 |
|
  
|
Archives: transmedia entertainment
April 30, 2012
Announcing Rio's Henry Jenkins Transmedia LabI have written from time to time here about my travels to Brazil and my wonderful engagement with the people who are shaping the creative industries down there. It is a country which has embraced my ideas with a passion that I have seen few other places, and in return, I have fallen in love with their culture, their people, their landscape, and their media. I was deeply honored recently with the Rio Content Market launched the Henry Jenkins Transmedia Lab (*Blush*) and I wanted to share some information about this initiative here with my readers.
A partnership between the Brazilian Independent Producers Association and The Alchemists. The Transmedia Lab selected 12 transmedia projects (among 170) from We were able to showcase Contacts at this year's Transmedia Hollywood event and introduce its producers to our audience. (I was unfortunately unable to attend the event due to some medical issues). So, now is my first chance to publicly share my enthusiasm and respect for what Segunda Feira Films has been able to produce -- a project which makes imaginative use of social media not as an added on feature but as a central focus of its story, which deals with the possibility that we might receive communications from the dead. At the heart of Contacts is a rich genre-mixing story, which is bold in its experimentation with alternative modes of audience engagement. I hope you will agree. Mauricio Mota, the key force behind the launch of the Lab and the person who has done the most to introduce me and my work to Brazil, wrote an important statement about the state of transmedia in his country as part of the launch of the lab. I am happy to share it with you here.
LETTER TO THE CONSULTANTS AND PRODUCERS OF THE SELLECTED PROJECTS
April 6, 2012
Watching the Internet: An Interview with Jose M. Alvarez-Monzoncillo (Part One)This summer, I am embarking on an extraordinary adventure -- a 20 city lecture tour of Europe. I have been long overdue paying a visit to the Continent, not having visited there since Convergence Culture has been translated into a host of different languages, and this will be my chance to visit academics, public intellectuals, cultural leaders, and transmedia producers, and learn more about the ways these various nations have responded to the shifts in the media landscape which my works describe. I am excited at the prospect of meeting many new thinkers there. I am still struggling to decide how to deal with this blog while on this exhausting journey but in the long run, it should allow me to bring more perspectives to you. Jose M. Alvarez-Monzoncillo, a professor of Audiovisual Communications at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, will be one of my many hosts on this trip, and he shared with me the English translation of one of his recent books, Watching the Internet: The Future of TV?, which takes up many of the issues we like to discuss through this blog. I asked him if he would be willing to do an interview and share some of his takes on the intersection between old and new media as seen from his perspective, as a veteran of the old media industries and as someone deeply immersed in a Spanish context.
I think there are two distinct, though closely related tendencies. On the one hand there is a tendency towards social individualism which is referred to by Lipovetsky, and on the other hand there is that which refers to the experience of the media. I think the first is indisputable, at least in Europe. "Close relationships" have diminished considerably in recent years (going to church or to the cinema on Sundays, chatting on public transport, talking every day to the person who sells you your newspaper or to the one who serves you coffee in the neighbourhood where you live etc.. There is a great demand to escape from "social control" or anonymity. With regard to television or the cinema I think there is also a trend towards individualism. The concept of the family sitting together in front of the television has disappeared and groups of friends who go to the cinema are doing so less frequently. Others, myself among them, argue that television viewing has in fact become more "socialized" as people respond to and debate what they are watching through formal and informal social networks. Would you agree? Yes, I agree in general terms as people are talking, expressing their opinions, debating and sharing much more than in the past. However, I also believe that television audiences have become much more fragmented in the last few years. The mass audiences of the past are more divided. Broadcasting vs narrowcasting. New digital divides are being created (in their use of the net), economic and social (between the rich and poor), generational (young people, the middle aged and elderly) and cultural (technophobes and technofiles). Inside every group, however, a larger socialisation has appeared. For example, television is more "collectivised" and the dreamed of interactivity of the past is starting to become reality. You write, "The social functions once fulfilled by TV are in crisis, while new ones have yet to be defined." Does this imply that television is in crisis? Should a medium survive if it has outlived its social functions? In Europe, yes. The television of the masses which emerged during the previous century to inform, teach and entertain and was controlled by the State has died. All of the public television stations are in crisis and commercial television, though highly competitive, is losing audiences and advertising. Young people are now deciding how to do these three things. That form of television is changing at the hands of the internet. The logic of demand is changing to the logic of choice. It is the viewer who decides what he wants to see.Is the "new television" television, and if so, how do we define this medium? Is watching a television series on Hulu television? Is watching a web series? What about playing a game on our television set? What defines the nature of this medium -- the content, the delivery technology, our modes of consumption, its social functions? This new concept will be created by all of us. But for me, what defines television is the content. When we watch an HBO series, we are watching television. It doesn't matter what screen we are watching it on or the type of telecommunication (cable, satellite, ADSL etc) .The day the internet produces content, things will change. We will then have to invent new concepts. Hulu will always be a joint venture.......
This has more to do with what the statistics say than with my opinion. Spain is the leader in pirating and, traditionally, a culture of sharing has not existed, to the point of defrauding the tax office being well looked upon. The Spanish are individualists, in contrast to what is usually supposed. However, I believe that little by little the UGC is catching on among young people, but more slowly than in other countries.
Global television for big events (sports, news programmes etc) will continue for a time and will coexist with regional and national television. The Net will complement and start to integrate with television. The internet offers a fascinating complementary opportunity.
I don't believe so. The global mainstream will be North American. It will be difficult for them to break into China but they will manage it in the end. My position is very similar to that of Frédéric Martel. We are moving towards "standardised diversity". We are not faced with a value system that wants to impose itself on the world, rather a "hydra" of companies that feed off each other and know how to adapt themselves to circumstances. The power of the USA on the net and in the production of content makes me think this. Without doubt, styles and vanguards from other cultures will be incorporated, just as happened during the 20th Century. The size of the American national market will help to provide high production costs which will make it very difficult for other cultures to compete.
March 28, 2012
How to Ride a Lion: A Call for a Higher Transmedia Criticism (Part Three)2011 C3 Research Memos and White Paper Series How to Ride a Lion: by Geoffrey Long
PART 3 of 3
By now, the value proposition for transmedia criticism should be clear, even if the challenges involved in developing it are daunting. Even if one believes (as I do) that the rewards do justify the labor involved, the question remains of where such criticism will be found. Who will these transmedia critics be, and where will they publish their work? It's easier to imagine a home for transmedia criticism than one for transmedia reviews. Academically speaking, an easy place to begin would be a Journal of Transmedia Studies, but so far that has yet to come into existence. As more conferences and academic programs begin to appear with transmedia as their focus, more critical thinking about transmedia projects will continue to be produced as a result, and will likely be released either as conference proceedings or on blogs dedicated to particular courses or research projects (not unlike the C3 blog in its heyday)[18]. Programs to keep an eye on for such resources include the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, the IMAP program at USC, the Center for Future Storytelling at the MIT Media Lab, and the nascent Center for Serious Play at the University of Washington. To date, many discussions of transmedia projects at levels that begin to approach true transmedia criticism can be found around the burgeoning alternate reality game sub-industry, such as ARGNet, the mailing list for the IGDA ARG SIG (or the International Game Developers' Association Alternate Reality Game Special Interest Group, for the uninitiated) or the blogs of ARG authors like Andrea Phillips, whose April 6, 2010 post analyzing the Why So Serious ARG campaign for The Dark Knight explained what that campaign did exceptionally well and, in so doing, showed why the first Twilight book is so poorly designed for transmedia extension. Phillips: One: Experiences like Why So Serious have come under criticism because they arguably don't create audiences where none were before. At the end of the day, the people who were really involved in Why So Serious were all people who were going to see the movie anyway, right? It's uncomfortable to admit it in public like this, but... yeah, it's probably true. I read that post and heaved a sigh of contented relief, as if I'd just been given a tubful of water after marching across the Sahara. It's not long, but it's insightful, and is an excellent example of how some sample transmedia criticism might work: pick a transmedia project to criticize, break it apart to determine what worked and what didn't, bubble up the learnable observations, and draw connections from that observation to other examples to give it context (and your argument more weight). To my mind, this was a brilliant example of nascent transmedia criticism, and I constantly go back to Phillips' site in hopes of finding more. Another up-and-coming source for transmedia criticism is Christy Dena's cheekily-named You Suck at Transmedia (www.yousuckattransmedia.com), which includes comments from Comparative Media Studies and C3 alumnus Ilya Vedrashko and friend of C3 Jeff Watson. Although the site is relatively sparse (24 posts over six months), many of the articles to be found there are really interesting. Here's an excerpt from Dena's opening post: You Suck at Transmedia!! As of this writing, Dena's posts have titles like "YSA Directing Meaning Across Media," "YSA Being an Artist", "YSA Being Human," and "YSA Sucking".[21] As of this writing, most of Dena's posts haven't been critical evaluations of particular transmedia experiences so much as reflections on the trials and tribulations of life as a transmedia experience designer, including videos of Quentin Tarantino talking about being an artist and a critique of the National Theatre's recent mishandling of a Twitter snafu, but the site has a great deal of promise. A third newly-released resource for transmedia criticism is The Pixel Report, from Power to the Pixel's Liz Rosenthal and Tishna Molla. TPR declares itself to be "devoted to showcasing new forms of storytelling, film-making and cross-media business development that is in tune with an audience-centered digital era. It is an essential tool for content creators, a vital resource for policy-makers & funding bodies and a unique guide for anyone interested in the future of film and the media."[22] Unfortunately, the site seems to be a thinly-veiled set of hooks to draw people to the Power to the Pixel conference or order the proceeds from the conference. Although the site ostensibly includes case studies of such projects as beActive Entertainment's Final Punishment, Tommy Palotta's Collapsus, and the National Film Board of Canada's Waterlife, the site's pages for these case studies amount to little more than an overview of each project, video clips of people discussing these projects from the previous conference, and a big button encouraging people to order the case studies. This feels less like transmedia criticism and more like advertising for Power to the Pixel and their consulting services.
It's possible that the very structure of transmedia experiences, where ideally each extension in each medium is of sufficient quality and modularity to serve as an ambassador for the rest of the franchise to the 'native' fans of that medium, also extends to critics. If Escape from Butcher Bay is good enough to garner a high score on Metacritic, perhaps it's good enough to be reviewed by video game critics who will serve as multipliers (to steal a term from Grant McCracken) and advocates for the rest of the franchise to their audience. However, this still leaves us wanting for critics who will advocate for transmedia experiences that do transmedia well, evaluating and recommending the "greater than the sum of its parts" super-experience of the franchise as a whole. It's possible that such reviews will be relegated to the review sections for the medium in which each franchise has its mothership - so reviews of the transmedia franchise surrounding The Matrix will be found in the film section, reviews of the transmedia franchise for Assassin's Creed will be in the video game section, and so on - but as transmedia experiences continue to evolve into massive things that touch on every part of our lives, will the notion of "mothership" continue to exist? Only time will tell - but it seems likely that, if such a scenario comes to pass, by that time our reviews systems will have evolved to accommodate such vast experiences as well. Finally, returning to the notion that newspapers, magazines and other print-centric media structures might be dead anyway, it's possible that the very notion of curated collections of reviews will dissipate as well. We already have big blogs dedicated to particular audience demographics, like Engadget or io9 or Blastr, that, like special-interest basic cable channels, cover everything that might be of interest to that particular demographic.[23] This suggests that students interested in becoming transmedia critics might first attempt to become staff writers for such blogs - and supplement their writings there with a constant stream of insights posted to their own blogs (a tactic similar to that of both Phillips and Dena). As transmedia continues to trend towards mainstream acceptance and continues to gather mass as a key area of development in the entertainment industry, all of these options are likely to flourish. It's only a matter of time before a Journal of Transmedia Studies appears to support the research coming out of these new academic programs, only a matter of time before sites like io9 have to figure out how to review projects from transmedia shops like Fourth Wall Studios, Quixotic Transmedia, Campfire, or Blacklight Transmedia, and only a matter of time before more rich resources begin to appear online that cater specifically to producers and fans of transmedia experiences. Our next steps now are for more of us to start engaging in close analyses of transmedia experiences, to start breaking them down and figuring out why they work or why they fail. More of this exploration must be done in order to help us understand how to really leverage the unique affordances of transmedia experience design as its own particular art, both individually and as a whole. Tearing into these new transmedia experiences to figure out what makes them tick, sharing those insights with one another and then using those lessons to create more astonishingly fantastic transmedia experiences, teaching each other how to ride these lions, is how we will push the medium forward. Writing more transmedia reviews to spread the word about those experiences to a broader audience is how we will ensure that we will all keep riding lions for a long time to come.
[18] The Convergence Culture Blog ran from 2005 through 2011. [19] http://www.deusexmachinatio.com/2010/04/why-so-serious-lessons-in-transmedia-worldbuilding.html [20] http://www.yousuckattransmedia.com/2010/06/hello-world/ [22] http://thepixelreport.org/ [23] Unsurprisingly, Blastr.com is operated by genre cable channel Syfy. Bloom, David. "A Critical Shortfall: Who Rates the Transmedia?" TheWrap.com, March 21, 2010. http://www.thewrap.com/television/blog-post/critical-shortfall-who-rates-transmedia-15492
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing About Film, 7th Ed. Longman, 2010.
Delaney, Samuel. Shorter Views.Wesleyan, 2000. [GL10]
Dena, Christy. "Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments." PhD Dissertation. University of Sydney, 2009. Heer, Jeet and Kent Worcester. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium. University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
MIT Comparative Media Studies, Converegence Culture Consortium White Paper, http://www.convergenceculture.org/research/c3-learningshare-full.pdf
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Thompson, Brooke. "A Criticism on the Lack of Criticism." GiantMice.com, June 1, 2010. http://www.giantmice.com/archives/2010/06/a-criticism-on-the-lack-of-criticism/ Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2007.
March 26, 2012
How to Ride a Lion: A Call for a Higher Transmedia Criticism (Part Two)Register now for Transmedia Hollywood, April 6, USC.
How to Ride a Lion: by Geoffrey Long Author's Note: Since this paper was originally authored in 2010, I've been delighted to discover an increasing amount of transmedia critics. Whose analysis of transmedia projects do you most enjoy? Please let us know in the comments! -GL)
PART 2 of 3
If, as suggested in the last section, what is needed is an ecosystem that includes both transmedia criticism and transmedia reviews, then we need to explore both halves. First, what value can transmedia criticism and transmedia critics provide to the industry? Second, what value can transmedia reviews and reviewers provide to the public?
As David Bloom suggested in his 2010 Transmedia /Hollywood recap, transmedia criticism could provide some answers to the very real concerns of the entertainment industry - not just "What is transmedia?" or "Why should I invest in a transmedia project?", but "What does real, measurable success for a transmedia project look like?" Transmedia criticism may not have all the answers - as noted, we desperately need better systems for transmedia 'ratings' and other metrics - but it may provide a jumping-off point for some qualitative analyses while we're waiting for the quantitative ones to catch up. Most beneficial, perhaps, is the role that such criticism can play in the shaping of a language of transmedia experiences, through the discovery of a set of standard best practices. By understanding these best practices - by speaking the language - creators and their sponsors can improve their chances of creating successful transmedia experiences. Once such an 'open' language is developed, individual implementations of, and strategic differentiations from, those best practices can result in highly profitable products and even new competitive advantages. In their seminal text The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson describe the importance of standardization in the very early years of the cinema. Rather than reinventing the wheel with every film, Hollywood began to adopt standard techniques, formats, and practices that could be reused effectively in each production - which in turn led to a set of norms against which excellence could be judged:
Bordwell points out that trade papers in the entertainment field (such as the New York Dramatic Mirror, Show World, the New York Clipper, Moving Picture World, Motion Picture News, The Nickelodeon and, of course, Variety) served as an important channel for these theorists and critics to influence their audiences. One such important influential was Epes Winthrop Sargent, a columnist for Moving Picture World:
Bordwell goes on to quote an article of Sargent's from December of 1909 as a sample of such prescriptive writing, generated from Sargent's observation of emerging best practices in the form and, amusingly, what sounds an awful lot like comparative media studies:
Theorists and critics do the same, but they then write up their analyses and share it with others. In doing so, they begin to create a shared language with which to discuss these emerging best practices, which then becomes a linguistic shorthand for particular approaches and tactics, which then in turn becomes a shared lens for understanding how these things work. This is where terms like first person point of view, suspension of disbelief, unreliable narrator and so on come from - and, once those observations and tactics are internalized, they become accepted as tools by a wider creative audience. Once these concepts become tools, they become more commonly used in the creation of future experiences, thus reinforcing the acceptance of the concepts. Criticism becomes influential through dispersion, acceptance and implementation. Jenkins' ideas are already becoming widely accepted in the industry and his terms are becoming the terminology for this emerging space. The problem is we need much more of this type of work, and we need it quickly. Increase the number of really insightful, clearly-spoken and practically-minded theorist-critics and we accelerate the rate at which we come to understand what transmedia is really capable of. Again, to paraphrase Kochalka, "Transmedia criticism is a means we have of making sense of this new medium, focusing to make it clearer." The value in adopting the best practices that emerge through such transmedia criticism in order to increase a transmedia experience's chances for success is apparent. However, there's another key reason why an ecosystem of transmedia criticism would be incredibly useful to practitioners: the creation of strategic differentiation. In other words, to see where to zig when everyone else has chosen to zag. As Bordwell writes:
Between a shared language for transmedia experience design, a collection of best practices that will increase a transmedia experience's chances of success, and a seedbed for accelerated strategic differentiation, the value of transmedia criticism to practitioners seems clear. However, transmedia experiences without audiences remain difficult to justify. This is where transmedia reviews come into play.
As of this writing, buying the canonical Buffyverse on Amazon will set you back over $400, and take weeks to consume. One can only imagine what it would cost in both time and money to experience every film, book, comic, video game, TV show and piece of ancillary merchandise that makes up Star Wars. This is where a transmedia critic can play sherpa: a really good (there's that word again) transmedia critic can give an interested fan-in-the-making maps to these daunting territories, even suggesting which paths they should take depending on their personal interests. Are they fans of Luke Skywalker? Watch the original movies, read these books, play those games. Fans of space battles? Watch these TV episodes, read these different books, play these other games. A single transmedia critic can't create personalized recommendations for everybody, but that's why we need an entire thriving community of transmedia critics sharing their opinions and providing maps like these. The people who currently play these roles are the die-hard fans on fan websites, the people who live and breathe these franchises. Unfortunately, they're frequently not the best ambassadors to the series. We need the John Clutes, the Pauline Kaels, the Gene Siskels and Roger Eberts, the people who can analyze and report back on multiple franchises to convince hesitant audiences that these heights really are navigable, that the best experiences really are worth the labor, and that, alas, some of the peaks are actually best avoided. Having multiple transmedia critics, and having those critics establish themselves as experts with distinct tastes across franchises instead of fanboys for particular franchises, will help make such massive, complex entertainments less intimidating - and thus more enticing to mass audiences. And if we're serious about moving transmedia entertainment more and more towards the mainstream, this has got to happen. Unfortunately, the viability of transmedia reviews - and, for that matter, transmedia criticism - suffers from the same Everest-level challenge. In a June 1, 2010 post to her blog called "A Criticism on the Lack of Criticism", transmedia designer Brooke Thompson puts her finger on one of the biggest problems facing transmedia criticism - scale:
In the Comics Journal article "A Call for Higher Criticism" I cited earlier, Paul Levitz suggests that comics critics consider each issue in the context of the larger body of work, that "the time and effort we now devote to carving up a story should be devoted to carving up the universe in which the story exists" (44). This resonates with transmedia reviews, because, as Thompson points out, current reviews of transmedia franchises are usually limited to individual components - so a review of the latest Star Wars video game, instead of a review of Star Wars as an entire franchise. Thompson hits the nail on the head when she writes, "the commitment required to fully experience a transmedia project... makes it a pursuit of passion or, perhaps, an academic exercise." Being able to review Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, or any of these other transmedia super-franchises at the franchise level requires thousands of hours to consume it, let alone analyze it and write intelligently about one's findings. In a way, each of these super-franchises is in effect a lifestyle brand - and therein lies both a primary trouble with transmedia reviews, and why they're so important. Imagine you're trying to decide whether to engage with the Star Wars franchise for the first time. The sheer size of the franchise at this point is epic and must loom large in the eye of the potential audience member - again, an Everest on the horizon. This is why Marvel keeps launching new X-Men titles, reboots and alternate versions, attempting to give people an "accessible" version of the X-Men franchise. As Sam Ford writes frequently on the challenges facing new audiences to soap operas, longevity and drillability can be simultaneously a franchise's greatest strength and greatest liability. Further, there's a chicken-and-egg issue at hand with massive franchises and geekiness: are geeky people attracted to excessively drillable subjects, or does excessive drilling make one geeky? It's just as easy to become a sports geek as it is to become a comic book geek. The catch is that sometimes those people who are the most familiar with the topic, the ones who have done the most drilling, are also those who are the least valuable as the topic's advocates. From the outside looking in, there must clearly something interesting about Star Wars, soap operas, the Chicago Cubs, quantum physics, the Civil War, and so on, because so many people are so passionately interested in these topics. An outsider may want to engage with the complex topic enough to enjoy it without becoming "that guy", at least until their interest reaches a sufficient level that they crest the tipping point and mastery of the topic becomes acutely desirable. In a way, transmedia reviews, or transmedia criticism for the masses,[15] should be the equivalent of a 101-level course - sufficient to introduce a lay audience to the highlights of a topic, loaded with directions on where to go next for further drilling, and so on. The trouble is that we need, as Thompson points out, a Roger Ebert of transmedia reviews providing a reliable viewpoint to bear on a new franchise every week, which is the equivalent of a rockstar professor teaching an entire Philosophy 101 course one week, a Political Science 101 course the next week, and a History 101 course the week after that. As Jenkins has pondered for years, there's a strange line to consider between fandom and scholarship - one needs a certain amount of fandom to motivate the epic amount of drilling required to become an expert in a subject, yet one must also remain sufficiently detached to retain an objective perspective. An Ebert who gave a huge thumbs-up to everything he reviewed wouldn't be a very good critic, he'd just be a guy who never shut up about all the things of which he was a fan. A truly valuable transmedia reviewer/critic must be able to engage with multiple massive transmedia franchises and have enough dedication to consume, analyze and report on each of them on a regular basis, even those he or she doesn't like. Of all the responses to Paul Levitz' call for higher criticism published by The Comics Journal, my favorite is one by Richard Howell and Carol Kalish. Their response contains a brilliant concise definition of what comics criticism should be, which can easily be applied to transmedia criticism as well: We feel, however, that comic books share their major objectives with other mass media, [and] can and should be judged by similar standards. To wit: Capability - a familiarity with, and craftsmanship-like utilization of, the medium's techniques, be they visual or verbal elements; Communication - a conscious and responsible manipulation of these technical elements in such a way as to transmit at least the bare storytelling elements (plot, characterization, and theme) to a responsive reader; and Commitment - the perception required to invest the product with a moral focus which can both enlighten and entertain and the dedication needed to broaden the craft repertoire of the medium.
Any time you have a combination of disciplines brought together into an art form, every element has to succeed for the work as a whole to function properly. A comic book that has beautiful art but is shoddily written will be tossed aside; a TV show that is brilliantly written but horribly acted will get zapped away. Clearly some particularly excellent elements can make up for some weaker ones - the cinematography in The Last Samurai helps make up for Tom Cruise being, well, Tom Cruise - but overall it's how the entire thing hangs together that determines the overall valuation of the whole. Under this logic, an ideal transmedia critic must be able to criticize the six films of Star Wars as a film critic, The Clone Wars as a TV critic, the Timothy Zahn Heir to the Empire novels as a book critic, the Force Unleashed games as a game critic, Dark Horse's Star Wars: Legacy comics as a comic critic, and so on. This may seem harsh, but it's important to remember that just as each component of a transmedia franchise serves as an entry point into the franchise as a whole, it must also serve as an ambassador to the "native" audiences of each medium. Think of it as the Transitive Quality of Crap: if a Star Wars comic is a crappy comic, comic readers for whom that comic is their first point of contact with the franchise will likely assume that a similar low quality permeates the entire franchise, and thus assume that the games are crappy, the TV shows are crappy, the film is crappy, and the franchise overall is just one big steaming pile.[16] I have seen some astonishingly lousy transmedia extensions that were clearly approved by people unfamiliar with that extension's medium - countless tie-in games, comics and novels spring to mind - and/or by people who assume that the value of the franchise's license is sufficient to overcome a lousy experience. This isn't the case, and this is why video games based on film licenses are widely derided in the games industry: a video game based on a film is assumed to have blown most of its budget obtaining the license, was rushed to market to make a "day and date" simultaneous release with the film (and had its production started much, much later than that of the film, despite the fact that video games can sometimes take even longer than films to produce), was creatively crippled by strict oversight by the licensor, and so on. So here's the problem: a transmedia author needs to be well-versed in each medium being deployed in their franchise, so they know when something is sub-par and can fix that weakest link. A transmedia critic needs to be able to evaluate each component of the franchise so if there is a weakest link, they can point it out as something to be avoided - but still point out that the rest of the franchise shouldn't be missed. For example, one of the best exceptions to the "lousy film tie-in" rule is The Chronicles of Riddick. Both Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick are Vin Diesel sci-fi movies with abysmal scores on Metacritic, but the tie-in game Escape from Butcher Bay has fantastic scores on Metacritic. A transmedia critic looking at the franchise as a whole must be well-versed enough to be able to say what the films did poorly, what the game did well, what the connections are between the films and the game and how well those connections are crafted, and whether or not an audience must sit through the films in order to enjoy the game. There's enough of a Venn diagram overlap between gamers and sci-fi nerds for game critics to be able to report that the game is better than the movies because they probably saw the movies, but it'd be almost unthinkable for film critics to say, "The films are awful, but the game is excellent - skip the films and play the game." And yet that's precisely what an ideal transmedia critic would be expected to do. Being well-versed in just one medium does not qualify you to criticize another, for the same reason that gamers find Roger Ebert writing criticisms of video games dubious. A transmedia critic must have a rich, nuanced understanding of multiple media in order to speak authoritatively to audiences across media - to be respected by film buffs when reporting on film components, by comic fans when reporting on comic books, by the literati when reporting on films and by foodies when reporting on food. In a way, the ideal transmedia critic is a return to the Renaissance Man style of critic that drove the first waves of literary criticism in 18th-century England. The question is whether or not such breadth is even remotely feasible on the 21st-century Internet.
WORKS CITED: [9] Bordwell et al. 96. [10] http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html [11] Bordwell et al, 106. [12] Bordwell et al 106. [13] Quoted in Bordwell et al, 107. [14] Bordwell et al 97. [15] I'm resisting 'transmedia advocacy' because I believe that term should be reserved for advocacy done across media; see Lina Srivastava's excellent work on transmedia activism for more on this. [16] Again, Rule One.
March 24, 2012
How to Ride a Lion: A Call for a Higher Transmedia Criticism (Part One)As people here on the west coast are getting ready for the April 6 Transmedia Hollywood conference to be held at the USC Cinema School (hint, hint - tickets still available), my old colleagues on the East Coast -- the fine folks in the Futures of Entertainment Consortium (formerly the Convergence Culture Consortium) which I helped to establish back at MIT -- released a significant new white paper which calls for more critical engagement with what does and does not work in the current generation of transmedia entertainment. Geoffrey Long, an alumni of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, was part of a remarkable cohort of students who helped me work through some of the core ideas in Convergence Culture and who have continued to engage with issues of transmedia in their professional lives. Long, from the start, has asked some of the most thoughtful questions about the aesthetics and poetics of transmedia as a mode of storytelling, and some of that core thinking comes together here in an especially powerful way. I hope to see many of you at the Transmedia Hollywood conference in just a few weeks but in the meantime, Long's white paper gives us all something to chew on. Talk amongst yourselves.
How to Ride a Lion: by Geoffrey Long (Author's Note: Since this paper was originally authored in 2010, I've been delighted to discover an increasing amount of transmedia critics. Whose analysis of transmedia projects do you most enjoy? Please let us know in the comments! -GL)
PART 1 of 3
As we move past the "Transmedia 101" stage of definitions and early experiments, the next stage of development for transmedia experiences may require transmedia criticism. Such a move is not without its challenges. Transmedia criticism is inherently difficult (Should transmedia criticism only focus on transmedia's unique characteristics? Should it evaluate how well each individual component performs as an example of its medium? Must a transmedia critic be 'fluent' in every medium in a franchise?), and unleashing a horde of vicious critics on a medium still in its infancy could be horrifically damaging. There's also the question of where such criticism might ideally begin, as it is likely to evolve in three distinct directions - first in an industry-educating role like that of E.W. Sargent in the early days of cinema, second in an "educate the public sphere" role like that of early literary criticism in 18th-century England, and third in the lonelier role of isolated education to which literary criticism eventually found itself exiled. Despite these issues, a robust system of transmedia criticism will be well worth the difficulty. As the future of entertainment becomes increasingly dominated by transmedia experiences, the entertainment industry will require both more informed practitioners (who will need both insights into leading transmedia experiences and a shared language of transmedia akin to the language of cinema) and a broader audience for transmedia as a medium (who will need ways to find new transmedia experiences and recommendations of which are worth their time). All of these breakthroughs can be attained through a robust transmedia criticism.
Good. I've been thinking a lot lately about this one weird word. 'Good' is a horrible word, really, because it's not only wholly subjective, it's also inherently subjective, fleeting, and hyperlocalized. What I think is good might be garbage to you, what was good yesterday isn't good today or what's good today may be passé tomorrow, and what's good in Los Angeles may be worthless in Tokyo or even in the next building over. Yet 'good' is also an intensely powerful word. In 2006 I wrote a white paper for the Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) in which I half-jokingly declared that Rule One for creating anything is "Don't Suck." The awkward truth at the heart of that joke is that in order for a work to succeed it must first be good. This brings us back to the subjective, fleeting, hyperlocalized nature of 'good', and round and round we go. And yet, as maddening as the pursuit of 'good' can inherently be, this is where both transmedia production and transmedia studies must go next. The majority of the papers written and talks given about transmedia to date have focused on defining the terminology or recounting early experiments: "this is what we think transmedia is, and this is how we're tinkering with it". A lot of this is Transmedia 101, or, when we're lucky, Transmedia 201. What we need now is Transmedia 701, 801 and 901, to tell us how to create good transmedia experiences, how to succeed at transmedia as a medium in and of itself. Measuring transmedia success objectively will require some form of transmedia metrics, to tell us which transmedia experiences are gathering audiences, retaining audience attention, converting new audiences in one medium into fans that pursue the experience into additional media, and so on. Alas, we're not there yet. For now, we must satisfy ourselves with subjective forms of success, observing tactics adopted by various transmedia experiences and evaluating how well they appear to function in the service of the whole. We can also attempt to evaluate how well a particular transmedia experience succeeds as a transmedia experience by setting a number of tightly-defined criteria for evaluation, and then determining how closely the subject under examination adheres to those criteria - but attempting to do so for any medium, much less one as early in its infancy as transmedia, may be a fool's errand. The edges of any medium (and, arguably, any definition) will always remain what Samuel R. Delaney calls a 'fuzzy set', and so a fixed definition of 'transmedia' will always be as elusive as a fixed definition of 'film' or 'comics'.[1] This isn't to say that pushing and pulling at the boundaries of a definition isn't a worthwhile pursuit - such experimentation is what leads to the expansion of any enterprise, and often leads to the creation of wholly new types of things. Some folks will happily bicker for years over whether a truly transmedia experience has to have community involvement, whether all Alternative Reality Games (ARGs) are transmedia experiences, if it's really transmedia if it's just a jump from a digital version of a comic to a print version of a comic, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.[2] Yet there are now a sufficient number of us playing in this particular sandbox that we can move on to more advanced debates. We can stop pointing to examples of what transmedia storytelling is or is not, and start creating some in-depth, insightful criticism of what we consider to be good or bad examples of what we call transmedia, why we consider them to be so, and what they did that appears to have worked. In his Cute Manifesto, comics artist and theorist James Kochalka states:
Simply put, we don't yet know enough about transmedia to communicate firm, definitive truths about it that we already hold. However, this demonstrates the value of engaging in such analysis now, while general understanding of - and the creative practices in - transmedia is still relatively malleable. We should engage in earnest transmedia criticism now to gain a clearer focus, a better understanding, and ideally both a broader audience for transmedia and deeper, richer, more engaging, more profitable, and generally better transmedia experiences overall. This explorative tactic is my chosen approach for this extended essay. The pages that follow include a few examples of what transmedia criticism already exists and draw on a history of criticism and examinations of criticism in other media (particularly comics and film) to lend them some context. By the end, this essay will have sketched out who's calling for such transmedia criticism, what role transmedia criticism might play and why it's important, where such criticism might be found, who might do it, and where might be a good place to start. Some of us - especially those of us familiar with the work of the Convergence Culture Consortium (C3)[3] - are starting already, groping around in this dark direction. While I wouldn't call the recently-published doctoral theses of either Derek Johnson[4] or Christy Dena[5] transmedia criticism per se, both documents make me long to read what criticism Johnson and Dena would write given the chance. Therein lies the problem - some of this work exists, but we need more of it - a lot more - and we need it quickly and broadly disseminated. This essay is designed as a resource for those of us already thinking about transmedia criticism, to help us step up and write that criticism and get it out there where it can start to do some real good. At the end of the day, all of this Transmedia 101-level "This is what transmedia is, and this is how we're experimenting with it" panels and papers feel a bit like "There's this thing called a lion, and this is how we poked it with a stick." The challenge is to go further: not just "this is how to tame a lion" further, not just "this is how to ride a lion" further, but "this is how to ride a lion well". We have proven the existence of lions. There are plenty of people out there who are not only starting to ride lions, but are getting really good at riding lions. It's time we point out who's riding their lions through fire - and to tell the world why that's so amazing. 2. Who's Calling for Transmedia Criticism? I once had a conversation with a high-ranking executive who was a transmedia skeptic. I was describing how important this notion of transmedia was becoming to the future of experiences, until he cut me off. "If it's so important," he said, "why aren't I hearing people calling for it?" The first response that sprang to mind was Henry Ford's famous quote about how if he had only listened to what people were asking for, he would have built a faster horse. My second dismissed candidate was that people are calling for it - but then I realized that these people calling for transmedia experiences are themselves already converts, and are in fact calling for more advanced transmedia experiences. The response I chose? Those familiar with transmedia experiences are calling for more, and those who aren't just haven't been properly introduced to good transmedia experiences yet. Not unsurprisingly, the same thing can be said of transmedia criticism. In a recap of the March 2010 Transmedia Hollywood event, journalist David Bloom wrote:
Transmedia designer Brooke Thompson voiced similar concerns in a June 1, 2010 blog post called "A Criticism on the Lack of Criticism":
Thompson is referring to the nascent form of transmedia criticism on the message boards of sites like Unfiction or ARGNet (both of which specialize in alternate reality games) and in the blog posts of individuals like Andrea Phillips (another transmedia artist) and Christy Dena (a prominent transmedia scholar). More on their attempts to address this need appear in sections V and VI of this paper, but the main point is that calls for criticism are being issued by fans, practitioners and scholars. Such calls for criticism have been issued in other media before. In fact, the subtitle of this extended essay pays homage to an article called "A Call for Higher Criticism" published in October of 1979 in The Comics Journal #50. In it, the author pleads:
The author was a young comics writer and DC editorial staff member named Paul Levitz, who happened to go on to serve as the President of DC Comics from 2002 until 2009. Levitz was calling for a comics criticism that transcended mere reviews of individual stories and included more insightful examinations into the context in which those stories existed. As Levitz concluded:
Many professional comics writers and artists, for whatever reasons, think no further about their work than the job they're currently finishing. Many others, of course, give deep and intense thought to the medium they use. Many critics of comics criticize issues or stories as the be-all and end-all. Few take the time to consider the bigger picture, and to make criticisms that can give both readers and professionals lasting insight into what they do. It's this lasting insight that is a critic's opportunity to make changes in a field - changes great enough to last beyond his lifetime. A number of established critics stepped up to answer that question, and The Comics Journal published their responses to Levitz' article in the very next issue. The tone of these replies was predictably mixed. Pierce Askegren, for example, noted that "Levitz should bear in mind the comparative youth of comics, comics fandom and comics fans; maturity comes to institutions more slowly than it does to individuals." It's Bill Sherman's response, though, that bears the most relevance to our current purposes:
We should make a distinction here between reviewing and criticizing. Reviews ask - and, one hopes, answers - the simple question: "Is this piece of art worth my time?" In a review the writer acts as an educated consumer, giving a context for his opinion (which may involve history as well as some critical comments) and then telling readers his answer to that question. Most reviewing is by nature ephemeral, though if a writer is consistent and works long enough without taking the easy way out (overusing the cursory cop-outs Levitz mentions, for example), he will produce criticism of a general sort. An example of this happening might be James Agee's series of movie reviews in the '40s: collected, they provide an excellent critical overview of the period.
This suggests that instead of merely 'transmedia criticism', what we need is actually both a type of 'transmedia criticism' and a form of 'transmedia reviews'. A richer, deeper understanding of transmedia among academics and professionals may require an equally rich, deep form of transmedia criticism, which develops its own language of transmedia akin to the language of cinema (more on that later), wrestles with the lasting import of any particular example of transmedia (in other words, debates the existence of and admission into some form of transmedia canon) and enjoys all the delightful tensions between industry and academia inherent therein. At the same time, broadening the audience for transmedia experiences may require transmedia reviews, which concern themselves more directly with communicating to the general public (and the generally curious) which transmedia experiences are worth their time and money - and, ideally, which components of those franchises will be the most interesting to a given sub-section of the audience, which component would be the best place to start, and so on. There's clearly a place for both such criticism and such reviews, but it is the combination of the two which will most likely result in both better transmedia and a broader audience for it.[8] The task at hand, then, is to sketch out not just a form of transmedia criticism, but an ecosystem of transmedia criticism, one that's broad enough to include both criticism targeted at educating the industry and reviews broadening the public. Such a combination might finally provide the ideal answer to the question posed by the executive at the beginning of this section: to hear more people calling for transmedia, first you have to produce something worth wanting, and then show them why they want it.
(Next: What Role Might Transmedia Reviews Play?)
