on the story being the thing that should hook the audience to your pitch. When I started out, I pitched badly. Really really badly. We were so proud of the tech we had included in our formats that we skipped a large part of the story, in order to explain how nicely all Java-interactivity and set-top-box-interactivity, along with the mechanics of the show fit together. After a dozen pitches during one hectic MIPTV day, I grew tired of the blank look on people’s faces and decided I needed to change my approach. So, yes, the story!

One drawback when pitching transmedia is that there are not that many comparisons you can make. When pitching a script for a movie, you could go for "It's like Godzilla meets Titanic, in space!" which sort of gives everyone an idea of what it's about (hmm, I'd like to see that movie btw :). In transmedia, possible comparisons are fewer, which leads to you having to stress the points that are easy to get and that hooks the audience immediately - so if you do not have those points and hooks, you really need to think about developing them!

The guys over at http://www.willyouhelp.co.uk and their interesting and potentially brilliant project Resonance are on the same track. ”[It’s the] story x 3. Must be good enough to engage & sustain across the platforms. [The] story hooks the reader. Tech … reels them in. ;)”

I like the notion of using tech to reel in audiences; using tech as a means to an end is what the content creation business is / should be all about. There quite a few instances where tech takes the more important role; this in turn leads to great examples of how to implement tech, but more seldom to content that engages an audience.

Thirdly, Dr Christy Dena, one of the pioneers in the field and the author of ”Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments.” listed the following points (which may change depending on the client, and are based on the project being unreleased as of yet, as Christy pointed out):

1) Start with story - theme, logline, synopsis, characters
2) A walkthrough of the experience (or part of it - the beginning & perhaps end) from the perspective of the audience
3) Aspects of innovation - the design principles, audience strategies etc
that sets this project apart as being well conceived (which includes a bit
of context)
4) The team - who are the awesome people involved
5) Timeline - what stage are we at, how much longer to go, what the
milestones are, when marketing will happen, when revenue intends to happen
6) Business strategy - including measurement
7) What we want/their role

Again, I’m definitely inclined to agree. These points make sense, especially if you are pitching the idea to a possible partner or financier that you belive has the potential of having a large impact on your project. In my opinion, the points also apply all the more if the person you are pitching to has at least a basic knowledge of the workings of transmedia and the benefits of a transmedia approach to a project. These points should naturally be a part of anyone's development work as well. It's a good way to test your idea, to try to do a walkthrough from a users perspective. Also, it's very easy to forget the last point - to have a firm grasp of what you see your role together with the ones you are pitching to. If you don't know, who will?

If you however have a 10 minute slot with an acquisition executive of a global production house, I would suggest you stick to the story, the hooks and the grand finale. Hook them and reel them in, make sure you get the go-ahead to approach them for a longer meeting with more executive staff involved in the near future. It’s always easier to say no than to say yes, if you are being sold something (like a transmedia project). But with a good enough story to hook them, you know they will not want to let it go easily. Make sure you’re interesting and exciting, avoid spaced-out and technological.

Finally, a couple of things: as Jeff Gomez suggested, always bring something tangible. A flyer is OK, a graphic novel or a comic is even better. Something to give your idea, your format, more of a physical presence. Just make sure it is up-to-date and repesents your idea properly. I don't think you need to have a drama-based idea to make a graphic novel either; make an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire into a graphic novel, from the view of a participant, spice it up a bit and you have a great piece of fiction, which explains your game show.

And, when the questions about ”but how do we make any money on this transmedia stuff then?” start piling in, make sure you’ve read up on Robert Prattens slides on Measuring RoI for Transmedia.

I feel there is a lot more to say on this subject, but I'll stop here (for now :). I'd welcome comments, as there are a lot of people better at pitching than I am, and with a better track record of interesting projects. Hopefully we can make the task of pitching transmedia a slightly easier one :).

Transmedia - the story of the story

I find it exhilarating and exciting to follow the current flow of interesting discussions and even more interesting projects and examples of transmedia bouncing around the Internet these past few weeks. Suddenly it seems like everyone is talking transmedia, from a great number of angles.

So, having read some tweets and comments on current transmedia projects today, I found myself sitting staring vacantly into space, my mind trying to grasp some thought that just did not want to be grasped. Irritating in the extreme, as I'm sure you all agree.

The glimpses I could see of the thought implied that it had something to do with the core and underlying premises of transmedia. I finally gave up and decided to start writing instead, hoping it’d show up.

After a while, it did. And with it, and in the sentences before this one that gave the setting and the background of it’s arrival, it brought the meaning of transmedia. It’s not the story you’re telling. It’s the story about the story, that gives your story meaning - that’s transmedia.

In that sense, we actually don’t need media. So, in the most simplified sense, there’s nothing for the transmedia to trans- around from and to.

OK, so we have no trans- and we have no –media. What’s up with that? I found myself thinking. Wasn’t it namely transmedia that I’ve been happily embracing for the past year or so?

