Transmedia Rising - comments

The JWT report of transmedia as a trend – Transmedia Rising, downloadable here – is a good read and shows pretty well where we are right now, in the world of transmedia (which evolves at a dizzying pace, but then again, what doesn’t). The report does have branding and revenue as core elements in the report; on the other hand, no transmedia project can expect longevity without a sound business model at its core.

I did have some thoughts on a couple of the topics discussed in the post: creating the flow and digital natives. We say transmedia but in my mind we really need to think sansmedia; there is very little we can create or come up with within the borders of a project (short of true telepathy or something suchlike) that there is not a viable technical solution for, or one that can be invented. This is not to say that we should not look at platforms or tools while developing and writing, as these many times can work as inspirational material and enablers, rather than obstacles. But to start a project with the assumption that ”this will be a television, web portal and iPhone app-project” and let that assumption define the story, story world and transmedia experience, that’s just plain wrong. The digital natives experience their content without thinking about platforms or codes used, they just do it. So must our content, our stories, do. Furthermore, it really is not enough to come up with new ways to tell stories and technical solutions for it, if we do not find new ways to empower the audience and let them have their way with the content - but in a way that we as creators can still be OK with.

Coming, as I am, from the world of television (television formats to be precise), this is a process and a way of developing and producing that absolutely MUST be viewed with positive goggles on. It is far to easy to look at ones’ television documentary or drama and simply give up on getting to grips with the challenges of a many-faceted story world with multiple intertwining stories; it is equally far too easy to look at such a project from a traditional marketers’ point of view and simply long to go back to selling those 30 second ad spots for the sitcom you represent.

The reality is, of course, that this is true if one lets it be. I would suggest quite the opposite; that such a project would give a producer a multitude of ideas, that can get an audience to engage deeper and truer in a story and a story world, it can give the producer and the developer invaluable contacts to their core audience, it can lengthen the life span of the content many times over… it is building an exoskeleton of pure titanium on a hitherto lovely but limited story, enabling it to punch through the traditional storytelling walls and invite an audience to follow.

For the marketer the benefits are even clearer. As the story gain more aspects, more details, more spaces to occupy, so will the marketer gain more possibilities to connect to a brand, to reach customers, to advocate the content and thereby the associated brand(s).

To quote JWT’s report:

For marketers, this is an evolution of the integrated marketing model: Rather than a consistency across multiple touchpoints, the goal is for different channels to communicate different things (within the overarching strategy), with an emphasis on putting the brand community at the center

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Now, substitute “marketers” for “storytellers”, “marketing model” for “storytelling model” and “brand community” for “narrative superstructure” and it is very obvious that these are two sides of the same coin.

The JWT report is a good sign that transmedia thinking and development is getting into more and more people’s minds in a good way. I for one am looking forward to what 2011 brings - a year that has already started magnificently.

The Three Facets of Transmedia

There has been an interesting discussion going on over at the Storyworld group on LinkedIn, about transmedia; what should be constituted as transmedia and what should be filed under ”flimsy cross media marketing”, to quote, and what should be taken into consideration when transmediating content. Deriving from that, I felt the need to expand on a couple of points, regarding the three different facets of a transmedia project:

The telling of a story

Transmedia storytelling is, at its core, simply that. By spreading out over different media and by creating a greater whole, we move deeper into the realms of transmedia. What it is, is basically the art and technique of telling a story, or rather multiple stories, connected directly or indirectly inside a larger story world and/or narrative superstructure and/or mythology.

As we all know, this can be done in many ways; through characters in blogs, through exciting and engaging television drama series, through sms, Twitter, Facebook, apps… The key is create the stories and the world, and use the platforms that comes naturally to the different parts of the story

Engaging an audience

The second facet is also crucial, that of embracing the audience and bringing them into the story/stories, to sandboxes or cheese-holes or perhaps even to less structured, more open areas in the structure of the stories and the story world.

This, of course, as many have discussed, profoundly changes the notion of an audience. Your audience is your audience, but at the same time they are your co-creators, investing themselves in your story and inevitably bringing change with them. It is then up to you, the creator, to choose just how much change you want. But generally, the more people invest, the closer they will feel to your content. Best case scenario, you not only have an audience and a horde of co-creators, you also have advocates that bring your stories to people in a fashion you yourself never could.