[1] For an example of what a nightmare this is, see the ongoing debate over Scott McCloud's famous definition of 'comics'. [2] We should let them do so. For many of them, tenure depends on it. [3] http://www.convergenceculture.org/aboutc3/ [4] A version of the ideas in Johnson's thesis can be found in his C3 White Paper: "Learning to Share: The Relational Logistics of Media Franchising" - [6] http://www.thewrap.com/television/blog-post/critical-shortfall-who-rates-transmedia-15492 [7] More on this in section V. [8] Over a quarter-century later, a new generation of comics scholar-critics have emerged to answer Levitz' call. One such critic is Douglas Wolk, who has written comics criticism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon and Rolling Stone. In his 2007 book Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, Wolk writes, "...It's my responsibility as a critic to be harsh and demanding and to subject unambitious or botched work to public scorn, because I want more good comics: more cartoonists who challenge themselves to do better, and more readers who insist on the same" (Wolk 22). One hopes it won't take nearly as long to generate the ecosystem of transmedia criticism I'm lobbying for here.
March 12, 2012
A Brief Outline of Kony 2012 and Initial Reactions to the Campaignby Rhea Vichot and Zhan Li The Kony 2012 video campaign by Invisible Children
(IC) has been extraordinarily - even unprecedentedly successful - in
spreading its message. It has also attracted criticism, both concerning
the content and strategy of the video campaign and the general character
of the organization itself. The Kony 2012
video was released by Invisible Children at 12PM PST on March 5th, 2012
on popular video sharing platform YouTube (the video had been hosted on
Vimeo, another video sharing site, since February 20th, but may have been password protected until its public release). KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo. Narrated by Jason Russell,
one of the founders of Invisible Children, the film aims to spread
awareness about the crimes of Joseph Kony, head of the militant group
the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which is operating in several countries
in Central Africa: Sudan, South Sudan, The Democratic Republic of
Congo, The Central African Republic, and Uganda. Kony was indicted for
war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, and the campaign
calls for increased action and pressure to bring him to justice. The
video quickly became an astonishing success in the scale and speed of
its spread. For instance, Invisible Children tweeted that the video had
already received 800,000 hits online in the first 24 hours. Indeed, the
scale and speed was so staggering that many people in the NGO and aid
world felt that they had to pay close attention to this campaign by a NGO
that many may have never heard of before (and some may have dismissed as an eccentric aid campaign organization aimed at an audience of high
school kids). The impact of the campaign also attracted much attention
from fields beyond the NGO and aid world - including the celebrity press
and social media and marketing consultants. By March 7th, the videos had attracted 40 million views on YouTube and almost 11 million views on Vimeo. IC's campaign planners had originally called for a target of a mere 500,000 views of the video by the end of 2012 and had thought the video would mostly circulate within IC's core audiences of (mainly US) high school and college students. Besides
raising awareness of the issues surrounding Kony and the LRA through
encouraging spread of the video online, the Kony 2012 campaign also
recommended to its supporters that they send communications (primarily
via Twitter) targeting 20 "culturemakers" and 12 "policymakers" as
selected by IC and identified on the Kony 2012 website.  These designated celebrities and political figures range in experience and ideology. The "culturemakers" ranged from entertainment celebrities (including some with reputations for involvement with NGO and humanitarian causes such as Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono - to major technology and financial entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, as well as other leading shapers of public opinion such as Rush Limbaugh and Rick Warren. The range of policymakers focused on U.S. politicians such as former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Harry Reid (President Obama and his Cabinet are notably not included here), while also including non-U.S. politicians Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada) and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Criticisms
as well as praise began to emerge online soon after the video's launch
on Monday. These responses came via social networks (perhaps most
notably Twitter and Reddit)
as well as independent opinion blogs (for instance, a grassroots blog
post whose critique of Kony 2012 started spreading widely early on was
an opinion piece entitled "We Got Trouble" that was written by a Canadian college student) and mainstream media channels in the US and beyond (the UK Guardian for instance liveblogged early reactions to the campaign and quickly published multiple reports online about Kony 2012). Key critiques of the Kony 2012 campaign included arguments that it greatly oversimplified the complexities of politics, conflict, and aid; that it displayed neo-colonial or patronizing attitudes towards Africans; that it distracted attention away from more pressing issues; that it was arguing for humanitarian military intervention without recognizing the immense difficulties and many unintended consequences of such policy; that the organization has inefficiently misallocated funds towards media/marketing and overhead at the expense of tangible on-the-ground development and aid efforts; and that there is something distasteful and counterproductive in the way that IC presents its message through glossy, stylish, and youth-centered popular culture savvy content. On March 7th, Invisible Children released an article on their site which provided official responses that argued against key critiques levelled at their campaign - for instance, regarding IC's NGO credibility and transparency and IC's position in relation to human rights based criticisms of the Ugandan government. IC also attempted to deflect attacks on what some critics have seen as IC's "white savior" rhetoric by highlighting "that over 95% of IC's leadership and staff on the ground are Ugandans on the forefront of program design and implementation." They also addressed the related controversy regarding the photo of the founders posing with guns from 2008, with co-founder Jason Russell stating "that photo was a bad idea. We were young and we got caught up in the moment."
Wow. Thank You. from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo. Jason called the movement a revolution that will change the world and told his audience: "I need you to know something. I am here representing you - your voice. This is a collective. It's a We. And this story transcends borders. It is not about politics. It is not about the economy. This is about human beings - human beings waking up to the potential and the power that they have. That's what KONY 2012 is about and it's just the beginning - because we are starting something which cannot be stopped." IC has also announced that it is translating the Kony 2012 video into as many languages as possible. Since IC published its response to critics, the attention towards Kony 2012 has only increased, with tallies at time of writing (end of day, March 11th) showing around 91 million views in total for the original YouTube and Vimeo versions (these figures do not count other versions that may be in circulation, including non-English language editions that may already have been released). Commentary critiquing and praising IC's Kony 2012 campaign continues to evolve and expand. Zhan Li, a fellow member of the Civic Paths Project Research Group has created a Storify linklist , which presents a selection of these critiques and defenses.
February 27, 2012
Announcing Transmedia Hollywood 3: Rethinking Creative RelationsUCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, Transmedia Hollywood 3: Rethinking Creative Relations Conference Overview: Many of Hollywood's entrenched business and creative practices remain deeply mired in the past, weighed down by rigid hierarchies, interlocking bureaucracies, and institutionalized gatekeepers (e.g. the corporate executives, agents, managers, and lawyers). In this volatile moment of crisis and opportunity, as Hollywood shifts from an analog to a digital industry, one which embraces collaboration, collectivity, and compelling uses of social media, a number of powerful independent voices have emerged. These include high-profile transmedia production companies such as Jeff Gomez's Starlight Runner Entertainment as well as less well-funded and well-staffed solo artists who are coming together virtually from various locations across the globe. What these top-down and bottom-up developments have in common is a desire to buck tradition and to help invent the future of entertainment. One of the issues we hope to address today is the social, cultural, and industrial impact of these new forms of international collaboration and mixtures of old and new work cultures. Fearing obsolescence in the near future, many of Hollywood's traditional studios and networks are looking increasingly to outsiders--often from Silicon Valley or Madison Avenue--to teach these old dogs some new tricks. Many current studio and network executives are overseeing in-house agencies, whose names--Sony Interactive Imageworks, NBC Digital, and Disney Interactive Media Group--are meant to describe their cutting-edge activities and differentiate themselves from Hollywood's old guard. Creating media in the digital age is "nice work if you can get it," according to labor scholar Andrew Ross in a recent book of the same name. Frequently situated in park-like "campuses," many of these new, experimental companies and divisions are hiring large numbers of next generation workers, offering them attractive amenities ranging from coffee bars to well-prepared organic food to basketball courts. However, even though these perks help to humanize the workplace, several labor scholars (e.g. Andrew Ross, Mark Deuze, Rosalind Gill) see them as glittering distractions, obscuring a looming problem on the horizon--a new workforce of "temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants." While the analog model still dominates in Hollywood, the digital hand-writing is on the wall; therefore, the labor guilds, lawyers, and agent/managers must intervene to find ways to restore the eroding power/leverage of creators. In addition, shouldn't the guilds be mindful of the new generation of digital laborers working inside these in-house agencies? What about the creative talent that emerges from Madison Avenue ad agencies like Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, makers of the Asylum 626 first-person horror experience for Doritos; or Grey's Advertising, makers of the "Behind the Still" collective campaign for Canon? Google has not only put the networks' 30-second ad to shame using Adword, but its Creative Labs has taken marketing to new aesthetic heights with its breathtaking Johnny Cash [collective] Project. Furthermore, Google's evocative Parisian Love campaign reminds us just how intimately intertwined our real and virtual lives have become. Shouldn't Hollywood take note that many of its most powerful writers, directors, and producers are starting to embrace transmedia in direct and meaningful ways by inviting artists from the worlds of comic books, gaming, and web design to collaborate? These collaborations enhance the storytelling and aesthetic worlds tenfold, enriching "worlds" as diverse as The Dark Knight, The Avengers, and cable's The Walking Dead. Hopefully, this conference will leave all of us with a broader understanding of what it means to be a media maker today--by revealing new and expansive ways for artists to collaborate with Hollywood media managers, audiences, advertisers, members of the tech culture, and with one another.
This panel seeks to capture the unruly, still unfolding, wild wild west moment of cultural-industrial conversion taking place in both virtual and real-world workplaces as Hollywood looks for top-down solutions to engaging with consumers where they live--online. Once the dominant players in the content industry, Hollywood today is having to look as far away as Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue for collaborators in the 2.0 space. Many in Hollywood are trying to bridge the gap between the old and new ways of doing business, describing their operations as "Silicon Valley startups within a big media company." Disney is buying out the founders of social experiments like Club Penguin, Togetherville, and Playdom in order to reinvent their family business for the connected generation. In each instance, Hollywood's old guard is having to rely on a new generation of entrepreneurs from the tech and geek communities to teach them how to navigate the 21st century. Break: 11:15-11:30 Panel Two (11:30-1:30): "Creative Economies: Commercial vs. State-Based Models" In the United States, transmedia production has been often coupled with issues of promotion and branding, because of the ways that production is funded in a Hollywood studio or network television models. But, around the world, in countries where there is strong state support for media production, alternative forms of transmedia are taking shape, which are governed by different imperatives (cultural, educational, artistic). How has transmedia fit within the effort of nation-states to promote and expand their creative economies? What can commercial media producers learn from these alternative models and approaches? How might these developments further expand our understanding of what transmedia is and what it can contribute to the language of storytelling? What are the advantages and disadvantages of creating transmedia content under these different kinds of creative economies? Lunch (1:30-2:30) Panel Three (2:30-4:30): "Working on the Margins--Who Pays for Transformative Works of Art?" Denise Mann, moderator The independent film industry isn't working any longer--so says powerful indie producer Ted Hope, who now advocates for using transmedia entertainment models that allow media-makers to engage directly with fans, and in the process, rethink old production, marketing, and distribution patterns that no longer make sense in the 21st century. A new generation of media-makers, actors, writers, directors, and producers are taking concrete steps to reinvent bottom-up entertainment for the contemporary, connected, tech-savvy audience. For some independent-minded creators, the best way to connect with today's self-aware audience is by creating a self-mocking, self-reflexive web series like The Guild or Dr. Horrible. For others, the best way to engage with the audience is by creating collective works of art via star-driven companies like hitRECord or Funny or Die. The impulse behind each of these works of collective intelligence is to take art out of the rarified world of crumbling art-house theaters, museums, and galleries and put it back into the hands of the masses-- creating an immersive, interactive, and collective works of transmedia entertainment, made by and for the people who enjoy it most. Panel 4 (4:45-6:45): "Creative Intersections: How Comics Fit into the Transmedia Ecology" By many accounts, the comics industry in the United States struggles to survive, with mainstream titles facing declining readerships, despite some growth in the sales of independent graphic novels through bookstores. Yet, the comics industry has never played a more central role in the entertainment industry as a whole, with comics seeding more and more film and television franchises, and with comics performing important functions within larger transmedia projects. So, how can we understand the paradoxical status of the comics industry? In what ways are these other media outlets helping to subsize the production of printed comics? What kinds of advantages does content audience-tested through comics bring to other media industries? Why have so many television series sought to extend their narratives through graphic novels in recent years? As comics are brought to the screen, what do the producers owe to the fans of the original material as opposed to new viewers who may have little to no awareness of the series' origins in comics? What lessons might transmedia producers learn from the larger history of extended universes and intertexuality within comics? Moderators: Henry Jenkins
Ivan Askwith Ivan Askwith is Senior Director of Digital Media at Lucasfilm, where he oversees strategic and creative direction for the wide range of online, mobile, social and cross-platform initiatives that make up the digital presence of Star Wars, Lucasfilm, and the company's other properties. Previously, he was the Director of Strategy at Big Spaceship. Morgan Bouchet Angela Chen Caplan Angela Cheng Caplan is the President and CEO of Cheng Caplan Company, Inc., a boutique literary/talent management and production company based in Los Angeles, California, representing Academy Award nominated filmmakers, best-selling book authors, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and world famous comic book creators such as Brian Wood
Director Katerina Cizek is an Emmy-winning documentary-maker working across many media platforms. Cizek directs the National Film Board of Canada's Highrise series on residential skyscrapers. For five years, she was the National Film Board of Canada's Filmmaker-in-Residence at an inner-city hospital, in a many-media project that won a 2008 Webby Award, a Banff Award, and a Canadian New Media Award. Sara Diamond Sara Diamond is the President of the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University, Canada's "university of the imagination." Prior to her presidency at OCAD University, Dr. Diamond was the Artistic Director of Media and Visual Art and Director of Research at the Banff Centre, where in 1995 she created the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) and led it for 10 years. Dr. Diamond holds a PhD in computer science and degrees in new media theory and practice, social history, and communications from the United Kingdom and Canada. Christy Dena Nick De Martino Jennifer Holt Jennifer Holt is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She specializes in the areas of media industry studies, film and television history, and media policy. Her current research looks at regulation and policy in the era of digitization and convergence. She is the co-editor of Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method (Blackwell, 2009) and author of Empires of Entertainment (Rutgers UP, 2011), which examines deregulation and media conglomeration from 1980-1996. She is also the Co-Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center's Media Industries Project.
Ted Hope has produced Academy-Award nominated independent films such as 21 Grams (2003), The Savages (2007), and In The Bedroom (2001). Three of his entries to the Sundance Film Festival have won the Grand Jury Prize: American Splendor (2003), The Brothers McMullen (1995), and What Happened Was.. (1994). In the early 1990s, he co-founded Good Machine, an independent film production and distribution company that went to become Focus Features. Currently, Hope works from his New York-based indie production house, This Is That, which he co-founded in 2002. He is the recipient of the 2009 Vision Award from the LA Filmmakers' Alliance as well as the Woodstock Film Festival's Honorary Trailblazer Award. Gareth Kay Katherine Keller Katherine Keller is a "Founding Tart" and the current Culture Vultures
Joe LeFavi, is a transmedia producer and brand strategist who launched consultancy Quixotic Transmedia in 2010. His company provided the transmedia strategy for Immortals (2011), Relativity Media's highest grossing film. He has also collaborated with I am Rogue, Lionsgate and Crest Animation. In addition, his company has published motion comics for Platinum's Cowboys & Aliens, numerous titles for Archaia such as Immortals and Johnny Recon, and over 100+ titles for The Jim Henson Company, which includes their line of Archaia graphic novels. Jordan Levin Jordan Levin is founding partner and CEO of Generate, a management and cross-platform production company in Los Angeles. Levin is best known for co-founding the WB, where he where he helped develop a distinctive brand of young-skewing shows (Dawson's Creek, Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and served as the youngest-ever network CEO. Sheila C. Murphy Shelia C. Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan. Murphy is also the author of How Television Invented New Media (Rutgers UP, 2011). She received her B.A. in Art History from the University of Rochester and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine. From teletubbies to cybernetics, television to "convergence," net.art and hacking, her interest lies in visual discourse of and cultural rhetoric about how, why, when and where we use computers and incorporate them into our everyday life. Jose Padhila Mike Richardson Mike Richardson is the current president of Dark Horse Comics, a comics publishing company he founded in 1986, as well as the president of Dark Horse Entertainment, which has developed and produced numerous projects for film and television based on Dark Horse or other licensed properties. Dark Horse publishes many licensed comics, including comics based on Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aliens, Predator, Mass Effect, and Conan; the company also publishes creator owned comics such as Frank Miller's Sin City and 300, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, Paul Chadwick's Concrete, and Michael Chabon's The Escapist. Mark Verheiden Mark Verheiden is a writer for comics, movies, and television. He is a co-executive producer for the television series Falling Skies for DreamWorks Television and the TNT Network. Verheiden was also a writer and consulting producer for Heroes and a a writer and co-executive producer on the television series Battlestar Galactica. Verheiden's introduction into writing comics came in June 1987, when he penned The American, which was published by Dark Horse Comics. Verheiden has written many series for Dark Horse based on both the Aliens and Predator series of films.
Mary Vogt is a costume designer who has been Emmy-nominated for her work on Pushing Daisies (2008). She was the costume designer for the Men in Black movies, Batman Returns (1992), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and the 2010 Tamil (South Asian) science fiction blockbuster, Endhiran (Robot).
Location: Parking Conference Pass (includes admission to all panels and reception) Extra Event: Teaching Transmedia As more and more colleges and universities are teaching courses in transmedia enertainment, crossmedia design, and convergence culture, Transmedia Hollywood wants to invite people interested in exchanging resources or trading experiences to gather for a special "birds of a feather" meeting at the Annenberg Innovation Lab on the eve of the conference -- April 5 -- at 7 pm. If you want to come, drop me a note at hjenkins@usc.edu
February 22, 2012
Inventing the Digital Medium: An Interview with Janet Murray (Part Two)
Well, movies are a mature medium - we don't think about the devices by which the story is told - the placement of the camera or the acting style: all of that has become conventionalized and made transparent to the viewer and at the same time it affords the practice of virtuosity, of invention of the new within a stable expressive range of conventions. What is the case for seeing the computer as a medium as opposed to a delivery mechanism for a wide array of different kinds of media formats and practices?
Though you write near the end about the importance of creating "more expressive machines," Hamlet on the Holodeck's concern with expression often takes a back seat here to issues of functionality and transparency. Does this suggest that you think the kinds of debates you used to have with Sven Birkerts and others have been resolved? Are you personally less interested today in the issue of whether the digital can be art or literature? No, I am still interested in art which is one of the primary ways of exploring the expressive qualities of a new medium - of stretching the clay, so to speak -- and there are many expressive examples in the text, such as Camille Utterback's work, which I admire tremendously as well as a section in the last chapter on playfulness as a design strategy. You rather quickly dismiss the concept of "transmedia" or "crossplatform" storytelling from your focus here. Yet, I know you have been working with the American Film Institute on various projects to think about the computer as a "second screen" in relation to film or television. What insights might you be able to share from this work with my readers who are interested in transmedia issues? My etv group has been an important focus of my own research since I came to Georgia Tech. It assumes a convergence platform that combines everything we love about TV with all the affordances of the digital medium. This is what I predicted in HoH in 1997, and described in chapter 9. The home TV is converging with the computer, the game platform, and the telephone which is now a video telephone. The tablet has become a useful second screen and is very well positioned to replace the remote control. Our prototypes address these possibilities. For example, we assume that TV series are stored in an archive that is navigable across episodes and across series. Then we ask, what kinds of connections will viewers want to make? So we do prototypes that connect two American history documentaries that explore the Cuban Missile Crisis from Castro's perspective and from Kennedy's. Or we show how a long-form story arc, like Graham Yost's masterfully controlled Justified season, can be made clearer to viewers by scene-specific synchronized visualizations that do not distract them from the unfolding story. In the interest of continuing this "friendly quarrel," let me add a few thoughts about Janet's arguments about "transmedia" as a purely "additive" concept. She is in some senses rehashing arguments she made two decades ago against the concept of "multimedia," which she argued was like "photoplay" a transitional term which described our limited understanding of how media could be integrated together and that as better design principles emerged, we would see a richer deployment of the affordances of the digital, which included new understandings of the properties of once distinct media. I agreed with her then about multimedia, and still do despite the resurgence of the concept as a result of the iPad's appeals to more integrated media experiences (perhaps, a second stage in the integration process). I am less certain that transmedia is a transitory term in this same sense. Here, I see the gaps between media as a feature and not a bug. For me, transmedia is about creating meaningful layers, where much of the pleasure and agency is in making connections across texts and deploying them as resources in an ongoing social conversation. The gaps between different extensions encourage a more active engagement, accounting for the recurring interest in transmedia across the entertainment industry as Hollywood seeks models for what engagement-based content looks like. I do believe we will see more and more integration of the functions of transmedia as more and more content comes to us through digital platforms, but I also think something vital will be lost if all of the content becomes instantly available to us in a more integrated fashion. This is the moment where transmedia changes back into multimedia (which for me is media across multiple modalities but within the same platform). The result will be to make the layered texts associated with transmedia more popularly accessible, but potentially at the expense of the hunting and gathering (not to mention the social exchange and collective interpretation of content) which has made the transmedia model so effective at mobilizing buzz and participation around media properties. Janet anticipated some aspects of transmedia with her discussion in Hamlet on the Holodeck of the notion of "hyperserial." The key concept here is "serial." Transmedia is a kind of seriality. Serial fictions have a distinct aesthetic and economic function, which would not be achieved by simply integrating all of the elements into a mega-text, and I think the kinds of seriality represented by transmedia will have value even when it becomes technically possible to more fully integrate the extensions. My five cents worth.
February 20, 2012
Inventing the Digital Medium: An Interview with Janet Murray (Part One)I first met Janet Murray when I arrived at MIT almost 25 years ago. At the time, she was working on her book, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, while I was working on Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Murray, along with the members of the Narrative Intelligence Reading Group, was an early guide for me to the emerging realm of digital culture and helped to shape my thinking in ways that I will never be able to fully acknowledge. A few years later, Murray and I worked together, along with Ben Singer and Ellen Draper, to create The Virtual Screening Room, the prototype for a fully interactive digital textbook for studying film analysis. In many ways, what we constructed together using Hypercard was more advanced than anything we've seen so far coming out of the realm of e-books, with hundreds of clips on command from almost as many movies to illustrate core concepts in film editing. Shortly afterwords, she left MIT for Georgia Tech, while with William Uricchio, I took over the leadership of our newly created Comparative Media Studies Program. We've remained in touch through the years, with Murray always proving to be a wonderful thinking partner, sometimes affirming, sometimes challenging my own thinking, and always overseeing cutting edge projects which stretched the affordances of digital media in the service of expanding human expression or more fully realizing its pedagogical potential. We've both found ourselves under attack for being "narratologists" in the famous "Ludologist" debates, and sharpened our own thinking about games as a medium in the process. I was delighted (well, for many reasons) when the British magazine, Prospect, identified both of us as among the top thinkers for the digital future. Murray recently released her long-awaited new book, Inventing the Medium: Principals of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. On one level, the book is a textbook designed to help designers in training develop a fuller, more robust understanding of digital media, one which builds productively on principles she first outlined in Hamlet on the Holodeck, but which also reflects on the past decade plus of developments as many once cutting edge practices have now become normalized and routinized within digital media. This book captures some of the thinking she did as the chair of her program at Georgia Tech, which remains one of the most forward thinking about new media platforms and practices. On another level, the book is a theory of media -- especially of media change -- with a strong emphasis on the intersections between technology and culture. I was delightful to see how much more deeply Murray had read and thought about media theory since the first book, and in the process, she is pushing all of us to think more deeply about what it might mean to consider the digital as its own medium rather than as a delivery system for multiple media or what it might mean to think about the local choices made in digital design as contributing to a larger evolution of that medium. Murray's writing has shifted in a more technical direction than her first book, which was very much an argument for why humanists should engage with new media production and critique, but she remains very much a humanist at heart, who sees digital media as making vital contributions to our contemporary culture. Inventing the Medium is an epic accomplishment, one which we will all be mining for years to come. In this interview, Murray reflects about the larger conceptual framing of the book, what it has to say about the nature of media change and the role of design in constructing contemporary culture. Her thoughtful and engaging responses to my questions should provoke further reflections about the state of the art in digital design. Your earlier book, Hamlet on the Holodeck, has been described as an experiment in speculative poetics, in that you were reading early signs of what kind of affordances digital media would offer for human expression. Inventing the Medium now has several decades of experiments and innovations to draw on. How did this change the way you approached this project? When I sat down to write Hamlet on the Holodeck (HoH) I challenged myself to prove what I believed from the day my students at MIT showed me Eliza and Zork - that this was the beginning of a new medium of expression that could be as rich as print or film. To do that, I had to step back and say what were the equivalents of the material affordances that made film a new medium and not just a way of recording plays or acting out novels. So I came up with the formulations in Chapter 3 of HoH which is probably the most widely read part of that book - that the equivalent of cutting the film and changing the focus of the lens, etc. for cinema was the procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial affordances of the computer as a medium of representation. You describe this book as documenting "the collective cultural task of inventing the underlying medium." In what sense is this a cultural as well as a technological project? To what degree do you think designers are aware of their impact on the future of a medium as opposed to the pragmatic issues of designing an App? In my own teaching I encourage designers to have a kind of double consciousness, sort of short-term and long-term. The short-term consciousness involves serving the immediate users - and the more specifically we can think about them the better - and honoring the constraints of the immediate task, which can mean using a specific platform or limiting functionality in some way. But another part of their mind has to be fixed on the horizon, on the immediate work as part of a larger cultural task, that draws on media conventions from the past that have made for coherent communication, and that creates a foundation of conventions that will make for ever greater coherence going forward. You draw on some of the same core concepts here as in Hamlet on the Holodeck. Which ones have had to be rethought the most to reflect the actual changes which have taken place? Well if I were writing HoH again I would have to make changes, and I intend to do something like that for my next book - sort of a Return to the Holodeck (!) But Inventing the Medium is really a matter of taking the same ideas deeper, and so I see it as continuous with HoH.. The main change is that just as I had to think deeply about the affordances of the medium for HoH in order to think about interactive storytelling as a special case of digital affordances, for ITM which focuses on digital affordances as the basis of a design process, I had to think much more deeply about what a medium is. In HoH I took "medium" for granted. For ITM I had to think about whether what I was claiming about a medium was true for other media. I actually had another 50,000 words about this that I had to cut out and condense into parts of the Introduction, Chapter 1, and the last chapter on the Game Model, because it slowed down the main argument about design too much to go into it. But I am writing more about that in other places. I gave a talk about it for the MECCSA in the UK and I'm going to be writing that up for an article in Convergence. Janet H. Murray is an internationally recognized designer and media theorist, and Ivan Allen College Dean's Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Tech where she also directs the Experimental Television Laboratory. She holds a PhD in English from Harvard University and was a pioneer of digital humanities applications at MIT in the 1980s and 1990s, moving to Georgia Tech in 1999, and serving as Director of Graduate Studies in Digital Media from 2000-2010 during which time she led the redesign of the MS curriculum and the founding of one of the first PhDs in the field. She is the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Free Press, 1997; MIT Press 1998), which has been translated into 5 languages, and is widely used as a roadmap to emerging broadband art, information, and entertainment environments, and Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice (MIT Press, 2011). At Georgia Tech, her interactive design projects include a digital edition of the Warner Brothers classic, Casablanca, funded by NEH and in collaboration with the American Film Institute; the Interactive Toolkit for Engineering LearningProject, funded by NSF; and a series of prototypes for the convergence of television and computation, created in collaboration with PBS, ABC , MTV, Turner, Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, and other networks and media companies. Murray is an emerita Trustee of the AFI and a current board member of the George Foster Peabody Award. In December 2010 Murray was named one of the "Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future" by Prospect Magazine.
January 27, 2012
On Transmedia and Education: A Conversation With Robot Heart Stories' Jen Begeal and Inanimate Alice's Laura Fleming (Part One)This week, I want to showcase two innovative projects which seek to explore the intersections between transmedia storytelling, participatory culture, and education -- Robot Heart Stories and Inanimate Alice. Here's some background on the two projects, taken from their respective home pages: Robot Hearts Stories is an experiential learning project that uses collaboration and creative problem solving to put education directly in the hands of students. This fall, two classrooms, a continent apart, will work together to get a lost robot home, and they will need your help... The experience begins when a robot crash lands in Montreal and must make her way to LA in order to find her space craft and return home. Two class rooms in underprivileged neighborhoods, one in Montreal (French speaking) and the other in LA (English speaking), will use math, science, history, geography and creative writing to help the robot make her way across North America. At the same time, Robot Hearts Stories extends beyond the classroom, as the project welcomes involvement from a global audience. We need participants of all ages to share their own passions in the form of a creative act involving a robot they can print, customize and document. For each photo or piece of art featuring the robot that is submitted, the "signal strength" of the robot grows stronger and helps her to get back home. Robot Heart Stories is the first in a trilogy of experiential learning projects from award winning storytelling pioneer Lance Weiler and creative producer Janine Saunders.
Robot Heart Stories from WorkBook Project on Vimeo. Set in the early years of the 21st century and told through text, sound, images, music and games, Inanimate Alice is the story of Alice and her imaginary digital friend Brad. nanimate Alice is Transmedia - designed from the outset as a story that unfolds over time and on multiple platforms, the episodes are available on all devices capable of running Adobe's Flash Player. Alice connects technologies, languages, cultures, generations and curricula within a sweeping narrative accessible by all. As Alice's journey progresses, new storylines appear elsewhere providing more details and insights, enriching the tale through surprising developments. Students are encouraged to co-create developing episodes of their own, either filling in the gaps or developing new strands. Designed originally as entertainment, 'Inanimate Alice' has been adopted by teachers eager to connect with students through media they inherently understand. Created around a high-quality robust text, the content is suitable for the deep-reading and re-reading necessary for academic investigation. My desire to learn more about these imaginative and groundbreaking projects led me to two women (Robot Heart Stories' Jen Begeal and Inanimate Alice's Laura Fleming) who have been heavily involved in their development and deployment. What follows is an online conversation between the two of them which describes not only their work on these projects, but also dig deeper into their underlying philosophies concerning the value of transmedia and participatory learning. (For my own thoughts on these topics, see this blog post.) My hope is that this exchange will help spark similar discussions across projects, across entertainment companies, nonprofits, educators, and schools, about how we can tap in the power of new forms of storytelling experiences to enhance the opportunities students have to learn and grow.
Jen: I have recently been involved with Robot Heart Stories (RHS), an experiential education project that used collaboration and creative problem solving to put education directly in the hands of students. The experience begins when a robot crash landed in Montreal and must make her way to LA in order to find her space craft and return home. Two class rooms in underprivileged neighborhoods, one in Montreal (French speaking) and the other in LA (English speaking), will use math, science, history, geography and creative writing to help the robot make her way across North America. Laura: I have been working on Inanimate Alice , a series of interactive, multimedia, episodes that uses a combination of text, sound, images, and games to tell the story of Alice, a young girl growing up with technology as her best and sometimes only friend. During my time with the project, I have been able to work closely with the producer of the series advising on the educational media attributes of the story and helping devise intriguing new ways to navigate the transmedia experience that is just starting to unfold. What lessons have you taken from your experiments so far in deploying transmedia practices for education?
While transmedia has long been a property of commercial franchises aimed at young people, we are just now beginning to explore the implications of transmedia for education. What lessons do you think educators might take from commercial transmedia aimed at children? In what ways does educational use of transmedia require different underlying models and assumptions?
Laura Fleming has served the children of New Jersey as an educator for the past fifteen years as both a media specialist and a teacher. In recent years she has taken a professional interest in developments in new media and in vanguard techniques in interactive and transmedia (multi-platform) storytelling. In this context, she has been able to draw powerful connections between transmedia and education. She blogs on these issues at www.edtechinsight.blogspot.com and is a regular contributor to other outlets, including the Huffington Post. Laura is currently playing a lead consultative role with the BradField Company, the developers of the innovative and popular transmedia story, Inanimate Alice. She has played a major role in growing and sustaining a thriving and vibrant global community around Inanimate Alice. She has consulted on several transmedia properties, working with producers to help maximise the value of their creations and toolsets for teachers and students as well as for the corporations themselves. Laura is currently co-authoring a book on Transmedia LearningWorlds, due for publication in Autumn 2012, and has spoken at a number of prestigious education, publishing and media events on the significance of transmedia for teaching and learning.
January 27, 2012
On Transmedia and Education: A Conversation With Robot Heart Stories' Jen Begeal and Inanimate Alice's Laura Fleming (Part Two)Some transmedia properties are entirely top-down, deploying fairly conventional models of authorship, despite their deployment across multiple media platforms. Others include strong elements of participatory culture. How central is youth participation in the production and circulation of media to your visions for transmedia education? Jen: Youth participation is very important In production and circulation as many Transmedia projects are aimed at young people, and the ones aimed at adults require that the adults have some prior knowledge of media which leads us back to teaching media literacy at a young age. Specific youth aimed projects, like Robot Heart Stories, require that the students create their own videos, write collaborative stories and construct and color their own paper robots (called "heart packs") which were pdf downloads from the website. The theory behind transmedia education is that user generated content (i.e. created by the students themselves) should be at the core of these projects.Laura: Story-driven user-generated content is a powerful piece of the transmedia experience and in my opinion is an essential consideration for any educational property. Technology tools allow for new forms of participation and learners inevitably seek out those opportunities. Even just the notion of creating transmedia experiences for specific groups or demographics is something we need to consider carefully. Learners themselves should be immersed in the creative process to ensure that they are not mere consumers of the experience. What are the implications of teaching a generation not only how to read but also how to write across media?
One potential implication of the use of transmedia for education is that it might help students to experience the same story or events through multiple points of view. How might such practices contribute to young people's capacity to explore different perspectives?
I have used the metaphor of "hunting and gathering" to describe the activities of consumers engaging with a transmedia narrative. What connections do you see between these modes of active consumption and the kinds of research processes which have long been central to education? Jen: Research requires actively searching out information and can be as involved as your project requires. Likewise transmedia storytelling allows you to be as little or as much engaged with the project as you desire. The students who participated in Robot Heart Stories had a specific curriculum presented to them, however what they chose to do with the information provided was up to them. In the end they chose to tell the story of the robot across multiple platforms including videos, e-mails and through song. Laura: There is no problem with the notion of 'consuming' transmedia, but its true educational value will come in our definition of 'active'-- its definition has to be about more than mere 'thinking about the content', it has to stray knowingly into the creative and the immersive aspects too. In the case of Inanimate Alice, students around the world have been motivated to create their own next episodes of the series. Learners have used critical literacy skills to deconstruct the digital text as readers, and have used the knowledge they gained to write and create. They have become producers of content, shaping new narrative possibilities. Students have developed episodes of their own, either filling in the gaps or developing new strands of the narrative. In addition, students have created interstitial episodes that fill in the gaps in Alice's story. How might we reconcile calls for transmedia education with ongoing concerns raised by the Kaiser Foundation and others about the amount of time young people spend engaging with "screens." Does transmedia education compound the concerns others have raised around multitasking and divided attention or might it foster a higher level of media literacy? Jen: For some, transmedia may be seen as technology overload, however not all transmedia projects take place completely on screens. For instance with Robot Heart Stories part of the project involved students physically cutting out paper robot heart-packs and either drawing pictures or pasting photos on the robots stomachs as a way to "fuel" the robot. The students also had to create videos which meant they had to engage in face to face collaboration.One promise of transmedia education is that it responds to research about multiple intelligences -- that is, the idea that different young people might learn more effectively through different media channels. Should the model of transmedia education focus on multiple paths to the same knowledge or on the ability of any given learner to synthesize information across multiple channels? Jen: The model of transmedia education should focus on the ability of the learner to synthesize information across multiple channels as students need this skill in the real world. Content is continually being dispersed across multiple channels and as more content becomes available it will be up to us to teach young people how to curate this content and synthesize the constant stream of information.Pottermore has been a highly publicized attempt to connect multimedia and participatory elements to children's literature. What are your hopes or concerns about Pottermore as a model for transmedia entertainment and education?Laura: To me, neither of these models are mutually exclusive. Ultimately, only the learner is really in control (for a concise exposition of this position, see I am Learner) Teachers can influence, guide, and facilitate, but what is taught is rarely if ever what is actually learned- so while learners focus on synthesizing information across multiple channels, they will also, naturally, when they are allowed to, take multiple paths to knowledge. The most powerful transemdia education will therefore try to combine both models into one more persistent model. Jen: Pottermore has the ability to connect children globally, to teach them how to learn from different cultures, to understand how to connect with one another and be more accepting of each other. I foresee projects like these with such a broad scope and community to reduce prejudices, stereotyping and encourage collaborative learning.Laura: JK Rowling has done a fascinating thing with Pottermore. She has taken her linear novels and created a non-linear experience around them. Her fans have been wanting to get close to her for years and through Pottermore they will feel like they have gotten that chance and that they now have the opportunity to contribute to the story world. The loyalty this will foster should not be underestimated and should serve as a model for future transmedia properties. In the case of education, these strategies will empower learners to share, contribute, and create by making discoveries through their own interpretations, which encourages passion and responsibility for their own learning. Both of you have placed strong emphasis on the value of stories as a means of capturing and communicating human wisdom and knowledge. How do we decide which stories or themes should form the basis for these kinds of grassroots storytelling activities? Jen: Stories should have personal meaning, and they should have an overriding theme. We had learned that for primary and secondary education topics that deal with social good, passion and personal responsibility (anti-bullying) campaigns are the easiest for students to tackle. There are many themes which can be explored or addressed, however the theme itself should be easy to understand and engage with, and be meaningful to the students learning the curriculum.Our culture has historically reified the concept of authorship, suggesting that only special people have the capacity to create meaningful stories. What techniques have we discovered that help young people overcome their own insecurities and resistances to becoming authors?Laura: Storytelling activities should have the power to offer multiple perspectives and different ways of communicating ideas. Authentic, meaningful, genuine narratives that engage learners through their intent will naturally capture them and enhance the depth of their knowledge. Jen: By allowing students to tell their stories across multiple platforms we have given them the chance to be authors without making them self conscious. Some students tell stories visually, others through music and some even through short form dialogues, transmedia embraces the telling of stories across multiple channels, thereby giving everyone a chance to be a storyteller or author. In the case of Pottermore, these same young people are encouraged by a community to pick and choose how little or how much they want to involve themselves into the stories. It gives them the chance to become immersive creators and to actually play instead of write. This is especially helpful to those kids with learning disabilities as they can engage with others in their own way and at their own pace. By breaking down traditional barriers of storytelling we build a world of creators who can tell a story and synthesize information more effectively than ever before. Jen Begeal is a social media strategist and transmedia producer. Her recent projects include developing a social media strategy for the experiential education project, Robot Heart Stories, developed by The Workbook Project and producing the transmedia campaign for the film, Zenith. She currently works at Umami.TV and can be found tweeting at @jlbhart and @umamitv Jen has spoken at leading conferences including the Film & History Conference for the University of Wisconsin and Mobility Shifts Conference at The New School on the subjects of film theory and media literacy. As a writer her works have been featured on the Tribeca Film: Future of Film blog and on Huffington Post's blog. Jen received her BFA from The State University of New York at Purchase in film directing and her MA from The New School in media studies. She is a co-organizer of the Transmedia NYC meetup group and an active member in the New York Film community. Laura Fleming has served the children of New Jersey as an educator for the past fifteen years as both a media specialist and a teacher. In recent years she has taken a professional interest in developments in new media and in vanguard techniques in interactive and transmedia (multi-platform) storytelling. In this context, she has been able to draw powerful connections between transmedia and education. She blogs on these issues at www.edtechinsight.blogspot.com and is a regular contributor to other outlets, including the Huffington Post. Laura is currently playing a lead consultative role with the BradField Company, the developers of the innovative and popular transmedia story, Inanimate Alice. She has played a major role in growing and sustaining a thriving and vibrant global community around Inanimate Alice. She has consulted on several transmedia properties, working with producers to help maximise the value of their creations and toolsets for teachers and students as well as for the corporations themselves. Laura is currently co-authoring a book on Transmedia LearningWorlds, due for publication in Autumn 2012, and has spoken at a number of prestigious education, publishing and media events on the significance of transmedia for teaching and learning.