Actually, I don’t think it’s transmedia I’ve been embracing. I have not, for instance, been embracing the production of storylines on three different media, stemming from the same storyworld but adding to each other rather than copying or duplicating each other. Or rather, I have, but that has rather been a by-product.

What I’ve been embracing is the thought process and the development process of creating more than you need, just in case (and there is always the case). The process of not saying ”this is enough, we don’t need more than this” but rather ”hey hang on, let’s elaborate on that for a bit”. The process of building the story, and at the same time the story of the story, to enable new stories and explain and expand on old ones.

It’s like you’re planting a sapling and nurse it to be a massive tree, trunk and all – even if audiences just pick the fruit, i.e. your stories, the stories would not be there to be enjoyed without the work before.

At this point, the elusive thought let out a sigh and went away, mission fulfilled. I will continue to grow the tree tomorrow, and at lot of other trees as well. See, the telling of the story, that tells of the story, that's work that's never done.

Until later.

PS. A couple of good blog posts from the last week or so - Simon Pulmans post reviewing and commenting on Brent Weinsteins presentation at the PGA Transmedia Masterclass some weeks back was a very good read, and a reminder of things to remember while developing. The post about hoaxing in transmedia, by @poburke was also a mighty interesting one, good comments and all.

Transmedia sans fiction

I'm a big fan of @Jeff_Gomez, as you've probably noticed. He really opened my eyes to the powers of transmedia at The Pixel Lab in Cardiff last summer (and he also helped create the Magic The Gathering card game, which I thoroughly enjoyed playing back in the day :) .*

I've enjoyed listening to his visions and his presentations (a great and touching video from the TEDxTransmedia conference can be found here, and a review of his Cinekid presentation last week here) and firmly believe that more and more properties and stories will go the way of transmedia, for the better of all story-interested members of mankind.

One aspect that I'm struggling with at the moment is when a development project strays from the path of fiction, or never originated as fiction to start with. As with the examples Jeff talks about in the links above, well executed transmedia projects in the vein of Avatar or Pirates of the Caribbean have a rich story world to build on, to create stories in, just as it should be. At the same time, this is almost a prerequisite for creating these types of transmedia projects; you need that fictional world, well built and stable, to be able to tell your fictional stories that complement each other and build the world onwards.

The challenge, as I see it, is to figure out what happens when you base these in the real world, omitting or at least limiting the fictional elements. Is it still transmedia? Or are we then reverting back to cross media (if that indeed can be considered reverting?). If it is still transmedia, is it possible to base it in the real world and still create a good transmedia narrative?

My opinion is that this is more than possible. What you need to do is to create the narrative superstructure in as great a detail as when you create your fictional world. Just because what you're creating is based on the real world, doesn't mean you can take it for granted that everyone perceives this world the same way as you do - not even your collaborators on the project. When writing this narrative superstructure, the mythology of your project, you need to explain the essence of, say, London, as represented in your project (if London is a part of your story of course) in as great a detail as the essence of Pandora is explained in the Avatar mythology. You also need to be able to explain this essence, via the descriptions and the mythology, to each and everyone involved in the development and the production. I believe this is the only way to avoid mishaps in the production (such as people not realizing what you want to get out of the narrative, what feelings you want to convey, how you want people to interact etc). One hour spent on the mythology will save you five hours in execution; production and editing.

This will also assist you a lot when bringing new people into the development and/or production team. Finally, I agree with Jeff on one point he has been making; if you feel the need to make some material to explain your project, a graphic novel is a great way to go. And if you base it in the real world, so what? Who wouldn't want to be in a graphic novel??



* see Jeff's comment below; the honor of creating MtG goes to Garfield and WotC.

A guest post and a couple of questions

I wrote a guest post for ReedMIDEMs MIP blog; it's geared towards the typical MIP-goer; i.e. a TV executive with a fair amount of years in the biz, just hearing about the term "transmedia" for the first time and wondering whether this will be a hype that'll fade away in a couple of years time, or something that they should take note of and start acting on.

I'm for the latter, so that's the angle I'll try to take in my guest posts. Not in a "do-this-or-be-DAMNEDFORALLETERNITY!!!"-way, but rather just to tell people what I know and show good examples that other's have done. Transmedia - or whatever you want to call it (I came up with the term "Sansmedia" the other day, since I'm fervently waiting for the day when we get rid of all "platforms" and concentrate on the stories being told) - is in my opinion the way forward, and I hope many others will recognize this as well.

I do, of course, as everyone involved in the transmedia business probably does, welcome a discussion on the subject. I started thinking about the multitude of people who are not aware of transmedia, who do not care about transmedia and probably never will. So, is transmedia a fad that'll fade? Will it merge with something else? Is it a phase we will go through on the way to finding an even better way of telling stories and engaging people? What do you think?