Financing your creations

The third facet is that of building sustainable financial structures, which have to be re-developed for each case, just as the stories and the worlds are re-developed for each new project. Transmedia projects have so many variables in play, that they inevitably become different from each other – more different than, say, television series or feature films. This leads to the creators needing to re-think the financing for every project; for sure there is a measure of recycling financing models from previous transmedia projects, but there will always be new possibilities in the context of a new project. This – sustainable financial structures – can take many shapes; from brands financing the lot to crowd sourced funding via IndieGoGo or a similar service.

Win-win-win

I firmly believe that to transmediate content opens up a whole lot of new possibilities to turn a project into a win-win-win situation, where you as a content creator win since you can tell more stories to more people in more ways, and get more and better (as in more fitting with your project) money in when you can play with a number of platforms and a number of stories. The brands or financiers win since you can target their message better, and since there is room for more financiers to partake - tv, online, books, mobile - the cost is less per participant with more bang for the buck as the end result. Finally the audience wins, as you have more money to make better content and make it available on more platforms to be even easier to obtain, engage and participate with and advocate for the audience.

The Phantom - a Theoretical Transmedia Case Study

Yesterday, in a post about developing existing properties towards becoming transmedia properties, I warned everyone to leave The Phantom be, ’cause he was mine to develop. A jest, naturally, but today it actually got me thinking a bit. See, today, the 17th of February, marks the 75th anniversary for the iconic comic hero, who saw the light of day on this very day in 1936. I found an old Phantom magazine from when I was a kid and had a look; lo and behold, the foundation for a solid transmedia setting is there already!

Below is what could be called a Case Study of a Theoretical Transmedia Development (or CSTTD) (happy there were two ”T”:s in that abbreviation, or this post would’ve featured in some quite different google searches) of the existing property The Phantom.

The Phantom has always, for some reason, been most popular not in it’s country of origin, USA, but rather in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Lee Falk, who created The Phantom, rewrote a lot of the background story at the same time as the actual first strips were being publised in 1936, building an intricate setting which almost could be part of the real world as a framework for the story.

The story of the Phantom

The Phantom is, as we all know, over 400 years old. Back then an ancestor was on a ship that was overtaken by Singh-pirates. Wounded, he managed to flee, was found by the pygmés (the ”bandars”) and woved never to rest until he was avenged. He created the mask and the costume, and after his death, left it all to his son, who left it to his, and so on, until today.

Do observe that we’re already talking ”distant mountains” here. Singh-pirates? Bandars? The Skull Cave? A lot of things to explore and dive deeper into.

Over the years – and the strips – the world of The Phantom grew bigger and bigger; a number of tribes appeared, a country (Bengali or Bangalla) where the Skull Cave and surroundings were situated, the Jungle Patrol overseeing justice in the wilderness, the island Eden, where all animals live in peace… strange going ons like The Little People and the slave trading nations in the north… freely mixing 18th or 19th century traditions and legends with the technologies of today, Falk and his co-creators created a rich world and a rich mythology – sometimes with different parts at odds with each other, but most often not – which would be just right for a transmedia developer.

The Phantom goes Transmedia

The Phantom has tried to revive itself – from the movie in 1996 to different features and fan clubs – but obviously not looked at their property from a transmedia angle. Some suggestions I would look at, were I to develop said property:

- What are all the different storylines that need to be collected? Can they be benchmarked against each other and either be removed from the canon of The Phantom or embraced, included and communicated to everyone associated with the brand? This goes hand in hand with….
- Re-writing the mythology, starting from the storylines that have been spared, to get as much flesh on the bones as possible and evaluating the efforts made already – how does it all fit together.
- Which of the canonical storylines are at home in the real world, i.e. which can, as a casual impulse, use for instance the Internet to perform a task. Myself, I’d like to work on the Jungle Patrol and how the Patrol was created in greater detail, opening up their web presence to today’s readers, adding twitter accounts, a continuous Help The Patrol online mystery game etc, and see what other stories can be derived from the Jungle Patrol without directly involving the Phantom.
- How can a storyline (or more than one) be translated to an ARG or suchlike, and where and how can such an ARG take place? The Phantom has bases all over the world and has been on adventures everywhere, which should lend any ARG-developing team a helping hand.

And of course, there are a multitude of stories, that have only been briefly touched upon in the magazine or the strips, enough to create a whole Phantom shadow world as a shadow of the real world.