November 30, 2011
The Futures of Entertainment 5: The Videos (Day Two) Grant McCracken (author of Chief Culture Officer; Culturematic)
New means of digital circulation, audience engagement and fan activism have brought with it a variety of experiments with serialized video storytelling. What can we learn from some of the most compelling emerging ways to tell ongoing stories through online video, cross-platform features and applications and real world engagement? What models for content creation are emerging, and what are the stakes for content creators and audiences alike? Moderator: Laurie Baird (Georgia Tech) Panelists: Matt Locke (Storythings, UK), Steve Coulson (Campfire), Lynn Liccardo (soap opera critic), and Denise Mann (University of California-Los Angeles)
Children's media has long been an innovator in creating new ways of storytelling. In a digital era, what emerging practices are changing the ways in which stories are being told to children, and what are the challenges unique to children's properties in an online communication environment? Moderator: Sarah Banet-Weiser (University of Southern California) Panelists: Melissa Anelli (The Leaky Cauldron), Gary Goldberger (FableVision) and John Bartlett (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Moderator: Johnathan Taplin (University of Southern California) Panelists: Molly Bingham (photojournalist; founder of ORB); Chris O'Brien (San Jose Mercury News), Patricia Zimmermann (Ithaca College) and Lenny Altschuler (Televisa)
The music industry is often cited as the horror story that all other entertainment genres might learn from: how the digital era has laid waste to a traditional business model. But what new models for musicians and for the music industry exist in the wake of this paradigm shift, and what can other media industries learn from emerging models of content creation and circulation? Moderator: Nancy Baym (Kansas University) Panelists: Mike King (Berklee College of Music), João Brasil (Brazilian artist), Chuck Fromm (Worship Leader Media), Erin McKeown (musical artist and fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University) and Brian Whitman (The Echo Nest)
November 28, 2011
Futures of Entertainment 5: The Videos (Day One)A few weeks ago, I made the trip back to Cambridge, MA to participate in the fifth iteration of the Futures of Entertainment conference. This conference emerged from the work we did at MIT through the Convergence Culture Consortium. The goal of the conference is to provide a meeting ground for forward thinking people in the creative industries and academia to talk with each other about the trends that are impacting how entertainment is produced, circulated, and engaged with. Through the years, the conference has developed its own community, which includes alums of the Comparative Media Studies Program who see the conference as a kind of homecoming, other academics who have found it a unique space to engage with contemporary practices and issues, and industry leaders, many of them former speakers, who return because it offers them a chance to think beyond the established wisdom within their own companies. Our goal is to create a space where academics do not read papers and industry folks don't present prospectus-laden powerpoints or talk about "take-aways" and "deliverables," but people engage honestly, critically, openly about topics of shared interest. Read by these criteria, this year's event was arguably our most successful venture ever, ripe with sometimes heated debates about the nature of the "crowd" (and of the relations between artists and consumers within crowd sourcing models), about the struggles over privacy, piracy, and self identity which shape everything from our relations with location-based entertainment to children's media, about the ways that global perspectives complicate some of the assumptions shaping American media practices, and about the ways that grassroots control over circulation complicate established business models. On a personal level, I was deeply proud to see so many of the CMS alums in their new professional identities, showing that they have continued to grow in intellectual stature and cultural authority after leaving MIT, including Sam Ford who has taking over as the primary person in charge of the event and of our newly renamed Futures of Entertainment Consortium. I was delighted to see so many of my new friends from the west coast fly to Cambridge to join us for this year's event, including Ernest Wilson, the Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism. Formally, Futures of Entertainment is the sister conference to Transmedia Hollywood, which we host here in Los Angeles, swapping years between USC and UCLA. But this was the year where the two families mingled with each other and the bridges between the two conferences were strengthened. By the way, I've gotten lots of questions about the next Transmedia Hollywood conference: there's not a lot of information to share yet, but it will be held on April 6 2012 at the USC Cinema School, if you want to save the date. Watch this blog for further announcements. Finally, I was deeply proud of the diversity we achieved in our programing this year, making further progress in a long struggle to get greater gender balance on our panels, and making a huge step forward in terms of bringing transnational perspectives into the mix. We welcome recommendations for speakers at our future events in general, but we especially welcome recommendations for female, minority, and international speakers. I am also proud that we continue to maintain a tradition of making webcasts of the conference available free to all. I am posting the videos of the Friday events today and next time, of the Saturday events. We will end the week with a focus on a special event on Global Creative Cities, and with some further reflections of our announcement of a new partnership with the City of Rio. Check out this very thoughtful response by Jonathan Gray to the conference's focus on "crowdsourcing" and collaborative production. While I was at MIT, I dropped by my old stomping grounds at the Comparative Media Studies Program and had brunch on Sunday with the newly arrived crop of Masters Students and some of the Program's Alums. What a smart group! After several years of regrouping, CMS has come back strong as ever, has maintained strong standards in terms of the quality and diversity of the community. I wish them all the best. Introduction (8:30-9:00 a.m.) William Uricchio (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Ilya Vedrashko (Hill Holliday)
How are the shifting relations between media producers and their audiences transforming the concept of meaningful participation? And how do alternative systems for the circulation of media texts pave the way for new production modes, alternative genres of content, and new relationships between producers and audiences? Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green-co-authors of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media-share recent experiments from independent filmmakers, video game designers, comic book creators, and artists and discuss the promises and challenges of models for deeper audience participation with the media industries, setting the stage for the issues covered by the conference. Speakers: Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California), Sam Ford (Peppercom Strategic Communications) and Joshua Green (Undercurrent)
In an era where fans are lobbying advertisers to keep their favorite shows from being cancelled, advertisers are shunning networks to protest on the fans' behalf and content creators are launching web ventures in conversation with their audiences, there appears to be more opportunity than ever for closer collaboration between content creators and their most ardent fans. What models are being attempted as a way forward, and what can we learn from them? And what challenges exist in pursuing that participation for fans and for creators alike? Moderator: Sheila Seles (Advertising Research Foundation) Panelists: C. Lee Harrington (Miami University), Seung Bak (Dramafever) and Jamin Warren (Kill Screen)
Beyond the buzzword and gimmicks using the concept, crowdsourcing is emerging as a new way in which creators are funding media production, inviting audiences into the creation process and exploring new and innovative means of circulating media content. What are some of the innovative projects forging new paths forward, and what can be learned from them? How are attempts at crowdsourcing creating richer media content and greater ownership for fans? And what are the barriers and risks ahead for making these models more prevalent? Moderator: Ana Domb (Almabrands, Chile) Panelists: Mirko Schäfer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Bruno Natal (Queremos, Brazil), Timo Vuorensola (Wreckamovie, Finland) and Caitlin Boyle (Film Sprout)
Here We Are Now (Entertain Us): Location, Mobile, and How Data Tells Stories (3:15-4:45 p.m.) Moderator: Xiaochang Li (New York University) Panelists: Germaine Halegoua (University of Kansas), Dan Street (Loku) and Andy Ellwood (Gowalla)
The vast range of new experiments to facilitated greater audience participation and more personalized media content bring are often accomplished through much deeper uses of audience data and platforms whose business models are built on the collection and use of data. What privacy issues must be considered beneath the enthusiasm for these new innovations? What are the fault lines beneath the surface of digital entertainment and marketing, and what is the appropriate balance between new modes of communication and communication privacy? Participants: Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard University) and Helen Nissenbaum (New York University)
November 11, 2011
Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part Five)This is the final installment in an ongoing series of posts by transmedia designer and entrepreneur Brian Clark on transmedia business models. We've been delighted by all of te interest this series has generated out there. Here's hoping it inspires further reflection and innovation on these issues. At the very beginning of this series, I advanced the argument that the next wave of innovation in transmedia would be driven by business innovation as we move beyond the traditional patronage model that dominates the existing body of work. The ten examples of alternative business model solves from other independent movements shows us the building blocks, but transmedia properties (versus mono-modal products) are uniquely suited for business model mash-ups: like companies, they are actually better defined by the combination of business model solves they use. Dissecting the business models of my friends and peer practitioners is a delicate position to find myself in as a writer, but the value of discussing this topic as a community is an important part of incubating broader innovation and sustainability. It is part what we talk about as practitioners when we find ourselves together over cocktails in small groups at conference and events, like the recent gatherings at DIY Days or StoryWorld. For the purpose of illustrating why we're going to see this wave of innovation, we don't even have to dive beyond what some of those firms are already saying publicly. Traditional Models The best place to start is with the elephant in the room: we're in middle of a dramatic period of growth in the more traditional transmedia business models. Entertainment and brand marketing transmedia projects have gone from startlingly rare to relatively expected and are starting to move from the realm of marketing into the realm of product design (even in the views of very large companies). Meanwhile, significant new granting initiatives for transmedia storytellers have appeared in the issue advancement space and more traditional financing methods from film and broadcasting expanding to include more diverse expressions. Transmedia entrepreneurs in companies like Campfire, Blacklight, Firelight and 42 Entertainment have business models that are primarily focused on scaling against that blossoming of demand and opportunity: they continue to polish the tactical usefulness of transmedia methods against familiar needs and mechanisms that already exist in the marketplace. One of the unspoken advantages of a "pure play" such as these is that you don't have to stay a pure play forever ... you have both some scale and the entrepreneurial nimbleness to adapt to changes in the marketplace. Marketplaces of demand for these kinds of media skills tend to grow most robustly from the bottom up: as the market matures, the value for these kinds of services constantly decreases towards commodity. The democratization of creation works against the long-term value of any particular reproducible tactic. Already, you see traditional advertising agencies and broadcast networks setting up experience design or transmedia labs in order to service that same demand: requests for proposals tend to become job openings as optional elements become required forms. Patchwork Models That entrepreneurial flexibility of transmedia tactics has led others in the space to pursue more hybridized business models at a variety of different scales. Individual careers begin to look like hybrid business models, such as Lance Weiler who mixes "story R&D" and infrastructure plays with both public and private financing models across the scope of multiple pieces of work in the marketplace at the same time. At some point, those careers start to look more and more like serial entrepreneurship, like Jordan Weisman who has been incubating one innovative venture after another for decades. My own firm, GMD Studios, is an example of this kind of patchwork approach from a company level: our model for 16 years has focused on using the R&D and financial yields of commercial work along the traditional service models to fuel our own angel capitalization of a series of ventures that have ranged from infrastructure and software plays to publishing venture incubation to transmedia entertainment properties. New Models As the variety and frequency of transmedia work has blossomed, it is starting to produce more daring business model experiments at both the grassroots and venture capital ends of the spectrum. With the impact of the low-capital and fan-capital models, creators like Jim Babb and Andrea Philips are funding new work that venture capitalists or granting organizations just might not always get. In some cities, you see the beginnings of a transmedia theater movement that relies upon direct ticket sales that involve production groups regularly releasing new work, such as Red Cloud Rising or Sleep No More in New York City. At the other end of the spectrum, Fourth Wall Studios is fueled by one of the largest venture capital investments in transmediaís history and is betting on a model rooted heavily in an infrastructure play for immersive mobile storytelling. This kind of entrepreneurial innovation isnít contained to just upstart mad scientists, either. At last week's StoryWorld conference in San Francisco, it was just as evident among bigger traditional media companies as grassroots developers. The corollary to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" in business is "only brands in pain innovate," and the massive changes in media distribution and consumption are driving product developers in big companies ask similar questions about business models and profitability. These two factors -- grassroots entrepreneurial risk taking and well financed companies looking to take more limited risks with bigger piles of money -- will inevitably influence and reinforce each other (in the same way that indie film and Hollywood do). Like in film, there are also amazing potentials for international co-productions to help drive some of these new models, particularly where the more entrepreneurially funded U.S. system and the more heavily cultural funded European, Canadian and Australian models find synergies. In many ways, transmedia productions are uniquely suited to adopt their platform choices to the unique tax incentives and granting opportunities in particular territories that can provide 20% to 40% rebates on production budgets. Successes will emerge from these cauldrons of international opportunity over the next handful of years that will help define the working business models for our entire creative lifetimes. Some of those successes will be modest but prove critical concepts of business sustainability that influence a generation of producers. Some, though, will be amazing successes both creatively and financially and become much-dissected case studies for decades. Right now, though, it is a completely open playing field, which is a rare gift to any generation of artists and reason enough for us to think of business model as one of the mediums in which we work.
November 10, 2011
Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part Four)This is part four of a five part series on transmedia business models by Brian Clark: Founder/CEO, GMD Studios. The segments are based on a talk Clark gave earlier this semester as a guest speaker to my USC class on Transmedia Entertainment. A HANDFUL OF VENTURE MODELS In the prior installment, we looked at handful of business models that try to work for even small budget projects. This time, we're going to look at models that rely (almost) intrinsically on raising capital. These models all share at least two common features, and the key one is that the source of funding is some kind of venture capital (which means the return that investors expect is their money back and hopefully some profit for taking the risk.) If that ís a little bit of capital, these might be angel investors that resemble patrons, but if that ís a lot of capital you'íll be dealing with professional investors. The change that comes with that is the mechanism of promotion. If you've only got a little bit of capital, you'll be relying upon media you create (owned) and earn (press and social sharing), but if you've got more capital you might start buying advertising from other places. Ticketed Events An entire set of business models that come from performance instead of media are frequently neglected by transmedia creators: an audience paying for a ticket to attend a live communal experience, whether that ís a theater performance, a concert, a conference or a stranger experience like "Red Cloud Rising" or "Sleep No More". This is the core business model of theatrical distribution (in film), pay-per-view (in broadcast), and touring theater and bands (in music).
Independent music and theater artists will tell you about the entrepreneurial challenges of squeaking a margin from festivals and tours (and then remind you to buy a t-shirt on your way out), but sustainable careers can be built on these models (and the way they can work with fan incubation as a business goal between ticketed events.) Having funding is usually essential, as the expenses to put on the event get incurred before you collect the revenue back from the sales and you have to buy gas for the tour bus to the next town. Marginable Arbitrage In market dynamics, arbitrage is nothing more than buying low in one market to sell high in another, often by creating new value from it that others arenít optimizing. Informercial space on television networks is a good example of this (the broadcast time is cheaper for an hour than for a thirty-second ad during primetime, which is why you see hour long commercials for $19.95 products), but most of the Internet is driven by arbitrage thinking. Many online publishers, for example, get a huge chunk of their traffic from Google because of their knowledge of search engine optimization of content, but then make money off of ads served up by Google that were actually the same as the ads on the search engine page they came from: the publisher made the ads more relevant to the audience, and got paid more because of it. Will some transmedia innovator find a similar system that uses infomercial broadcast space the way online publishers use Google? An arbitrage business model might look something like:
It isnít as easy as it sounds to find value in the cheap: you get two Snuggies for $24.95 plus shipping and handling because they've tested that more sales happen if they price it like that. The more neglected value you find and extract, the more you attract others to do the same (making that cheap resource less cheap) and, like the ticket sales model, as soon as you stop creating arbitrage you stop creating revenue. Conversely, I know people who do nothing but write for the Web from home and get six-digit checks every month because of their understanding of content arbitrage. Audience Developed Products In the same way that "fan funded" treats the renewable fan base as a replacement for investors, you could instead treat them as co-creators (and thus invested in the sustainability and promotion of the work.) Online interactive art, especially community games, are an obvious example of this (such as Top Secret Dance Off, Socks Inc. or Ze Frankís Star.me), but there are also filmmakers experimenting with crowdsourcing the shooting of features and online documentarians working to preserve history through cellphone photos or family pictures. These kinds of projects often produce business models such as:
The strength of this model (crowdsourcing of development) is also its Achilles' heel -- you need a vibrant enough community for that crowdsourcing magic to kick in, and that takes feeding and care. Where it seems to have the most predictable value is in creating longer tails of value, for example in videogames where making level editors available for Halo produced totally new fan-developed games like Portal that became products in their own right. Infrastructure Play If research & development models focus on creating new skillsets and proofs of concept, sometimes they are far more than that -- they become infrastructure plays. The impact of THX on audio standards in movie theaters was an infrastructure play contained inside the Star Wars business model, just as Condition One are documentarians creating licensable interactive technology to increase audience immersion. These types of business models typically look more like:
Infrastructure plays often require even deeper capital reserves than other types of models, because the core value of the sustainability argument requires scale (so, for the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, growth is more important in the short term than revenue generation.) These business models often also require "a business within the business" that focuses just on the licensing or enablement revenue streams (since those needs are often different than the actual creative implementation that generates that infrastructure). Venture Capital Every vibrant art form also has some kind of venture capital model, from financers of films and Broadway shows to venture capitalists in publishing and technology. Some of those communities are sophisticated enough to have created formal marketplaces for capital raising (for example, documentary film) while others have adopted venture capital models into new forms (for example, the artist granting organization Creative Capital). Venture capitalized business models often look something like:
The challenge with venture capital models are primarily in the courting of capital: people can spend years trying to put together a full slate of investors to trigger the actual creative work. Many give up before succeeding, and if they do succeed, then the pressure is on to deliver not just a completed creative work but a successful creative revenue stream. This is an even harder sell with innovation (unless you can show how youíll drink someone else's milkshake) because it makes everything seem more risky and risk raises the cost of capital. Three paragraphs per business plan is obviously skimming the surface of complex media business issues, but I'd like to extend that even further in the next installment and look at how multiple business models come together among the companies in the space (and thus potentially illuminate the kinds of innovations that will drive the next revolutions in transmedia.)
November 9, 2011
Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part Three)This is part three of a five part series by transmedia designer and theorist Brian Clark.
In the prior two installments, we looked at what might drive the next wave of innovation in storytelling and dissected the patronage business model that dominates the transmedia space today. In this installment and the next, I want to dive deeper into ten different alternative business models that we know work from other media movements in the hopes that they provide some inspiration to other entrepreneurial storytellers. The first handful treats funding and sustainability as the primary challenges: if you don't have access to millions of dollars, just how much capital do you really need? Do you need any at all? No Budget Some artists and art movements solve the business model problem by assaulting the very need for capital funding. They might treat funding as unnecessary (such as Theater of the Oppressed in the 1950s, the Dogma 95 film movement of the late 1990s or the subsequent Mumblecore movement of the early 2000s that embrace no budget as a choice) or might literally treat capital as the enemy (such as the dÈtournement of the Situationist International movement of the 1950s or modern Anonymousí physical and digital hacktivism). In the context of business models, their solutions look something like:
No budget movements are a healthy part of any artistic form: things get made all the time without having business plan justifications. The Internet and digital creative trends amplifies these kinds of models disproportionately because of the constant increase in tools that decrease the costs of production towards free. Sadly, it isn't decreasing the cost of your food, rent and healthcare towards free and no budget artists typically have more traditional jobs that pay those bills -- which might be, in part, why Lars von Trier doesn't still make films under the Dogma 95 model. Grassroots Sometimes, not having funding isn't an active choice but is definitely a current reality. This is familiar territory to independent artists and publishers, from pulp fiction zines of the 1930s through the punk D.I.Y. ethic of the 1970s to the Internet tradition of "grassroots alternate reality games" of this century -- you embrace your limitation as a virtue and make the most of it. For this "D.I.Y. ethic" style of grassroots, the business model solve might look like:
Rather than being entrepreneurial, the funding in grassroots efforts is ad hoc, doesn't really set revenue goals for sustainability and leaves little funding for promotion. Sometimes, for the artists, the connection and affirmation of an audience is still enough reward to make them want to do it again. Research & Development Hopefully, creating always involves learning new things, but sometimes the point of making it in the first place is to learn. The R&D arms of giant companies share this business model with entrepreneurial garage tinkers and both work in prototypes and proofs-of-concept. Some creators, most notably Lance Weiler, have started talking about "story R&D" as the explicit value to their experiments -- learning how to tell stories across all these new platforms and opportunities in relatively low capital risk environments. An R&D business model solve might look like:
The most inherent challenge in R&D models is that you're entrepreneurially deciding to push the return on your investment and sustainability to some future date. It requires some confidence (at least on the artist's part) that those kinds of R&D results are a predictable yield and tends (by necessity) to push the work into more experimental territory (because there is very little R&D yield in doing things you already know how to do).
This is essentially the same model I critiqued in the prior installment, but with a key difference: you've become your own patron, you've become your own client, and you're leveraging the tactical usefulness to your own potential benefit. Like the research and development model, that means you've pushed off revenue and sustainability to some future product those fans want that has its own business model as an investment in a renewable resource. Fan Funding Speaking of the power of fan bases, if you already have even a residual fan base, there are ways to replace funding with those fans. In the classic models, you'd call this pre-sales -- collecting money for a product you haven't made yet to fund the creation itself (often incentivized by some exclusive value add), a model quite common now in the videogame industry but also the classic underpinning of why magazines and newspapers offer annual subscriptions. The Internet's capabilities for crowdsourcing have made this an even more attractive model for independents, whether you're harnessing fans as angel capitalizers with a system like Kickstarter or selling a product that was manufactured "just in time" via a platform like Lulu. The business model might look something like:
The scale of this model is directed tied to the size of the fan base: George Lucas will always pre-sell more than you do, but a smaller group of fans could dramatically change the way a grassroots project might operate. Many creative properties (large and small) leverage this business model in serial with fan incubation -- when you're not pre-selling something, grow the overall size of the fan base as an investment in your next cycle of fan funding. In the next installment, we'll look at another handful of models that solve from the opposite direction: maximizing revenue instead of minimizing investment.
November 8, 2011
Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part Two)This is the second in a five part series on transmedia business models written by veteran crossplatform and indie media producer Brian Clark. DISSECTING THE "TRADITIONAL" TRANSMEDIA MODELS Most of the money fueling innovation in transmedia storytelling falls into one of three major buckets: entertainment properties created as extended experiences around a core media product; advertising properties created to advance the marketing of a brand; and issues advancing properties created to promote a topic or perspective. In the last installment, I proposed a "business model lens" for looking at some of issues hampering innovation in the new forms of storytelling. There's no better place to start than where the money is. The Danger of Tactical Functionality In truth, all three of these "traditional" transmedia models actually share the same business plan solution, one that focuses on the proven usefulness of transmedia as a tactical function. Let's take a look at the five business plan statements from the point of view of an entertainment, brand or issue property:
So if a big brand hires you to create a transmedia marketing campaign, they are actually hiring you to use transmedia tactics to accomplish some particular goal -- perhaps to sell cars or videogames, perhaps to increase brand awareness or enhance brand perception, perhaps to generate leads or social sharing. From the funder's point of view, the cost of doing it must be justified by the results they hope will be delivered. Big media brands work the same way as non-media brands in the current marketplace, because the budgets for those efforts are most typically from the marketing and promotions expenditures from the studio's point of view. The tactical goal might be different -- for example, film studios are often interested in "butts in seats" in the opening weekend as a marketing goal that they spend against -- but the focus on "transmedia as tactic" is identical. Issues projects are slightly different, but share most of the same attributes. From a grantor's point of view, the results your effort could create per dollar granted is being evaluated not just against the funder's mission but also against the submissions you're competing against for that same funding. Typically, the fees tacked on are much less than with brands and entertainment projects, and grantors typically are less willing to provide fuel for paid media promotion than financers who are in the business of paid media. The most noticeable difference between these three models is how they deal with the ownership of intellectual property. Brand marketing campaigns are nearly always a work for hire, which means you don't own the intellectual property you created because you were compensated to create it (although there are "branded entertainment" trends in those industries that are changing that). Entertainment properties tend to be similar, but as an industry they are more used to discussions regarding back-end percentages on direct revenue your work might create (and that trend towards "branded entertainment" is similarly impactful.) Issues funders are less likely to be focused on the ownership of the underlying IP, although some might put a re-compensation clause on funding that returns some small percentage of revenue back to the granting organization. Their greatest similarity is the focus on transmedia tactical usefulness to accomplishing particular goals. Being useful brings with it baggage. There is a tendency to treat the work as disposable, like an advertisement or a poster promoting a band's gig or a banner painted for a traveling sideshow. It can be beautiful, it can be moving, it can be groundbreaking, but these aren't the way the work will be ultimately evaluated. The goal will be accomplished or it won't, but continued activities require continued funding. Patronage as Lichen, Studio as Old Growth Forest Since ancient times, there has always been a deep connection between the arts and systems of patronage. In the modern media age (from say 1920s onward), those patrons and sponsors have become brands and studios and corporations instead of kings and churches. Even the meaning of the phrase "sponsor" has grown in modern parlance to have both the implication of commercial ("and now a word from our sponsor") and of patronage ("a proud sponsor of the Olympics") intertwined. The advantage for the sponsors has always been the platform to advance their own ambitions. Frequently, patronage is one of the first business models to develop in each periodic revolution in how media get delivered -- for example, the soap opera format first developed for radio that came about as branded entertainment for, you guessed it, soap manufacturers. Like lichen, it is the first part of the ecosystem that can thrive and that, in the process, lays the foundations for more complex ecosystems to develop (especially for those that are entrepreneurial in nature). Eventually, the media becomes so successful (and mass producible as technique, like "the movie ticket") that an industry will emerge -- like in publishing, radio, film, television, etc. You could think of some of those industries as old growth forest, one of the last ecosystems to develop that requires a level of stability in the environment. Much of the revolution you see in every other media is tied to disruptions and inefficiencies in those stable business models that allow for those old growth forests, and most of that is both created and solved by entrepreneurial independents working against/with the old growth forests. If we think that lichen is really cool and totally enough, patronage models are tremendous -- even those of us who aspire to more than that appreciate the fun of a nice big commercial innovation project. Many of my peers and I, though, hail from the more decidedly independent communities around music, film and new media. There, you work from the assumption that you'll probably never have access to the traditional system (but maybe you might) but still want to find a way to create a sustainable career making this kind of work. The transmedia movement has no traditional system to be excluded from, and the traditional system is the patronage model. What would it look like if the last hundred years of independent media business models were all research and development learning for this moment in time, before there was a real industry? In the next three installments, we'll go through ten business models that should provide inspiration for innovation.
November 7, 2011
Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part One)This week, I am going to be sharing a series of five guest blog posts by Brian Clark which are based on a lecture which he gave to the students in the Transmedia Entertainment class I have been teaching in the USC Cinema School. If you follow transmedia closely, you probably already know who Clark is. If you don't, check out some of his astute contributions to this panel from the 2009 Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT. (There are still a few seats left at this year's event which is bring held Friday and Saturday in Cambridge). What I admire about Clark is that he cuts through the crap. He's got a track record as someone who has worked across the entertainment industry and knows what's involved in creating and sustaining transmedia production. He brings street cred as someone who emerged from the worlds of indie music and filmmaking and who helped to create IndieWIRE. He has the pragmatic streak of someone who runs his own business and has to pay the bills, even as he enjoys the visionary speculations that excite many of us about the new forms of creativity that are emerging at the intersections between old and new media. And he's wickedly smart. When he spoke to my class, he brought all of that and more: this was a provocative presentation which described an array of different business models that might support the production of transmedia content as a challenge to the current economic and creative constraints which stem from the industry's reliance on promotional and advertising budgets as the primary driver of creative innovation in this space. I encouraged him to put the core ideas behind this lecture into writing and am happy to share this provocation with my readers in hopes that it will push all of us to think about what needs to be in place before our exploration of transmedia experiences can be sustainable.
In September 2011, media scholar Henry Jenkins invited me to deliver a guest lecture to his transmedia class at the University of Southern California to explore with his students some of the issues raised in an epic Facebook thread my friends and I engaged in back in May called "Reclaiming Transmedia Storyteller". Henry asked me to focus on exposing his students to some of the transmedia business models "beyond the mothership franchise model" -- a dichotomy I jokingly referred to in that Facebook discussion as the "East Coast / West Coast" contrast in the transmedia community. Coming Tomorrow: DISSECTING THE "TRADITIONAL" TRANSMEDIA MODELS
October 24, 2011
Making My Peace with The Bicycle Girl: Reflections on The Walking Dead Web Series
Earlier this semester, I was asked by Scott Walker to be the guest speaker at the Los Angeles Transmedia Meetup, an event which brought together a roomful of artists and entrepreneurs who are invested in making the concept of "transmedia entertainment" into a reality. Today, I wanted to share with you the webcast version of this exchange. If this whets your appetite for further discussions of these issues, it's not too late to register to attend the Futures of Entertainment conference being hosted by MIT on November 11-12. I will be speaking there on a panel with Sam Ford and Joshua Green, the co-authors of our forthcoming book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Society, and you can find more information here. In my opening remarks to the Transmedia group, I responded to the news that The Walking Dead was launching some webisodes in anticipation of their Second Season. My remarks were based on a news story I had seen that morning, which contained very little information about what was planned other than the news that it would center on "Bicycle Girl," a very memorable zombie character introduced in the series's opening episode. This news seemed to me a mixed blessing and as such, offered us a way to think about when and where transmedia extensions are appropriate or desirable. The discussion was a hypothetical one, a thought experiment, not intended as a criticism of the series producers, and I can now follow it up with some thoughts about the actual execution of the webisodes. On one level, the choice of "Bicycle Girl" as the focus is inspired. The character originates in Robert Kirkman's original graphic novel and despite appearing on only a few pages, remains a "haunting" figure. She is the first zombie we really get to know as an individual when Rick exits the hospital and his decision to, in effect, commit a mercy killing on this zombie punctures any easy divide between humans and zombies. I've long wanted to know more about this character and particularly I wanted to know whether there was any previous relationship between Rick and the human who had changed into this hideous monster. Clearly the producers also were fascinated with this figure since they devoted a video segment on The Walking Dead dvd release specifically to the making of this sequence.
1. She is an iconic figure. She's a character we remember. Her situation speaks to the larger themes and conflicts which structure The Walking Dead as a series. Often, transmedia extensions, for budget and contract reasons, end up working with secondary characters rather than the series leads. This is fine if the secondary characters are ones we care about, if they are ones who have a compelling role to play in the series. In fact, introducing alternative points of view on the action may be one of the most valuable contributions transmedia extensions can make. A series which did this right was The Wire, where they produced only a few highly memorable and meaningful webisodes, each focused around characters and character relationships which were meaningful and memorable in the context of the original series. Too often, producers work with who-ever is available and the results seems arbitrary and disappointing.
Why might it not be a good idea to return to the "Bicycle Girl" story? I have been finishing up an essay which explores the ways that The Walking Dead is and is not "faithful" to the original comic book series. In doing so, I argue that fans are ready to accept expansions and elaborations, even major changes in the continuity (especially those which allow them to explore other aspects of the character conflicts) as long as they are consistent with "the rules" (to borrow from Scream) which were established by Robert Kirkman. In this case, the "rules" are explicit; they emerged over time as Kirkman engaged with his fans through the letter column in the back of the comic. One of the core rules which Kirkman established was that we would never be given an explanation for why there are zombies and we are never going to go back and fill in the first 20 days of the zombie apocalypse. Here's one of the many times that Kirkman has explained his rationale: As far as the explanation for the zombies go, I think that aside from the zombies being in the book, this is a fairly realistic story, and that's what makes it work. The people do real things, and it's all very down to Earth...almost normal. ANY explanation would be borderline science fiction....and it would disrupt the normalness. In my mind, the story has moved on. I'm more interested in what happens next then what happened before that caused it all. Some in the original audience for my remarks assumed I was saying that there was a hole in Kirkman's construction that he was seeking to work around. I don't think so. I think this goes to what I call the active production of belief. I never much liked the phrase the suspension of disbelief, which seems to me far too passive to explain what happens when we consume a fiction. For me, belief is something that is achieved (not something simply accepted) and it is achieved through choices made both by the storyteller and the listener. In this case, Kirkman's impulses as a storyteller is that any explanation for the zombies would damage the credibility of the fiction he was constructing. This is not a problem with his story: it's a challenge in working with the zombie genre more generally, one all storytellers run up against, and especially a challenge of a version which strives for emotional realism in the ways Kirkman did. Given this particular "rule," which we might see as an informal contract between the producers and consumers, fans were understandably upset when the final episodes of last season took us to the Center for Disease Control and threatened to provide a "rational explanation" for the zombie attacks -- one grounded in the idea of contagion and epidemic. So, I was also defensive at the thought of telling the "Bicycle Girl" story which would mean going back to a time prior to Rick's awakening and thus increase the likelihood of the producer's trying to explain why there are zombies. As it turned out, I should not have worried. The producers of "Torn Apart" (as the Bicycle Girl webisode is called) were well aware of audience expectations around this issue and as a consequence, they take steps to avoid giving us anything substantive which might explain the outbreak. We get one dubious theory from a somewhat crazed neighbor that the zombie attacks might have been caused by "terrorists." We get a few snippets of news coverage before the power grid goes down and all communication gets cut off. We get the suggestions that whatever happened occurred very swiftly, allowing no time for people to prepare, and catching most of the population off-guard. None of this breaks the underlying logic of the "rule" even if it may push up against the letter. I spent a class session in my Transmedia Storytelling seminar walking episode through episode through "Torn Apart". The initial response was that the quality was not as high as was routinely achieved on the television series: the acting was more heavy handed, the scripting and camera work more obvious in calling out certain key plot points, and there was less time to fully explore the emotional consequences of certain moments of intensified drama. As we talked as a class, though, we came to a deeper understanding of how these aspects of amplification and simplification emerged from the specifics of production for the web. There were production constraints, in terms of budget and time, which made it hard to achieve the same quality in the web productions as could be achieved on the show itself, and this becomes an issue when what happens on the web is intended to be read as "part" of the television series, a problem which transmedia producers of all kinds will need to address. We discussed the similarities and differences from how these problems are confronted by student filmmakers (at USC film school and elsewhere) and exploitation filmmakers, both of whom dealt with limited time and money, and worked within short form as opposed to long form storytelling. And we discussed the very different interpretive frames consumers bring to such work, excusing imperfections in favor of ambitions in both cases, because we understand the constraints on what could be done. A second discussion centered around the compression which occurs here. The more closely we looked at the construction of this web series, the more impressed we were by how tightly integrated the details were. Every line, every plot point connected to something else, so that by the end, this was a very classically constructed story with many intensely melodramatic moments and with no loose ends. There are choices here the class debated, such as the decision to recenter or decenter key aspects of this story from the "Bicycle Girl" onto her ex-husband or other members of her family, or the relative arbitrariness of how the "Bicycle Girl" becomes a zombie, despite the elaborate back story with which we were presented (and whether this was consistent with the sense that anything could happen at any time that is part of the logic of The Walking Dead series as a whole.) The short length of these segments seems to suggest a prevailing industry logic that people only want to watch things on the web which are less than five minutes long (shorter depending on which web expert you talk with) but we can start to question this logic when more and more of us are watching full episodes or feature length movies on our computers through Hulu and iTunes. In the class setting, it quickly became tiresome to have to wade through a pre-roll commercial and credits before getting into the next chunk of the story, and in this case, all of the episodes were released on the same day which means that the serial process was perhaps wasted on this content. That said, part of what we were trying to discuss in class was the twin logics of seriality, which depend on chunking (the creation of meaningful bits which cohere in any given chapter) and dispersal (the shifting of interests and attention onto what is coming next through cliff-hangers and enigmas, both of which are well illustrated in the construction of this particular series). Some of the more interesting discussion centered around the placement of this episode in the overall flow of The Walking Dead series -- as a bridge between the first and second series. I often hear people talk about the nonlinear quality of transmedia, saying that the parts can be consumed in any order. This is technically true in the same sense that we can read any chapter in a book in any order we want, but we often choose to read the book in a desired sequence. Or we can read any book in a series we want, but again, most readers choose to follow the author's preferred order. Transmedia (at least as Hollywood currently practices it) has to be designed so that any given extension can function as a point of entry into the series and so that only the "mothership" is essential to the experience, but that does not mean that there is not considerable thought put into the timing with which different extensions are introduced into the franchise. In this case, there is a conscious decision to create something which refers back to the very first episode of The Walking Dead rather than following on from the end of season one, especially in the context of a series which has been sparing with flashbacks and which tends to have a strong forward momentum. We also felt that the focus here on children at risk connected very strongly to the core themes which surfaced in the opening episode of the second season, with certain moments in the webisode having direct parallels in the television episode many of us would watch shortly after. Beyond this, there is a nice balance in the webisodes between relying on information hardcore fans have acquired through watching the series (such as what happened in Atlanta or what they know at CDC, both plot points here which were already answered in the series) and creating something which could be an "attractor," a point of entry for first time viewers which might draw them into watching the series itself. There is a lot more that transmedia producers and consumers can learn from looking closely at this example: indeed, my hope is that we can move the conversation about transmedia from broad definitional debates to this kind of close reading, which helps us to learn what works and what doesn't in the current work being done in this space.
