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:
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.
Bam!
-Danny
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Written on Thursday, December 26, 2013 by Unknown
In this post I blabbed a bit about my thoughts on transmedia categories. I said I would expand on some of those thoughts, and I've got some time now so let's get to it.
If you don't want to go back to that post, allow me to quickly summarize. If you've already saw it, then ignore the following paragraph. So Andrea Phillips discussed in her book that there were two types of transmedia, West Coast (or Hollywood) and East Coast. I disagree. Well, at least with her choice of names. I've decided that I prefer the terms industry transmedia (in place of West Coast) and creator's transmedia (in place of East Coast). Industry transmedia uses bigger pieces of media that don't heavily depend on each other (just like in Phillips' version) and is usually done as a means to an end. The end is usually dollars, exposure, shares, or something else to that effect. Creator's transmedia tends to uses more intricate and occasionally smaller pieces of media, relies more heavily on social media (again, like Phillips'), and tends to be done for the love and expansion of the story. At least, this is how I've chosen to categorize them. If I want to make them truly stand apart then I would probably call these the extremes on a transmedia spectrum, with something in between. Both of those names come from the standpoint of the producer, not the audience, so this in-between would also need to be named similarly. I have yet to figure that out.
Now, here is where I expand. I do also think that transmedia can be categorized in other ways, perhaps with terms like audience-immersive transmedia, or maybe even audience-participatory. Something that describes the experience from the other side. These labels could even be combined. So maybe like Creator's audience-immersive transmedia. Or it can be specific to the tactics/medias used. Industry ARG/Video transmedia. Regardless, I have plenty of time to make up more names later. For now I just want to stick with the industry and creator differences.
So here's what I'm thinking. It's a loose theory, and I'm just spitballing here, but that seems to be the best way to collect my thoughts. Consider this a first draft of a possible thesis argument. It is going to be long, maybe even repetitive, so you should probably get a snack.
Creator's transmedia, in general, is the more versatile form of transmedia. This is due to the fact that industry transmedia has to appease the studios, so there are more rules and constraints. It is less about the art or the story, and more about how transmedia can be used to get The Ultimate Goal (be it money, views, fame, etc.). So logically, creator's transmedia tends to take more risks and do more experimenting. Failures are inevitable, as are successes. But they have more opportunities to fail and succeed because they take more chances. Creators want to create, even if they don't have much money, and they don't have a studio that will be furious if they bomb. It is possible that they will have a kickstarter fund, but again those don't always make a lot (and when they do it's possible the money was raised after or that they are actually moving closer toward the industry side) at least when compared to the wallets of the industry. So creators can break out of the box, maybe to see how far they can go. Industry, on the other hand, can use this to their advantage. They can watch the creators and capitalize on their successes while heeding their failures. They aren't going to copy a failed creator. In fact, they might even hire a successful creator (or team of them) for an industry project.
All of this means that the industry is not the true leader. The creators are the innovators that are moving transmedia forward. They are the ones changing the game, not the industry. This is unfortunate, because the industry's efforts can reach more people, and their transmedia is more polished because more money and many professionals went into it. The east gets none of those successes nor do they get any credit. Their existence is advantageous to the industry. As my dad said, it is kind of like pure vs. applied science. Pure science is all about studying and learning. There is no goal, just experimenting. But applied science is all about the end result and they use pure science as a means. Applied science is finding a cure for cancer, and they use the results of pure science (misc. studies about cancer cells for example) as they go. Cure is the end, pure is the means. I don't really know anything about pure vs. applied other than what I was briefly told, so forgive me if I am mistaken.
I've said a lot about how creators create for the love of the story or the sake of the art. They do to do, not to get. Industry is the opposite. So does this mean that the creators fail a lot more than succeed? Yes. Does this mean they never succeed? No. But when they do succeed, do they not become industry because they got bank/audience? Not necessarily. I think it is all about intentions. But don't creators want success and viewers and maybe some money too? probably, yes. So how are they not industry? This is exactly why I need to have a middle category. This category would cover those who make choices for both the story and The Ultimate Goal. And what about those who are creators that work in/with the industry? Can we call that industry with creator's transmedia or creator's in the industry transmedia or even something like industrial creator's transmedia? Yeah, sure. The point is that this is all very blurry. There is rarely a black and white scenario. Transmedia is and probably always will be a tricky thing to define.