I’ll stop here, but I think you get the point. You will be able to go transmedia with almost any project. But some are simply just already made for it. And once again – hands off The Phantom! ☺

Twain on Transmedia

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
- Mark Twain

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I was pointed in the direction of a post on Mark Twain and social media from last summer. Twain had, some 120-odd years ago, written a piece on how to tell a story. It’s a good and true read, and in many ways instantly transferrable to any transmedia project being considered or developed today. In his text Twain refers to the two ways to tell a story – the humorous way and the witty way. Says Twain –

The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story, Twain argues, needs an artist to tell it right. The witty story, on the other hand, is a story that could be told by a machine.

This is, I feel, a kind of crossroads where transmedia is today, as more and more people are beginning to see the uses of a transmedia approach to telling a story, as producers and companies can point to increasing revenues from transmedia projects and as technical and sociological means and practices open up newer, quicker and deeper ways of telling stories over different media.

Some will be – are, already, actually – going the ”comic/witty” way of developing and creating transmedia. To, again, quote Twain:

[…] the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.

I see that as a great pointer to what NOT to do with a transmedia story. There is no magic and no fun – and most of all, nothing to discover – in a story that someone is banging you over the head with, no matter how the story unfolds over different media platforms and/or turns out hundreds of different merchandize possibilities. On the other hand, as the quote on top says, an ideal transmedia story could also have ”no order to it, and the reader (user) would have to discover his own.” …which is an approach that tickles the imagination a lot more vigorously.

As Bill Wren, who wrote the post on Twain and social media, translates Twain’s musings, there are two ways to tell a story; the right way and the wrong way. It all depends on your ulterior motives:

As Twain describes it, telling stories is manipulative. However, the reason for the manipulation is what makes it a good or bad thing. Doing it to delight your audience is good; doing it to bamboozle them into doing something that profits you, is bad.

So, with the possibility of transmedia as a term being connected to a lot of not-so-beautiful projects in the near future – and with Steve Peters’ tweet from yesterday, which I believe was a reaction to the massive transmedia hype at the NY Toys Fair (which actually was mostly franchising in the traditional sense), in mind – we might be wanting to take care of the term transmedia a bit more. For me, transmedia has been - and still is - a term that tells of possibilities and excitement, not necessarily revenue streams and franchising. If too many projects labels "transmedia" are told in Twains comic/witty way, we might be looking for a new term in the not so distant future.

On the other hand, terms are terms, and should not be taken too seriously. It’s what we create, why we create it, how we create it and how we execute it that matters. However, to round off with a final quote from the great Mark Twain, I think transmedia, in all of it’s momentum forward, might want to rein in a bit and reassess:

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation. - Mark Twain

Doing it the transmedia way

Working with transmedia is one thing. Working transmedially, that’s something else, at least in my book. The two thing do go hand in hand, in a way – if you ARE working with transmedia, starting to think in a transmedia fashion about the way you work opens up possibilites.

In his book ”The rules of work” Richard Templar talks about roles in a working environment. He statest that:

Basically your Role is how you fit into the team – and yes, we are all team players. We have to be, in this day and age.

Looking at how many transmedia producers approach their work, this is very true. You need a transmedia producer to work with the other producers and the creator(s) of a certain property, especially if you are looking at developing and producing something a bit bigger. It goes without saying that defining the roles of these different team members is a crucial part of any project; who is responsible for what, who has clout when it comes to the development of a certain content and who needs to know what and when.

Working ”transmedially”

Transmedia, however much a buzzword it has become in the past few months, is a very powerful instrument when you get it right. So why not use it to make your teamwork better? If you build the storyworld, the mythology, of your project with the same careful and precise devotion as you build the storyworld that will be the content of your project, you will – according to my/our experience – receive a number of benefits:

- Everyone involved in the project will know their role intimately, and can naturally interact to change their role to fit themselves as persons even better – as long as it does not break the transmedia principles of theme and tone
- Integrating new co-workers or external partners in the project is easier when you have a story to connect to. This is not saying that you should start explaining transmedia principles or dive deep into storyworlds when talking to potential partners, but it will give you the means to explain the gist of the project in a coherent, logical and always similar way.
- Pitching your project suddenly becomes much easier. Not only do you know your content, you know your project and everyone’s role in it, and you know your own role as well.
- Defining a transmedia setting for your project also gives ideas on how to implement the project on different platforms, and how to use different platforms to the greatest advantage
- By defining the transmedia setting, the storyworld, for your project, you will by default also (at least partly) define the role of your company (and affiliated companies) in that setting. This can lead to new aspects on your company and possible future projects and cooperations.
- If you want to make additional material available, which in a transmedia project is almost a given, approaching the way you work transmedially will help you no end when it comes to amassing "behind-the-scenes"-material, making-of-documentaries etc