September 16, 2011
Announcing Futures of Entertainment 5 ConferenceRegistration Open for Futures of Entertainment 5 We're excited to announce that registration has officially opened for our fifth Futures of Entertainment conference, which will begin on 11/11/11. The conference--which will run Nov. 11-12--will be held at the Kirsch Auditorium on the first floor of the Frank Gehry-designed Ray and Maria Stata Center on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, MA. Full details on the line-up as it stands is below. Registration is available here. Please keep in mind that seats are limited, so--if you plan to attend--register soon. The Futures of Entertainment conference brings together professionals from academia and the marketing and media industries to discuss how communication between media producers/brands and audiences are changing, and how the nature of storytelling is shifting in a digital era. On Friday, we will tackle some of the pressing questions and new innovations on the media horizon: new models of media creation and distribution--and challenges/questions related to participation--in a "spreadable media" landscape; new models aimed at representing fan interests in media production; innovations in crowdsourcing for content creation, funding, and distribution; the impact of location-based technologies and services; and privacy concerns raised by these developments. On Saturday, we will look at particular media industries to how these innovations are evolving: serialized storytelling; children's media; nonfiction storytelling; and music. The conference will run from 8:30 a.m. until 6:45 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a reception scheduled for Friday evening. On Thursday evening, Nov. 10th, from 5-7, MIT will be hosting an "eve of FoE" Communications Forum event on "Cities and the Future of Entertainment" in the Bartos Theater in MIT's Wiesner Building. Cities and the Future of Entertainment. Today, new entertainment production cultures are arising around key cities like Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. What do these changes mean for the international flow of media content? And how does the nature of these cities help shape the entertainment industries they are fostering? At the same time, new means of media production and circulation allow people to produce content from suburban or rural areas. How do these trends co-exist? And what does it mean for the futures of entertainment?
Introduction:
Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Society. How are the shifting relations between media producers and their audiences transforming the concept of meaningful participation? And how do alternative systems for the circulation of media texts pave the way for new production modes, alternative genres of content, and new relationships between producers and audiences? Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green--co-authors of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media--share recent experiments from independent filmmakers, video game designers, comic book creators, and artists and discuss the promises and challenges of models for deeper audience participation with the media industries, setting the stage for the issues covered by the conference.
Collaboration? Emerging Models for Audiences to Participate in Entertainment Decision-Making. In an era where fans are lobbying advertisers to keep their favorite shows from being cancelled, advertisers are shunning networks to protest on the fans' behalf and content creators are launching web ventures in conversation with their audiences, there appears to be more opportunity than ever for closer collaboration between content creators and their most ardent fans. What models are being attempted as a way forward, and what can we learn from them? And what challenges exist in pursuing that participation for fans and for creators alike?
Here We Are Now (Entertain Us): Location, Mobile, and How Data Tells Stories. Location-based services and context-aware technologies are altering the way we encounter our environments and producing enormous volumes of data about where we go, what we do, and how we live and interact. How are these changes transforming the ways we engage with our physical world, and with each other? What kind of stories does the data produce, and what do they tell us about our culture and social behaviors? What opportunities and perils does this information have for businesses and individuals? What are the implications for brands, audiences, content producers, and media companies?
At What Cost?: The Privacy Issues that Must Be Considered in a Digital World. The vast range of new experiments to facilitated greater audience participation and more personalized media content bring are often accomplished through much deeper uses of audience data and platforms whose business models are built on the collection and use of data. What privacy issues must be considered beneath the enthusiasm for these new innovations? What are the fault lines beneath the surface of digital entertainment and marketing, and what is the appropriate balance between new modes of communication and communication privacy?
Saturday: Introduction:
The Futures of Serialized Storytelling. New means of digital circulation, audience engagement and fan activism have brought with it a variety of experiments with serialized video storytelling. What can we learn from some of the most compelling emerging ways to tell ongoing stories through online video, cross-platform features and applications and real world engagement? What models for content creation are emerging, and what are the stakes for content creators and audiences alike?
The Futures of Children's Media. Children's media has long been an innovator in creating new ways of storytelling. In a digital era, what emerging practices are changing the ways in which stories are being told to children, and what are the challenges unique to children's properties in an online communication environment?
The Futures of Nonfiction Storytelling. Digital communication has arguably impacted the lives of journalists more than any other media practitioner. But new platforms and ways of circulating content are providing vast new opportunities for journalists and documentarians. How have--and might--nonfiction storytellers incorporate many of the emerging strategies of transmedia storytelling and audience participation from marketing and entertainment, and what experiments are currently underway that are showing the potential paths forward?
September 6, 2011
Back to School Special 2: Syllabus for my Transmedia Entertainment ClassOne of the challenges of teaching cutting edge subject matter is that you need to totally revamp your syllabus each time you teach a class. The following is the updated syllabus for the class on Transmedia Entertainment I am offering this term through the USC Cinema School. Our long-range hope is that a significant number of the students studying film production at USC will end up with a basic conceptual vocabulary in transmedia storytelling and will thus enter the industry already able to collaborate across media platforms in a meaningful way. Indeed, I would argue that the "movie brats" who have long been poster-children for the Cinema School, the guys whose names are on the buildings -- Spielberg, Lucas, Zemeckis, were never "pure filmmakers" in the classical sense but had always worked across media platforms and indeed, paved the way for contemporary transmedia practice. So, USC is the appropriate place to be developing such a subject. As you will see, the class relies heavily on guest speakers from across the media industry and it also relies on a simulation activity in which our students develop transmedia proposals (including Bibles) and pitch their approach to a panel of industry experts. I am not a designer and so can not teach the design and production aspects of transmedia fully, but I try to tap the full range of creative talent in the class to see how far we can push their thinking, using a model I developed at MIT where I taught an interactive design class from the late and much missed Sande Scordos from Sony Imageworks. Transmedia Entertainment
Required Book: Recommended Book: All additional readings will be provided through the Blackboard site for the class. 1) the core defining properties of the media property For a potential model for what such a book might look like, see the transmedia bible template from Screen Australia, available here: http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/filmmaking/digital_resources.aspx. Or visit: http://zenfilms.typepad.com/zen_films/2010/06/transmedia-workflow.html. If you use either as a model, include only those segments of their Bible templates which make sense for your particular property and approach. Required Readings: TUESDAY, AUGUST 30th Required Reading: Recommended Readings: Speaker: Alexander Seropian, Disney Interactive
Recommended Readings: Student Team Meetings
Required Reading:
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20th Required Reading: Recommended Reading: Speaker: Brian Clarke, GMD Studios
Reading: Recommended Reading: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4th Reading: Speaker: Geoffrey Long, Microsoft TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11th Reading: Recommended Reading:
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18th Recommended Reading: Speaker: TBD, Campfire
Reading: Speaker: Mark Warshaw, The Alchemists
Readings: Tuesday, November 8th Recommended Readings Student Team Meetings
Reading: Student Team Meetings
Work on Student Presentations
August 1, 2011
Transmedia 202: Further ReflectionsThe above video was shot by Scott Walker during one of my presentations at San Diego Comic-Con, during which I spoke about some of the controversy which has surrounded the definition of transmedia over the past six months or so. I've largely stayed out of these conversations, though you can find a very good summary of the debates here. I've been focusing on other projects and also I've been more interested in the shapes these discussions take than seeking to intervene in them directly, but over the summer, in a range of venues, I've been pushing and proding at my own definitions to see if I can capture some of my own shifting understandings of transmedia, especially as I am preparing to teach a revamped transmedia entertainment class at USC. Today, I am going to try to put some of this still evolving thinking into writing in hopes that it helps others sort through these issues. Much of this is covered in the above video so if you process things better in audio-visual than in print, you have your options. I've heard some gossip that Jenkins was going to issue a "new definition" of "transmedia": this is no where near as dramatic an overhaul as that, just some clarifications and reflections about definitions. This definition still covers, more or less, what I mean by transmedia storytelling: 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. So, consider what follows Transmedia 202, to compliment my earlier Transmedia 101 post. Given the sheer range of people who have embraced (latched onto?) transmedia, we should not be surprised that:
So, let's start at the top with convergence, which in Convergence Culture, I describe as a paradigm for thinking about the current moment of media change, one which is defined through the layering, diversification, and interconnectivity of media. Convergence contrasts with the Digital Revolution model which assumed old media would be displaced by new media. Aspects of this convergence model are shaping decisions of media producers, advertisers, technologists, consumers, and policy-makers, and thus convergence has many different aspects and consequences. Transmedia, used by itself, simply means "across media." Transmedia, at this level, is one way of talking about convergence as a set of cultural practices. Keep in mind that Marsha Kinder in Playing with Power wrote about "transmedia intertextuality", while I was one of the first to popularize the term, transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling describes one logic for thinking about the flow of content across media. We might also think about transmedia branding, transmedia performance, transmedia ritual, transmedia play, transmedia activism, and transmedia spectacle, as other logics. The same text might fit within multiple logics. So, for example, we could imagine Glee as a transmedia narrative in which we follow the characters and situations across media, but more often, Glee's transmedia strategies emphasize transmedia performance, with the songs moving through YouTube, iTunes, live performances, etc., which we read against each other to make sense of the larger Glee phenomenon. So, there are some people who think that transmedia is simply a form of branding: I would rather argue that branding is one thing you can do with transmedia, but when I speak about transmedia storytelling, that is not the central focus of my interest. I am focusing on emergent forms of storytelling which tap into the flow of content across media and the networking of fan response. Some people have argued that transmedia is simply another name for franchising. Franchising is a corporate structure for media production which has a long history and throughout much of that history, there has been an attempt to move icons and brands across media channels, but not necessarily an attempt to extend the story in ways which expanded its scope and meaning. Most previous media franchises were based on reproduction and redundancy, but transmedia represents a structure based on the further development of the storyworld through each new medium. For a good guide to the history and practices of franchising, watch for the forthcoming book by Derek Johnson, who has been doing extensive thinking on this topic. Much of franchising has been based on licensing arrangements which make it hard for media producers to add or change anything beyond what is already in the primary text or the mother ship. True transmedia storytelling is apt to emerge through structures which encourage co-creation and collaboration, but as Johnson notes, the more a media producer moves in this direction, the greater the challenges of coordination and consistency become. I have sometimes talked about a distinction between adaptation and extension as fundamental to understanding these shifts. Basically, an adaptation takes the same story from one medium and retells it in another. An extension seeks to add something to the existing story as it moves from one medium to another. Christy Dena has challenged making such a cut-and-dried distinction. Adaptations may be highly literal or deeply transformative. Any adaptation represents an interpretation of the work in question and not simply a reproduction, so all adaptions to some degree add to the range of meanings attached to a story. And as Dena notes, the shifts between media mean that we have new experiences and learn new things. To translate Harry Potter from a book to a movie series means thinking through much more deeply what Hogwarts looks like and thus the art director/production designer has significantly expanded and extended the story in the process. It might be better to think of adaptation and extension as part of a continuum in which both poles are only theoretical possibilities and most of the action takes place somewhere in the middle. What the adaptation-extension distinction was intended to address was additive comprehension, a term borrowed from game designer Neil Young, to refer to the degree that each new text adds to our understanding of the story as a whole. So, the Falling Skies graphic novel is a prequel which tells us about the disappearance of the middle brother and thus helps to provide insights into the motives of the characters on the Turner television series. In this case, additive comprehension takes the form of back story, but the same graphic novel also helps us to better understand the organization of the resistance movement, which we can see as part of a world-building process. Most transmedia content serves one or more of the following functions:
I have been troubled by writers who want to reduce transmedia to the idea of multiple media platforms without digging more deeply into the logical relations between those media extensions. So, if you are a guild, it matters deeply that you have a definition which determines how many media are deployed, but for me, as a scholar, that is not the key issue that concerns me. As we think about defining transmedia, then, we need to come back to the relations between media and not simply count the number of the media platforms. So, again, let's imagine a continuum of possibilities. We might start with the notion of seriality. Seriality would imply the unfolding of a story over time, typically through a process of chunking (creating meaningful bits of the story) and dispersal (breaking the story into interconnected installments). Central to this process is the creation of a story hook or cliffhanger which motivates the consumer to come back for more of the same story. Historically, seriality occurs within the same text. So, we've seen American television evolve over time between highly episodic structures (more or less self-contained) to much more heavily serialized structures. Most shows, though, combine elements of the episodic (a procedural plot which can be wrapped up in a single episode) and the serial (an evolving character relationship, an unfolding mythology, a larger plot within which the individual episodes work as chapters.) The shift towards seriality on American television plays a large role in preparing audiences for transmedia storytelling. Most transmedia stories are highly serial in structure, but not all serials are transmedia. So, Bones, say, is a partially serialized drama which, for the most part, remains within a single medium. But we can think of examples where there is a movement across texts or across textual structures within the same medium. I describe this in terms of "radical intertextuality." So, for example, the DC and Marvel universes create dozens of titles which are seen as inter-related. Characters move between them. Plots unfold across them. Periodically, they may have events which straddle multiple book titles, and part of the pleasure of something like Marvel Civil Wars is that we see the same event from the point of view of multiple characters, who may have conflicting perspectives on what is happening. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica unfolds across multiple television series, mini-series, and stand-alone movies. If Battlestar remained in a single medium, television, then it would be another example of radical intertextuality. But, because Battlestar extends this process to include webisodes and comics, which are understood as part of the same continuity, then we call it a transmedia story. So, let's call this next level Multimodality -- a term coined by Gunther Kress to talk about how educational design taps the affordances of different instructional media, but applied by Christy Dena to talk about transmedia narrative. The key point here is that different media involve different kinds of representation -- so what Green Lantern looks like differs from a comic book, a live action movie, a game, or an animated television series. Each medium has different kinds of affordances -- the game facilitates different ways of interacting with the content than a book or a feature film. A story that plays out across different media adopts different modalities. A franchise can be multimodal without being transmedia -- most of those which repeat the same basic story elements in every media fall into this category. For me, a work needs to combine radical intertextuality and multimodality for the purposes of additive comprehension to be a transmedia story. That's why shortening transmedia to "a story across multiple media" distorts the discussion. So far, nothing here implies that particular media need to be involved for something to become transmedia. One can construct a high end transmedia system (a major blockbuster movie or network television show and its extensions) and one can construct a low end transmedia system (a low budget and/or independent film, a comic book or web series as the spring board for something which might include live performance or oral storytelling...) Some have tried to argue that games are a key component of transmedia, but I do not want to prioritize digital media extensions over other kinds of media practices. For this reason, it is possible to find historical antecedents for transmedia which predate the rise of networked computing and interactive entertainment. I am not preoccupied with the "newness" of transmedia. The current push for transmedia has emerged from shifts in production practices (shaped by media concentration, in some cases) or reception practices (the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media), but it has also come from the emergence of new aesthetic understandings of how popular texts work (shaped in part by the rise of geeks and fans to positions of power within the entertainment industries). The options available to a transmedia producer today are different from those available some decades ago, but we can still point to historical antecedents which were experimenting with notions of world building and mythology-modeled story structures in ways that include both radical intertextuality and multimodality. In that way, you can say that L. Frank Baum (in his focus on world building across media), Walt Disney (in his focus on transmedia branding) and J.R.R. Tolkien (with his experiments in radical intertextuality) each prefigure transmedia practices. Similarly, I've argued that Obama is as much a transmedia character as Obi Wan is. I do not mean by this simply that our everyday lives are conducted across multiple media platforms, though this is true. I also mean that we tend to connect those dispersed pieces of information together to form a story, that the story we construct depends on which media extensions we draw upon (Fox News vs. The Huffingston Post), and that there are architects who seek to coordinate and construct the range of meanings which get attached to that story. In that sense, the Obama story, as constructed by his campaign, includes both radical intertextuality and multimodality. When I wrote Convergence Culture, I focused the transmedia discussion around The Matrix, while including a side bar which discussed The Beast as an Alternate Reality Game. I understood that ARGs had something to do with transmedia, but my use of the sidebar structure allowed me to dodge the tougher question of whether ARGs are transmedia, and that's where some of the most heated debates in recent years has occurred. The Hollywood based model of transmedia assumes a story told or a world explored across not simply multiple media but multiple texts, which can be sold to audiences separately and which represent multiple touch points with the brand. (Note, for my definition, it really doesn't matter if the texts form a single narrative or multiple stories set in the same world, since in practice, most transmedia includes multiple plot lines which can be dispersed in different ways across the installments.) The ARG model, however, assumes that multiple media can contribute to a single entertainment experience. So, we are more likely to talk about The Beast, I Love Bees, or The Lost Experience as completed texts in their own right (as well as in all three cases as part of larger entertainment franchises). Different groups have different stakes in drawing lines distinguishing or integrating these two models. It is important to understand what they are each trying to accomplish, but I am less invested in defining in or out one model or the other. I just think this is a space which deserves closer conceptual work than it has received so far. Both could meet my emphasis on radical intertextuality and multimodality and both can deliver on the promises of additive comprehension. Another debate worth monitoring here has to do with issues of audience participation in the development of a transmedia property. These debates break down into two sets of issues. The first has to do with the differences I draw in Convergence Culture between interactivity and participation. For me, interactivity has to do with the properties of the technology and participation has to do with the properties of the culture. Obviously, in practice, both may come into play in the same text. So, for example, a computer game stresses interactivity and thus preprogramed entertainment experiences. Fan culture is high on participation, where fans take the resources offered by a text and push it in a range of directions which are neither preprogrammed nor authorized by the producers. When people claim that interactivity is a core element of a transmedia experience, I want to make sure we are using the term in the same way. We can imagine a range of different relations which fans might have to a transmedia property. On one end would be the hunting and gathering practices of finding the dispersed pieces of information and figuring out how they all fit together to form a meaningful whole. On the other end, we might have playing through a level of a game, working past obstacles, killing bosses, and gathering objects. But we might also think about various forms of fan performance -- from fan fiction to cosplay -- which are more participatory and open ended and less dependent on the design choices of the transmedia producers. A second set of issues has to do with continuity vs. multiplicity. Most discussions of transmedia place a high emphasis on continuity -- assuming that transmedia requires a high level of coordination and creative control and that all of the pieces have to cohere into a consistent narrative or world. This is a practice which is hard enough to achieve across the multiple divisions of the same production team and it becomes hard for fans to contribute directly to the development of a narrative which places high emphasis on continuity. Indeed, many projects which claim to tap "user-generated content" do so in ways which protect the "integrity" of the continuity at the expense of enabling multiple perspectives and more open-ended participation. They make the author or some designated agent an arbiter of what counts within the canon. On the other hand, there are forms of commercially produced transmedia which really celebrate the multiplicity which emerges from seeing the same characters and stories told in radically different ways. This focus on multiplicity leaves open a space for us to see fan-produced media as part of a larger transmedia process, even if we then want to try to sort through how different elements get marked as official canon or fan alternatives. Sorry this has gotten so complicated, but I think part of the problem is that many people are looking for simple formulas and a one-size-fits-all definition, trying to delimit what transmedia is. But, we are still in a period of experimentation and innovation. New models are emerging through production practices and critical debates, and we need to be open to a broad array of variations of what transmedia means in relation to different projects. I wrote in Convergence Culture that convergence practices, for the foreseeable future, will amount to "kludges," jerry-rigged attempts to connect different media together, as we all figure out what's going on and what works well. There is no transmedia formula. Transmedia refers to a set of choices made about the best approach to tell a particular story to a particular audience in a particular context depending on the particular resources available to particular producers. The more we expand the definition, the richer the range of options available to us can be. It doesn't mean we expand transmedia to the point that anything and everything counts, but it means we need a definition sophisticated enough to deal with a range of very different examples. What I want to exclude from this definition is "business as usual" projects which are not exploring the expanded potential of transmedia, but are simply slapping a transmedia label on the same old franchising practices we've seen for decades. As a way to promote more conversation, please send me your questions, critiques, and other responses to hjenkins@usc.edu, and I will try to respond in a future post.
July 18, 2011
Imagining Television's Futures: An Interview with Intel's Brian David Johnson (Part One)Shortly after I arrived at USC, Brian David Johnson from Intel came to the office to interview me for a book he was developing on the future of screens and entertainment. I was giddy from having taught the first session of my Transmedia Entertainment class, and we had a great exchange about the relations between consumers and technology and how it might impact our future relations to television and other entertainment media. The interview was included in Johnson's book, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment Computing and the Devices We Love, which was released last year. Johnson's book combines interviews with key thinkers about media's future from both academia and industry with his own reflections on recent technological developments being developed at labs and what their long term implications may be. After years of teaching at MIT, I am often skeptical of work on media which starts from a technologist's perspective since they rarely factor in the social and cultural dimensions of media. Johnson is a notable exception -- a deep thinker who groks the interface between technology and culture, who may work for industry but also understands the consumer perspective on why we love television and what we want to get out of watching our favorite series. So, I recommend his book to anyone who wants to expand their thinking and learn about the visions of screen futures which are driving technological development at Intel and a range of other companies. Johnson was nice enough to sign on to let me reverse the microphone, so to speak, and do an interview for this blog. Over the next few installments, Johnson will share some of his current thinking. Here, he talks about television in relation to such trends as ubiquitous computing and social media, and shares some of the factors which drove him to produce this book. Here's Johnson's official bio which should give you a clearer sense of where he is coming from: The future is Brian David Johnson's business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2020. His work is called "future casting"--using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to provide Intel with a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Along with reinventing TV, Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and using science fiction as a design tool. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment Computing and the Devices we Love, Fake Plastic Love, and Nebulous Mechanisms: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.
I love that quote! I have tremendous respect for Asimov not only as a science fiction writer and a thinker but also as a person who brought science and conversations about science into the mainstream. When I was writing Screen Future I actually had two books always within reach. The first was Richard Feynman's The Character of Physical Law - his collection of lectures and the second was a collection of Asimov essays The Planet that Wasn't. Asimov was such a good writer, easy to understand and quite funny - that people had no problem reading about the intricacies of planetary motion or the theoretical planet of Vulcan. Both Feynman and Asimov were passionate communicators and conversationalists. Feynman was known as the great explainer, while Asimov was the great popularize of science.. You describe yourself as a "Consumer Experience Architect." What does this entail? What kinds of expertise and insight shape your models of the consumer experience? What factors are shifting the consumer experience of television? Are the changes being driven by shifts in technology, in business practice, or in social and cultural expectations? I'm going to give the answer that I give to my engineering colleagues. But I have to warn you that they hate this answer. So I kind of like giving it to them. The answer to your question is....yes. The answer is yes. All of the above. The changes in consumers experience with TV are due to all of the factors you mentioned. Let's look at each one and see if we don't uncover some more.
July 1, 2011
Now Available: Transmedia Hollywood 2 VideosDue to technical difficulties, we've been delayed in sharing with you the videos from our April Transmedia Hollywood 2 conference, jointly sponsored by the cinema schools at USC and UCLA, and hosted this year at UCLA. We hope to be back next April at USC with a whole new line up of speakers and topics, which we are just now starting to plan. In the meantime, check out some of these sessions, which should give the ever expanding Transmedia community plenty to chew on this summer. As for myself, I'm flying down to Rio, even as we speak. Transmedia Hollywood 2, Visual Culture & Design: Denise Mann Opening Comments from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo. Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, Annenberg School of Communication, USC. (Some of my comments here got me into trouble at the time and I hope to post something here soon which explores the issue I raise here about the role of radical intertextuality within the same medium.) Transmedia Hollywood 2, Visual Culture & Design: Henry Jenkins Opening Comments from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo. Panel 1: "Come Out 2 Play": Designing Virtual Worlds--From Screens to Theme Parks and Beyond Hollywood has come a long way since Walt Disney, circa 1955, invited families to come out and play in the first cross-platform, totally merchandised sandbox -- Disneyland. Cut to today and most entertainment corporations are still focused on creating intellectual properties to exploit across all divisions of the Company. However, as the studios and networks move away from the concrete spaces of movie and TV screens and start to embrace the seemingly limitless "virtual spaces" of the Web as well as the real-world spaces of theme parks, museums, and comic book conventions, the demands on creative personnel and their studio counterparts have expanded exponentially. Rather than rely on old-fashioned merchandising and licensing departments to oversee vendors, which too often results in uninspired computer games, novelizations, and label T-shirts, several studios have brought these activities in-house, creating divisions like Disney Imagineering and Disney Interactive to oversee the design and implementation of these vast, virtual worlds. In other instances, studios are turning to a new generation of independent producers -- aka "transmedia producers" -- charged with creating vast, interlocking brand extensions that make use of a never-ending cycle of technological future shock and Web 2.0 capabilities. The results of these partnerships have been a number of extraordinarily inventive, interactive, and immersive experiences that create a "you are there" effect. These include the King Kong 360 3D theme park ride, which incorporates the sight, smell, and thunderous footsteps of the iconic gorilla as he appears to toss the audience's tram car into a pit. Universal Studios and Warner Bros. have joined forces to create the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new $200 million-plus attraction at the Islands of Adventure in Florida. Today's panel focuses on the unique challenges associated with turning traditional media franchises into 3D interactive worlds, inviting you to come out 2 play in the studios' virtual sandboxes. Moderator: Denise Mann Panelists:
TH2 Panel 1: "Come Out 2 Play" from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo. Panel 2: "We're Looking For Characters": Designing Personalities Who Play Across Platforms How is our notion of what constitutes a good character changing as more and more decisions get made on the basis of a transmedia logic? Does it matter that James Bond originated in a book, Spider-Man in comics, Luke Skywalker on screen, and Homer Simpson on television, if each of these figures is going to eventually appear across a range of media platforms? Do designers and writers conceive of characters differently when they know that they need to be recognizable in a variety of media? Why does transmedia often require a shift in focus as the protagonist aboard the "mothership" often moves off stage as extensions foreground the perspective and actions of once secondary figures? How might we understand the process by which people on reality television series get packaged as characters who can drive audience identification and interest or by which performers get reframed as characters as they enter into the popular imagination? Why have so few characters from games attracted a broader following while characters from comics seem to be gaining growing popularity even among those who have never read their graphic adventures?
TH2 Panel 2: "We're Looking for Characters" from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo. Game On!: Intelligent Designs or Fan Aggregators? A similar revolution is taking place in the post-network television industry as creators form alliances with network marketers in an effort to reach out to engaged fans. Many of the cutting-edge creative team at Smallville forged this path in the wilderness, creating innovative on-line campaigns that they later took to Heroes. Fans avidly pursue TV creators who incorporate an arsenal of visual design elements derived from films, comic books, games, web-series, and theme park rides in the series proper and in the online worlds. Experimenting with ways to reinvent an aging medium and buoyed by a WGA strike that assigned derivative content to showrunners, the question remains whether these creators won the battle but lost the war as more and more network dot.coms have asserted control over the online interactive entertainment space. Do web-series like Dr. Horrible and The Guild represent the next frontier for enterprising creators or can creative personnel learn to play within the confines of the corporate playground? We will ask creators from both industries -- gaming and television--to explain their philosophy about the intended and unintended outcomes of their interactive properties and immersive entertainment experiences. Marketers clearly love it when fans become willing billboards for the brand by wearing logo T-shirts, deciphering glyphs, or joining mysterious organizations such as Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves, and Trolls, and then sharing clues, codes, and supporting content across a virtual community. These and other intriguing questions will be posed to the creative individuals responsible for designing many of these imaginative and engaging transmedia worlds. Moderator: Denise Mann
TH2 Panel 3: "Game On!" from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo.
The rules for how to structure a Hollywood movie were established more than a century ago and even then, were inspired by ideas from earlier media -- the four-act structure of theater, the hero's quest in mythology. Yet, audiences and creators alike are still trying to make sense of how to fit together the chunks of a transmedia narrative. Industry insiders use terms such as mythology or saga to describe stories which may expand across many different epochs, involve many generations of characters, expand across many different corners of the fictional world, and explore a range of different goals and missions. We might think of such stories as hyper-serials, in so far as serials involved the chunking and dispersal of narrative information into compelling units. The old style serials on film and television expanded in time; these new style serials also expand across media platforms. So, how do the creators of these stories handle challenges of exposition and plot development, managing the audience's attention so that they have the pieces they need to put together the puzzle? What principles do they use to indicate which chunks of a franchise are connected to each other and which represent different moments in the imaginary history they are recounting? Do certain genres -- science fiction and fantasy -- embrace this expansive understanding of story time, while others seem to require something closer to the Aristotelian unities of time and space? Moderator: Henry Jenkins Panelists:
TH2 Panel 4: "It's About Time!" from UCLA Film & TV on Vimeo.
June 24, 2011
Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters...Yesterday, J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame announced a bold new online venture called Pottermore which has sent shock waves through multiple communities which I follow closely and I've had more than a few people already ask me to weigh in on my initial thoughts about what's taking place. Keep in mind that, as Will Rogers used to say, all I know is what I read in the newspaper. I have no knowledge of what's taking place here other than what's already in the press and what I can speculate about from my knowledge of the announcement's fit within a range of trends impacting social media, transmedia entertainment, Web 2.0, and fan culture. Here's the video of Rowling's announcement, which you should watch, if you haven't already, so the rest of this makes sense. Now, let's consider what this announcement means from several perspectives. Pottermore as Transmedia Storytelling: This may be the most highly visible transmedia project to date -- after all, Harry Potter is as big a media franchise as we are likely to see anytime soon. I've blogged before about the paradoxical nature of Harry Potter fandom:
Relatively little of the official Harry Potter media produced to date has been transmedia in the sense that I use the term -- as an extension of the information we have available about the world rather than as a replication of the story from one medium to another. I've been suggesting lately that we might identify transmedia projects through the combination of two factors - radical intertextuality (that is, the complex interweaving of texts through the exchange of story-related information) and multimodality (that is, the mixing of different media and their affordances in the unfolding of the story). Pottermore works at both levels.
By far, this is the aspect of the announcement which has caught fire with fans, especially those who have been worried that the intensity of the fandom will fade once the last film is released into the theaters. Trust me, there's been lots of mashing of teeth about this. No one thinks that Harry Potter fandom will go away completely -- we've seen many fandoms long outlast the production of new material -- but there is apt to be less intensity and visibility once the final film hits the theater. For these fans, Pottermore is a game changer. Here, for example, is some of how HPANA, one online Harry Potter fansite, responded to the news:
Those are high hopes for the author to meet. On the other, there is the promise of multimodality represented by what's been described as interactive "moments" introduced around the books -- including a sorting hat process and a wand shop -- which allow fans new ways of interacting with the story. For literary critic Lev Grossman, who has been a key enthusiast for the books, this aspect of transmedia causes him to pause: When publishers mix reading with other media, the way Pottermore does (or the way that The 39 Clues, another Scholastic creation, does), I find it confusing. Every time I see more of the Potterverse realized in other media, as video or audio or even still images, it undoes the work I did by reading about it. It takes away from the marvelous, handmade Potterverse I've got going on in my head and replaces it with something prefabricated. Those of us who are more enthusiastic about transmedia see it differently: we see these materials as expanding our knowledge and deepening our experience of the story (at least in so far as they are done well and everything about Potter has been done well) by allowing each medium to do what it can do best. There's been lots of talk about whether there has been a killer demonstration of the potential of transmedia -- this may well become that killer demo, for better or for worse, and I for one am going to be watching closely to see what happens next. Pottermore as eBook: The Wall Street Journal has read the Pottermore story through the lens of ebook publishing and the future of authorship, and it's a pretty significant story from that perspective also. Here's part of what they speculate: While her publishers and major online book retailers will continue to sell her physical books, Ms. Rowling has reserved for herself the digital editions, the fastest-growing segment in the book world. The move could inspire other authors, large and small, to pronounce themselves independent agents in hopes of tapping more lucrative paydays. Ms. Rowling refused for years to release her books in electronic format, retaining the digital rights for herself. While most other authors have already handed over their digital rights to their publishers--most recently, John Grisham--Ms. Rowling's deal could prompt them to self-publish when their deals come up for renewal or demand higher royalty rates than the 25% of net sales that most publishers offer today on digital editions. Some may even choose to forgo all traditional means of book publishing and set up their own bookstores, reaping 100% of everything they sell.I am following the world of epublishing closely these days, thanks to my affiliation with the Annenberg Innovation Lab which is launching its own epublishing division. Few authors at this point can exert such power over their own publications and few have the ability to set new terms of professional compensation. Read through this lens, it may be a comparable to when George Lucas took a smaller salary on Star Wars in return to a percentage of the revenue from ancillary products, a decision which helped paved the way for Star Wars as a ur-text for transmedia storytellers and entertainers. Rowling recognizes that it is not enough to offer a digital offset of the books via Kindle but that ebook publishing represents its own kind of event, which enables her to further expand the reader's experience through new content and new ways of interacting with the material. Her continued involvement with the social network of her fans moves the ebook from a product to a process - not a one time thing, but something which can draw back people who have already read the seven books and watched the eight films to have a new set of relationships with the story. So, again, the announcement is big news. This has become increasingly true for Rowling, who has shown many signs that she wants to continue to shape and control how fans respond to her work well after she finished writing it. We can see this in the epilogue to the last novel, which seems to pointlessly map out futures for all of her characters, including shaping the "ships" (relationships) between them, in what amounts to spraying her territory. Many fans would have preferred a text which was more open ended on that level and allows them more freedom to speculate beyond the ending. She decided to "out" Dumbledore not through the books but via her own discourse around the books. She tried to shut down the Harry Potter Lexicon. So, it is abundantly clear that she likes some of her fans more than others and that any effort to facilitate fan interactions also represents an attempt to bring fandom more under her control. Two key phrases stood out for me in the announcement: "digital generation" and "safe," both of which require some glossing here. Harry Potter has attracted a very strong adult readership, many of whom would not conventionally fall into the digital generation. Even among those who come from the digital generation, many of those who grew up reading the books, are now young adults, even in some cases, parents on their own. And then, there are the children readers who were the targeted audience for the books. The most active fans, as noted above, are often a "surplus audience," and may well not be children. This doesn't matter when the book can be purchased at a range of different locations, read in a variety of contexts, but if you try to bring that readership together online, then the tensions are apt to become more of an issue. That's where the term, "safe," is a red flag. In this case, it can mean two things -- first, a space where you can read the stories without encountering any of that dratted "pornography" that some (many actually) of the adult fans have been producing. I remember talking to Warner executives when I was working on Convergence Culture who kept saying they wanted to distinguish between the "fans" and the "pornographers," and I couldn't bear to tell them that most of the erotica is produced by the fans and is part of what it means to them to be a fan. So, "safe" in those terms means censored, regulated, or policed. So, the promise is that "You," "Us," will help shape the future of the franchise but only in terms specified by Rowling and by the companies involved in overseeing this site. Here enters a second potential meaning of the word, "safe," which is that the site will comply with the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (or its British equivalent) which sets restrictions on the exchange of personal information, especially by minors. (For a useful discussion of how the desire to protect children may also restrict their ability to meaingfully participate, check out this recent post by Anne Collier.) So, does this mean that Pottermore will become the literary equivalent of Club Penguin, social media without the potential for off-line social interactions, and how does this fit within the larger framework of social relations upon which Harry Potter fandom, like all other fandoms, depends. Moving beyond the word, "safe," there's the potential that this follows the logic of Web 2.0 more generally which seeks to capture and commodify participatory culture. There are multiple concerns here, which I need to know more to be able to address. While the language of the video hints at a more open-ended structure of participation, wherein fans share their thoughts, speculations, and creative works with each other, the only features specifically described constitute preprogramed interactivity -- such as the Sorting Hat -- which sets the terms of our engagement with the storyworld. I might note that Harry Potter fandom has been among the most innovative in helping fans make the transition to the era of social networks -- having developed their own platforms and practices since the book was first published -- including several very sophisticated versions of the Sorting Hat. Which house you identify is deeply personal to Harry Potter fans. I strongly identify with my affiliation with Ravenclaw, so why should I cede to Rowling and Sony the right to decide which house is mine! So, in this case, Rowling is offering fans what they already have on their own terms and using the release of information as a bribe to pull them into her walled garden. (Keep in mind that the information is going to get spoiled and leaked the moment it is posted.) If, on the other hand, she does allow for more creative and participatory engagement of the material on the site, that opens other questions already hotly debated along the borders between Web 2.0 and Participatory Culture. Abigail DeKosnik, for example, has described the bargain fans often are forced to make -- ceding all rights to their own intellectual property in return for the promise, easily revoked, of corporations not suing them for their efforts. Others have described this in terms of issues of fan or free labor -- people are doing creative work for free which benefits corporations without getting any revenue in return. Lawrence Lessig has gone so far as to describe this as a modern form of "sharecropping." This is a complicated issue and we have a lot to say about it in my forthcoming Spreadable Media book. I am not prejudging the terms that Rowling and Sony are offering here. I am just saying that the platform as described raises these questions and we need more information before we can really weigh whether Rowling is treating her fans fairly here. She's been surprisingly supportive of fan culture in the past, but on a selective basis, which does not give us much guarantee on how this one is going to shape out. The devil is going to be in the details here and those are going to be rolled out over the next few months. Could Rowling's "gift" to her fans turn out to be a Trojan Horse? Hell yes, but it may also open the door for some other creative opportunities along the lines discussed in the earlier sections of this post.
