» Posts Tagged ‘transmedia’
Robert Pratten has posted another thoughtful entry about transmedia development at the Workbook Project, this time about prioritizing and selecting platforms for transmedia projects. It’s easy to think about how to extend a film project to web, mobile, and gaming platforms, but unless we have realistic goals in mind for each platform, it doesn’t make sense to do it just for the sake of doing it. His advice:
Think of the story as has having two components: “the story” – the whole world that’s created with all the characters stretching out in chronological order. “The experience” – how the storyworld is revealed to the audience (timing and platforms). Note that the story might be much larger than the project you’re working on now.
You can download the entire piece [PDF], or read part one at the Workbook Project, and part two at Zen Films. There’s also an Excel worksheet at Zen Films (note: it’s an .xlsx file, which wouldn’t open on my Mac).
A diagram of the complete transmedia strategy for my next project
The push-pull interactions between marketing and storytelling are undeniably complex for transmedia projects. As such, there are a lot of diagrams and charts floating around the web illustrating how to best reach audiences dispersed across disparate viewing platforms. Thankfully, after months of hard work, I’ve come up with the definitive chart for transmedia storytelling! Click the image for a full-size view:
What’s that? This is a powerpoint slide of the American military strategy in Afghanistan? Oh. Looks the same to me!
[via The NY Times]
Yesterday’s post about transmedia and the interactive filmmaker highlighted the challenges of developing a transmedia story for independent creators. It’s interesting, then, to look at an example of an expansive transmedia campaign from a studio — in this case, Warner Brothers’ Alternate Reality campaign for The Dark Knight.1 Independent productions are not going to be able to implement an ARG of this scope, but it’s nonetheless good brain candy for the concept of taking a movie “outside” the theater.
- Much of the transmedia strategy and implementation was run by the folks at 42 Entertainment, some of whom later split off to found No Mimes Media. [↩]
This video by Robert Pratten is a great introduction to what transmedia is and how it can be employed by the independent filmmaker (he also has a refreshing perspective on the “technological fetish” of our obsession with new camera technologies!). It’s a 45-minute presentation full of brain candy and should be required viewing for anyone thinking about telling stories across mediums. As Pratten stresses, “transmedia plays to indie’s strengths,” because delivering a consistency of story across platforms is possible for independent creators — not large studios made up of divided teams. In my opinion, his point about authenticity is even more important, because: I could care less about playing a social game if the original auteur had nothing to do with it, and I could care even less about buying a DVD if I suspect only 65 cents of a $15 purchase is going to find its way back to the original filmmaker. Creating our own cross-platform projects and retaining ownership not only gives us more creative control on all of the different incarnations of our story, it can also motivate fans to make purchases because they know we’re the ones benefiting from their support.
In addition to the above presentation, however, Pratten has written some very helpful articles at the Workbook Project on the process of developing transmedia projects: More »
Independent producer Ted Hope (Adventureland, 21 Grams, In the Bedroom, and seemingly a thousand other films) is expanding the perception of what “independent film” is and how it should be distributed. I had a chance to sit down with him at Power To The Pixel, where he gave me some very valuable advice; we share the same view of independent film, that with crisis comes opportunity. Ted’s been very generous on his Truly Free Film blog by sharing advice like Ten things to do before you submit a script and Display your value: you are different from them, as well as asking pertinent questions such as What defines an event? In short, his blog is a must-read for independent filmmakers. Here, he answers some questions for the forthcoming film Press/Pause/Play. More »
Despite the fact that Zack and I have been pitching and developing our transmedia project Third Rail for over a year, it was a mad rush to pull together a trailer and rehearse our presentation for yesterday’s first annual Pixel Pitch here in London. During this process, which we had to conduct virtually — with him in New York, and myself temporarily in North Carolina — we considered a few different approaches to our verbal sell, some more theatrical and some more straightforward. Ultimately we went with the straightforward approach, and, in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. More »
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