The roles

As for how to define different roles, it might not be the most productive way to go down the drama route, as there is less call on archetypes like ”Hero”, ”Sage” or ”Villain” when you sit around a table brainstorming stuff. I think the best way is to define roles according to the people connected to a certain project, but there are places to start looking if inspiration is needed.

For instance, Dr Meredith Belbin, who has been researching into team work roles for over 40 years, is one place to start with the definitions of nine distinct team roles at the core; the Plant, the Resource Investigator, the Co-ordinator, the Shaper, the Monitor Evaluator, the Team Worker, the Implementer, the Completer and the Specialist. Have a read at the Team Role Theory site for more information.

Conclusion

Taking the opportunity to apply transmedia principles not only to the content you are working on but also to the work processes themselves, has the potential to add a surprising amount of value to not only your work, but to the way you work as well. Try it – you might just like it.

Must connect, must make sense.

Today I read a good post by Pamela Rutledge over at Psychology Today. She talks about the psychological power of storytelling and brings up some points that I find are absolutely crucial for transmedia developers to take into consideration when developing their stories. I’ve touched upon the subject before, in Transmedia - the Story, the Experience and the Needs, since I believe that storytelling in a transmedia setting makes it possible to satisfy a greater number of needs than most forms of traditional storytelling. For example – we’ve all come out of a movie theatre, euphoric, with a deep sense of wanting to know what happened to the characters after the movie ended. Or, in the case of Avatar, LotR and many others, wanting to be a part of the world we have just gotten a glimpse of. Transmedia storytelling can fill this need, at least much better than other methods.

But we need to be wary and know what limits we are working within. As Rutledge writes:

In spite of all the excitement, however, the human brain has been on a slower evolutionary trajectory than the technology. Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience.

And this is so very crucial. The different parts must connect, but must also make sense. Whichever way a user/consumer/viewer chooses to enter a narrative superstructure, they must fit logically into the mythology and the storyworld.

In a post about themes, deriving from Jeff Gomez’s and Starlightrunners way of working with coherent themes in transmedia projects, Lucas J.W. Johnson writes that:

…. there should be a broad theme present to unify the pieces, to actually allow for that dialogue between the stories of the property.

So this is one way of looking at it, although not at all at odds with what Rutledge writes about . As I wrote in a comment to Lucas’ post, the different parts of the terminology are not mutually exclusive in any way. Rather, they build on each other and support each other. With a solid theme to lean on, your stories will unfold HOW they should. WIth a solid world, they will unfold WHERE they should, and with a solid superstructure they will unfold WHEN they should, etc.

Always keep on track with your transmedia narrative. As Rutledge writes:

Humans seek certainty and narrative structure is familiar, predictable, and comforting. Within the context of the story arc we can withstand intense emotions because we know that resolution follows the conflict.

This is not to say that it doesn’t pay to experiment with storytelling principles, especially when we can plan for audience engagement and user interaction in a much deeper way, when planning transmedia. I simply find it is always of the essence to – from time to time – go back to the basics, to mirror what I’m working on against “how it always has been done”. A mix of both, with logical connections and attractive content coupled with clear calls-to-action, that is the future.

Tools for Transmedia part four - MyHistro and Magma

Screenshot from MyHistro

MyHistro - telling stories in a new way

I just stumbled upon an Estonian startup called MyHistro, which looks a bit interesting from a transmedia point of view. The idea is to tell stories, but to do it in a new and more social way. What you do is you sign up (it’s in open Beta, so go ahead and try it out) and start creating your MyHistro. It is an event-based way of telling stories, where you create your different events (you can check my test-event of a trip from Helsinki to Vaasa here), geotag with Google Maps interaction, add comments, pictures and YouTube videos as you please, and arrange these in the desired chronological order. Anyone viewing can then ”play” your story, which takes the viewer through the events with the possibility of stopping to read more, examine photos or suchlike.