June 18, 2011
Keeping Your Sanity While Engaging Your Audience Through TransmediaOne of the questions I am most often asked about transmedia is whether this is a game for multinational media conglomerates or whether this strategy has something to offer independent and alternative filmmakers. This post, which was sent to me by the fine folks at Tribeca Film, tells the story of one such film and how they dealt with the challenges of creating a transmedia property on a shoe-string budget. Keeping Your Sanity While Engaging Your Audience through Transmedia. by Jen Begeal Summary: A successful transmedia project doesn't require a big budget or a large team. It just requires patience and foresight. Transmedia projects have multiple points of entry that follow multiple storylines across several platforms. This kind of attention to detail can be overwhelming to a small team, and let's face it, most transmedia projects function on micro budgets. Asking your audience to jump down the rabbit-hole with you requires finesse, timing, and above all energy. With so many moving parts it can be a daunting task to keep a project from becoming completely overwhelming. In the spring of 2010 I joined a transmedia project already underway, called Zenith. Focused around a film (which was not set to release for months), our small team was tasked with designing and building a campaign that would invite our audience to engage with the film's central themes and incorporate them into their own stories. This is how we did it. Zenith is a science fiction thriller, which takes place in two separate time periods: the present day and the year 2044. The film alternates between the realities of the two main characters: Ed Crowley, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and his son Jack, a drug-dealing ex-neurosurgeon. Ed predicts a future where a hidden society controls the minds and actions of the population. Ed's future - Jack's present - has become a bleak reality where people are permanently numb, yet pay dealers like Jack for pain from expired prescriptions. Jack is pulled into his father's quest for the truth behind this genetic experiment when he is presented with the first in a series of ten VHS tapes that Ed has left behind. Zenith's director, Vladan Nikolic, first conceived the concept of multiple entry points for a project years before the advent of Facebook and Twitter. It wasn't until production got underway in 2008 that Internet technology had reached a point to where it could lend itself to an engaging multimedia experience. The term "transmedia storytelling" was the latest buzzword in the film community and its definition closely matched that of the filmmaker's vision of a new form of storytelling. The transmedia project was multi-tiered. The first tier, an outreach campaign, was developed to connect with bloggers in the gaming, film, science fiction and conspiracy theory communities. The initial goal of the campaign was to get people talking about the conspiracy theory portion of the project, called Stop Zenith. With a tag line of "What is Zenith?" the outreach garnered mixed reactions, some bloggers were afraid they had been accosted by a group of conspiracy theorists while others embraced the deception with the understanding that this was all part of a much larger project. Partnerships with other websites were also developed, like that between Zenith and Above Top Secret (ATS), a conspiracy website with a multi-million member fan base. These partnerships were instrumental to attracting a larger, more engaged audience. They also showed our team that to keep the conspiracy plot moving, we had to think fast and build out our story lines with intelligence. The second tier of the project was to develop online personalities who we would use to encourage conversation about Stop Zenith. One of my roles as a member of the transmedia team was to create over a dozen Twitter, Facebook and YouTube personalities to carry out the Stop Zenith message. While the concept was easy enough to start, we quickly found that managing so many feeds with such time and budget constraints were nearly impossible. Shortly afterward we scaled back the number of characters as well as their functions, limiting them to posting on The Conspirist, a transmedia blogging site. Another concept we fleshed out was the VHS tapes. Ed's creation of and Jack's hunt for the tapes is a core component of the film. Our hope was that by releasing portions of the tapes from the film across video platforms like YouTube, we would attract an audience that would want to create their own versions of the tapes and continue the story. We started by asking friends and colleagues to create and post their own videos, and then reached out to others in the community. Though a few people were happy to jump on board, the reality was that many people were still not comfortable with downloading a video file from an undisclosed source to edit on their own and re-post. We released six tapes in total, the final of which correlated with the film's release. After the initial theatrical release of the film we scaled back on the Stop Zenith project, which had been planned early on. We instead turned our focus onto the second part of our distribution strategy, a cross-platform launch that incorporated the DVD with a VOD release while the film screened in independent theatres across the country. This unique strategy earned a lot of press for the film and the transmedia project. Filmmakers began to question whether a festival release (which Zenith chiefly avoided) was still a necessary requirement for an independent film. As Zenith made its calculated progression across platforms we took the time to build a new social media presence in the form of a singular Facebook page and Twitter feed to provide updates on the film's distribution, showings, release information and reviews. Zenith was met with both rave reviews and harsh criticism, which is to be expected with any experimental project. Some members of the audience embraced the transmedia component; others found it clunky and difficult to navigate. Overall, based on our viewing numbers and the amount of press we received, it can be concluded that we achieved success beyond any of our expectations. While certain components of the transmedia project worked before the release of the film, such as the outreach campaign, the partnerships and the websites, others benefited from the film's theatrical release and distribution, including the campaign with the tapes and the social media element. While I don't believe every film needs a transmedia component, independent filmmakers shouldn't rule it out. Transmedia storytelling is a creative way to engage with a film's audience and Zenith proved that you don't need a big budget or large team to pull off a project that gets noticed. ZENITH 2011 TRAILER from Surla Films on Vimeo. Jen Begeal is a Social Media Strategist for Ride5 Media Group an award-winning creative agency in New York. She has worked as a Transmedia Producer for films such as Zenith and mindFLUX, and she is an active member of the New York Transmedia community. Follow Jen on Twitter @jlbhart or @zenithfilm.
June 16, 2011
How Do You End a Cult Series?: Fans RespondI asked for your thoughts about how cult series should end and in particular your expectations and responses about the resolution of Smallville. Here are your responses: Hello: I watched Smallville at the beginning and kind of faded out when Jonathan died. I left it alone for a couple of years and picked it back up again in season 8. I've since watched all the episodes in order and truly love the series for so many reasons. The messages were so positive, family was important, good, truth, justice and all the things that we seem to be lacking or maybe I should say we're trying to uncover again. I thought the end of the series was excellent. I truly was not disappointed other than learning it took another seven years for Clark to marry Lois. I'm not a comic book fan so I don't know what's happening in that reality. As far as Chloe goes, my impression was she was happily married to Oliver, she's a mother and she's still involved in the Justice League albeit in a role that keeps her anonymous for her protection and the team's. Given her propensity to stick by Clark no matter what, I can't imagine Chloe doing anything else with her life. It would have been nice for them to work Lana in there somehow. I wanted to know what happened to her but I wasn't disappointed per se. Hope this is what you were looking for. I'm just so grateful not to have a St. Elsewhere or Dallas kind of ending. As it was done, Smallville and Superman live on. Happy writing! Kim Kloes
Hi Allison I have been watching Smallville since my dad had me watch it with him which was "Justice" in season 6 as my starting episode. It was awsome and I have loved your character ever since. And just between u and me I think chloe was more fun with Oliver then Jimmy. Besides the Finale what episode do u think u liked the most of the ones u were in for season 10? For ur role I think the best was probably "Masquerade with Desaad" but u looked like u had a lot of fun with "Fortune." What kinda props did u take home when the season ended? Did kristen and erica not like each other that much because after season 5 they actually (and i looked back) had only 6 scenes together in 2 whole seasons. Or was it the writers who did that? Im sorry if this is a little akward and u dont have to answer but i always wanted to know was it akward that u and tom knew each other for 9 years and u guys did a naked scene together in season 9 in "Escape"? With Silver Banshee? I think thats enough questions and I loved Smallville and I will always love it. I also was happy with Chloes ending being a recruiter of heros, a mom, and still a reporter. Your character always developed in fun ways and whats good is that it never changed it just kept adding on. Thanks, Justin your Smallville fan
My 1st response is about the show: The most awesome part about it is that, because of it's origins of Comic books, it already had it's core fan base; Those that weren't comic book geeks are more abstract/contemporary viewers.
Wow, you are a brave person, opening up your inbox to comments from a horde of Sci-Fi fans :) I appreciate the opportunity to weigh in, so I'll keep my comments brief. I'll lead off my comments by pointing out that there's obviously no way they could have satisfied everyone with the finale, especially with a Canadian TV show budget. If you did everything all of the fans wanted, you'd spend a hundred million dollars, which was clearly not in the cards. I also note that many folks appear to be quite satisfied with the finale. For my part, though, I found the finale to be monumentally unsatisfying, but not for the reasons that are being cited by many. My only expectation was that I expected the producers handling the finale to deliver a cohesive, meaningful story that wrapped up the TV series, its characters, and its plotlines during their last outing, and it is in this basic storytelling respect that it really came up short. The best example of this fact is the way in which the Lois and Clark wedding was handled. The fact that Lois and her relationship with Clark was so important to his destiny was one of the truly innovative and memorable things about this season and a really novel, welcome addition of the Superman mythos; the storyline and accompanying great performances by the two actors really enhanced the show. They ultimately built up the wedding into one of the prime narrative drivers of the season, to the point where it took up half of the time in the series's final episode. The Lois and Clark wedding was, of course, also heavily hyped by the network. If you spend that much time building up to something, you have raised audience expectations to the point where you really, really, need to cohesively deliver a satisfying resolution onscreen. Instead, the wedding gets interrupted at the halfway point to the show, we get to the end of the final episode, there's a brief 7-year flash forward sequence, and the two main characters still aren't married. As a viewer, my response to that moment was roughly: "WHAT?!!! Are you kidding me? All that buildup and this is what we get?" The fact that the ending of the show establishes that they are still trying to get married is really just a bad storytelling decision. It rudely snaps the viewer out of the story. This ending raises a host of uncomfortable questions that the viewer really shouldn't have been induced to ask, since they completely ruin the "suspension of disbelief" that is absolutely required for a show with an (admittedly zany) premise like this one. Questions like: Why didn't they just finish the wedding in the parking lot with the minister 7 years before? Why did it take so long for them to try to get married again? More importantly, why haven't Superman and Lois Lane, of all people, not been able to find a day--or heck, even an hour--in seven years to finish their 90% done wedding, which had been portrayed as immensely important to them both for an entire season? You make time for what's important, and waiting seven years is very much out of character for them. The Lois character in particular goes from "never accepting defeat" just two episodes prior to apparently blithely accepting defeat in the case where her own wedding doesn't get finished. Bottom line: the whole thing just defies belief, and having a prime narrative focus of the series be handled in this fashion really makes no sense. What makes it even more frustrating is that there are any number of ways this plotline could have been handled more satisfyingly; I for one would have been A-OK if that last scene had just established that they were were married offscreen at some nebulous point beforehand, which would have been shockingly easy to do (a simple "Hello, Mrs. Kent" would have worked just fine...). Instead, although we did get lots of wedding-related character moments and the ending clearly shows that the two characters are still together, the viewers categorically did not get a satisfying onscreen narrative conclusion to the season-long wedding plotline. You spend that much time building up to something, you have to deliver, and they did not. It would be interesting to hear about the thinking that went into this decision; to a completely average TV viewer such as myself, it is absolutely befuddling, and I just felt insulted by the way that the wedding plotline was handled. It felt like my time had been wasted for an entire season. Now, I don't know if the non-wedding was mandated by the studio or was a misguided effort to leave the viewer "wanting more", but no matter whose responsibility it is, it was a huge mistake to end that plotline (and the show) in such a nonsensical and unsatisfying manner, especially when handling it in a more straightforward and crowd-pleasing way would have been just as easy and let them tell the same story. The completely illogical conclusion to the wedding plotline is emblematic of other, similar problems in the finale, like (for example) the bizarre Chloe-and-the-comic book framing story that gives away Clark's identity already noted by many, as well as the fact that (despite two seasons of some pretty thick foreshadowing) we never get to see Lois name Superman and reveal him to the world, a fairly important and defining moment for both characters. In the cosmic scheme of things, of course, it doesn't really matter. Griping about the final episode is of course a symbolic gesture at this point since the show is over, we'll never see the actors in these roles ever again, and everyone (myself included) is moving on. But, that's just why I think some people remain frustrated. The producers apparently took the position "We don't need to show [insert really important Smallville character milestone here] on our TV show, since we all know from [insert comic book or movie here] that it will eventually happen!". Well, that's just lazy. As a fan of the TV show, I wanted to see these iconic story moments with "our" versions of these characters, and that's what the viewers really didn't get. I had always held off buying the Smallville DVDs, because I knew there would inevitably be a big box set at the end of the series, and I knew that for me the payoff from the destination (the finale) had to be worth making the journey. Let's face it, this show had some real clunkers along the way. Unfortunately, the final episode (and in particular, that final scene, where the two main characters are inexplicably not married after a whole season of buildup) was such a let down that I'm not going to waste my time and hard-earned money on the DVDs in order to relive a journey that has such an unsatisfying destination. Which is kind of a shame. Thanks again for the opportunity to offer an opinion! I don't mind if you utilize the preceding paragraphs for public consumption, but I would request that my identity remain anonymous. Cheers, I am a huge Smallville, Superman fan and have been from day one. I am also involved heavily in the online fandom on various sites including Twitter and Kryptonsite forums so I have a very good idea of how the Finale of Smallville was perceived. Generally, I've only come across a small minority who didn't enjoy the finale for various reasons and unfortunately these people are also the most vocal. I wish I could write a logic piece analyzing bit by bit how the writers broke the contract with the audience they established in the pilot. I'm a writer myself (in Spanish, English is not my first language as you probably can tell in my bad grammar) and I studied for years creative writing, plot points, chekhov guns, the journey of the hero and the heroine....so many other treaties about the art of writing and if the writers really think they did their job I pity any new fans that engage into their projects because they lack basic storytelling skills. But I can't. I'm still mourning. The connection the first five years created with this characters and me was strong and powerful, and it was downhill from them on and in the end they just destroyed it, to a point that all I can feel is rage thinking about it. I wish I could be more rational about it, is just a TV show that no one will remember in 10 years (maybe because of the horrible ending), but I can't. I was in love with Smallville. I usually call it my only abusive relationship, always believing the promise that the good times will come back and kept coming back for more mistreatment almost every week, like a beating husband that brings you flowers and promises not to hurt you again and you forgive because you are in love, but then the beatings continue coming and in the end you end up dead. This is what Smallville did to me. It killed my faith on TV series. I will say I haven't seen any other series and I don't plan to, I can't have faith again. Heroes started great and also ended in a mess, and the perfect TV series Pushing Daisies was canceled. There are many other great series that also suffered the same faith so is obvious that TV shows are stale like Hollywood movies are becoming now with nothing new or original just rehash, unlikeable characters and bad writing that they cannot see it for the life of themselves. I really hope the producers of Smallville are really happy about being part of the many problems I have with TV that lead me to quit it altogether. For as much as they say this is the planned ending for the last 10 years I would love to see the original planned ended script or layout, I'm pretty sure it was totally different. As for my kids I will be buying DVD of good TV shows of the past for them to actually enjoy watching good stories. Star Trek TNG for example, also finished in its own terms and their ending was perfect, IMO. It got closure for all the characters, gave us a glimpse of the future that was logical for them in most ways and opened new possibilities, organically integrating even the special guests....just perfection in writing. But new TV shows and cable networks can keep airing bad written shows and Reality TV 24/7 if they want to. This viewer, that was willing to purchase the special 10 seasons package of Smallville if only the ending would had been...decent, Is going to take her disposable income and investing on good stories and people that are willing to actually do their homework and keep their promises, YMMV as usual. Thanks again for the chance and who knows I might be able to write something proper in the future, at this point I just can't. Ana Bastow
Editor's Note: Thanks to everyone (whether fan or professional) who took the time to share with me your thoughts on Smallville's ending or on the ending of cult series more generally. There were many different and sometimes conflicting perspectives expressed here, and it's worth remembering the range of production contingencies and restrictions which also figure into this process.
June 11, 2011
Going Beyond the Ending: A Wrap UpThis week, this blog has been using the debate about Smallville's ending to raise some larger questions about how cult series ends and how producers might deal with fans who are disappointed or frustrated or enraged or betrayed or... with the outcomes. Seeking to place this debate in a larger context, I reached out to Flourish Klink,who graduated with a Masters from the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program (where I was her proud mentor) and now, alongside teaching at MIT, works as the Chief Participation Officer for the Alchemists, advising this transmedia company about fan relations and participatory culture. She always has interesting things to say about the interplay between producers and fans, so I wanted to give her a chance to weigh in on this discussion. Cult series always seem more satisfying to fans in the middle than at the end. How do you think producers should deal with the expectations which have built up over the run of the series? Are there classic mistakes which producers make in trying to respond to fan frustration with the ending of a program? One of the most important aspects of dealing with expectations is to be honest about the situation, the possibilities, and the fact that not everybody is happy. One of the most classic mistakes that producers make is to become very defensive about their own work, suggesting that the way the show (or book, or...) ended is the only way it could have ended. Obviously, producers and writers and actors get just as wrapped up in their own long-running projects as fans do, so sometimes they become very certain that they're doing the right thing!
What franchises do you think have done the best job in resolving the competing expectations that surround the final episode of a favorite series? Even though lots of fans disliked the final season, I think that Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a very good job - and it did a good job of using multiple shows and multiple media to let fans choose what view of the universe they wanted to take. Fans can choose to only watch Buffy - or also watch Angel - or also read the Season 8 comic books. Depending on what they chose to do, what they choose to consider their own personal "head canon," they can enjoy their own ideas about the series. What's more, whether you liked or disliked the final episode of BTVS, nobody was able to say that it wasn't climactic. BTVS somehow managed to have an apocalypse every season and still raise the stakes every season. If that's possible, no other show has an excuse for not having a climactic final episode! For those who want to have a better understanding of how one can be a fan, even a very loyal fan, and actively seek to write around or think around disappointing elements in the original series, I'd recommend checking out my chapter on Beauty and the Beast in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Here was a series that many, though not all, fans thought took a wrong turn which violated the genre contract the producers had made with their viewers and many chose to disavow an entire series and proceed with the fandom as though it had never existed as part of the canon. Now, I want to share two letters I received from other fans who wanted to share their thoughts on the ending of cult series. I would be happy to see more such letters at hjenkins@usc.edu and will publish more if they come. Do let me know if you intend your letter for publication.
From Eugenia:
Sometime during Season 3, I had decided that there were three types of resolutions to this series. These were:
1. Everyone dies According to the laws of narrativium and story logic [1], this was the most likely resolution. Hints, or what other writers call "foreshadowing", in this direction were themes such as humanity wasn't fit to survive and children didn't come into their own until their parents were eliminated. Minor plots centered on schisms in the population leading to violence, characters suffering fatigue both mentally and physically, and characters becoming addicted to mind-altering substances. Logically these actions would have led to depleting resources to the point the fleet would be unable to defend or sustain itself. 2. Most of the main characters survive Given Moore and Eick's manifesto [2] which described their "re-imagining" as "Naturalistic Science Fiction" and which stated, "Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series", something resembling an optimistic ending was the least likely resolution. After several seasons of "gritty realism", bleakness, and despair, the reversion to something resembling a traditional ending where the "good" guys win would be tantamount to an admission of failure of their "re-imagined" series. Rationalizations of following the original series are mere excuses. Moore and Eick never felt obligated to follow anything in the original series beyond the title, the character names (even then demoted to "call signs" or last names), and the general design of the eponymous spaceship. It's absurd to even bring up Galactica: 1980 to justify the ending; that series wasn't titled Galactica: 148,000 BC. In light of the "critical acclaim" of the series in the first two seasons, this conclusion to the series was possible if Moore and Eick sought to reinstate their favoured position with the critical intelligentsia. The typical ingredients of postmodern works are evident in the series: style over substance, juxtaposition of different elements, references to past works, combination of the "lowbrow" and "highbrow", ambiguity, nihilism, and self-awareness of the artificial contrivance involved in creating the "work". Frequently accompanying postmodern literature or art is the author's stated intention to make it "difficult" for the reader or viewer. Not only difficult in interpreting it, but also even reading or looking at it due to the revolting subject matter. These traits were evident in the series with its use of documentary (cinema-verite) camera work, the "re-imaging" of a "cheesy, 1970's TV show" into something "complex" with "layers of meaning", the disjointed narrative which frequently shifted time frames leaving gaps in the storyline, the monotone colour scheme of the costumes and sets making it difficult to distinguish characters, and viewers constantly being referred to deleted scenes and podcasts to fill in the gaps. Adding to the difficulty in understanding the storyline was demanding the viewer to shift frames of reference in quick succession. At times it was space opera, at others it was contemporary drama, and at still other times abstract symbolism. A frequent trait in postmodern literature is the author making an appearance in the story itself, so Moore's cameo in the final scenes was not unexpected. What is claimed as sophisticated and erudite is merely confusing as the postmodern approach repeatedly disrupts the "suspension of disbelief" which narrative fiction relies on. The conclusions of such works are often self-referential or circular in that they return to the beginning.
Basically the conclusion was a traditional "happy" ending in which most of the main characters survive and a quick addendum of the postmodern self-referential with a few final swipes at the original series. Moore and Eick just couldn't resist making the "Guardians" (old-school Cylon centurions) all on the "evil" side and obliterated. They just couldn't resist pitching the whole fleet into the sun accompanied by the original 1978 series title music played at the tempo of a dirge [3]. They just couldn't resist one last potshot regarding the original Baltar's beheading/non-beheading [4]. WHY IT DIDN'T WORK FOR ME It contradicted the underlying assumption of the science fiction genre. Underneath the spaceships, lasers, funny-looking makeup, etc. is the ideal that the scientific method enables progress through a greater understanding of the physical world. As such, it allows humanity to determine its own destiny by surviving threats of extermination from disease, natural disasters, and predators. The finale succumbed to the romantic notion of the "noble savage" living in harmony with nature by giving up material possessions, advanced technology, and accumulated knowledge. In essence, these Colonials sentenced their direct descendants to ignorance and a minimal existence. This is the antithesis of the science fiction genre's foundation. The series conclusion reveals that the "optimism" that Moore and Eick criticized as unrealistic in Star Trek was actually a lack of understanding on their part of the values inherent in the scientific method and Western civilization. The cyclical "what has happened before, will happen again" typifies Eastern traditions. Destiny is preordained meaning when it come right down to it, an individual or civilization having no "free will". References to the "Head" people as angels who are acting in accordance with God's instructions is actually in direct opposition to the original series "Beings of Light". The "Beings of Light" represented the possibility of humanity's evolution to a higher state yet they could not "interfere with freedom of choice [5]", unlike the "re-imagined" series "Head" people who directly interfered and acted in the capacity of fate or destiny. Various comments regarding comparisons of the original series to the "re-imagined" series indicate that some viewers weren't paying attention or were not able to recognize recurring themes without a character pontificating at length. When the original series mentioned that Kobol's [6] civilization migrated and abandoned technology, it stated: "And when they settled the Colonies, they turned on the very technology that could have saved them had they used it properly [7]". This theme is later alluded to in dialogue referring to the Cylons as "a race of beings who allowed themselves to be overcome by their own technology [8]". Technology wasn't considered evil in and of itself, but that it could be misused either intentionally or through over-reliance. The original series connected the themes of "free will" and the use of technology. These themes are intertwined in the episode "War of the Gods" and complement the surface mythic storyline. In being seduced by technology, there is the danger of losing one's humanity or soul. To retain "free will", and thus humanity, it was deemed necessary to maintain family, community, and knowledge through religious, educational, political, and military structures. To submit blindly to another power is to lose "free will" and the ability to determine one's future. This point was again visited in the episode "Experiment in Terra" with the words: "I came from a world where the people believed the opposite of war was peace. We found out the hard way that the opposite of war is more often slavery. And that strength -- strength alone -- can support freedom [9]". [1] The force that holds the story together as defined by Terry Pratchett.
June 10, 2011
How Should Cult Series End?: A ReponseLast time, I posed the question of how to end a series which has attracted a passionate and committed fan following -- using Smallville as our central example. Today, I wanted to give some of the people associated with the series a chance to respond and share some of their perspectives on trying to close out Smallville's tenth and final year as a television series. Specifically, I asked them to reflect on how they closed off the Chloe Sullivan storyline which some fans had come to see as emblematic of what it means to be a professional women in the early 21st century. As I mentioned last time, I am grateful to Mark Warshaw of the Alchemists for his help in arranging for these responses. The first comes from Kelly Souders, an alum of USC's Graduate Screenwriting Program, who joined the Smallville team, with her creative partner Brian Peterson as staff writers and finished their ninth and final season on the show as Executive Producers and showrunners. Kelly's frank and intelligent discussion of the challenges of constructing and managing transmedia characters was a highlight of this year's Transmedia Hollywood 2 conference, as you will see when we release the videos of that event through this blog late next week. What are some of the challenges you face in trying to bring about closure to something as long-form as a cult television series like Smallville? Honestly, "challenges" is a polite way to put it. Trying to sum up a decade of stories and characters, trying to sum up that season's arc, trying to give people as much as they can (knowing even a major feature film couldn't do it and they aren't following a nine day shoot and many other tv constraints) is pretty much... impossible. But, the benefit of a ten year show is that the people that are there after so long are there because they are passionate. And everyone gave 150%. Given the diverse investment fans make in such series, what steps can producers take to live up to their expectations?
Some fans have expressed concern that the ending of Smallville effectively has "undone" some of the character development from the rest of the series, for example closing off Chloe's career ambitions. How would you respond to these concerns?
This second response comes from Allison Mack, the actress who played the part of Chloe Sullivan, and has now moved on to do stage work: I want to begin this response by stating how moved and honored I am to know that a piece of work I was involved in creating over the last decade has inspired such passion, commitment and support. I believe our ability to have deep emotional experiences is what makes life worth living. Knowing that I was and am a small part of inspiring this type of experience is more gratifying than I can express. Thank you. I would love to hear what you are thinking. As I did with the discussion of committed relationships and Castle, I am going to suggest you send your responses to me directly via e-mail at hjenkins@usc.edu so you don't have to face the headache of my spam catcher. I will post as many responses as I can through the blog proper. Please be clear if you are sending this personally to me or want to see it published. So, if you are a Smallville fan, what did you think about how the series ended and how might you like to see the series extended in new directions, as Mack suggests here? And if you are not a fan of Smallville, share your thoughts about the endings of other cult series. Which ones were handled the best? Which were handled the worst? What steps can producers take in responding to fan disappointments around the series? What would you like to tell "The Powers That Be" about how cult series should end? Next time, I will share some closing thoughts and we will hear from Flourish Klink, a former student of mine who is now Chief Participation Officer for the Alchemists, and perhaps from some of you.
June 8, 2011
When Bad Things Happen to Good Series, or How Should Cult Series End?The May 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly included a list of what they saw as the most controversial television series finales; they included Lost, The Sopranos, Seinfeld, Saint Elsewhere, and Newhart. The piece was timely since as I was reading it, I was hearing of some of the controversies surrounding several of the cult television series which concluded this season. Reader Polly Robinson shared with me an interesting set of developments around Stargate:Universe getting canceled. I wrote some time ago about the ways Stargate fans worldwide had lobbied to keep this franchise in production. In this case, the much publicized Universe extension had been canceled by the SyFy Network after only two seasons and dedicated fans wanted an explanation. Craig Engler, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Syfy Digital, went on the GateWorld blog to offer an explanation, offering some interesting behind the scenes insights into how cable networks make decisions about how long and in what ways to prolong struggling series. Not every fan was satisfied by Engler's answers, but most appreciated his efforts to help them understand what had happened. About the same time, I received an email from Margaret J. Bates, a longtime Smallville fan, who was disappointed with some of the narrative choices made in that series final episodes. Bates had been part of an effort featured on this blog to produce a television commercial paying tribute to the character of Chloe Sullivan, though she wanted me to be clear that the opinions she expressed were her own and not necessarily a reflection of that movement as a whole. I asked her to frame her concerns in a way that I could share them with you via this blog and this is what she had to say:
Craig Byrne, webmaster of KryptonSite and author of five Smallville licensed companion books, offered this account of fan response to the final episode: I think the general response to the finale of Smallville is dependent on what the viewer signed up to see. There are people who were elated that their favorite characters ended the series together, and there were people who celebrated the fact that after ten years, Clark Kent has become Superman. There is some negative reaction - some have complained about the computer-generated Superman and lack of full-on Superman from Tom Welling, and others didn't care for having Lex Luthor forget everything - but there is a strong feeling that the show at the very least was able to go into a series finale and conclude itself rather than having the network make the decision for them. Inspired by what GateWorld had done to help fans get some closure on the ending of their series, I reached out to contacts I had with the Smallville production team via Mark Warshaw of The Alchemists, who had developed some of the original transmedia content around the series. Through his help, we've been able to talk with several folks associated with the program, and their responses will run next time. I should be clear that I have only seen a limited number of episodes of Smallville and so am not taking my own position on this, but since I was in a situation to help clarify things between the producers and the fans, I am offering this website as a channel of communication. I welcome your feedback on the conclusion of Smallville or of other cult series, and will run a special reader's response post, if I hear back from enough people. Send your comments directly to me at hjenkins@usc.edu and signal if they are intended for publication.
June 3, 2011
Coming Soon: Acafandom and BeyondIn the summer of 2007, this blog hosted a rich series of exchanges concerning "gender and fan studies," which paired male and female researchers together to reflect on the impact that gender had on their work. We are still feeling the impact of these exchanges in terms of new collaborations between researchers and new paradigms for approaching our shared interests. This summer, the blog is going to host another large scale conversation, this time focused on the concept of the Acafan and the kinds of work this term has done for helping us to sort through our complex emotional and intellectual relationships to our object of study and the equally complicated relationship between our professional lives as fans and who we are in our personal lives. We wanted to expand the concept to bring together people from Game Studies, Critical Race Theory, Performance Studies, Queer Studies, and Gender Studies, who are confronting similar issues surrounding the role of subjectivity and cultural criticism. This time, we are working with groups of three, a number purposefully chosen to avoid binaries and force us to collectively find common ground across a range of perspectives. Each week, we will have three short 500-1000 word provocations coupled with the transcript of an exchange between the three contributors. Public discussion sparked by these provocations will continue at a yet to be designated spot on Live Journal and periodically I will be sharing highlights from this larger public discussion through this blog. We want as many fans, academics, and acafen to weigh in on these topics as possible and will do our part to give you stuff to chew on all summer long. The discussion has been organized and will be moderated by Kristina Busse, Drew Davidson, Henry Jenkins, Louisa Stein, and Karen Tongson. This series builds upon a series of exchanges in the Fan Studies world over the past year around the concept of the "Acafan," including a rich discussion last summer through Jason Mittell's and Ian Bogost's blogs, a special issue of FlowTV, and a Society for Cinema and Media Studies panel organized by Louisa Stein. Contributors for the series are also drawn from participants in Drew Davidson's Well Played books, which offer subjective criticism of computer and video games, and are intended to showcase the launch of the new Postmillenial Pop book series which Karen Tongson and I are co-editing for New York University Press.
In this discussion we want to expand the questions and the focus to address autobiographical research and the role of the researcher in general. In so doing, we want to look at the ways different fields and disciplines have faced the problem of being invested in and accountable to different aspects of our identity, such as academic and fan. We are interested in the way this can and has affected our research and the way it has affected our intersectional identity. We are also interested in discussing the relationship between forms of academic knowledge creation and presentation and the relation between lived experience and academic work. As we search for interdisciplinary commonalities, we also want to explore the limitations to the notions and practices of acafandom. Beyond objectivist proponents, who fault acafans for being too close and too engaged, some scholars resist the approach for the way it possibly affords fans special status and forces too much attention on one particular mode of interaction, ignoring other equally important modes of inquiry. Acknowledging and exploring these objections without abandoning the concept of a participatory and vested research with autobiographical self-awareness is central to this conversation. Provocations
Participants:
May 19, 2011
Learning from Hollywood: Voices from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center ConferenceI spent the first part of the week participating in a conference, hosted by the USC Cinema School and organized by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, "Learning from Hollywood: Can Entertainment Media Ignite an Education Revolution?" This was the kind of event that warms my radically undisciplined heart and mind -- a gathering of people from many different backgrounds (educators and academics, media industry people from both the commercial and public media worlds, activists and nonprofits, foundations, librarians and curators) to talk about the potential intersection between education and entertainment. In the course of the two days, we heard a lot about the value of stories and storytelling to incite the imagination, to provoke curiosity, to convey our collective memories and wisdom, and to inspire more acts of creativity. This was perhaps best brought alive for me through a performance by The Story Pirates -- a group of actors, improv comedians, and otherwise kooky and creative people, who go into schools around the country, help young people construct their own stories, and then incorporate them into their performances. In this case, they brought a class of Latino/a elementary schools with them, both performing one young man's previously written stories, and soliciting elements from the kids for a story performed live on the spot. My own remarks at the conference centered on what the practices and logics of participatory culture might bring to the paradigm of "entertainment education" which I have been learning a lot about since coming to USC. Under the classic version of this model, experts consult with script writers to get information about health or social concerns integrated into the fictional programs and sometimes to get tags or bumpers which help link viewers to the groups working on these issues. I really respect the commitment behind such work and know that it does make a difference for many people. But increasingly, I've wondered what would happen if these same projects got taken up by the fan communities around the show, if the messages were not simply embedded in the program but designed to be acted upon in more creative and public ways. I used the example of what's happened around Harry Potter to describe a movement from inspiring reading to inspiring writing to inspiring activism, remarks which build upon the work my Civicpaths research group has been doing for the MacArthur and Spencer Foundations. Scott Traylor from 360KID, who I knew from back at MIT, was nice enough to capture my remarks and those of several other speakers via his cellphone camera and has given me permission to share some of these segments with you through this blog. Thanks, Scott. So, this first bit is my talk on Harry Potter and the potential of a more participatory model of entertainment education. Scott also captured some of the highlights from a panel on Monday night on "Storytelling and the Art of Engagement," hosted by Betty Cohen, the former President of the Cartoon Network and the Lifetime Network, and including film producers Don Hahn (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) and Doug Wick (Gladiator, Memoirs of a Gesha) and television producer Marcy Carsey (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Third Rock from the Sun), sharing their insights on Hollywood's craft and speaking about their desire to see the work that they do more fully incorporated into both formal and informal education. Getting these kinds of glimpses into the behind the scenes production processes is one of the great joys of living so close to Hollywood. Here are two highlights Scott captured -- showing Carsey talking about the need to "respect the audience"... And Wick talking about how he draws inspiration from the work of Bruno Bettelheim: The event was also a place for demonstrations by some top digital designers and developers, including this segment on Sifteos by a Media Lab alum Jeevan Kalanithi. On Tuesday morning, we heard from Linda Burch from Common Sense Media and Frank Gilliam, Dean of the UCLA School of Public Affairs, talking about the challenges of overcoming existing frames parents and teachers have for thinking about the relations between digital media and schooling. Scott captured Gilliam's remarks, which offer some real insights into how and why some of the messaging around digital media and learning may be falling on deaf ears. Unfortunately, Scott had to fly back to Boston so we do not have some of the other highpoints of the conference, such as a presentation by Participant Media's John Schreiber on their Waiting for Superman documentary;
All told, my head is exploding from new insights and beyond that, new connections, many of which I hope to build upon through this blog in the weeks ahead. Special thanks to Cooney Center Director Michael Levine who has helped pull together this phenomenal event.
March 10, 2011
A Remediated, Premediated, and Transmediated Conversation with Richard Grusin (Part Three)I am putting up the final installment of my conversation with Richard Grusin a day early as I am headed out of town for much needed R&R time with my wife. I will not be posting next week, but expect to return shortly thereafter. History and Genealogy RG: Speaking of history, though, I wonder if you would let me pose another question about the relationship between remediation and transmedia. One of our claims in Remediation (which has gratifyingly been borne out by a good deal of scholarship in the past decade and more), was that although the explosion of new digital media at the end of the 20th century made the double logic of remediation visible, remediation (and its double logic) had a very long history in Western culture, going back at least to the invention of linear perspective. By identifying the working of remediation in contemporary digital media, we have been able to look back on the history of mediation in Western culture to see it in a different light. Do you see a similar historical genealogy for transmedia? HJ: Yes, depending on how broadly or narrowly we define transmedia. I have made the argument that the church in the middle ages was profoundly transmedia if you lacked the capacity to read. For the priests, the Bible stories were rooted in a text and everything else would have been understood as an illustration of that text. But if you couldn't read that text, you were absorbing bits of the stories from many different sources in the culture around you and the stories could be brought together via stainglass windows, tapestries, or paintings, where characters from multiple stories or symbols for many parables might exist side by side. Michelangelo is in that sense a profoundly intertextual artist. I would also point to the great world builders of the 20th century -- especially L. Frank Baum, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Walt Disney as also contributing much to the current configurations of transmedia. Baum in terms of mapping Oz through books, stage plays, films, and public lectures, each adding new layers to the original. Tolkien developed a mythology much larger than he could communicate in Lord of the Rings as a specific narrative. And Disney in moving from the screen to location-based entertainment and in constructing a "world" or "family" of characters drawn from multiple stories. RG: Your mention here of "world builders," and earlier "fictional worlds" or "universes," is helpful, I think, in clarifying another difference between our approaches. You're interested in how transmedia create fictional worlds. My approach focuses more on logics and practices of mediation in specific historical formations--although your sense that transmedia represents the current media formation of the infotainment industry is itself, I would argue, a historically specific claim. HJ: I am very interested in Kim Deitch's graphic novel, Alias the Cat, which depicts a story being created in the 1910s via newspaper serials, comic strips, film serials, and live stunts, all practices possible in the early 20th century, and all practices used in various combinations, although perhaps not in the hypercoordinated way depcited in the comic. For me, this story helps sort through the difference between a set of potential practices, each transmedia in its implications, and an overall logic which may be the current configurations of practices. Transmedia in that sense is not totally new, yet it is unlikely that it would take its current shapes in the absence of networked communication. And that's why I started this by reflecting on the different ways that transmedia impulses work in the era of the cd-rom, of the web, and of the iPad. Turning the lens back in your direction, is the history of remediation one in which the same dual logic repeats itself again and again or is it one of historical transition and transformation in which shifts in the media landscape enable or foreclose certain possibilities, certain models of creative practice? But I do remember that, while we were writing the book, we used to have fun imagining with our students other arenas in which the twin logics of remediation, transparent immediacy and hypermediacy, had manifested themselves historically. Romantic poets like Wordsworth, for example, appealed to the immediacy of the vernacular and the heart or intuition, while someone like Blake demonstrated a form of hypermediacy especially through his illustrated poems. The scientific debate between scholasticism and empiricism in science might also be glossed in terms of the immediacy of the experiment and the hypermediacy of scholastic traditions. And it is hard not to see the contrast between the Catholic Church and Protestantism as one between hypermediacy and immediacy. These, however, were mainly speculative musings. As someone committed to historical specificity, I remain cautious in trying to think about transhistorical laws of mediation. Nonetheless, in the historical period within which remediation does operate, I would argue that the double logic of remediation does not repeat itself in the same form but operates, as you say, in terms of "historical transition and transformation in which shifts in the media landscape enable or foreclose certain possibilities, certain models of creative practice." In my new book I situate the double logic of remediation both, as you plausibly suggest earlier, in relation to the invention of new stand-alone multimedia storage devices like the cd-rom, as well as in relation to the 1990s desire for immediacy represented most fully in technical fantasies of virtual reality which grew largely out of the cyberculture and cyberpunk imaginary of the 1980s. In the last two decades of the 20th century, immediacy was defined in terms of the erasure of mediation in an immediate, immersive encounter with the real, while hypermediacy was defined in terms of the kind of multiplication of mediation made possible by cd-roms, the world wide web, and other related media formats. In the first decades of the 21st century, the emergence of social media has, I argue, shifted the ways in which immediacy and hypermediacy manifest themselves--and thus alter the double logic of remediation. In fact where in the 1990s the immediacy of the real was defined in opposition to the multiplicity of mediation, in the 21st century hypermediation is the mark of the real, as epitomized most dramatically in the Fox series 24, which depicted real-time not in terms of the erasure of mediation but in terms of its multiplication. In our current moment of mobile, socially networked media, immediacy is manifested as mobility, connectivity, and flow, the easy, almost seamless, interaction among our countless personal and collective media sites--FB, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and countless others. Hypermediacy manifests itself not so much in the formal fragmentation and multiplicity of the visual space of the screen as in the multiplication of mediation among and across our networks, including the ways in which all of our socially mediated interactions are tracked, recorded, and archived by a state and corporate security regime for purposes of data mining, tracking, trendspotting, and preemption of criminal behavior. Politics
March 9, 2011
A Remediated, Premediated, and Transmediated Conversation with Richard Grusin (Part Two)
For me, the video's remediation of the look and style of pin-up magazine covers as live videos is a clear example of an instance of remediation that I would see as distinct from transmedia. On the other hand the now longstanding practice of refashioning songs as music videos might be able to be seen as an example of both remediation and transmedia. Would you agree with this? HJ: We could, however, imagine a version of this music video that with very little changes would be pulled towards transmedia narrative (or transmedia play). Right now, the magazine covers function to comment on the situations being described in the song lyrics, but they also seem to construct a kind of world where the song takes place. Let's suppose we built more of a plot into that world -- not simply the story the song offers of failed relationships, violated trusts, and sexual tension. Can we imagine extending those core plot elements into a melodramatic plot and imagine the magazine covers perhaps referring us to other media where we learned more about these people and their relationship? Can we imagine the magazine covers as functioning as clues which led to a kind of alternative reality game, which then led us down a rabbithole where we started seeking out more information elsewhere on the web? This would pull us much more fully into a transmedia logic. RG: Yes, I suppose we could and I suppose it would. Your inclination to actively remediate or transmediate existing media forms is much stronger than mine. I see myself more as a cultural critic or media theorist than as a creator of new forms. Still I would be interested in you defining even further how you see transmediation differing from or extending remediation.HJ: Well, I think I intended this as a thought experiment at most, but your point is well taken. My work on transmedia has taken me into much closer dialogue with the creative community than I had expected and as that happens, I become much more likely to imagine other possible configurations of media that have not yet emerged in much the same way that Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck sought a kind of predictive or anticipatory aesthetics, mapping what could be done with the affordances of digital media she saw starting to emerge. And do not overlook the fact that Remediation has surely inspired many designers and artists, even if you have not yourself chosen to explore the creative practices implicit in your argument. RG: True enough. I like the way you describe your and Janet Murray's work as imagining or anticipating new media futures. It reminds me that, in the context of my most recent work, premediation was already quite active in the 1990s. And yes, it has been very gratifying to see how Remediation was taken up by designers, artists, and other creative people--not to mention by new media scholars like you, especially in relation to transmedia.Immediacy and Hypermediacy HJ: On the other hand, more and more, transmedia extensions represent themselves as advertisements for imaginary products, such as True Blood. They show us what the mediascapes of these fictional societies might look like, and so we achieve a kind of access to the fictional world through an heightened awareness of processes of mediation. We can see how the immediacy and hypermediacy come together by looking at something like MNU Spreads Lies , one of the websites created to help promote District 9. The website proports to be the home page for an Alien Rights organization. Much of the text is in an alien alphabet, though we can convert it to English. My favorite entry is one called "I'm Speechless" which is halfway down the page. Here, we have a mocked up government video on the aliens reproduction system, complete with imitation grain and scratches, clearly intended to achieve a certain degree of immediacy, though the focus on the buggyness of the footage uses properties of mediation to allow us to achieve that level of immediacy. The text around it shows a fake resistant reading of this fake documentary -- the alien rights organization has captured this footage from the government and is offering a shocked and outraged reaction to what they are seeing. Here, we are invited to be aware of the processes of mediation and contestation that have emerged around the video -- for me, this would seem to represent a kind of hypermediation. As you note in the book, at a certain point, as our everyday reality is shaped by our interactions through media, the lines between immediacy and hypermediacy blur. We achieve immediacy by way of hypermediacy. RG: HJ: Both the True Blood and the District 9 materials were generated by the producers (or those working for the brand) rather than the fans. They certainly are responsive to genres and themes which may have originated within fan culture. (We are just beginning to theorize how fan productions might or might not be understood as part of the transmedia system around a given media property). Transmedia is part of a larger shift in the logic of the media industries to place a greater emphasis on engagement, which in turn values fans as the ideal audience for their productions. Part of what first drew me to look at transmedia storytelling was the ways that it seemed to represent a commercial response to key aspects of fan culture: such as the desire to extend the world, to construct backstory, to focus on secondary characters, or even to construct alternative versions of the original characters. But ultimately, these materials claim the status of canon and not fanon, and that has consequences for how they are read. If they are participatory, it is on the level of reception and circulation rather than on the level of production, though we are seeing some kinds of transmedia production which apply crowd-sourcing or user-generated content models to build out the fictional world further. So, yes, these are part of a new commercial logic. My argument, though, is that they are not simply commercial products; they are also creating new opportunities which gifted storytellers and artists are exploring in ways that deepen our possible engagement with these fictional universes. You could read both the District 9 and True Blood examples as promotional: they are designed to spread word about their affiliated media properties. But they are both expansive (adding to what we learn in their respective works) and expositional (helping to inform our experience once we see their affiliated works) in ways which go beyond what we would expect from a movie trailer. We go into District 9 with different expectations (even a different moral orientation or emotional identification) and have a different experience if we've visited the MNU Spreads Lies site than if we have not. Given this, I don't think we can simply dismiss them as promotional materials.