(I'll put my 2c in, in just a bit :)

The mixing of Real and Not Real in Transmedia

(the musings continue, now with something I'm struggling with right now)

One particular challenge that I face while developing transmedia, is the thin line between being just about enough fictional, but not too fictional. I don’t work – or, should I say, I do not at the moment work – with drama-based transmedia projects; instead, the ones we’re working on now are music projects, game shows, kids formats, etc.

As I see it, one key element of any transmedia venture is the classical ”willful suspension of disbelief” (love the phrase, btw). You know that you have your narrative superstructure in place, it’s solid and will be a fine, nurturing growth bed. You have some – three, then, to go by PGA’s rules for a transmedia producer – different media platforms utilized. The different pieces of content support each other, either directly or indirectly, but are not duplicates of each other. What you need now is for the consumer / participant (the ”consupant”? sounds a bit constipated...) to go into your story, your narrative superstructure, and embrace the willful suspension of disbelief and engage him-/herself.

This is a bit easier when building a drama-based transmedia setting, as anyone connecting to the mythology of the story knows and has accepted that it is a story. When blending ”real” stuff with a narrative that contains fictional elements, the cracks are a lot easier to spot.

What I’ve found out so far is one fairly simple thing, yet hard to stick to while developing, writing and scripting. Simply – be as true as possible. If you embark on the mission to include real stuff – be it persons, objects, physical landmarks or whatever – in your transmedia project, these different kinds of stuff will be a lot more credible if they, to as large an extent as possible, base themselves and present themselves as their real selves. What you don't want is for these characters and stuff to show any light shining through them. They need to be as solid as possible - which is only possible if they are, for the main part, grounded in who or what they really actually are.

The only thing you need to add are the small fictional things that lets these real persons and real places function within your transmedia venture.

I’ll update with an example of ours as soon as we’ve got stuff to show ☺

Musings on transmedia development

(Felt the need to write down some stuff re: transmedia development that have been bouncing around in my head for some time. It's basically just some reflections from the ground floor of the transmedia development factory...)

We started out as developers of interactive television-formats some five-six years ago. These were based on television as the core of the content, with interactivity included either via mobile phones or via digital set-top-boxes. We realized very early on that if you want to develop something that should accompany a traditional piece of content - like a tv show - you needed to develop the two (or more) together from the start. Thus you avoided the awkward feeling of added content being slapped onto existing content, without any form of seamless and enjoyable experience.

As time has gone by, we have thankfully been able to let go of the limited MHP interactivity for set-top-boxes and have happily embraced the cross media / transmedia approach to telling stories, be they music shows, kids shows, game shows or just about any kind of content. Now, some things are always good to keep in mind while starting up or being in the development phase of a transmedia project:

First off, make sure you're developing and creating compelling content - you need a great story to function as the framework, with enough holes in it for the audience to be able to fill in stuff themselves and become engaged in the story (Jeff Gomez's "Swiss Cheese-model"). Don't forget the narrative superstructure - build it solid enough to serve as a vehicle for this particular story, but also as a bed for future stories (from past, present and future in the story universe) to spring from.

Secondly (but developed at the same time so it all fits together nicely without any last-minute panic solutions, thank you very much) - logical ways for the audience/users to connect to the story, from platforms that are themselves logical ways into the story. I.e., do not make an iPad app just 'cause everyone else has one. If it's not essential for how you experience the story, leave it out.

Thirdly, get out there and get some traction for your content. Lots of stuff gets developed and produced and perhaps gets a blog mention or three, topping out at 452 users over a three month period. Don't do that. Get those people interested that can tip your little thing over the edge and into the abyss of a global phenomena. Get everyone to step over that invisible "WTF"-threshold (the threshold where you KNOW you should be doing something else but you're seeing thousands of people (who also should be doing something else) involving themselves in the story and having the time of their lives, so you think "Oh hell, WTF" and you jump right in). How? Read up on Propagation Planning. As they say - plan not for the people you reach, but the people they reach. Find your spokespersons. Be inclusive, not exclusive. Which nicely builds over to...

Be interactive. Listen. Communicate. You're probably not right every time, and others may have better ideas for your story and it's development. Face it - it is no longer yours only. Embrace that fact and take it onwards - it's all a good thing.

Lastly, don't leave people hanging. There's nothing worse than getting peoples expectations up and then letting them down. They have invested in your creation. Make sure they get full value for their investment. If you do, they'll be back.

Feel free to add stuff in the comments!


PS. Just read this in a blog text of mine from 2006, still agree 100% with the need to focus on content :)

"Myself? I believe that the changeover to new forms and ways of watching television will go much slower than people think, or hope for. I believe that in five years time there will be a small minority watching television via portable devices, while for the most part the audience will watch television in their living rooms, just like back in the 50s. I also believe that content is the most important factor, and that less energy and resources should be spent on developing and offer to people gadgets and trinkets they don't want or need, and more should be spent on doing great television shows."