Now, the ones using MyHistro at the moment are for the most part people trying it out – there are stories about Manchester Utd:s football games, one story from a person training for a ski competition later this year and so on. But for a transmedia producer, this tool could come in handy.

Firstly, it could be used to tell the development of your property in the real world. I would, for instance, love to follow the shooting of the crowdsourced Iron Sky movie via a service like this, instead of reading a blog or Timo’s tweets, as they move from Germany to Australia and onwards.

Secondly, as a part of a narrative, it could very nicely blur the lines between reality and fiction. A series like Lowlifes (which I thoroughly recommend everyone to check out) could perhaps have used this as an additional way of telling one side of the story. Just about anything set in the real world could use MyHistro to let a fictional character tell a story in a new and interesting way.

The stories are, of course, instantly shareable on the most important social platforms.

Magma - publishing made easier?

The second service that could be interesting from a transmedia point of view is Magma from Denmark. It is not possible for me to recommend this service yet, as I have not tried it out – it’s a 30 day free trial, but I have not yet started one – but on the surface it looks handy. Magma is about publishing for instance a magazine or a book. It lets you ”simplify your flatplanning, organize your content and resources” and the most important from my point of view ”Collaborate on content creation and keep track of photos, files and text.”

In a transmedia world where many (me included, if it fits the project in question) advocates the publishing of a graphic novel or similar, to enhance the value of your content and establish the mythology/canon in a more tangible form, Magma looks like a tool that might be useful. I have been looking at collaborating with people from all over the world on different projects, and Magma might just be the tool for that. I will get back with a fuller review once I’ve had the chance to use the service.

Quick post - Shadow Cities and context

Scott Walker asked me on Twitter: "Can you elaborate (or quick blog post) to clarify re: Shadow Cities and missing context?" This was in reply to me tweeting re: Shadow Cities that "been playing Shadow Cities for a couple of months now - verdict: yes, but would benefit from context." So here a quick post to elaborate, as 140 characters is a bit limiting.

To recap - Shadow Cities is a Finnish startup, in Beta mode in Finland. It's a quite nice iPhone game, that uses OpenMaps and GPS to put a magical layer on top of the "real world", a layer in which you and a lot of other mages do battle. Two teams compete, the Animators (or "Hippies", as we affectionally call ourselves) and the Architects (or "Narks") for the win in each campaign, which lasts about a week each. As a mage you can build Dominators to conquer Gateways and collect energy. With this energy you can maintain Spirit Catchers (to catch spirits, which you need to get points for your team or donate to research to get Mana Potions which replenishes your mana) or Beacons, which act as waypoints for your team mates to warp to, over great distances. You can also build Traps to thwart your enemies spells, or Heal other players or Dominators or Beacons, and you can naturally attack with the "Z" spell. You gather experience points and advance in levels and get more perks, better spells etc.

So, all in all a compelling game. These past few weeks have seen numerous rule changes - as it is in Beta mode - some for the better, some for the worse.

What I severely lack is the context, which I believe the game would benefit immensely from. The background story is flimsy to say the least; "Animators vs Architects!", yes, but why? There are no NPC:s, not even static ones... there should be a story world, as the game world has been built very nicely on top of the real world, a story world to get campaign ideas from and to let players draw more inspiration from. If Gray Area, the company behind Shadow Cities, would do that - get some good transmedia storytellers onboard - there is the possibilites for a major transmedia campaign; comics, board games, tv series, you name it. As it is now, it's a compelling game and a unique game plan, but not really there just yet.

Transmedia - The Steady Burn

There is an interesting discussion going on regarding the possibilities and implifications when talking about transmedia and localization – i.e. segmentation, catering for the needs of different demographics through the powers of transmedia. Simon Pulman wrote a great post stemming from Shakira, Jeff Gomez and Rosetta Stone, to which Alison Norrington responded with some good thoughts on the cultural perspectives and Lucas J.W. Johnson pitched in with an interesting post about the dangers of ghettoization (be sure to read the comments too, all good stuff!)

Transmedia - engaging in the long run

Looking at the issue from another angle, I have always felt that one of the major strengths of transmedia is the possibility to add the Steady Burn to any project you’re working on. If, in a project, the tv series premiere or the major motion picture release is the bright flash that catches everyone’s attention, the transmedia story archs can provide the steady burn that keeps people huddled around your story fire.