March 7, 2011
A Remediated, Premediated, and Transmediated Conversation with Richard Grusin (Part One)This week, I am sharing an extended conversation with Richard Grusin, co-author of Remediation and author of Premediation:Affect and Mediality After 9/11 If this sparks your interest in learning more about Transmedia Entertainment, check out Transmedia Hollywood II conference coming up at UCLA on April 8. Tickets are still available. At the time you wrote Remediation, many of us were very excited about the kind of multimedia expression which was possible within cd-roms, a short lived technology, which never-the-less became the focus of a good deal of scholarly interest. So, we might start by thinking about the relationship between the multimedia (envisioned within the cd-rom) and the transmedia (now being realized via digital networks). For me, the difference can be summed up as inside the box - outside the box. That is, multimedia sought to organize a series of different kinds of media experiences inside a curated and bounded text. There might be movies and audio files and illustrations and texts, but they were all inside the cd-rom itself. By contrast, the elements of a transmedia experience are dispersed -- they are spread across multiple media channels -- with the expectation that the consumers will tap into digital and social networks to track down the elements. Part of the pleasure is what I would call "hunting and gathering" and what Rose calls "foraging." Alternate Reality Games make tracking down, exchanging, deciphering, and mapping the dispersed media elements the central play mechanic. And insofar as we are doing this activity within fan communities or as "collective detectives" to use an old term from the ARG world, these mechanisms support social interactions with other readers. Part of what allows this to become a viable form of publicity for media franchises is our tendency to want to brag about our discoveries and share them with others with whom we have common goals and interests. The rise of the iPad seems to suggest a return to a multimedia model -- witness the promotional video for Sports Illustrated on the iPad which sparked so much excitement in the publishing world at the time the platform was introduced. Here, we again see all of the media elements brought together into a single ordered, curated experience. This design will make these kinds of experiences more accessible to casual readers who want to simply click through an experience, but they may take away from the social mechanics that have grown up around "foraging" or "hunting and gathering." It occurs to me that the Sports Illustrated video might be a good starting point for us to compare notes. What do you see going on here when you read it through your core concepts? RG: Thanks, Henry, for suggesting this. I think it's a great idea, and after reading your initial paragraphs I think there is plenty of room both for clarification and divergence. I will confess that at first I was a bit puzzled by your identification of remediation with the multimedia cd-rom--especially insofar our account of the double logic of remediation at the end of the 20th century takes up so many other media artifacts including muds and moos, the world wide web, and hypermediated space. But in light of your concept of transmedia storytelling I can see why the contrast with an apparently self-contained multimedia artifact like the cd-rom would be important for you. HJ:
From Remediation to Premediation
February 14, 2011
Announcing Transmedia, Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and DesignTransmedia registration can now be done through
A UCLA/USC/Industry Symposium Friday, April 8, 2011 Event Co-Directors: Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School of Communication Overview Transmedia, Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and Design is a one-day public symposium exploring the role of transmedia franchises in today's entertainment industries. Transmedia, Hollywood 2 turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means. Co-hosted by Denise Mann and Henry Jenkins, from UCLA and USC, two of the most prominent film schools and media research centers in the nation, Transmedia, Hollywood 2 builds on the foundations established at last year's Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story. This year's topic: Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture and Design is meant to move from an abstract discussion of transmedia storytelling in all its permutations to a more concrete consideration of what is involved in designing for transmedia. The past year has seen the Producer's Guild of America (PGA) embrace the concept of the transmedia producer. The other Guilds have begun discussing the implications of these developments for their membership. A growing number of small production units are springing up across the film, games, web, and television sectors to try to create and distribute transmedia content. Many of today's new transmedia producers are helmed by one-time studio or network insiders who are eager to "reinvent" themselves. Inside the studios, the executives tasked with top-down management of large media franchises are partnering with once marginalized film directors, comic book creators, game designers, and other creative personnel. The underlying premise of this conference is that while the traditional studios and networks are hanging onto many of their outdated practices, they are also starting to engage creative personnel who are working outside the system to help them re-imagine their business. With crisis and change comes the opportunity for the next generation of maverick, independent-minded producers--the next Walt Disney and George Lucas-- to significantly challenge the old and to make way for the new. So, now, it is time to start examining lessons learned from these early experiments. Each of the issues outlined below impact the day-to-day design decisions that go into developing transmedia franchises. We hope to break down the project of developing transmedia content into four basic design challenges:
As with the first event, Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture & Design will bring together comic book writers, game designers, "imagineers," filmmakers, television show runners, and other media professionals in a conversation with leading academic thinkers on these topics. Each of our speakers will be asked to focus on the unique challenges they faced while working on a specific production and detail how their understanding of transmedia helped them resolve those issues. From there, we will ask all our speakers to compare notes across projects and platforms with the hopes of starting to develop some basic design principles that will help us translate theories of transmedia entertainment into pragmatic reality. The creative personnel we have assembled include many of the key individuals responsible for masterminding the fundamental changes in the way traditional media operates and engages audiences by altering the way stories are told temporally, by exploring how graphic design translates from one medium to another, and by explaining how these visually-stunning worlds are being conceived in today's "connected" entertainment arena.
9:15--9:45 am
Rather than rely on old-fashioned merchandising and licensing departments to oversee vendors, which too often results in uninspired computer games, novelizations, and label T-shirts, several studios have brought these activities in-house, creating divisions like Disney Imagineering and Disney Interactive to oversee the design and implementation of these vast, virtual worlds. In other instances, studios are turning to a new generation of independent producers--aka "transmedia producers"--charged with creating vast, interlocking brand extensions that make use of a never-ending cycle of technological future shock and Web 2.0 capabilities. The results of these partnerships have been a number of extraordinarily inventive, interactive, and immersive experiences that create a "you are there" effect. These include the King Kong 360 3D theme park ride, which incorporates the sight, smell, and thunderous footsteps of the iconic gorilla as he appears to toss the audience's tram car into a pit. Universal Studios and Warner Bros. have joined forces to create the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new $200 million-plus attraction at the Islands of Adventure in Florida. Today's panel focuses on the unique challenges associated with turning traditional media franchises into 3D interactive worlds, inviting you to come out 2 play in the studios' virtual sandboxes. Moderator: Denise Mann
12:00--1:50 PM How is our notion of what constitutes a good character changing as more and more decisions get made on the basis of a transmedia logic? Does it matter that James Bond originated in a book, Spider-Man in comics, Luke Skywalker on screen, and Homer Simpson on television, if each of these figures is going to eventually appear across a range of media platforms? Do designers and writers conceive of characters differently when they know that they need to be recognizable in a variety of media? Why does transmedia often require a shift in focus as the protagonist aboard the "mothership" often moves off stage as extensions foreground the perspective and actions of once secondary figures? How might we understand the process by which people on reality television series get packaged as characters who can drive audience identification and interest or by which performers get reframed as characters as they enter into the popular imagination? Why have so few characters from games attracted a broader following while characters from comics seem to be gaining growing popularity even among those who have never read their graphic adventures? Moderator: Henry Jenkins
2:00--3:00 PM
Once relegated to the margins of society, today's media fans are often considered the "advance guard" that studio and network marketers eagerly pursue at Comi-Con and elsewhere to help launch virtual word-of-mouth campaigns around a favorite film, TV series, computer game, or comic book. Since tech-savvy fans are often the first to access Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Second Life in search of a like-minded community, it was only a matter of time before corporate marketers followed suit. After all, these social networking sites provide media companies with powerful tools to manage fans and commit them to crowd-sourcing activities on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere. Given the complexities and contradictions involved in negotiating between industry and audience interests, we will ask the game designers to explain their philosophy about the intended and unintended outcomes of their fan interfaces. Marketers clearly love it when fans become willing billboards for the brand either by wearing logo T-shirts or by dressing a favorite Madman avatar in the 1960s clothing, accessories and backgrounds on display on the AMCTV.com "Madmen Yourself" and then spreading the content through Facebook and Twitter. What is the design philosophy behind a video game like Spore, which allows fans free range to create their own creatures and worlds but then limits their rights over this digital content? Who owns these virtual creations once they appear for sale on E-bay? These and other intriguing questions will be posed to the creative individuals responsible for designing many of these imaginative and engaging fan interfaces. Moderator: Denise Mann
5:00--6:50 PM We might think of such stories as hyperserials, in so far as serials involved the chunking and dispersal of narrative information into compelling units. The old style serials on film and television expanded in time; these new style serials also expand across media platforms. So, how do the creators of these stories handle challenges of exposition and plot development, managing the audience's attention so that they have the pieces they need to put together the puzzle? What principles do they use to indicate which chunks of a franchise are connected to each other and which represent different moments in the imaginary history they are recounting? Do certain genres -- science fiction and fantasy -- embrace this expansive understanding of story time, while others seem to require something closer to the Aristoltelian unities of time and space? Moderator: Henry Jenkins
7:00 PM Location
General Public:
Campus Map: Parking Info: Contact
January 26, 2011
"Deep Media," Transmedia, What's the Difference?: An Interview with Frank Rose (Part One)Wired contributing editor Frank Rose is releasing a new book this month which will be of interest to many of my regular readers -- The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the Way We Tell Stories. It is a highly readable, deeply engaging account of shifts in the entertainment industry which have paved to way for more expansive, immersive, interactive forms of fun. He's talked to key players -- from Will Wright and Jeff Gomez to James Cameron and George Lucas -- and brings back their thinking about the changing media landscape. As he wrote me, "at various points in my career I've focused on technology and at other times on entertainment, but when I joined Wired in 1999 I started writing about both together." Rose has been exploring some of the key concepts from the book through his blog as he's been working through the project. I suspect when I teach my transmedia storytelling class again at the USC Cinema School next fall, this book will be on the syllabus, since it manages to condense down many of the key conversations being held around these much discussed topic into language which is accessible and urgent. When I first heard of his concept of "deep media," during a talk Rose gave at South by Southwest, I was intrigued by its relationship with what I've called transmedia entertainment. And in fact, I've been asked about the relationship many times and didn't really know what to say. So, naturally, given a chance to interview Rose for the blog, that's where I started. It sounds like his own thoughts on the relationship have evolved over time and in interesting ways. As the interview continues, we talk about world-building, the relationship between games and stories, the interweaving of marketing and storytelling, and the impact of 9/11 on interactive entertainment. You write in the book about what you call "deep media." What do you see as the core characteristics of deep media? How do you see your concept relating to others being deployed right now such as transmedia or crossmedia?
Throughout the book, it seems you see these creative changes towards a more immersive and expansive entertainment form being fueled by the emergence of games. Why do you think computer and video games have been such a "disruptive" influence on traditional practice in other entertainment sectors?
Another key idea running through the book is the idea that entertainment is now designed to be engaged by collectives, often of the kinds that form in and through social network sites. What are some of the consequences of perceiving audiences as collectives of people who interact with each other and with the producers rather than as aggregates of isolated eyeballs?
November 5, 2010
From a Cyberspace of Their Own to Television 2.0: An Interview with Rhianon Bury (Part One)Several months ago, I was contacted by Rhianon Bury, an early contributor to the scholarly research on female online fan communities through her book, A Cyberspace of Their Own, asking me to help her publicize a survey she was conducting on how fans engaged with new delivery platforms for television content. Bury agreed to do an interview for my blog which deals with this new initiative and what it means in terms of her own methodological approaches (an expansion from primarily ethnographic to a more hybrid approach), as well as shifts in the field of fan studies and new media since 2005 when her book first appeared. Like many of us, Bury is finding it hard to separate out the study of media audiences, creative industries, and new media practices, at a time when some aspects of fan culture have become more central to the operations of convergence culture, while, as many recent scholars note, others remain marginalized and in some cases, continue to be fully hidden from outside attention. You have recently launched an online survey designed to better understand the shift in the media consumption patterns of fans in response to the changing affordances of the new media environment. What kinds of shifts are you hoping to explore?
Until now, you have been seen primarily as a qualitative researcher. What has motivated you to adopt a more quantitative approach to this project?
Rhiannon Bury is an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Athabasca University, Canada's Open University. Her research interests include communication technologies, identity and community, and media fan culture. Her book, Cyberspaces of Their Own, was published by Peter Lang in 2005. She is currently collecting data for her Television 2.0 project. To take the survey, visit here. Check out her blog.
November 1, 2010
DIY Video 2010: Activist Media (Part Three)This is the first of an ongoing series of curated selections of DIY Video prepared in relation to the screening of DIY Video 2010 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and organized by Mimi Ito, Steve Anderson, and the good folks at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy. The following is an interview with curator Sasha Constanza-Chock designed to more fully map the contexts from which these Activist videos emerged. Some critics have argued that the corporatized sites of web 2.0 will not allow sufficient room for progressive and radical voices to be heard. Some of the videomakers here, such as Witness, have established their own platforms for sharing their work, while others have deployed YouTube, Vimeo, and some of the other commercial platforms. How have these filmmakers worked through their relationship with commercial portals given their often anti-corporate messages?
You reference here the extended history of DIY activism through film and video production, which we might trace back to, for example, the ways black organizations responded to The Birth of a Nation, if not earlier. To what degree are the new DIY Videomakers conscious of that history? How does it inform the work they are doing? Honestly, I think that DIY Video has become so much a part of activism and social movement practices that there's no good answer to this question. Some activist videomakers have closely studied the history of radical filmmaking, and go to great lengths to cite and reference that history in their own work. Others have no idea that this history exists and are mostly applying the tools and techniques of present day remix culture to something they're passionate about. Some activist videomakers learn how to shoot and edit by making skate videos, others shot their first video at a street protest and then got hooked, some grew up within communities of radical media makers who took part in key social movement struggles of the previous generation. "Collective Action" was a central theme in the entire DIY 2010 series. In your case, most of these videos come from collectives and political organizations, even as YouTube is often understood as "self branding" and promoted with the slogan, "Broadcast Yourself." How have these collectives taken advantage of the networked nature of online communications in their production process?
In many cases, these videos are simply one resource in much more elaborate campaigns which unfold across a range of different sites and platforms. Can you say a bit more about how online video fits within larger communication strategies for some of the groups you describe?
October 20, 2010
Henry Jenkins The Movie or How Does Fandom Happen?Around the same time as Teenage Paparazzo first appeared on HBO, I was participating in a Social Media week event billed as a "Fanthropology" workshop here in Los Angeles, hosted by Cimarron Digital, and intended to share insights with area media makers about how they might productively reframe their relations with their fans. I was asked to deliver some opening remarks as a "fan expert" and then join a panel of entertainment bloggers as they talked about their relations with the media industry. My fellow speakers were:
and the event was moderated by Digital LA founder Kevin Winston and Cimarron's Kristen Olson. How Does Fandom Happen? from Cimarron Digital on Vimeo.
Much to my amusement, the slides were organized around Henry Jenkins the Movie. A highlight for me was a photoshopped image that shows what the more or less appropriately aged and built Bruce Willis would look like wearing suspenders, glasses, a grey beard, and my alternately bald and shaggy pate -- that is, in the branded, trademarked, and copyrighted persona of Professor Jenkins which I sometimes play in the media. Here's part of a synopsis created for the rather unlikely Henry Jenkins vehicle:
I don't know about you but I'd certainly buy multiple tickets to that movie and almost certainly grab it when it came out on DVD! Your stakes might be a bit lower than mine, but still, you can surely see why this movie would generate buzz. We might call it William Shatner In Love With Himself or as the Hollywood team preferred, The Redemption of Sulu. As it happens, I do not know George Takei, but I did have a chance to moderate a panel featuring the Star Trek actor at MIT where he was taping narration for a game in which he played one of my faculty colleagues, Shigeru Miyagawa, so sometimes reality is almost as strange as fiction. At the time, our biggest concern was heading off likely audience questions that might attempt to out the still closeted Star Trek performer, though today, he's a poster child for gay marriage in California. For the presentation, the Hollywood types had mocked up everything from Tweets and Facebook updates to blog posts, suggesting how the fan community would respond to news about the production -- from its initial announcement through to subsequent announcements and promotions. The goal was to prod the panelists into reflecting on the ways that they, as entertainment bloggers, interfaced with the publicity machine surrounding a major studio release. They did a very effective job at simulating the courtship dance between producers and fans, including unauthorized leaks (and strategies for dealing with them) and fan objections to race-bending casting decisions as well as more carefully controlled PR releases. Below are a sample of the materials generated for this event. As the presentation's narration explains:
Their presentation worked through how the studio gradually reveals information about the production, how it responds to fan speculation and gossip, how it fuels and expands audience interest, and how it incorporates grassroots intermediaries into the information flow. It is a strategy designed to build buzz and cultivate but not regulate the growing fan base around this property. I've included some samples from their slides below. All in all, I felt they did a plausible job of modeling fan response, including how the fan base emerges from existing fan communities, how interest gets expressed initially through speculation and later through various kinds of cultural production, how fans develop a sense of ownership over the property and sometimes doubt the legitimacy of the people producing it, and how this buzz may or may not translate into box office success.After all, Scott Pilgram went through this entire cycle only to disappoint its producers, though I have argued this has as much to do with inflated budgets leading to inflated expectations. After all, if Scott Pilgram was a small budget indie film (on the same level as the comic on which it was based), it would have been fantastic to see it ranked fifth in that week's box office, where-as seeing a highly touted major studio release there was a devastating disappointment. After all of this excitement, I will now go back to my normal life as a mild-mannered, absent-minded, and over-worked USC professor who wants to make the world safe for participatory culture. But you never know when I may get pulled back into duty as a time-traveling adventurer or when I may find myself being played on screen by Bruce Willis. When duty calls, I hope to have the smart folks at Cimarron Digital build the PR campaign for my big screen adventures.
October 13, 2010
Harry Shum Jr: Dancing With and Without GleeIn Media Res is a project of Media Commons. Every day, a media scholar posts a clip and some commentary which is intended to spark conversations. These clips are ideal for incorporating into teaching, but can also be considered resources for the ongoing virtual community of media scholars around the world who use the site to wake up their brains each morning. The format is one which exploits the properties of the web environment well in order to expand our teaching to larger communities. This week, In Media Res is running a series of posts themed around "Transmedia: New Platforms," and I was asked to provide one of the post. My materials are found below, but you will want to check out other great posts from Janet Murray and Chuck Tryon so far, with Christina Dunbar-Hester and Jeff Watson rounding off the week.
By contrast, Shum plays a central role in The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD), now finishing up its first season as a direct to Hulu video series, designed to showcase spectacular urban dance performances. Shum was allowed to essentially solo episode 8, "Elliott's Shoes" in a performance which echoes back to Jim Carry's rubbery movements in The Mask. Check it out, since Hulu doesn't allow us to embed clips. Shum is never given a chance to dance like that on Glee! There, the camera placements and choreography subdue his performance to make his co-stars shine. Yet, after seeing him in LXD, his efforts become much more visible when I watch Glee. His Showreal, shared here, suggests how often Shum has appeared in shadow (as in his appearances for iPod) or in the edges of frames (as in countless music videos), while LXD finally allows him to take center stage.
and on So You Think You Can Dance, which features Shankman as a judge. Shankman in turn was the executive producer for Step Up 3D, which also featured Shum and was directed by Jon Cho, who is the executive producer of LXD. Step Up, which was released near the end of LXD's first season, also features Twitch and Little C', two other veterans from Dance, while Little C appears in a cameo role in LXD. And the LXD dancers opened for Glee's summer road show (where Shum was given his own spotlight moment). Will his character get more screen presence on Glee this season? As the magic black ball hints, "Signs Point to Yes." What seperates these transmedia performances from more conventional strategies of star development may be the intense coordination across these various properties which are clearly designed to move attention from one media platform and one text to the other. I would love to hear of other examples of how transmedia performance is operating today.
October 4, 2010
Sites of Convergence: An Interview for Brazillian Academics (Part Three)Conducted by Vinicius Navarro for Contracampo, a journal from Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil).
I am not someone who is going to argue that the world is flat. The economic dominance of Western countries, especially the United States, over the global imaginary continues to be a strong force, one that is difficult to resist. Yet we are also seeing increased fluidity as culture produced in other parts of the world is circulating more freely across national borders. Last year, you and David Bordwell engaged in a discussion on transmedia storytelling, which was posted on your blog. Narratives that start on a movie screen, for instance, can continue in a videogame and then make their way back to the film medium. The idea of transmedia storytelling, however, makes it hard for us to apply formal criteria to the analysis of a particular cultural experience, which is why Bordwell seems to favor more traditional forms of narrative. What are some of the aesthetic criteria that you use to analyze an experience that involves different media platforms? I teach a course on transmedia entertainment at USC and the experience of closely examining texts and listening to media producers share their creative processes and their conception of the transmedia audiences has really sharpened my focus on these issues. I now believe that it is possible to map out some cornerstones of the aesthetics of transmedia. The first would be a shift from a focus on individual characters and their stories towards ever more complex forms of world building. When I read your discussion with David Bordwell, I thought about the repercussions of media convergence to traditional academic disciplines. In a sense, Bordwell's response to the notion of transmedia narrative suggests a concern with the status and autonomy of a particular discipline - film studies. It reveals a desire to look at cinema qua cinema. How do you see the role of traditional academic disciplines in the world of media convergence? What fate might they have apart from responding to the "demands" of new media? Well, that description is more than a little unfair to David Bordwell, who really does seem engaged with the intellectual issues raised by transmedia stories and, if anything, was arguing that the Hollywood industry was too conservative in using the practices in relatively trivial ways having more to do with marketing than storytelling. He certainly would object to the push to turn all films into "mother ships" for transmedia franchise. So would I.
August 23, 2010
How New Media is Transforming Storytelling: A New Video SeriesKurt Reinhard from the Institut für Theorie, Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts, recently posted on Vimeo a fascinating series of short videos on the future of storytelling. The videos juxtapose the perspectives of some key thinkers in this space, including Clay Shirkey (NYU), Joshua Green (UCSB), Ian Condry and Nick Montfort (MIT), Dean Jansen from the Participatory Culture Foundation, Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling, and, hmm, Henry Jenkins (USC), among others. Each video is between five and ten minutes long and tackles some of the ways that shifts in the media environment are changing the nature of stories and storytelling. This opening installment sets the stage with a broad overview of the nature of media change. Storytelling Part 1: Change of Storytelling from ith storytelling on Vimeo. Here's a segment that deals specifically with the issues around transmedia storytelling and entertainment. Storytelling Part 3: Transmedia from ith storytelling on Vimeo. This one deals with storytelling in relation to social networks. Storytelling Part 4: Potential of Social Media from ith storytelling on Vimeo. Another explores collaborative production of stories through processes like crowdsourcing. Storytelling Part 5: Collective Storytelling from ith storytelling on Vimeo. And this one explores issues of motivation within participatory culture. Storytelling Part 8: Motivation to Participate from ith storytelling on Vimeo.
The video series is intended to call attention to the launch of a new collaboration between European institutions to explore the processes, practices, and literacies surrounding stories and storytelling. Beyond Reinhard's own people at Zurich, he says that the following other researchers are going to be contributing to this project: * Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Verena Kuni
August 8, 2010
No, You Do Not Have to Be A Gamer to Like Inception!Last week, Patrick Goldstein of The Los Angeles Times ran a provocative blog post about the mixed reception surrounding the film, Inception, in which yours truly was quoted heavily. If Inception plays especially strongly with a young audience, it's probably because they instinctively grasp its narrative density best, having grown up playing video games. "When it comes to understanding 'Inception,' you've got a real advantage if you're a gamer," says Henry Jenkins, who's a professor of communications, journalism and cinematic arts at USC. " Inception is first and foremost a movie about worlds and levels, which is very much the way video games are structured. Games create a sense that we're a part of the action. Stories aren't just told to us. We experience them." Goldstein did a good job of compressing almost half an hour of conversation about critical response to the film into a few substantive paragraphs. In no sense do I feel misquoted there -- indeed, he drew on my conversation as background to frame other parts of his discussion as well. I have, however, been bemused by the ways that my claims here have traveled through cyberspace and gotten a bit more distorted by each new contributor. So, Entertainment Weekly's blog picked up on Goldstein's story and shifted the ground just a bit. It's headline reads "Inception -- Only Good if You are Young?" And on Twitter, several people rephrased the claim, " Do you have to be a gamer to like #Inception?" By the end of the week, when someone tweeted that they only "partially agreed" with my claims about the film, I wrote back to say that I only "partially agreed" with them too since people were responding to a partial representation of what I had to say in the first place! So, let me take a step back and sketch out what I thought I was arguing. I start from the assumption that differing responses to the film are at least partially shaped by differing interpretive strategies. I discussed this concept back in my book, Textual Poachers, in relation to arguments made by reader-response critic Peter J. Rabinowitz about how genre impacts reading. Peter J. Rabinowitz has suggested that genre study might productively shift its focus away from properties of fictional narratives and onto the 'strategies that readers use to process texts," seeing genres as 'bundles of operations,' conventions, and expectations that readers draw upon in the process of making meanings. As Rabinowitz puts it, 'reading' is always 'reading' as."...Different genres evoke different questions readers want to ask and provide alternative rules for assigning significance and structure to textual content. Rabinowitz distinguishes between four basic types of interpretive strategies: (1) 'rules of notice' which give priority to particular aspects of narratives as potentially interesting and significant while assigning others to the margins; (2)'rules of signification' which help to determine what meanings or implications can be ascribed to particular textual features; (3)'rules of configuration' which shape the reader's expectations about likely plot developments and allow the reader to recognize what would constitute a satisfactory resolution of that plot; (4) "rules of coherence" which shape the extrapulations readers make from textual details, the speculations they make about information not explicitly present within the story. The reader's experience, he suggests, thus requires an initial decision about what genre(s) will be most appropriately applied to a given narrative and then the systematic applications of those genre rules to the process of comprehending the textually provided information. Of course, the ability to mobilize the interpretive strategies associated with a genre rest on having access to and familiarity with that genre in the first place as those of us who teach freshman film classes discover when we try to expose students to westerns or musicals or any other genre which has not been part of their repertoire of consumption. That's the sense in which gamers have an "advantage" -- they have a set of skills, literacies, competencies, expectations, call them what you want, that they bring with them to the theater and which shapes the range of strategies they have available to them which helps them to make sense of a film like Inception. So, this brings us back to my claim about games and Inception. I am not saying that it would be impossible for a non-gamer to enjoy the movie. It doesn't represent, after all, such a dramatic break with other films which have come before it. In the interview, I drew analogy to the way D.W. Griffith cross-cut between four different historical periods, intensifying the movements between them as we neared the climax, in his silent classic, Intolerance. I would also agree with Entertainment Weekly's Darren Franich that it is less complicated than many art films or even, in his example, some classic film noirs. Yet, it interests me that the discussions around Inception are the kinds of discussions we might once have had around an art film in the 1960s or even an indie film like Nolan's own Memento, yet they are occuring around a summer blockbuster. The genre elements are part of what makes the film popular, part of what makes it fun and pleasurable to play the game that Inception offers us. David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson have offered a brilliant analysis over at their Observations on Film Art blog about the role that exposition plays in maintaining clarity as we move between the different levels of the film. Indeed, they suggest that the presence of exposition across the film replaces character development in many cases, insuring that we can in fact follow the different levels or layers at work here. I would also argue that at the start of the film, the audience is required to make a leap of faith, entering into a world whose rules are not immediately clear (especially in the opening sequence) and which are still being laid out to us in the final segment. This is very much like the experience of a gamer jumping into the game without always knowing the rules or properties, trying out new ideas and bumping into walls, until they learn how it works. Bordwell's discussion of the film's opening segment (which he calls a "training exercise") suggests that it may function as a "tutorial" or "sandbox" level -- such as we see in games where our first level of play allows us to test our capacities and rehearses skills we will need later in the game. So, at the most basic level, I would say that gamers have a predisposition to embrace certain kinds of open-ended experiences, figuring out what's going on as they go, which is different from the notion of clear expositional foundations we would association in classical Hollywood narratives. Indeed, gamers may have an expectation, as I suggested, that the film not lay everything out for us at the start but expects us to make an effort to figure out the pieces as we go. This is part of what makes an experience like this more intense and immersive. I couldn't believe it when I realized how long I had been in the theater, not having glanced at my watch during the duration, indeed, not having breathed very much while watching Inception. This is not to say that the film abandons us altogether to our own devices. Genre plays an important role here in terms of helping us to map what's going on and understanding what matters in the film. We can read it as a straight forward action film or as a science fiction film -- think Total Recall. But there is also the possibility of making sense of it in terms of the conceptual vocabulary that games provide us -- so that we can understand the final sequence as moving between "levels" or "layers," each with a well defined task or "mission", each with a visually distinctive environment (not unlike the fire or ice levels in classic Nintendo scrollers like Mario Brothers or Mega Man), each requiring a different set of skills to master and a different set of obstacles to overcome. I am leaving aside claims that the film may pay tribute to specific games in its visual references: Bordwell cites Assassin's Creed II, Meigakure, and Shadow of Destiny. And Kristin Thompson closely examines a claim that the film was inspired in part by an episode from The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion. Thinking about Inception as a game or at least a film for gamers might also speak to the ongoing critical discussion of its lack of development at least in terms of its secondary characters. Kristin Thompson writes, "The characters' goals, apart from Cobb's, arise from the premises of the dream-sharing technology. Of course, they want to get paid, but that's assumed. Their actions all arise from the need to keep doing what they must to sustain the dreams and later from the need to improvise solutions to unforeseen problems that seem to violate the rules they have previously known. Why they need the money, whom they go home to when off-duty, how they got into this business, and all the other conventions of Hollywood characterization, are simply ignored." This is consistent with an argument which Mary Fuller and I made about games in 1995. The very nature of an interactive narrative serves to strip characters of psychological depth -- game characters are often glorified cursers, vehicles we use to move through the game worlds, rather than characters into whom we project sophisticated motives or anticipate character development. Their goals are assigned from the beginning. They are defined through their capacity for action and their missions. The need for an open-ended structure means that we do not expect them to learn through their experiences nor do we expect their actions to be motivated through psychological realism. Choices become relatively arbitrary, having more to do with resources and capacities, than drives or needs. I don't think this lets Inception off the hook in terms of character issues, but it is interesting to think of this shift in the function and nature of characters as an extension of the game-like logic I am describing. Bill, a reader, sent me an email with an interesting question about my argument:
Here's my response: "I would agree totally with you that the film's perspective on reality and perception also has a generational slant. It's interesting though that the films and television shows which take on some of this philosophical/spiritual argument are often associated with games and other digital media -- so I would see The Matrix, the final episode of Lost, and Inception, as all part of the same conversation about our relationship with the real world. We may as a culture be more open to such ideas because of our experience of the digital, just as people in the industrial age were more apt to think of a clockmaker god, or people in the early 20th century started to understand repetition compulsion in terms of a phonograph record in their heads. As Sherry Turkle suggests, we use technologies as tools to think with and a key question we use them to consider is the nature of consciousness."
Now, coming back to Goldstein's original blog, he takes my discussion of gamers and maps it onto what he sees as generational differences in people's response to the film. I would point out, however, that the age span of active gaming expands with each passing year: more younger players are entering the game market, more older players are continuing to play into adulthood, and more seniors are trying games through multiplayer worlds and the Wii controller, let aside casual games. So, let's be careful about assuming there's a correlation between being young and being a gamer. After all, I'm over fifty and I still play games. I hope this at least clarifies what I meant. I have only seen the film once and I have a feeling that I would need to see it many more times before I could offer anywhere near an adequate analysis, so take these as provisional observations about a work which I am sure many of us will continue to debate for a long time. It's exciting to have a summer film which sparks this kind of discussion!
