Transmedia storytelling is a way to create a storyworld and tell a story across multiple platforms and formats. The different media complement each other and are linked together. An essential aspect of a transmedia production, is that the audience can actively participate in the storyworld. Therefore a digital platform often has a central role. One example is a tv series where the audience can follow the characters on Twitter and respond to them.Transmedia arises from our convergence culture, as mediatheorist Henry Jenkins states. We use all kinds of media at the same time. We text with our cellphones while listening to music on Spotify, reading the newspaper, checking tweets and meanwhile writing a blogpost.
Since the audience is getting more and more used to consume different media at the same time and responds to them online, producers are looking for new and creative ways to tell their stories, and use different platforms in order to create a storyworld. ~ Katía Truijen (Masters of Media)
Transmedia Storytelling is the practice of telling a single story with multiple platforms and formats, often using digital tools. Often shortened to simply Transmedia, it can allow documentary filmmakers to not only reach new audiences, but also to create unique educational components to enhance their film’s message and provide ways to partner with companies and brands, which can mean welcome financial relief to lighten the burden of the high cost of filmmaking.
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“Transmedia” is a buzz term that while currently all the rage may soon go out of fashion. But the essence of Transmedia storytelling — the integration of digital technologies and creating cross-platform experiences to enhance content, perhaps in a documentary’s case its message — is here to stay. Documentary filmmakers already wear many hats. Partnering with a developer familiar with coding and end users’ needs will elevate a documentary Transmedia project — and just might open creative avenues the creator wouldn’t have thought of on his or her own. With Transmedia, it really does take a village. ~ Amanda Lin Costa, producing of documentary, “The Art of Memories.” (MediaShift)
Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story… There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the… [story]. ~ Henry Jenkins
In a March 22, 2007 blog post, “Transmedia Storytelling 101“, Henry Jenkins laid the foundation stone for all subsequent conversation and speculation on the nature of transmedia storytelling. (Nota bene: USC Professor Marsha Kinder is generally credited with coining the term “transmedia” in 1991.) Though transmedia storytelling definitions abound, most trace their DNA back to Jenkins. Attempts to explain the idea of transmedia storytelling sound wonky: discrete constituent parts of a narrative are distributed via diverse audience interfaces, permitting a more interactive, organic and audience-centric story experience… Snooze!
Despite the academic language and the buzzword-laden rants, transmedia storytelling isn’t such a complicated concept. We apply the term primarily in instances where digital communication channels are involved, but the underlying idea is that the audience/player/consumer actively “creates” the story by selecting and aggregating distinct but complementary narrative threads. Uh-oh, I’m slipping into wonk-land. The idea is simple. Articulating the idea, less so.
Austin Kleon practices “creative thievery”. Perhaps we all do!
Austin describes himself as a writer who draws.
After seeing Austin’s found poetry collection Newspaper Blackout, Broome Community College invited him to deliver their commencement address. Austin shared the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was graduating, most notably, “Steal like an artist.” Once Austin posted the talk on his website, it instantly went viral. To date, the original post has been read by 1.5 million people. He has shared his ideas with audiences at TEDx, SXSW, and The Economist’s Ideas Economy conference. Austin’s insightful guidance and distinctive presentation has struck a chord with those trying to create original work in a time when nothing seems new. Indeed, we learn from Austin that nothing is original. All creative work must build on what came before and combine old concepts in exciting new ways.
Now, Austin Kleon has delved deeper into his ideas and expanded his game-changing speech into a manifesto:
STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST: 10 Things Nobody Ever Told You About Being Creative (Workman Publishing, April). The book tells us all how to study our heroes and begin to see the world as they do. You’ll learn how to copy, steal, and be inspired by the world around you — without plagiarizing it.
True to his tenets, Austin makes practical advice seem fresh with striking illustrations and genuine passion. His book will help experienced professionals and new graduates alike find new ways of working. His wisdom has clear applications to creative fields like fashion design, performing arts, and literature. Yet it can be equally motivating to those forging new paths in finance, engineering, and technology. (Authors at Google presents Austin Kleon: Steal like an Artist)
Intrigued? Here’s Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like An Artist” talk delivered as part of the TEDxKC presentation of TEDxChange, covering much of the same territory but a bit more polished. It’s worth revisiting despite the overlap.
In this next video, “Everything is a Remix So Steal Like An Artist” Austin Kleon and Kirby Ferguson (writer, filmmaker and creator of Everything is a Remix) delve deeper into techniques for “being a creator in the digital age.” (Fair warning: it’s long.)
Preposterous! Or is it? There’s only one way to know for certain. Try it out. Steal and remix like an artist. Then judge…