All previous advice still apply, naturally. The different transmedia parts of a story must fit together, they must stay true to the overall mythology and canon and they must be executed with utmost care. My point is rather to look at parts of what you’re creating as just that – the steady burn, the log you put on the fire to ensure it does not go out, that final piece of wood that makes the tinders just perfect for roasting your transmedia marshmallows on.

In this sense my thoughts tie in with the discussion above – I feel that including the awareness of localization, of catering to different segments of your audience via different storylines, is a powerful thing in this aspect.

To exemplify: If a tv series has ended and there will be over half a year until the start of the next season, you will have viewers that symphatize with different characters in your story. Now, as the steady burn until the next bright flash, let the ones following your hispanic character continue to do so via her YouTube videos, the ones following your gay character continue via Twitter updates, the ones following your divorced suicidal middle aged white mail character do so via his blog etc – and plan these updates to a) stay true to the story world, b) move off on their own mini-story-archs, as a sort of interlude and c) tie them all together, so that anyone watching the first one or two episodes of the next series of the tv show will find references to these storylines that have acted as interludes. (Of course, that first show must also work for anyone who has not been involved in the interludes as well, but that’s a given).

The Long Tail in a transmedia world

Now, Venture Beat has an eye-opening article on how social media advertising is replacing traditional media advertising. We all know this has been happening for quite some time already (just look at how traditional newspapers are faring) but when, for instance, Proctor & Gamble declares that they will be moving the lion share of their tv advertisement money to social platforms, this will have broad implications for anyone in content production.

Looking at the example above, I was talking about the tv series being the driving platform for the story line. This will probably be true for the forseeable future as well (even though the largest amount of people watching said tv series will have torrented it, watched it online somewhere or just basically NOT sat down in front of a television at a set time each week), since tv is a great media to tell stories via and since most people are used to the 30, 45 or 60 minute spot and it's dramaturgy. What will not be true - and has not been for some time now, regarding many productions - is that tv will be the major source of revenue for whatever story/property you are producing. The "long tail" model is no longer only about distribution but also production. Revenue will come from online, mobile, you name it, and the content will need to take this into accord, be tailored, localized - basically developed according to the best transmedia principles.

In the example above, I would look at a scenario in the very near future where the sole aim of the television series - even if it is am HBO mega series or suchlike - is to build the mythology and the story strong enough to engage people in the Steady Burn between series, where the major part of the revenue stream is found through subscriptions, donations, fees, etc.

Interesting times ahead.

Make sure it fits!

Note: this might be too basic for some, but as I noted above, I’m keeping this blog as a notebook for myself as well; most of the musings here have come as a direct consequence of pondering on the development of ideas I’m working on, and I know there is a considerable chance that I'll forget them if I don’t jot them down. This is a typical one :)

It may be a bit early to start talking about complacency with regards to transmedia. It’s a form of storytelling that didn’t have a proper name until some five years ago, and only during the past few months has managed to penetrate the minds of the industry and the audience to any greater degree.

Still, and I will willingly point the finger at myself as well in this case, any transmedia project (as with any other project) runs the risk of falling into the pit named ”We’re doing it as it should be done”.

Now, do read me right – there are a number of talks and presentations and discussions on the Net on how to create and produce transmedia, and these talks, presentations and discussions are for the most part spot on and simply required hearing/reading/watching. What I’m saying is that you always have to mirror the advice, the blueprints and the examples against what YOUR transmedia property is about.

As an example – in connection to one project I’m working on at the moment, I was quite convinced that producing something tangible in the form of a graphic novel, a photo book or a hard-covered short story would help the project along; grounding the mythology, the canon, in something tangible, while at the same time adding perceived value to pitches and discussions. Now, while this may be true for many transmedia projects, I have since come to the conclusion that such an approach will not suit this particular project. Yes, there will quite probably be printed material in the future. Yes, it will build on the same narrative supertstructure. Furthermore, it will have it’s own business model. But it will not be the first contact anyone will have with the particular project, simply because it it not in the nature of the project.

To conclude: evaluate each and every option and make sure that they themselves stay true to the core of your story. It is not merely about the content (although the content of course needs to be consistent, logical, engaging etc), it is as much about the way it is delivered, the way it is received, the feel of the communication… everything needs to fit. If you feel it does not fit, don’t do it – or at least don’t do it in the way that does not fit.

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!

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!

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.