August 2, 2010
Medium Specificity -- a SyllabusI have been using this blog to share the syllabi of the new courses I am developing for the University of Southern California -- courses which reflect my long-standing research interests. This semester, I was asked to develop a course for the multidisciplinary iMap program in the Cinema School, a program which encourages the interplay between theory and practice. The original subject was developed by the late Anne Friedberg, so I am very much aware of her intellectual legacy as I developed my approach to this subject matter. I also saw it as a chance to revisit some of my own intellectual roots -- with different topics hearing paying tribute to faculty who have influenced my own intellectual development, including Edward Branigan, Rick Altman, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and David Thorburn -- as well as some such as Tom Gunning and George Lipsitz who have shaped my thinking from afar. I intend to use this course both to expose students to key ideas drawn from a range of different areas of media studies and to get them to think critically about a range of different media texts. Film, no doubt, plays a special role in this class, because there is such a fully developed tradition of critical and theoretical writing there, but we will also be constantly returning to contemporary developments in digital media as a space against which to test these various theories. For me, the formal and aesthetic dimensions of this course will form a nice contrast with the more social and ideological issues I am exploring in the Civic Media class that I shared with my blog readers earlier this summer. Medium Specificity This course takes as its central themes the borders and boundaries between media. Early on, we will consider some attempts to develop theories of medium specificity - trying to determine what traits define film, photography, and games with a focus on what differentiates them from other existing modes of representation. How is photography distinct from painting? What are the defining traits of the cinematic? Are games narratives? As we deal with these theories, we will show how they each moved from descriptions of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look like. It is at this intersection where this course most clearly explores the relationship between theory and practice. Even with these medium-specific approaches, we will be exploring how their development required a mode of comparison across media. So, we see Eisenstein, for example, resting his theory of the cinematic on analogies to text-based media and Bazin drawing on notions of photography and theater to talk about cinema. And we will explore how writers like Arnheim sought to resist the coming of sound in order to protect what they saw as the "purity" of their medium specific approach. As the course continues, we will dig more deeply into media theories and practices which consciously explore the intersections between expressive media rather than marking the borders between them. We will explore notions of interface, affordance, narrative, character, space and spectacle, globalization, and cultural hierarchy as they relate to the interplay between different media systems and practices. Here, we will be looking at theories which celebrate hybridity and border crossing rather than seeing them as problematic. Yet, in doing so, these theories still make implicit assumptions about what each medium does best or what each has to contribute to a transmedia system. So, again, we will find that the notion of medium specificity plays a central role in such formulations. Across the course, we will be looking at a range of media texts as vehicles through which to test and expand the theories we are studying. These texts are sometimes read as experiments in medium specificity and border crossing and in other cases these works are seen as making their own conceptual contributions to our understanding of the interplay between different kinds of media. In every case, they will be looked at as illustrations of how media theory might inform creative practice and how production may help extend theoretical arguments. Books: Assignments: The Specificity of Digital Media (20 Percent) Much of what we are reading this semester was written in regard to early 20th century media such as film and photography. In what ways have these debates surfaced as our culture has responded to the emergence of new media of expression? What similarities or differences do you see in terms of the debates about games or the web and the debates about these earlier media? Which ideas from the past offer us the best tools for thinking about the present and future of digital expression? (Sept. 27) August 23rd Screening: Sita Sings the Blues (2009) The Problem of Medium Specificity (August 30th) LABOR DAY, NO CLASS (September 6th) Medium Specificity in Cinema (September 13th) Medium Specificity in Photography (September 20th) Medium Specificity in Game Studies (September 27th) Windows, Frames, and Mirrors (October 4th) Screening: Strange Days (1995) Attractions and Spectacles (October 11th) Migratory Characters (Monday, October 18th) Spectacular Media Spaces (October 25th) Transmedia Logics (November 8th) Hybridity and the Dialogic (November 15th) Final Presentations (November 29th)
July 21, 2010
The Night Of a Thousand Wizards
This is the Night of a Thousand Wizards -- well, in the end, when they got some more guest passes, it ended up being something like 1.7K wizards, but who is counting. Altogether, more than two thousand hard core Harry Potter fans have come to Orlando to attend Infinitus 2010, which the organizers described to me as the largest gathering of enthusiasts of J.K. Rowling's franchise ever. And as a result of arrangements made before they even started construction on The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, they've been invited into the park after hours (from 11-1:30 or thereabouts) to see for themselves what Universal's Islands of Adventure had constructed. My wife, Cynthia (my photographer) and I are embedded journalists amongst the fans --and I put it that way because while I consider myself a serious enthusiast of the Harry Potter world, I do not know a fraction of what most of the people around me know about the series. For the past three summers, I've come to speak and spend time with these fans and each year I come away with a deeper respect for their knowledge, their commitment, their creativity, and their passion. There have been discussions at the past few conferences about whether the fandom will survive the completion of the current film series, which wraps up with the two part version of Deathly Hollows all too soon, and how they are going to make the transition to a world where there will be no new Rowling-sanctioned Harry Potter content. Anyone who questions the strength and commitments of these fans must not have heard that the Harry Potter Alliance, an activist/charity group which has used Rowling's world as a platform for their own civic activities, had just won $250,000, beating out more than 200 other organizations, in an online competition to show support, sponsored by the Chase Manhattan Bank. For tonight, at least, as people are singing Wizard Rock songs on the boats transporting them from the hotel to the theme park, as they are parading through Seuss Landing, across the Lost Continent, and into the Eight Voyages of Sinbad auditorium, there's no question in anyone's mind that Harry Potter fandom is here, loud and strong. As I look around the auditorium waiting for the program to begin, I see Snape dancing in the aisles and I see Harry and Voldermort, not yet the BFF they will become before the nights over, staging their own duels in front of the crowd. They don't need anyone from the park to entertain them. But I see something more -- I see the fans who have spent more than a decade editing websites, writing fan fiction, organizing conferences, producing podcasts, performing and recording their own Wizard Rock songs, and creating activists organizations, all gathered together in one place and one time to celebrate what they had built together from the resources that Rowling, Scholastic Press, and Warner Brothers has provided them. There will be no Muggles in Hogsmeade tonight! We are indeed all Wizards here! If there was a mainstream journalist in the house, they would no doubt have had trouble seeing past the costumes: that seems to be where the line between the fan and the mundane world comes. Not every fan wears a costume but the wearing of costumes seems to be where the nonfans start to draw the line, start to look at us as strange, so for the moment, look past the costumes and think about what the people in this room have created around a book they cared about and the costume just becomes another extension of the creative spirit. The conference organizers had to negotiate hard for the fans to be allowed to wear the costumes into the park that night. Universal didn't want there to be any confusion between who the "guests" were and who the "cast members" were -- largely for liability purposes. They wanted to demarcate who worked there and who played there. The fans were to wear their membership bags at all time, but in the end, the fan organizers were allowed to bend the rules for this one night and the fans were invited to come dressed as they wished, a hodge-podge mixture of characters, some named, some generic, from the world Rowling created. Before the fans even arrived in the park, they had an emotionally intense experience. Lena Gabrielle had written and Mallory Vance had directed an original musical depicting the final battle from Deathly Hollows, which was performed by a large cast of amateur and semi-professional performers, many of whom had surprisingly strong voices and acting skills, and the rest made up in spirit for what they lacked in polished. The play should not have been anywhere near as good as it was. A Soul number performed by the Death Eaters after the presumed death of Harry Potter was a highlight here. And tears were flowing (mine among them) as certain key moments of loss and transformation were restaged for an audience that knew the original book inside and out. There were more than thirty named characters in the production and this crowd knew each of their stories well. Watching this, I had a clearer sense of the challenge the filmmakers are going to face in turning Deathly Hollows into a feature, given the sheer density and intensity of its final chapters.
Now, inside the Sinbad auditorium, there's a little bit of friction. The Park's PR people and designers have plopped themselves in front of the room clearly wanting to hear the fan's praise for the years of work which went into the design, development, and construction of this attraction. And they get plenty of appreciation from the crowd. But they also get a bit more than they expected, given that your best fans are also often your sharpest critics. They've basically brought us to a holding area while they finish sweeping the regular guests out of the park and making the Hogsmeade area pristine and clean. Cluster by clusters, the fans are walking down the aisle and pushing out the doors again -- they don't want to wait, they want to get inside as soon as possible. Sure, they want to hear about the design process which included substantial contributions by the production designers and art directors, not to mention the cast, of the Warner Brothers films. But most of them have already seen the promotional videos that have been circulating on the web and on television for months. They already know this stuff. What they want to do is come and spend as much time as they can in the Wizarding World area which these guys have built for our entertainment. (And I am hoping as I watch this that the designers know what a compliment this really is). Enough words, time to play. Others, however, have some questions to raise. For one thing, because this is Universal, where most of the attractions are thrill rides, the rides have weight and size limits, and some of the folks gathered here are not going to be able to ride them. There's a humiliating process outside several of the rides where people get stuffed into a cart to see if they can lower the protective rails over their bodies. Fandom is a place where people of all shapes and sizes are accepted, while the Wizarding World has more exacting and discriminating standards which leave some of the participants feeling crushed (literally and figuratively). Keep in mind also that height requirements will leave many of the books' youngest fans waiting outside, though there are not very many of them in the house tonight. Others are expressing the usual fan concerns about continuity issues -- how is it that Ollivanders, the wand shop, which the books and films tell us is in Diagon Alley, gets included in Hogsmeade, while the Novelty Shop there is Zonko's Joke Shop, the Hogsmeade establishment rather than the more fan friendly shop owned by Fred and George Weasley. And all the park can say is that this is the way Rowling wanted it and that she authorized Ollivanders to have a branch office closer to the school, which just never got mentioned in the books. Others are expressing their concern that so many of the dishes created for the park -- from Pumpkin Juice and Butter Beer to Chocolate Frogs, Candied Humbugs, and Gummy Skulls -- are confections which should be off limits to people with diabetes and other diet-based concerns, while the park designer explains, not fully convincingly, that there is less sugar in Butterbeer than in some of the things served at Starbucks and tells the fan who had expressed the health concerns about the high sugar content that she should simply indulge herself for the evening. (As a Diabetic myself, I wasn't very pleased with the suggestion that we can just opt out of our conditions.) Just when it starts to look like this could get ugly, the program ends and people start to move through the gates and past the Hogwarts Express train and into the streets of that enchanted village.
Make no mistake about it. This is a magical place. Some of the fans spoke of weeping the first time they entered this space. Others described it as a kind of homecoming as they were at last able to enter a world they had previously known only through their imagination. Suddenly, it became clearer that The Wizarding World is not about rides and attractions: it's about an environment which conveys through sights, sounds, taste, smell and touch, which makes tangible what had felt so vivid in our minds before, and as the fans said again and again all night, they really cared about the details. You can sip the Butterbeer (a concoction which mixes Root Beer and Butterscotch); you can smell the steam coming out of the train; you can feel the speed of a Quidditch match; you can see the wonders of the magical school; and everything is accompanied with the movie's soundtrack. Please do not quote me Baudrillard's comment that Disneyland is fake so it can trick us into believing the rest of America is real. Don't pull out Umberto Eco's discussion of "Hyperreality" and the ways that the "absolute fake" is realer than the real. These are, to put it bluntly, pseudo-insights. Everyone here knows that Hogwarts isn't real. What would it even mean to create a "real" Hogwarts. At best, they can judge this environment for its fidelity to the details of the film -- and that's a set of criteria which comes up frequently here. Even there, the analogy is not right. As we are told, the film producers never made a large scale version of Hogwarts -- what we see is a combination of models and digital effects and some isolated sets. There never was a full reconstruction of Hogsmeade -- we don't get to wander its streets and see from one end to the other in the films. But just as often the fans are talking about how it "feels right," how it achieves a kind of emotional integrity, which fits their impressions of the world where one of their favorite stories is set. This is where the postmodernists get it wrong. They start with a basic contempt for the content of the stories represented in the theme park and so they do not invest themselves deeply enough in the experience. For them, it is about surfaces and empty signifiers. There's nothing empty here -- all of the details matter here and are meaningful in relation to the books and the fantasies they inspire. For the people here, the park is a play set, and I mean this in two senses. First it is a site of play -- a invitation to flesh out this world through their own creative and imaginative acts of performance. The Wizarding World is something like the action figures I discussed in my essay on He-Man a few months ago. And second, it is a set -- a place where they perform, where community rituals can be staged. I don't like to draw analogies between fandom and religion, since the comparison is always misleading, especially given the historic association of the word, fan, with false worship. But let's think of this as a ritual space. When tribal communities dance wearing clay masks and straw costumes, they re acting "as if" they were the animal spirits. The performance is a recognition of shared beliefs and mutual emotional experiences. They've all worked to construct the costumes so they know that they are not "real" but it does not diminish the emotional intensity of the experience. Cornel Sandvoss has proposed we use the concept of "Heimat", "homeland," to describe the kinds of emotional experiences when fans are allowed to visit spaces associated with the production of their favorite programs. For Sandvoss, we experience this Heimat when we visit these places through texts or physical places. That seems a very good concept for talking about what these fans, myself among them, were experiencing -- a sense of coming home. I like this analogy because it pulls the intensity of experience out of the realm of the spiritual and plants it much more appropriately in the realm of the cultural. Hogworts is a special place in the utopian imagination of the fan community. For many who grew up reading the books, it represented a vivid alternative to their own school experiences, a space where their gifts were recognized and valued, where learning served a higher purpose, where they were part of a community that grew to feel a deep commitment to each of its members, and where their acts of resistance to unreasonable authority had a larger significance. As they grew deeper into the fandom, they set their stories here and fleshed it out with their own imaginations: it is a space they created through their own ink, blood, and tears. And it was also a shared space which became associated with close and lasting friendships and a larger sense of collective identity. And this space, however over-commercialized, represents the closest the community is going to come to an actual homeland. One of the great things about the design of the park is that once you are inside the Harry Potter area, you don't see outside it -- you can't see the other attractions and areas; nothing jars you from the immersiveness of the experience. Well, very little. It is a typically hot and muggy night in Orlando. During the day, the sun can broil your flesh through your SunScreen and at night, you are going to be soaked with sweat no matter what you do, so there was something pretty amusing about the piles of snow on the roofs of the Hogsmeade buildings or the Snow Wizard and Snow Owl (pun no doubt included) which decorates one of the spaces. The snow looks real but unless they pumped substantial air conditioning into the open air attraction, it isn't ever going to feel quite real.
But you can wander past the various shops mentioned in the books, looking through the windows to see the wands, the Quidditch equipment, a display showcasing Prof. Lockhart's books, the Owl Post Office, the Boars Head on the wall of the pub, and a display for Puking Pestles which features a green-faced victim spewing an endless flow of purple vomit. Go inside the Hogwarts castle and you will pass through Prof. Sprout's greenhouse, Dumbledore's study, the halls full of talking paintings, and the dorm space where the Gryffindor Students live. And then you enter an intense, multimedia experience, which combines digital effects, cinematic projections, and physical models, to send you flying through the Chamber of Secrets, past the Whomping Willow, into the Forbidden Forest, and across a Quidditch match in progress. Here, you are lead on by Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter, in new footage shot specifically for the attraction. It is intense and jolting, but oh so very immersive.
I can't tell you about the other two rides, both of which are roller coasters, since I am a notorious roller coaster wimp, and I spent much of my time wandering the streets, watching people, and yes, buying stuff. I was personally disappointed that most of the merchandise targets fans of the two Houses most often discussed in the books -- Gryffindor (Harry, Hermione, and Ron) and Slytherin (Draco), but under-represents the two other houses (Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.) I have been sorted several times -- an important ritual inside the fandom -- and have always ended up Ravenclaw (Luna Lovegood's House) so I have to dig around to find a Ravenclaw banner to take back for my office. This is certainly an area where the park's priorities could better allign with those of the fans.
The park has made a conscious decision not to feature impersonators of the major characters here. Since they involve the film's actors in the rides and presentations, they did not want to try to recast them with street performers in the park. So one of my favorite moments came when I saw a row of Beauxbatons, who were hired to pose for photographs with guests, taking great pleasure in being photographed next to fans dressed as Snape, McGonigle, Sprout, and some of the other Hogwarts teachers. This is the moment that the Park management had feared where the lines between staff and guests were starting to break down. Indeed, everywhere I looked, the working staff was getting into the spirit of the evening, asking the fans questions, trying to learn the lyrics to Wizard Rock songs, showing off their own knowledge of the mythology, and otherwise, paying respect to how much the fans knew and loved these stories. In practice, the staff were themselves fans -- even if they hadn't been before they got these jobs -- as they had come to spend so much time inside this park.
If the park is empty, except within the rides, of the characters from the series, the shops evoke moments from the novels -- for the most part, happy parts when they went on holiday down to the nearby village, where they congregated over food and drink, where they stuffed themselves with candy, and where they played pranks on each other. In many ways, Hogsmeades functions for the characters much as it functions for us as tourists -- as a place to escape your fears and worries. Rowling does a good job establishing this space and then gradually as the series continues, introduces threats and dangers here, showing how the evil that can not be named has penetrated even the safe spaces in the students' lives, leaving them no escape to do battle. But the Hogsmeades here is not a dark place -- indeed, it has been removed from a narrative context. The park is structured around places and not events. We see no signs that the Dark Lord may be returning. And that frees us to construct our own stories here, much as fans construct their own stories on the blank screen and share them through cyberspace. There is such a strong contrast between the emphasis on character and incident in the play we saw earlier this evening and the emphasis on place and activity here, yet we need to realize how much the fans bring the characters, the stories, the events, with them where-ever they travel. When it came time to leave, there was some experience of trauma. Some of the fans grumbled it was like being thrown out of their home. But many of them were already making plans to come back.
July 19, 2010
Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tryon (Part Two)Below is the second installment of my interview with Chuck Tryon, author of em> Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence
Robert Greenwald has been a brilliant innovator when it comes to skillfully using social media for political purposes, and I find his work fascinating because he has typically managed to navigate between detailed, but accessible, policy analyses and using available social media tools, from email lists to blogs and web video, to build an audience for his work (and for Brave New Films in general).. In the book, you describe a splintering of independent films with South by Southwest becoming the key festival for filmmakers who do not wish or are not able to compete at Sundance. What can you tell us about the current status of these "mumblecore" filmmakers?
Much has been written about the fact that there is no longer a Pauline Kael among film critics. Instead, our most well known critic today is Roger Ebert, who has moved from television to the blogs and Twitter as platforms for sharing his views on film. Behind Ebert, there is an army of film bloggers who are sharing their thoughts about cinema. Is the result a stronger or weaker film culture? What do you see as the strengths and limitations of these two configurations of film criticism? . As you note, many of those producing short films for YouTube see them as "calling cards," which they hope will open doors for them inside the film industry. Five years into its history, how well has YouTube functioned as a pipeline for promoting and developing new filmmaking talent?
Cineastes worry about young people who are watching films on their iPod, iPhone, and we presume now, their iPad. To what degree is this a red herring? What do we know about the consumption of films on such mobile devices?
What new platforms or practices do you see as having the most likelyhood of "reinventing cinema" in the next few years?
Chuck Tryon is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Fayetteville State University, where his teaching and research has focused on various aspects of film, television, and convergent media, including digital cinema, documentary studies, political video, and on using technology in the language arts classroom. He is the author of Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence (Rutgers UP, 2009). He has also written several essays on the role of YouTube in the 2008 election, including "Political Video Mashups as Allegories of Citizen Empowerment (http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2617/2305)" (with Richard L. Edwards) for First Monday, and "Pop Politics: Online Parody Videos, Intertextuality, and Political Participation" for Popular Communication. He has also written about Twitter for AlterNet and published an early essay on using blogs in the first-year composition classroom for the journal Pedagogy . He frequently writes about film and media at The Chutry Experiment where he has been blogging since 2003.
July 16, 2010
Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tryon (Part One)I first discovered the gifted film and digital media scholar, Chuck Tryon, through his blog, The Chutry Experiment. Tyron was an early adapter of blogs as a vehicle for academics to comment on contemporary developments in media and has made the relationship of digital technologies and film production a particular area of emphasis in his work. As I am writing this header, his blog is engaging actively with the debates about the artistic merits of computer games, sparked by the latest set of comments by Roger Ebert, while other recent posts have dealt with transmedia entertainment (in response to Jonathan Gray) and Do It Yourself Filmmaking (in conversation with filmmaker Chris Hansen). His book, Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence, is ground-breaking in its attention to the many different forms of "digital cinema," from the use of digital technologies for production, distribution and exhibition to the ways DVD commentary tracks are reshaping the public's appreciation of cinema and the ways that film-related blogs are reconfiguring the nature of film criticism. He has so much to say there that is of interest to the readers of this blog that it was inevitable that I would do an interview with him for this site. If you are not reading his blog or his book yet, you need to do something about that right away. Throughout the book, you address a range of "crisis scenarios," predictions that in one way or another digital media is going to bring about the "death" of cinema as we know it. Why are such scenarios so persistent? What do they tell us about the ways that the film community is responding to technological change?
Your book title talks of "Reinventing Cinema." In what ways is cinema reinventing itself to take advantage of the affordances of digital media? How will cinema be different a decade from now than it was ten years ago?
You speak of DVDs as producing "new regimes of cinematic knowledge." What do you mean? Can you give us some examples?
There is a persistent anxiety that special effects may blur our perceptions, confusing us about what is real and what isn't. Yet, as you note, special effects are also always on display, inviting our awareness of the manipulations being performed and our appreciation of how the effects are achieved. Will there be a point when these contemporary digital effects are so "naturalized" and "normalized" that they will start to become an invisible aspect of film production? I think we will likely continue to be fascinated by how special effects are produced, even while many of those effects are relatively seamlessly integrated into the film. Although some shots use digital effects seamlessly, many films are marketed on the strength of innovative special effects, a contradiction that played out in the promotional materials for James Cameron's Avatar, a film that itself was billed as "reinventing cinema." Promotional articles emphasized Cameron's attempts to create a fully immersive environment not only through digital effects but also through his use of linguists to create the Na'vi language and botanists to help imagine the plant life of Pandora, knowledge that might make us conscious of the sheer amount of labor required to create such a believable "illusion." Because novelty is one of the strongest marketing hooks a film can have, I think there will continue to be some form of tension between producing seamless effects and promoting those effects in order to cultivate our appreciation of them.As you note in your book, digital projection has been closely tied to the rise of 3D. This may be the one area where change has been most dramatic since your book was published. What would you want to add about the recent push for 3D if you were revising the chapter now? I feel like I could write another chapter on 3D based just on what has happened in the last year. When I was writing the book, 3D was really just on the horizon. Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf adaptation had made a minor splash, and it seemed clear that 3D films would play a major role in enticing movie theaters to switch from using film projectors to using digital projection, even though Beowulf itself was a relatively awful film with murky images and cheesy effects, so I've been fascinated to follow some of the recent changes in 3D projection and I'm hoping to write about them in a future project. With DVD sales declining, studios seemed to be embracing 3D as a means of attracting audiences back into the theater, and a number of high-profile directors, including James Cameron, saw 3D as potentially offering deeper immersion into cinematic narrative.
He has also written about Twitter for AlterNet and published an early essay on using blogs in the first-year composition classroom for the journal Pedagogy . He frequently writes about film and media at The Chutry Experiment where he has been blogging since 2003.
July 7, 2010
ARG 2.0 (Part One)The Alternate Reality Game (ARG) remains a topic of great interest to me and to my students at MIT and USC. Through the years, we've discovered that the ARG falls at the intersection between our recurring interests in participatory culture, collective intelligence, new media literacies, transmedia entertainment, and civic engagement. In my Fandom, Participatory Culture, and Web 2.0 graduate seminar last spring, Jeff Watson wrote a provocative essay which reviewed and challenged the current state of ARG theory and design, proposing some of the limits of this still emerging genres, as well as identifying some experiments that stretch the ARG in new directions. I immediately knew that I wanted to share this essay with my readers, who have a range of different investments in this space, in hopes that it might serve as a catalyst for enlarging the conversation around ARGS and might give him useful feedback as he hopes to prepare this essay for publication. Watson comes at this topic as a student in the USC's Cinema School's innovative iMAP program, which is designed to bring together students who are interested in both media design and theory. I am going to be teaching a seminar through the program this fall on Medium Specificity, and will be sharing the syllabus here shortly. Each of the students I have met through this program have impressed me with their creative insights and their willingness to test their ideas through experimental practice. The Cinema School as a whole is exploring how to break down the silos between theory and production and between the different craft specializations within production, because the media maker of the future will need to think and create across media platforms. This is yet another of the many reasons I am excited about being at USC right now.
I. Abstract By exploring these components, players discover puzzles and challenges that serve both as impetus to connect with other players, and as time- and context-sensitive content bottlenecks. In order to advance the narrative, players typically work together, first assembling into affinity groups via both official (i.e., game-sanctioned) and unofficial (i.e., player-created) social media structures; then tackling puzzles and challenges collectively, leveraging the range of competencies, geographies, and biographies inherent in a large and distributed player base. As puzzles are solved, the game's content producers, or "puppet masters," release successive cycles of story and interactivity, tweaking their approach along the way based on the observed behavior and emerging collective intelligence capabilities of the players. This process repeats itself until the narrative concludes, typically with the launch of a product or service. At this point, official support for the player community is usually terminated, primary online game assets are deleted or otherwise rendered inactive, and the game ends. III. Introduction Other observers, invested in visions of participatory and collaborative storytelling, noted that, unlike typical consumers of cinema, television and other few-to-many media forms, the players of ARGs are always already necessary and constitutive elements of the work. That is, in an ARG, audience participation is not a byproduct, but rather an essential and formative component of the text. To practitioners and theorists with a stake in participatory culture, the notion of an interactive storytelling form conceived from the ground up as a means of facilitating the collaborative production of media artifacts provided a "perfect illustration of all of the principles . . . shaping the media landscape at the present time" (Jenkins 2006). Further, ARGs were viewed as fitting into a long tradition of spatially- and temporally-distributed narrative forms, and for some, their emergence indicated the arrival into the mainstream of practices that had hitherto been relegated to fan subcultures and marginal art movements. Like the critical interventions of Situationism, which sought to reconfigure public space as a "new arena for creation" wherein "unforeseen games will become possible through the inventive use of material conditions" (Nieuwenhuys, 1959), the ambiguously-bounded play of ARGs has the ability to produce dramatic shifts in subjectivity that "[sensitize] participants to affordances, real or imagined," "[make] all data seem connected, or at least plausibly connected," and "make surfaces less convincing" (McGonigal 2003, 43-44). Similarly, ARGs promised to do to mainstream storytelling what "distributed narratives"- experimental narratives spread out across "time, space, and the network" (Walker 2004, 1) - had done to avant garde and electronic literature: Distributed narratives break down the aesthetics of unity we have followed for millennia. They take this disunity a step further than the bricolage of postmodernism, by collapsing the unity of form as well as that of content and concept. Yet perhaps they also point to a new kind of unity: a unity where the time and space of the narrative are in sync with the time and space of the reader. (Walker 2004, 11)Finally, by bringing together once disparate practices such as game design, performance art, and cinematic narrative, ARGs were seen as being on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary new media thinking. Great things were forecasted, including the use of ARGs in establishing and leveraging collective intelligences in order to solve real-world problems (McGonigal 2003; Jenkins 2004). IV. ARGs in Practice: 2001-2010 While ARGs have proven that they have the potential to mobilize elite groups of "lead users" who can co-create content and evangelize for a brand or cause (McGonigal 2003; Szulborski 2005; IGDA ARG SIG 2006; Dena 2008a) - and that they can quickly generate alarmingly efficient collective intelligences (McGonigal 2007; see also DARPA 2010) - they have, perhaps understandably, failed to live up to some of the high expectations set at the turn of the century. ARGs have not seen the kinds of growth in popularity that other forms of gaming and storytelling have seen over the past decade (Schell 2010; compare with Dena 2008a); they have not proven to be a particularly effective way of building lasting communities or collaborative practices, especially when compared to more systems-oriented approaches to organizing and maintaining collective action (see Shirky 2008); and they have failed to maintain the same kind of relevance to contemporary media habits and technologies that they arguably held in the early 2000s, ceding this territory to other kinds of pervasive interactivity such as mobile and social media games, casual games, and collaborative production games (see Montola, et al 2009). The specific reasons for these shortfalls vary from context to context. In the media industry, for example, ARGs have largely been considered marketing tools, and as such have often not been sufficiently integrated into the development and production processes of the properties they promote, leading to disconnects between fans of the source material, ARG player communities, PMs, and producers. As writer Rich Silverman of the Transmedia LA message board (2010) puts it, "[it's] been my experience that an ARG component of a film or TV property comes to the game too late to be really effective . . . we need to start seeing these things baked into the development process of any show or film they're supporting." In educational and institutional contexts, ARGs are similarly marginalized, typically employed as orientation tools (Down 2008) or experimental promotions (Goodlander 2009), but rarely meshed with the core operations or mandates of their hosts. It is unclear whether the persistent design problems that constrain or preclude the accessibility, replayability, and scalability of ARGs are the cause or the result of this marginalization. Nevertheless, making such a determination is probably less important than identifying what those core design problems are, and suggesting ways in which the form can evolve or adapt in order to correct them. In general, these problems center on three overlapping and relatively unchallenged aspects of traditional ARG design, namely: 1) that, despite the decidedly playful and improvisatory character of the relationship between puppet masters and players, ARGs are ultimately not game systems but rather vehicles for delivering story; 2) that ARGs treat their core audiences as monadic "collective detectives" rather than groups of living, breathing individuals; and, 3) that ARGs are linear, event-driven experiences. Indeed, many of the problems associated with ARGs can be traced back to their status as temporally-bounded and sequentially-unfolding experiences. As Jim Stewartson of Fourth Wall Studios puts it, "[ARGs have historically been] essentially rock concerts. Very large, real-time, elaborate experiences that were really cool and really fun for the people who were involved with them" (Morris, et al 2009). This event-like design clearly eliminates any potential for replayability, and it exacts almost equally dire consequences on accessibility and scalability. In a typical ARG, players who don't have the time at the right time to dive into the game can find their experience spoiled by those who do. Even players with high levels of interest in the material and a strong desire to participate in the game's challenges can be reduced to lurking on message boards or merely following along with puppet master- or player-created story summaries if they don't have the time required to keep up with the more hard-core players. Consequently, the vast majority of the players of traditional ARGs aren't "players" at all, but are rather more like spectators, albeit very multi-modal ones:
Dena (2008b), Montola (2009), and others have pointed out that this "pyramid of participation" enables transmedial designs wherein "different play modes contribute to each other and support an experience that is larger than its parts" (Montola, et al 2009, 121). In such an arrangement, spectators co-exist with variously-engaged players, with the hard-core participants effectively acting as "stars" of the game's narrative ; puppet masters and serious players document the actions of the hard core in real- or near-real-time; and the rest of the player base consumes this documentation serially. This kind of structure has been experimented with to varying degrees of success. However, since this and other kinds of "tiering" (Dena 2008b) demand the production and management of numerous additional layers of game assets, they also represent some of the most expensive and labor-intensive solutions to the accessibility problem. That is, while individual players in an ARG are free to privately interact with characters or artifacts from the game, the puzzles and challenges are designed with such complexity that any information gathered from these interactions needs to be shared with and processed by a collective in order to be properly contextualized and rendered sensible in a timely fashion. While this design encourages the formation of collective intelligences, in the context of a time-based, event-driven, closed information system such as an ARG, it also somewhat counter-intuitively results in an increasing diminishment of the degree to which new players can easily access and enter into the activity. That is, once a functioning "collective detective" (Cloudmakers 2001) has been established, it will tackle the challenges presented by the puppet masters with a self-refining efficiency that will largely discount the need for new members. Knowledge production structures populated by elite players with available time, an appropriate range of competencies, and relevant social capital will gather, process, and analyze data faster and more thoroughly than a non-integrated outsider ever could. Further, as the game progresses, prospective members without adequate reputation within the player community and in-depth knowledge of "the story so far" (see Dena 2008b, 41) will naturally find it increasingly difficult to find a role within the collective. To illustrate this problem, consider the recent DARPA Network Challenge crowdsourcing experiment (2009). In this experiment, ten red weather balloons were placed in visible locations around the United States, and the public was challenged to find the balloons using any legal means whatsoever. Nine hours after the event commenced, all ten balloons had been found by a team from MIT (http://balloon.mit.edu/). In this instance, the team, which had conscripted around 5,400 balloon spotters via social media and various public entreaties (DARPA 2010), served its purpose and was quickly dissolved; but what if the DARPA Network Challenge had been only the first of many challenges in a long-term game - that is, if it was merely the opening puzzle of a three month long ARG. How would this emerging collective intelligence have evolved? Would it have become more broad-based like Wikipedia, exploring the diverse interests and passions of its user base, or would it have gravitated toward greater efficiencies, tighter working groups, task-oriented committees, and editorial sub-teams? According to fieldwork conducted by McGonigal (2007), the latter is more likely: rather than becoming more inclusive or expansive, the group might in fact become increasingly specialized along particular "threads of investigation" tied to the core problems with which it was presented. After all, the puzzles in ARGs are ultimately very specific: unlike Wikipedia, which is almost completely open-ended, the knowledge production demanded by an ARG is focused on a particular story world and an associated set of puzzles with clearly-defined solutions - much like the narrow-but-complex balloon-finding task of the DARPA experiment. Further, since the puzzles in ARGs are often cumulative and informed by the solutions to earlier puzzles, those who were on board for the first discoveries - in this case, those who understood the methodology by which the original 5,400 balloon spotters were coordinated and the information they provided was processed - would arguably be more valuable and acceptable assets to the team than newcomers unaware of those practices and procedures. Somewhat ironically, then, this kind of collective intelligence design, when applied to closed information systems such as ARGs, has steeply diminishing returns when it comes to inclusivity and accessibility. What all of these problems have in common is an origin in the "non-gameness" of ARGs. ARGs, despite their name, are not, in fact, games; rather, they are ergodic (Aarseth 1997) transmedia texts that, structurally speaking, are much more akin to scavenger hunts or group puzzle-solving activities like the annual MIT Mystery Hunt. Rarely in ARG design do we see the generativity, rulesets, and procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) that characterize games. This is fine; not everything has to be a game. But for an activity which so often aspires to take place on a massive scale, both in terms of content and participation, to not use game mechanics as a means of generating and managing interactivity is arguably a recipe for disaster. Indeed, much of ARG design is reminiscent of early experiments in electronic literature and interactive filmmaking which sought to create vast narratives via branching story trees: very quickly, artists who took this approach discovered that to do so meant writing or shooting orders of magnitude more material than the reader or viewer would ever see. An interactive movie-game like Dragon's Lair (1983), for example, needed a total of 27 minutes of animation stored on custom-made laserdiscs to provide an interactive experience that lasted for a maximum of 6 minutes (The Dot Eaters 2007) - and even then, the gameplay consisted of little more than making a handful of left-or-right decisions about which direction the protagonist should move. Compare this outcome to an even older video game, Rogue (1980), a procedurally-generated dungeon-crawler that remains popular to this day. In Rogue, the virtual world is generated on the fly at runtime via an algorithm. Instead of devoting limited computational resources to storing and displaying pre-rendered content (as in Dragon's Lair), Rogue's programmers used a compact ruleset to create their gameworld, producing an expansive and endlessly replayable realm of fantasy adventure and tabletop RPG-style interactivity that would have been technically impossible to produce using pre-made dungeon scenarios given the limited storage resources of early 1980s home computers. Despite being made for free by hobbyist programmers, Rogue's parsimonious use of algorithms rather than branching content trees resulted in much more interactivity and depth than was presented three years later by Dragon's Lair's spectacular but simplistic left-or-right decision making interface. This is the real power of games: to create dynamic interactive experiences through rules rather than archives of pre-made content. As we shall see below, approaching ARG design from this perspective opens a range of new possibilities for producers. Finally, because ARGs are so expensive and labor-intensive to maintain, media companies and institutions overwhelmingly abandon the communities they create once the putative purpose for their creation has been satisfied (McGonigal 2003; IGDA ARG SIG 2006). While this instrumental view of community may have short-term benefits to brands and creatives, and while many media companies are likely comfortable with the risk of "blowback" from disaffected ARG fans (especially since said fans will have long since served their purpose by the time their complaints come to the fore), in the long term, such a view effectively undermines one of alternate reality gaming's most important potentials for generating value: the creation and maintenance of strong, persistent communities.
June 21, 2010
Transmedia Education: the 7 Principles RevisitedLast week, I participated in one of the ongoing series of webinars for teachers which is being conducted by our Project New Media Literacies team. The series emerges from an Early Adopters Network we are developing with educators in New Hampshire to drill down on the skills we identified in our white paper for the MacArthur Foundation and to think through how teachers in all school subjects and at all levels can draw on them to change how they support the learning of their students. Vanessa Vartabedian is the coordinator who has been running this series. Each month, they focus on a different skill. This month's focus was on Transmedia Navigation. The webinars are open to any and all participants and are drawing educators from all over the world. The webinars are also available after the fact via podcast. The Transmedia Navigation discussion involved not only some remarks by me but also a conversation with Clement Chau from Tufts University and Mark Warshaw from the Alchemists who has developed transmedia content for Smallville, Heroes, and Melrose Place, among other properties. "Our Ning site is where our community of educators are exchanging ideas and trying out resources. You simply need to sign-up and fill out a short profile to access the schedule of upcoming webinars, as well as links to the archived recordings for previous webinars." The focus of transmedia navigation offered me a chance to think a bit more deeply about what it might mean for us to produce transmedia education and I thought I would share some of those insights with you. Let's start with some first principles: Transmedia needs to be understood as a shift in how culture gets produced and consumed, a different way of organizing the dispersal of media content across media platforms. We might understand this in terms of a distinction I make between multimedia and transmedia. Multimedia refers to the integration of multiple modes of expression within a single application. So, for example, an educational cd-rom a decade or so ago might combine text, photographs, sound files, and video files which are accessed through the same interface. Transmedia refers to the dispersal of those same elements across multiple media platforms. So, for example, the use of the web to extend or annotate television content is transmedia, while the iPad is fostering a return to interest in multimedia. Multimedia and Transmedia assume very different roles for spectators/consumers/readers. In a multimedia application, all the readers needs to do is click a mouse and the content comes to them. In a transmedia presentation, students need to actively seek out content through a hunting and gathering process which leads them across multiple media platforms. Students have to decide whether what they find belongs to the same story and world as other elements. They have to weigh the reliability of information that emerges in different contexts. No two people will find the same content and so they end up needing to compare notes and pool knowledge with others. That's why our skill is transmedia navigation - the capacity to seek out, evaluate, and integrate information conveyed across multiple media. The push for transmedia is bound up with the economic logic of media consolidation. Yet, there is a push to transform this economic imperative into an aesthetic opportunity. If entertainment experiences are going to play out across multiple platforms, why not use this principle to expand and enrich the experience which consumers have of stories? Why not see transmedia as an expanded platform through which storytellers can deploy their craft? As we think about transmedia in the classroom, there are several key justifications/motivations for integrating it into our learning and teaching practices. First, as modes of human expression expand and diversify, then the language arts curriculum has to broaden to train students for these new forms of reading and writing. If many stories are going to become transmedia, then we need to talk with our students about what it means to read a transmedia story and as importantly what it means to conceive and write a transmedia story. This is closely related to what Gunther Kress talks about in terms of multimodality and multiliteracy. Kress argues that we need to teach students the affordances of different media through which we can communicate information and help them to foster the rhetorical skills they need to effectively convey what they want to say across those different platforms. I've had good luck at getting students to think in these terms through assignments which ask them to propose ways of translating an established story into a new medium - for example, translating a novel or film into a computer game. This practice requires them to develop critical skills at identifying the distinctive features of specific stories and worlds and it requires them to think about the affordances and expectations surrounding other media. Check out my earlier blog post on this practice. Some will object that this skill takes a mode of commercial production as a model for what takes place in the classroom. Didn't I note here just a few weeks ago the dangers of talking about "learning 2.0" because it confuses a business plan for a pedagogical approach. I think we need to be careful in this regard and if it were only Pokemon or Lost that operated according to transmedia principles, I might be much slower to advocate integrating these same principles into our teaching. But here's the thing: Obi-Wan Kenobi is a transmedia character, so is Barrack Obama. In both cases, readers put together information about who this character is and what he stands for by assembling data that comes at us from a range of media platforms. In such a world, each student in our class will have had exposure to different bits of information because they will have consumed different media texts. As a result, one child's mental model of Obama may include the idea that he was not born in the United States, that he is a Moslem, that he is a socialist, or what have you, and we need some way of communicating across those mental models, we need a way of understanding where they came from, and we need to help students expand the range of media sources through which they search out and assess information about what's happening in the world around them. To some degree, teachers emphasis similar skills when they tell students to seek out multiple sources when they write a paper, yet often, they mean only multiple print sources and not sources from across an array of different media. All of this suggests to me that we need to make the process of transmedia navigation much more central to the ways we teach research methods through schools. Vanessa asked me to share with the group the Seven Principles of Transmedia Entertianment which I presented through this blog last fall and suggest how they might relate to learning. I wanted to express some cautions about this exercise. Transmedia Storytelling is one of a range of transmedia logics, which might also include transmedia branding, transmedia performance, and transmedia learning. There is sure to be some overlap between these different transmedia logics, but also differences. I don't doubt that some principles carry over but we need to keep in mind that there may also be some core principles for transmedia teaching/learning which will not be explored if we simply try to adopt what we know about transmedia entertainment for this space. I hope that this blog can start a conversation which helps us to identify other principles which are specific to the learning domain.