I think this type of categorizing can be useful for analysis. If we have names for these things then we can better understand them, discuss them, and pick them apart. The picking is fun for me anyway. Rhetoric student after all. I just need to make all of this more clear, and then possibly utilize it within my greater thesis argument. It could be the key. Or maybe it's all total bullshit. We'll see.
I think that's enough for now. Did you enjoy your snack?
-Danny
(& parents, who were nice enough to discuss this and provide the basis for some of these ideas.)
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Written on Tuesday, December 24, 2013 by Unknown
Dear Thesis,
What the hell am I going to do with you?
I'm sorry for being so brash thesis, but it's the truth. I have until Friday to come up with something for my advisor, and I've got about as many ideas as I have Christmas presents. (Just in case you were wondering Thesis, I'm Jew-ish so I have no Christmas presents.)
So what do I do? How do you throw around ideas for this kind of thing? I tried that with my parents, and while they do have some good theories and such, nothing they suggested is anything more than a long paper. And frankly Thesis, I want you to be so much more than that. Well, at least a little more than that. I want you to have some transmedia element other than this blog. I want you to have a video component or some other out-of-the-box type thing. I would love to make a web show, but how the hell do I incorporate that sort of thing? Can I do a web show that documents (or mockuments) the thesis process? Maybe, but I definitely don't want to be the subject. I'll write, direct, shoot, edit, etc. but I will not act. I mean, I want you to be good Thesis, and with me acting it would be total crap. No lies. I can tell a good story though, but that's not acting and I only have so many stories.
One video idea that I've had for some time revolves around people telling stories, but I can't think of a way to trasmedify that. Again, I could document it documentary-style. Like tweet about my process and shit, but that sounds so boring. Just thinking about it made me roll my eyes. But then again, I guess I've been doing that a lot lately with all this Christmas music playing non-stop and Christmas movies on every channel. But I guess that's what an iPod and Netflix are for.
But back to you thesis. What to do, what to do... Let's play the what if game.
- What if I made a web show?
- Ok, but it would have to be relevant.
-
What if I used that web show to help my argument?
- Ok, but it would again have to be relevant.
-
What if the web show proved some kind of point that I was trying to argue?
- Ok, that could be good because evidence is good.
-
What if the argument was about how transmedia is better for audience immersion than not transmedia?
- Ok, but can you take that a step further?
-
What if the argument was about how creators transmedia is better than industry transmedia? (see this post, and yes I know I said I would expand it)
- Ok, but you don't work for the industry and you aren't a creator yet, and besides there are plenty of existing examples that you could use to better argue this.
-
What if this was like a science experiment where you had a hypothesis and put it to the test via the show and accompanying transmedia?
- Ok, but what the hell is my hypothesis and why do I need to test it instead of relying on preexisting examples?
-
What if you were testing transmedia from the audience's standpoint instead of the creator's?
- Ok, but I basically do that every day when I participate in other peoples transmedia work and how does that help?
-
What if you were testing it from the creator's standpoint instead of the audience?
- Ok like can I get viewers, is this spreadable media, do people want to participate, how much effort is required on a weekly basis, and that sort of stuff?
-
What if your thesis was more science-y and you argued that the yet to be named in-between (creators and industry) version of transmedia is the best version because a) they care more about content and less about money, b) it is still important to get views and shares in order to keep the show going, c) anyone can do it so there are fewer rules, and d) I can do it and here were my results and the feedback that I gained from the experience?
- Ok, but I guess that isn't totally science-y because I was still looking for a hypothesis in there somewhere, but this is totally progress.
- What if you were hit by the Amazing Idea Asteroid tomorrow and got a way more concise, intelligent, and all around better version of the proposal above?
- Then my life would be complete, and so would you Thesis.
Well, at least I'm going forward.
And yes, I think transmedify should be a word. Upon googling I found "no results" so hopefully it will pick up soon.
Until next time.
-Danny
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