What is this?
Written on Monday, June 02, 2014 by Unknown
Hello there reader!
My name is Danny and you have somehow stumbled upon my senior thesis project.
It's nice to meet you.
Well, since you're here, allow me to explain what you'll find on this blog.
For starters, you may have noticed that all of the posts are in reverse order. This is not unusual for blogs, as people tend to want to read the most recent post first. But if you want to start from the beginning I have listed all relevant posts on this page (which I've also linked to on the right). There is also another "what is this" page on the side as well, but I wanted some kind of introduction on the homepage too.
This thesis is about transmedia and webseries. I had a few goals when I first started. Whether or not I completed them successfully is up to you. In my personal opinion, I think I completed them all to the best of my ability. Especially number six.
1. Explore the topics of transmedia storytelling and web series in a unique way.
2. Write about transmedia while also creating transmedia.
3. Come up with some of my own theories about said topics.
4. Learn and try new things which will hopefully lead to an interesting end result.
5. Embark on the difficult but rewarding task of being the first student at my school to create an entire thesis online that won't ever be bound in printed form (at least not by me).
6. Have fun!
My artifact for the thesis was the web show The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I am a big fan, and it was a lot of fun to examine.
In general I found that there was not a lot of research already done on these topics, so you'll probably see a lot of posts where I postulate (and ramble a bit) about he implications of transmedia storytelling and web shows. So there is a lot of my own opinion in here and a lot of unanswered questions. Hopefully there will be a time where there will be endless amounts of articles, books, videos, and any other academic work about the topics, but for now I just had to wing it.
I also had to wing a lot of this thesis, because a project like this had never been done before. So my advisor and I had to make up a lot of the rules as we went. In the future, when someone else does a project like this (and I'm sure they will) I hope my time spent as guinea pig no. 1 can be beneficial.
Because this project is online, it is highly likely that links, gifs, memes, and other pieces of media will expire. I will attempt to salvage as much of it as possible (by saving the photos and re-uploading them so they wont go away, for example), but I can't make any promises. They say that once things are on the internet they stay there forever, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they stay in the same place.
Also, due to the unconventional nature of my written work it was not all proofed, graded, and returned to me like everyone else. So there are bound to be spelling and grammatical mistakes, and maybe even some incorrect facts or something. I am doing my best to comb through it all again, but that takes time and I don't always catch my own mistakes. But please, feel free to comment on any post if you find an error and I will correct it as soon as I can.
And yea, I know. I use way to many commas. And I hyperlink too much. So sue me.
Even though my thesis is over and I have graduated, I still want to retain the integrity of this blog so I will be checking it periodically.
I hope you enjoy what you read/see here and that it may inspire some people to do some of their own research and come to some of their own conclusions about transmedia and web shows. I am always interested in what people think about this stuff and I can't wait for new authors to create more literature (and other media!) about it.
Thanks for stopping by!
Feel free to contact me with any questions/comments/concerns/hypotheses/epiphanies/absurdities.
-Danny
Links have been breaking, photos expiring, etc. I'm working on it. Most are up and running again. Plus I changed the domain which means all hyperlinks needed to be updated. If any are still incorrect, please let me know.