Analysis: Litvestigation Results - Part 2
Written on Friday, April 18, 2014 by Unknown
Man, that last one was loooooong. But don't worry. I intend to make this one much shorter and less ranty. Frankly, I just don't think I could write another one like that.
Well I've talked to death about web shows, so now it's time to talk about transmedia.
This semester I did quite a bit of research and found four books that I have primarily relied on for my work. I also found quite a few articles, but will only discuss the ones directly relevant that will not encourage me to go on a tangent.
The four books are cited in my bibliography but I will list them here again:
1. The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose
2. Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
3. Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green
4. A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling by Andrea Phillips
I also have some other oddities such as two thesis projects and a syllabus.
But first, the books.
To be honest, the two books that I used the most this semester were the ones by Rose and Phillips. I used Jenkins work a lot, but more from his blog than his books.
All four of these works are quite different, but they do have plenty of overlapping themes. And they all are mostly composed of history. How did we get to this point? Why? What does it mean? And in Phillips' case, how do we use what we've learned to make more - and better - creations?
Convergence Culture and The Art of Immersion are perhaps the most similar. Each go through the major points in media history, citing big examples and getting into all of the nitty gritty details that college students like me really need to know. So they definitely overlap plenty of times in terms of facts, but Jenkins and Rose do have their own unique ideas to bring to the table.
Just like the title says, Rose is all about immersion and how media is shifting from a passive, viewer-only standard to an active, participatory experience. He discusses games (ARG, video games, you name it), projects, films, franchises, and so on. If you want to know all about transmedia, this is a great book to start with. And not only does Rose tell you about all of the successes, he also goes into quite a few of the failures and why it is that they may have failed. Jenkins book is really quite similar though it is more often the one quoted in projects and papers like this. I enjoyed them both but read Rose more thoroughly. Probably because Rose's book reads more like a novel, whereas Jenkins is scattered with side-notes, delves into theory more, and also tends to ask more questions such as, "Where do we go from here?" But like many other authors he concludes that it is too soon to tell. At first that sounded like a cop-out, but after further reflection I totally get it. Besides, it a great way to leave room for a second book.
Spreadable Media is Jenkins follow up, but this time it was a collaborative effort. Unlike the last two books which mostly mapped out a lot of the ground work, this is a big ol' book of theory. Now I didn't go into the last two books a lot because it is boring for me to rehash a history book, just like it would be boring for you to read my rehash. I mean, if you want to learn more about topics like how people buy into American Idol, then read Convergence Culture yourself. I'm not going to try to summarize it for you. But with Spreadable Media, I'm just not sure if I even could. This book is more complicated, and I didn't really utilize it that much in my research. I can tell you their catch phrase though, which is written all over the book: "If it doesn't spread, it's dead." Essentially this book goes into theories about spreadability, profit, advertising, politics, enterprising, etc. Maybe if I were starting a transmedia business, I would have spent more time reading it. But then again, that's what the next book if for.
Lastly we have Andrea Phillips and her how-to guide on transmedia storytelling. I actually already did some ranting about this one (surprise, surprise). Like the others she goes over basic history, and I did like most of her definitions (though I had problems with some of them). And unlike the others she shares her personal experiences in the world of transmedia and gives her advice via the following sections: storytelling, structure, production, and the big picture (i.e. funding, profit, etc.). As her subtitle states, Phillips is interesting in telling you "how to captivate and engage audiences across multiple platforms." Transmedia in a nutshell.
Well those are the books. Sorry for the semi-useless summaries, but it would take hours for me to peel through each page and pull out obscure (and probably also useless) quotes and the like. But if you want to learn more about the topic, I would recommend these books. They provide a great baseline.
So I said I had some other stuff too. One of them is a syallbus by - guess who? That's right, Henry Jenkins! He teaches at USC and made a whole course about "Transmedia Entertainment and Storytelling." My dream class. They have some pretty awesome assignments and projects. Unfortunately the syllabus is rather limiting right now because they often have guest speakers from within the industry that simply are not available outside of areas like Southern California or New York. Still, it is a topic that my school hopes to integrate in smaller ways through the rhetoric department. As Jenkins says, "The key point here is that transmedia needs to be understood as an ongoing conversation between academic theorists and industry practitioners, that many of the key conceptual leaps have been made by vernacular theorists working in the media fields and trying to explain their own practices, and students need to be exposed to the more pragmatic aspects of how transmedia works" (946). Maybe in the future this will be a reality as opposed to a possibility.
Because of projects like The Lizzie Benet Diaries, students have become more interested in transmedia and there are some theses reflect this. I have found two that I really like and they are:
1. "Producing Transmedia Stories - A study of producers, interactivity and prosumption" by Cecilia Roos
2. "Story Bridges in Transmedia: Expanding transmedia sotries across platforms in a meaningful way" by Annette Corpuz Breum and Hanna Skov Midtgaard
I'd just like to point out that these are both masters theses from outside of the United States. I'm curious as to whether or not transmedia is more popular in other countries, if theses are more likely to be put online by non U.S. schools (who possibly fear plagarism more? I don't know), or if I just haven't been looking hard enough. Regardless, these are exemplary pieces of work. The first thesis goes into the intricacies of the production process in relation to transmedia. The author even made a really cool "Transmedia Manifesto." It is at the very end of the pdf and I highly suggest taking a look. The second thesis identifies the "Story Bridge Model" which I believe is a creation by the authors. The three bridges are the story universe, timeline and events, and the characters (69). They discuss the connectivity of transmedia and even conduct an experiment. It's just fascinating.
Well that is basically it in terms of what resources I used. I mean I did a lot of other online research as well that helped me learn more about my topic. That was more for the sake of broadening my horizons and was not intended to be used specifically in this project. If you would like to see some of the links I found to be helpful then here is a quick list that I've been keeping for a while (Note: These are only about webseries):
Articles by the creators of VGHS:
Articles by Bernie Su from when he was working on Compulsions:
Other:
Oh wait, I do have some transmedia articles. Here we go:
Litvestigation is finally complete. And now I get to use this gif which I have been holding off on using until it applies most accurately.
[via aliceinreaderland.com]
Bam!
-Danny