Spreadability vs. Drillability Daniel Thomas Hickey wrote a series of posts (Part One, Part Two) which explore how the circulation of educational media might be described and improved by our model of spreadability. They are worth checking out. But for the moment, let's think of this in a somewhat broader way. Spreadability refers to a process of dispersal - to scanning across the media landscape in search of meaningful bits of data. Drillability refers to the ability to dig deeper into something which interests us. A good educational practice, then, encompasses both, allowing students to search out information related to their interests across the broadest possible terrain, while also allowing students to drill deep into something which matters to them. This requires us as educators to think more about motivation - what motivates students to drill deeper - as well as class room management - how can we facilitate their capacity to dig into something that matters to them. Continuity vs. Multiplicity The media industry often talks about continuity in terms of canons - that is, information which has been authorized, accepted as part of the definitive version of a particular story. Education has often dealt in the range of canon - not only the canon of western literature which deems some books as more worth reading than others but also the structures of disciplines and standards which determine what is worth knowing and how we should know it. Multiplicity, by contrast, encourages us to think about multiple version - possible alternatives to the established canon. So, for example, Kurt Squire in his work on adapting Civilization III for the classroom talks about the value of asking students to think through "what if" scenarios about history - what if the Native Americans or Africans had resisted colonization, for example - that can be played out in the simulation game and which can help us to understand the contingencies of history. Asking what if questions both force us to think about the impact of historical events as well as the different factors which weighed in to make some possibilities more likely than others. As Squire notes, playing Civilization III encourages students to master the logic of history rather than simply what happened. The same thing happens when we explore how the same story has been told in different national contexts. It helps us to see the different values and norms of these cultures as we look at the way the story has been reworked for local audiences. p>Immersion vs. Extraction In terms of immersion, we might think about the potential educational value of virtual worlds. I don't mean simply having classes in Second Life which look like virtual versions of the classes we would have in First Life except with far less human expressivity. I mean the idea of moving through a virtual environment which replicates key aspects of a historical or geographical environment. I am thinking about Sasha Barab's Quest Atlantis< or Chris Dede's River City as examples of fully elaborated virtual learning environment which rely on notions of immersion. I am also thinking about activities where students build their own virtual worlds - deciding what details need to be included, mapping their relationship to each other, guiding visitors through their worlds and explaining the significance of what they contain. Extractability captures another principle which has long been part of education - the idea of meaningful props and artifacts in the classroom. In a sense, every time we have show and tell, everytime a student brings an element from their home culture into the classroom, every time a teacher brings back a mask or a tool from their visit to another country and displays it as part of their geography lesson. World Building World Building comes out of thinking of the space of a story as a fictional geography. I've mentioned here before that L. Frank Baum described himself as the Royal Geographer of Oz. In this case, we do not simply mean physical geography though this is part of it. Books with a strong focus on worlds often include maps - whether it is the large scale map of Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien or the much more local map of the rigigng of the ship found in many of Patrick O'Brian's books. Part of the pleasure of reading those books is mastering that fictional geography. But world building also depends on cultural geography - our sense of the peoples, their norms and rituals, their dress and speech, their everyday experiences, which is also often the pleasure of reading a fantasy or science fiction narrative. But it is also part of the pleasure of reading historical fiction and a teacher can use the activity of mapping and interpreting a fictional world as a way of opening up a historical period to their students. This moves us away from a history of generals and presidents towards social history as the key way through which schools help us to understand the past. And many traditional school activities encourage students to cook and eat meals, to make and wear costumes, to engage in various rituals, associated with other historical periods. If we develop ways of mapping these worlds as integrated systems, we can push beyond these local insights towards a fuller, richer understanding of past societies.
Subjectivity At heart, subjectivity refers to looking at the same events from multiple points of view. When we were going through my late mother's papers, we found a school assignment from the 1930s when she wrote the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the perspective of the wolf. When I mentioned this at the webinar, others mentioned Wicked which tells the Wizard of Oz from the vantage point of the Wicked Witch of the West. Matt Madden's book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Excercises in Style is a great way to bring these issues into the art or language arts classroom: he tells the same simple story 99 times, each time tweaking different storytelling variables, including those around tense and perspective. In the history classroom, there's a value of flipping perspectives - how were the same events understood by the Greeks and the Persians, the RedCoats and the Yankees, the North and the South, and so forth, as a way of breaking out of historical biases and understanding what lay at the heart of these conflicts. Performance In speaking about entertainment, I discuss performance in terms of a structure of cultural attractors and activators. The attractors draw the audience, the activators give them something to do. In the case of the classroom, there are a range of institutional factors which insure that you have a group of students sitting in front of you. But you still face the issue of motivation. When we were doing work on thinking about games to teach, we often had to ask the content experts to tell us what the information they saw as valuable allowed students to do. To turn the curriculum into a game, we had to move from information on the page to activities which put that information to use. This is at the heart of any process-driven approach to learning. What are you asking your students to do with what you teach them? How are they able to adapt it in a timely and meaningful fashion from knowledge to skill? And tied to this is the idea of adaptation and improvisation, since in the entertainment world, different fans show their different understandings and interest in the entertainment content through very different kinds of performances. So, how do we create a space where every student can perform the content of the class in ways which are meaningful to them? In short, how might teachers learn to think about cultural activators in designing their lessons?
June 7, 2010
My Big Brazillian Adventure
Of the foreign language editions of Convergence Culture, probably the best selling one was the version published in Portuguese and distributed primarily in Brazil. Thanks to the support of Mauricio Mota and the Alchemists, a transmedia company which works in Rio and Los Angeles, my book has stimulated enormous interest in that country, with companies such as Globo and Petrobras buying hundreds of copies to give to their employees and clients as Brazil seeks to better understand the digital age at a moment of deep cultural and technological transition. Why Brazil? Two primary reasons: First, Brazil is at the center of the so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), countries which economists believe are going to be dominant economic (and I suspect, cultural) powers in the 21st century. These are countries on the rise, countries which have embraced new media and are surfing it to gain greater influence over the planet. Much as China has gained greater visibility in recent years through the Olympics and the current Shanghai Expo, Brazil is positioned to gain wider attention by hosting the Olympics and the World Cup in the next few years. It is a country with a strong digital infrastructure and thriving creative industries. Second, unlike the United States, Brazil has held onto strong folk and participatory traditions, despite the rise of modern mass media. Seymour Papert famously used the Samba Schools as his illustration of how informal and community based learning works and that example has stuck in my head from my early days at MIT: If you dropped in at a Samba School on a typical Saturday night you would take it for a dance hall. The dominant activity is dancing, with the expected accompaniment of drinking, talking and observing the scene. From time to time the dancing stops and someone sings a lyric or makes a short speech over a very loud P.A. system. You would soon begin to realize that there is more continuity, social cohesion and long term common purpose than amongst transient or even regular dancers in a typical American dance hall. The point is that the Samba School has another purpose then the fun of the particular evening. This purpose is related to the famous Carnival which will dominate Rio at Mardi Gras and at which each Samba School will take on a segment of the more than twenty-four hour long procession of street dancing. This segment will be an elaborately prepared, decorated and choreographed presentation of a story, typically a folk tale rewritten with lyrics, music and dance newly composed during the previous year. So we see the complex functions of the Samba School. While people have come to dance, they are simultaneously participating in the choice, and elaboration of the theme of the next carnival; the lyrics sung between the dances are proposals for inclusion; the dancing is also the audition, at once competitive and supportive, for the leading roles, the rehearsal and the training school for dancers at all levels of ability. My Student Ana Domb Krauskopf recently wrote a fascinating white paper for the Convergence Culture Consortium on Techno Brega, a form of popular music in regional Brazil, which operates under a radically different model of production and distribution which is being studied by many in the Free Culture movement. If you accept my premise that digital participatory culture is what happens when we apply folk culture logic to the content of mass culture in an era where we have expanded capacities for circulation, then it makes sense that digital culture is going to take a very different shape in Brazil than in the United States. Given this history, my work seems especially resonant with Brazilian readers and I am feeling a strong tug to spend more time in that country. I spent the last week and a half of May in Brazil, speaking with several key players there in the efforts to make the country a key digital player, including Petrobras, the leading oil company, and Globo, a key media producer and distributor. While I was there, I was interviewed by half a dozen or so of the leading print and television journalists.
I was able to go to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain and look down on the city. Scattered throughout Rio are massive outcroppings of exposed rock -- to call them mountains, though they are mountain sized, does not really capture the oddness of these protrusions. They are much closer to Stone Mountain in my native Atlanta (of course without the carvings of Confederate generals!) than anything else I had ever seen. The city is wrapped in and around these mountains. In some cases, the Favela run up the sides of mountains. The more desirable land is at their foot. They are contained by the beaches and oceans that surround much of the city. And threaded through these pockets of development remain large forests. The effect is close to the technological utopian conception of the city as an integrated environment where nature and technology can co-exist. It is hard to go far in Rio without confronting the natural world and the companies where I spoke were very overt about their commitments to Green policies. The event at Globo was simply spectacular. The production people had turned a soundstage into what can only be described as a set. Not only had they taken a key motif from the cover of my book and blown it up to the size of a wall, adding in massive television screens on either side, but they had taken other elements from the book's design and decorated the entire hall. It was packed with hundreds of people who wanted to learn more about convergence and transmedia. And the event was being webcast and live-blogged so the words were being transmitted to many who could not be physically present. I presented an opening talk on transmedia which drew upon my recent He-Man essay and my 7 Principles of Transmedia Storytelling paper, both of which have already been shared on my blog, and ended with some thoughts about future challenges confronting transmedia producers which I hope to share with my readers soon.
Afterwards, we went on a tour of the production facilities. In many ways, they resemble the classic film studios of the Golden Era of Hollywood, except that they are managed by digital dasebases. So, there are large backlots and vast sound stages. We were shown, for example, a scale reconstruction of a Sao Paolo shopping mall which was used as the setting for a youth-oriented telanovela.
And we were driven through a lovingly recreated neighborhood from the south of Italy which is the setting of another of their popular series. I am posing here with Mauricio Mota and Flourish Klink from The Alchemists.
We toured a vast warehouse holding props which were in storage from previous productions and could be called up from the database when needed for new series and another warehouse where costumes were stored, organized by the decade where the stories were set. Alongside the storehouses, there was a factory of workers sewing new costumes to be used, often in just a few hours, on one or another of the projects they were filming and there were construction crews that could build and breakdown sets on a daily basis.
We walked through the soundstages and saw Passione, a telanovela, being shot. We met briefly the young and very attractive stars Mariana Ximenes and Reynaldo Gianechinni, who have been called the Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt of Brazil. And we were able to watch them shoot a scene from an upcoming episode, standing in the booth with the director as they swapped between five cameras which were filming the scene. It was one of fifteen scenes for the series that were scheduled to be shot that day amongst ten or so settings in the studio devoted to Passione's production. The scenes were shot out of sequence 4 or 5 episodes at a time to allow them to complete their needs of a setting, break it down, and make way for the next setting, all in the course of a 1-2 day period of time. The folks with us who worked in Hollywood were astonished at both the attention to detail in the production design but also the efficiency of the operation over all. (Next Time: Down Argentina Way) ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f1b3a7b4-91f9-4e30-91f5-e6d92df9437b)
June 2, 2010
The Hollywood Geek Elite Debates the Future of TelevisionEditor's note: It looks like we were sent two copies of the same segment. We are tracking down the missing piece of this and will get it up as soon as possible. We wanted to bring the smartest people we knew from the entertainment world face to face with leading film, television, and media researchers for a conversation about the future of entertainment. In some ways, this was a mini version of what we do with the Futures of Entertainment conference on the East Coast and the new Transmedia Hollywood conference on the West Coast. Today, I am able to share with you the web-version of that program. Part of what is fascinating about this exchange is how much these producers of cult television shows are thinking and rethinking their relations with their audiences, trying to understand how to court and hold active and engaged consumers in an era of competing media options and multiple delivery platforms. The value of fan participation runs through this conversation.
Below, I've included some transcribed highlights from the event. But so much is conveyed by the emotional tone and stylistic self-presentation of the various participations, which include the two head guys from Lost who had flown in just the day before from shooting the final episode in Hawaii. We didn't get any real spoilers but we did get to understand their thinking and sense the glow they had after finishing this key phase of their work. Ironically, their shows have all ended. Heroes and Ghost Whisperer were canceled in the latest wave of network decisions and Day One never reached the air. Without knowing it, we captured a moment of transition in American television.
CARLTON: Most of these things are very narrative driven for us and it's a hard thing to try to articulate specifically when we want the audience to understand that every small little niggling question will be impossible to answer watching the show. Our goals as storyteller were to tackle the big questions and try to bring the story to a satisfactory resolution. But if you're wondering who's the guy is, etc, you're not gonna get that answer in the series. The story we were telling in Lost, we planned to end on May 23rd, we have no plan to do any kind of sequel or spin off, anything. We set out to tell the story of the most significant thing that happened. Telling the story was our ability to negotiate with ABC in the 3rd season of the show. Now we're bringing the story that we plan to tell to a conclusion. Now that said, we've also acknowledged that we're not the owners of Lost. It is owned by the Walt Disney company and it is an incredibly valuable franchise. Worth billions as opposed to millions of dollars. And we completely understand that the Disney company will choose to continue to make money under the Lost franchise at some future point... There's no way when you tell a story that you can tie up all the loose ends, there are many creative minds who'll come stories to ABC and propose to take Lost, using franchise label in the future, and that's great. The story we wanted to tell was that tv series and that ends in May. The previous transmedia series you worked on--Smallville and Heroes--both had strong ties to the comic book realm--one directly from comic books, and the other owing a lot to the comic book tradition. Melrose Place is on the other side of the spectrum. Has the difference in genre affected where the online stories come from? Or do you find that teen soap lends itself as much to a transmedia story as the sci-fi fantasy genre? MARK: It's definitely different. You have people who want to get immediately after online and play games. But that's part of why I jumped out of the Melrose Place thing, and we're doing other things kind of that side of the spectrum. If you look at the spectrum, all, at the core, it's about extending a narrative and dipping into the fandom. On a soap opera, there's tons of different worlds and relationships to dive deeper into. That's a really rich photogram for telling transmedia stories. So it was really fun to dive in there, instead of feeding people with the ways to get your light saver. This is fun to go into the most stylish person on Melrose Place's cast and go into her closet, and learn about stuff she had in her closet. Or the diaries, you can just dive deeper. These are just fertile places to make buckets to tell stories. It was a very fun challenge and I think that anything with a story has a good place to go in the transmedia world. CBS is primarily known for an older demographic which, stereotypically, is not known for frequenting the web. Yet Ghost Whisperer has thrived beautifully both on the network and online. What did you do to make the series and its online components accessible and appealing to an audience that is normally not attracted to this type of content? KIM: I think that first of all CBS demographics has changed in the last 5 years that we've been on the air. At first when we started with Friday night and Ghost Whisper, we made the announcement for CBS, my partner and I knew we had a math problem, which was 82% of all the shows that had been launched on a Friday night since the X Files which was 10 years prior had not gone to its second year. And before that we had run a show Profiler which was on a Saturday night, so we knew what the challenges were. And we had been working for about 4 years before Ghost Whisperer got ordered, and we were working at the intersection of the Internet had some amazing discoveries when we were doing Profiler, that we were able to continue on and then fold onto our experience with Ghost Whisperer. So what we did was that we created this thing called the "Total Engagement Experience", which is a model that Professor Jenkins and I have talked a while about....CBS had never done this before. We also felt that moving into the 21st century, that our obligation is just developing, pitching and selling tv shows and delivering the film was not the end of our obligation as executive producers and showrunners. Our commitment to any network and studios that we've worked for is...to deliver the audience as well. And I believe that going into the future of tv and feature films, everybody is gonna need to get on board with that, and figure out how to deliver an experience, as opposed to just something that you watch, because we are in the experience era. So when we had layered that out for CBS, and our approach, unlike the CBS at the time, was to go out and find our audience, and court them, and create a playground for them so that they could experience the Ghost Whisperer world rather than just watch. And then, bring them back to the tv show in a very gentle way, that became very successful. Because what we built was a very, very loyal audience, not just a substantial audience on a Friday night, but a loyal audience, which has... this whole thing has served as a model for us to moving forward in the business. And be in the 21st century. It's an important time to do it. Many academics are describing a push in popular television towards more "complex narratives" (longer story arcs, greater seriality, larger ensemble casts, and so forth) and you represent some of the series which are most often held up as illustrating this turn. What factors do you see leading towards these developments? What obstacles have made it harder to shift television in this direction?
JAVIER: When I was a network executive in the mid 90s, one of the heads of research for NBC came and talk to us, and one of the things that he used to say is that "why is Stay By The Bell so successful?" when it is so hooky and so corny? And he said look: the audience is fragmented, into two very big pots: either there's 20% of your audience is A audience. This is the taste making audience, the audience that goes online, the audience that buys new clothing, the audience that does all of these stuffs. And there's your B audience, that is your audience who's content to go and watch a self contained show, have a laugh and then leave. And the funny thing was that some networks wanted to have A audience cause it would get that magazine cover, some people wanted the A audience, and NBC was going for the B audience at that time. And I think that there's a sweet spot which is sort of where Man Men is right now, with challenging serialized show, but they can have that audience and that's all they need. They don't have the pressure, which Lost had for its first 3 years. They're trying to get to that more mainstream audience without trying to alienate the one audience and I think that the success of Lost and Heroes is in a way, countered to that social wisdom. The media industry talks often about the value of "audience engagement." And your series are often cited as having produced particularly engaged audiences. Can you describe the relationship you've created with your consumers and what value you place in their active participation around the franchise? CARLTON: We very consciously try not to write the show outwardly but write the show inwardly. I mean we started basically this Lost just sitting around in my office every morning, we'd have breakfast and just talked about story [...] We stuck with that same methodology all the way through. We were working in the office until 11pm yesterday for the finale of the series, and we've kind of kept that same protocol. Now the advent of the Internet has provoked profound differences of what you can do as a storyteller. I mean for us, we were actually kind of building Lost and at the beginning, one of the things that we found ourselves doing was that breaking a lot of fundamental rules of television, which was: we had a large cast, a sprawling complex narrative, and we infused that narrative a lot of intentional ambiguity. I think we were influenced in a certain way by European filmmaking; this idea that we'd give a chance to make up their mind about certain narrative aspects of the show and it get the audience talking about the show really evoked a sense of discussion and the Internet became a place where people gathered. I remember actually when Javier and I went to this fan event at the Hollywood renaissance hotel the first year, and there were these people who'd flown from all over the world, who were kind of happy to see us, but they were more happy to see each other. They had created an online community. Lost was the catalyst for that community, but the community transcended the show very quickly and there were people who got married, there were relationships that were formed, it was a way of sort of finding a shared interest, but that shared interest ultimately was transcended by the relationships between all these people, and there was all the people from the Fuselage who were basically all meeting each other for the first time. That was really an interesting experience to see that, and I think that over time, we have used the Internet as a way to gage what the responses to the show. Usually we're so far ahead, it doesn't influence the storytelling. Now of course we're done pretty much with the writing of the show, so any surprising responses now, the ship has sort of sailed... The other sort of example we cite al the time is Nicky and Paula. The fans were clambering and saying: what about those other people, there's always those other people on the beach. We see them, they never talk, who are they? So we were actually influenced by the audience to make a narrative decision that actually backfired. So we actually said, "well okay, " [ laughs ]. We started to write those two characters and it felt wrong, but people wanted it, and then, we realized it was kind of a disaster. And then we decided to burry them alive. And the audience was in that same cycle, but they were behind us. We came to that realization week by week, and then the audience was sort of reacting because they were seeing episodes, it was like looking at life from a distance star, when the event had already occurred. But it was something we did because of the fans and then they hated these characters and then they were happy when we killed them, and they thought it was their doing. TIM: It's an amazing process when you're in this loop with the fandom. As the writer's room, you often emulate, or you basically mirror the fan base. When you start to feel you've gone too far with the story line or not gone far enough, and the characters are working for you, sure enough, it sort of mirrors the same reaction that the fans have except we're still three or more months ahead when... so, you often want to say to people "wait, and see: we're getting exactly to the place where you are" and this whole idea of how to communicate with the fans... it's very interesting. When Damon and I did Crossing Jordan, there was this "one way street" that you had. You pushed the narrative out in the world and two or three months later people saw it, and if people liked it they sort of voted with their Nielsen box. CARLTON:You got a Nielsen number, that was the entirety of your feedback. TIM: Yeah, that was it. So the feedback loop was really a one way street. Then the Internet created this two way street where you immediately had an obligation to the fans who were connected to the show. And all of the transmedia components of the show become that part of the show that allows them to have a more immediate feedback. JAVIER: yeah but the thing is that no matter how mediated you are, and how much of a two way street of communication you have, you're inviolate right as a storyteller, is the right to hold on to your ability to give the audience what it needs rather than what it wants and to be the judge of that, right or wrong! And I think that especially in the early days of the internet, it became very porous, because there was an oversize reaction to Internet reaction to shows. And then you realize: wait a minute, this is still an audience of 10,000 people who read Television Without Pity, and maybe 20 who post on the board. So I think that we're kind of cycling back to a place where storytellers were less likely to be swayed cause we have a better understanding of what that audience is and what our rights as storytellers need to be. DAMON: There's this incredible Catch 22 that exists, exactly on the point that everybody is talking. And I'm sure you experienced it too, which is: the question that Carlton and I get asked by far, above any other mythological question on the show is: are you making it up as you go along? People ask us that question, they want the answer to be "absolutely not". We have a big binder, we open it up, we go "hop", we're completely functioning by our plans. However, then they also say to us: "do you guys ever go on the boards and listen to what the fans have to say?" and they want the answer to that question to be "yes, absolutely". Now these two things are in direct opposition to each other. Because, unless the fans are saying exactly what's in the binder, which of course, they wouldn't be, so they want us to be making it up as we go along, they just don't want us to admit to it. And they want us to listen to their feedback, ... we're all in the gladiator arena: they're there, and they're giving us the thumb up or down. They want the gladiator to look to them to decide who lives and who dies. And when we kill characters which are popular, they get angry at us, and when we kill characters which are unpopular, they cheer us. And that's the game. KIM: Last year season 4, we killed Millie's husband and there was a huge push back from the audience. The thing that's valuable for us on the Internet is we're all subjected to testing. Even if you're in your 4th or 5th year, they're still testing the show, and the network and studios are giving you numbers and responses. The testing group is not that big. On the Internet, it's a very, very democratic voice. And that's really exciting. It can be dangerous at time, but I mean (we got death threats, ...) but it's also exhilarating where you're taking your show. And so, I would say, had we done this 10 years ago, when the Internet wasn't what it is today, I don't know what would have happened to our show. But because we did it, we knew that there was gonna be push back, but we also had a plan for it. We were able to go on the Internet and court the audience, and explain to them that there was more coming and that he was going to be a ghost... and it was a great experience. And CBS called us at one point and said "what are you guys doing over there, you're affecting all of our websites, it's because your fans have taking everything over". As you guys know, that happens. And that was very exciting for us. But it is very valuable. Even if you don't act on what you're getting, it's valuable to take the pulse yourself rather than have it filtered through different kinds of agendas. The television industry is struggling with the reality that consumers are pursuing the content they want through means other than broadcast television - both legally through iTunes, Hulu, and other such sites, and illegally through Bittorrents. How does this reality impact the way you approach your series? One recent study, for example, found that many television series, including several represented on this panel, were watched by more people illegally than legally. CARLTON: The Internet has kind of changed the world of distribution internationally. So now Lost has moved closed to a day and day model that's basically what's happened to the theatrical film business, to avoid piracy and to capitalize on sorts of marketing campaigns that aren't just now national but international.... TV used to be sort of a gentlemany business where you'd open the show here, and then a foreign buyer would come over and they'd look and they'd watch, and they'd see how it'd do. And then months, sometimes years later, the show would actually run there. Now, because of how the world has shrunk because of the Internet things have gone much more day and day. So we've actually changed.... So this year... each episode of the show has to be done 5 days earlier in order for it to be sent all around the world....One of things that's come up in China too is that there was a race amongst pirates in China to dub the latest issue of Lost. And they were telling me that within 48 hours of the broadcast on NBC, there would be fully dubbed versions of that episode of Lost on Chinese websites. And I was like: these guys are doing it for free! You guys are professional dubbers, why is it taking you 3 months to dub a show? And it was hard to argue with that. So they've actually really shrunk the window of time, and we're on a couple of days later on the English speaking territories, and really the window in terms of dub territory is going down. The studios are doing this for two reasons: one is primarily policy, but secondly, the ability to sort of capitalize on global marketing initiatives which reconnected these ARGs. All the ARGs that we've done have been done in constant with international broadcast partners. Around the world it contributed money and resources to these Internet things. And actually the Internet component of Lost has significantly impacted the actual way in which the show itself ended up being distributed. TIM: The interesting thing is that the networks, are in a sense, they shoot themselves in the foot a little bit by driving these audience towards these alternate platforms. Heroes, we show commercials where we promote coming to the website, to NBC.com, coming there to be able to watch the show online with extra content and commentary etc. so we're actually incentivizing the audience to go to these different platforms and the fact that you can watch the show on your DVR where you want it and when you want it, without commercials, or watch online with commentary or content, we are incentivizing this audience to go and find another places. Heroes was the number 1 downloaded show last year, Lost right there with it. And the general attitude of the networks towards this massive audience that's out there has been to stand on the sideline and heckle these people when, in fact, these are people who actively sought these shows out. They went some place and actively pirated the show. These are fans that should be embraced, and, somehow, figured out how to monetize. An interesting thing would be product placement as a way to sort of create favor with the network. The interesting thing about that is that when we do a Nissan product placement in the show, those 55 million people who download our show illegally are all getting a Nissan commercial. So in some way that may be the solution there. JAVIER: Activity creates fertility--especially when you're dealing with a niche show like The Middleman. If people are downloading it illegally in China...my God, please do! Because, ultimately, what I find is that, the more people talk about the show, the more other people will end up buying the DVD. Eventually, anybody who looks at a pirated copy will tell somebody to buy the T-shirt or the DVD or the keychain, and the money will come back to us. I mean that's something...I'd rather have the show I work on be seen, and, frankly, given the way that the studios have dealt with the royalty compensation for writers on alternative platforms...I'm so sorry about your pirating problem, really! 
May 21, 2010
He-Man and the Masters of TransmediaThe other day I flew back to Cambridge at the request of Scot Osterweill, the research director for The Education Arcade, in order to participate in the Sandbox Summit, a fascinating gathering of game designers, toy makers, television producers, children's book authors, and educators drawn together through their shared interests in "how media is changing our play and how play is changing our media." I had been asked to give a keynote address which would share some of my thoughts about transmedia entertainment in a way that might be relevant to people who were shaping children's culture. As I was pulling my thoughts together for the talk, I stumbled onto an article in I09, one of my favorite blogs about geek culture, which listed the "ten most unfortunate Masters of the Universe Toys." I shared the blog post with my son, now 29, who had grown up as part of the "He-Man" generation and we both took great pleasure in realizing that he had at one time had almost all of their examples in his collection and that we both remembered all of these toys. There was, for example, Moss-Man, an action figure covered in green fuzz; Stinkor, an action figure that smelled and looked like a skunk; and Mosquitor, an action figure which contained a red blood-like fluid. And I began to ponder why these toys had been such a memorable part of his childhood and what it meant that the generation of young men and women who were, in many cases, controlling the production of transmedia entertainment had come of age playing with this particular media franchise. In some ways, contemporary transmedia is being produced by kids who grew up playing with He-Man to be consumed by kids who grew up playing Pokemon. Peggy Charren, who formed Action for Children's Television and lobbied the Federal Communication Commission to regulate childrens programming, would have had an explanation. At the time, she argued that Heman and similar programs were simply "half hour commercials" which had no redeeming value, because they "blur the distinction between program content and commercial speech. Children are attracted to the concepts of the shows and don't fully understand the selling intent behind them... [This has become] a gold mine to station managers and toy manufacturers, but a commercial nightmare to most parents." She and her allies argued that the stories and characters, she feared, were being sacrificed in order to turn the cartoons into advertisements for tie-in toys and as a consequence, these toys were going to stifle youngsters' imaginations. Charren's critique of these toys has taken deep roots among the professional classes, as was reflected by the many different ways these concerns got evoked by speakers at the Sandbox Summit. I do not mean to make light of these concerns, though I have also always found myself resistant to the language used to critique these toys, which often assumes that the play around these fictional narratives necessarily reproduces the terms of the original stories without creating a space for the child's own imaginative contributions. There is no denying that Mattel had a clear commercial interest in producing the program and extending our experience of watching the show into a line of associated toys. And the same can be said of contemporary transmedia entertainment content which is often funded by the branding and promotional budget for the media property. Minimally, transmedia extensions are selling the "mother ship." Often, they are creating alternative sources of income - they are products in their own right just as the He-Man dolls are. Yet, I don't think we can reduce the experience which young people had playing to He-Man to simply the selling and buying of commercial commodities, however distasteful such toys seem to many academic parents. After all, all of us have bought many commodities in our lifetime, most of which we forgot as soon as we had consumed them, yet these particular toys have become part of the shared memories of my son's generation in part because they were tokens of stories and entertainment experiences which were deeply meaningful to them. More than that, though, these toys became resources for their own imaginations, tokens which they used to claim a space for themselves within the stories. Whether they fully recognized it or not, when media producers sold these toys to our children, they also told them things about the nature of the story - the story you saw on the screen was not complete and self contained; these characters had a life beyond the stories we've been sold and told, and what happens next is literally and figuratively in the hands of the consumer. These toys were in effect an authoring system which encouraged young people to make up their own stories about these characters much as the folk in other time periods might make up stories about Robin Hood or Pecos Bill. Children have long played with the core narratives of their culture, as might be suggested by the fact that Tom Sawyer played Robin Hood, Anne of Green Gables King Arthur, and Meg of Little Women Pilgrim's Progress, each central stories of their own time. In the 20th century, mass media displaced many traditional stories, but it does not follow from this that children's play with narrative was none the less meaningful to them as a way of trying on adult roles and asserting their own ability to build on and revise core stories that matter to them. As a father during that period, I have vivid memory of the intense pain of stepping barefoot on some molded piece of plastic when I was called into my son's bedroom at night to comfort him about a bad dream. I'd pick up the plastic shield, sword, or pick ax, and grumble, "grrrmble snarl Teela" and my son, a stickler for details, would correct me, "No, Dad, that belongs to Sorceress." These details mattered. I often reflected at such moments (or at least I did when the pain of my punctured flesh subsided!) on the ways that this attachment to distinctive shields, say, mirrored the detailed descriptions of the shields and weapons of the different Greek heroes found in Homer, suggesting that heraldry in some forms remains an active element in stories across history. The accessories were extensions of the characters, reflections of their personalities, artifacts of their stories, and signs of their capacities for action. Each character was connected to every other character through complex sets of antagonisms and alliances and each character bore their own mythology which could become the point of entry for a new as yet unrealized story. He-Man was teaching his generation to think not just about individual stories but about the process of world-building and part of the pleasure of collecting these toys was to demonstrate their mastery over the lore of these worlds. In some cases, the characters would be deeply embedded in the aired episodes and in other cases, they would exist only in the background or only in one episode and often these were the characters most vividly remembered because they became the child's own possession, their backstory fleshed out from their own imagination, their personality constructed from their own playful performances. Each of the characters had different personalities (and thus demanded different voices) and over time, you would learn their verbal ticks, the quirks of their personality, and the sound of their voice, even though no two children would necessarily perform these characters in the same way. We might think of these characters as in effect avatars, an extension of the child into a virtual or imagined world, and see these constant shifts between personalities as a predecessor of what we would describe as identity play in adolescence. Of course, the performance doesn't end there. The child themselves might become He-Man or some of the other characters through Halloween dress-ups and the web is full of yellowing family photographs of children of my son's generation physically embodying the heroes of their programs. Their mothers (or in my son's case, their grandmothers) might be coaxed into decorating birthday cakes with images copied from He-Man coloring books. And those lacking coloring books (or possessing artistic temperaments) would draw their own pictures of these characters which gave another tangible form to their fantasy lives. My son wrote countless stories which he dictated to his mother and I about He-Man and in the process, he moved from playing with physical objects to playing with words and with the basic building blocks of narratives. In many ways, Masters of the Universe was already a transmedia story, at least as much as the technology of the day would allow. He-Man not only appeared in the Filmnation-produced cartoons but his story was extended into the mini comic books which came with each action figures, on the collector cards and sticker books and coloring books and kids books, each of which gave us a chance to learn a little something more about Eternia, Castle Grayskull, and the other places where these stories took place. And of course, He-Man was only one of the many media franchises which were producing action figures. My son collected figures from Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the World Wrestling Federation, not to mention a smathering of Transformers, Thundercats, Silverhawks, and many other toy lines. Once they were removed from their packages, these toys could be mixed and matched to create new kinds of stories, which might involve meet-ups and cross-overs unlikely to occur in commercial media (though there was at least one DC comic where Superman and He-Man combined forces) but almost inevitable once kids got their hands on the toys. Sometimes an action figure would stand in for another character not yet acquired much as an actor plays a fictional role and in other cases the pleasure was in experimenting with the boundaries between texts and genres, with the mixing of characters forcing them to rethink the scripts. The cross-over points to the generative dimensions of this action figure play - the ways that kids would move from re-performing favorite stories or ritualizing conventional elements from the series to breaking with conventions and creating their own narratives. I never understood the parents who feared such toys would stifle my son's imagination because what I observed was very much the opposite - a child learning to appropriate and remix the materials of his culture. The fact that these stories were shared through mass media with other kids and that they were some vividly embodied in the action figures meant that it was easy for children to have intersubjective fantasies, to share their play stories with each other, and to pool knowledge about the particulars of this fictional realm. So, is it any surprise that as this generation has grown older, they have continued to use these stories, characters, even the toys themselves as resources for their own creative expression? The web is full of amazing fan art in which artists lovingly recreate the assemblage of action figures and accessories they enjoyed as a child, much as earlier generations of artists sketched or wrote stories about the stuffed toys of their childhood imagination. (Think Winnie the Pooh or Raggedy Ann and Andy for earlier kinds of toy focused stories.) There is a whole genre on YouTube of action figure movies, movies which may lovingly recreate the specific images the filmmakers remembered from the source material but may also playfully evoking the mixing and matching of characters that were part of toyroom play. This same aesthetic of action-figure cinema gave rise to Adult Swim's successful Robot Chicken series, which also mixes and matches characters or recasts them to achieve desired effects. Here's one of their spoofs of the He-Man characters. All of this suggests that these toys left a lasting imprint on the imaginations of the generation that grew up playing with them. When I speak to the 20 and 30 somethings who are leading the charge for transmedia storytelling, many of them have stories of childhood spent immersed in Dungeons and Dragons or Star Wars, playing with action figures or other franchise related toys, and my own suspicion has always been that such experiences shaped how they thought about stories. From the beginning, they understood stories less in terms of plots than in terms of clusters of characters and in terms of world building. From the beginning they thought of stories as extending from the screen across platforms and into the physical realm. From the beginning they thought of stories as resources out of which they could create their own fantasies, as something which shifted into the hands of the audience once they had been produced and in turn as something which was expanded and remixed on the grassroots level. In that sense, the action figure is very much the harbinger of the transmedia movement.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c9d12056-4092-446c-8828-0bfa9beac86a)
April 30, 2010
Ludic Narrans:Drew Davidson Talks Crossmedia Communication (Part Two)This is the second installment of my interview with Drew Davidson, Director of the Entertainment Technology Center Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, about his recently published Crossmedia Communications textbook. In this section, we talk about dvds, games, toys, amusement park, fan culture, electronic publishing, and much much more.
On the one hand, it's like Jesse Schell put in his recent talk at DICE When designing a crossmedia property, are we trying to design a unified experience which will be shared by most consumers or an experience which may have multiple points of entry to support a range of diverse and dispersed sets of consumers? I think it's more toward the latter from a design perspective (and from how it's currently playing out with consumers) although I could see how the major media conglomerates would like it to become more mainstream so that more fans are participating across more media. Your book talks about a range of forms of crossmedia experiences which are rarely talked about. For example, you spend part of a chapter on theme parks. So, in what ways can theme park experiences be used to extend our experience of a fictional world? What theme park attractions do the best job of expanding our experience of a property rather than simply adapting the property from one medium to another? Theme parks can provide the opportunity to have an embodied experience within a fictional universe. In general, I think most of them are really just adaptations of a story from another medium (or stand on their own). But even so, having an embodied interaction can enhance and expand your experience with a story. Being able to feel like you're actually there in the narrative universe is something theme parks can do.. You discuss toys as another kind of media extension. When are toys part of the story and when are they simply a commodification of the story?
You talk about media producers "listening" to their audience. To what degree is crossmedia entertainment shaped by audience expectations and emergent forms of participation? To what degree is it shaped top-down by the commercial and creative imperatives of professional storytellers?
Near the end of the book, you raise the issue of "too much content." Is it possible for crossmedia producers to generate so much content that it smothers fan participation?
You built a dvd that accompanies the book. What does it contribute to our understanding of crossmedia? To what degree does it put the book's ideas The purpose of the DVD-ROM is to enable students to put the ideas in the book into action. This happens in a couple of ways. First of all, there are a lot of media examples on the DVD-ROM (images, short videos and music). The media was created by students and interns at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. Tell us a bit more about ETC. press and what you are trying to achieve with this publishing venture?
Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories across texts, comics, games and other media. He is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University and the Editor of ETC Press. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chaired Game Art & Design and Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute Online and has taught and researched at several universities. He consults for a variety of companies, institutions and organizations and was a Senior Project Manager in the New Media Division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston. He was also a Project Manager in Learning Services at Sapient, and before that he produced interactive media at HumanCode. He helped create the Sandbox Symposium, an ACM SIGGRAPH conference on video games and served on the IGDA Education SIG. He works with SIGGRAPH on games and interactive media and serves on the ACTlab Steering Committee, and many review boards and jury panels. He founded the Applied Media & Simulation Games Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the lead on several MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative grants and has written and edited books, journals, articles and essays on narratives across media, serious games, analyzing gameplay, and cross-media communication. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=11925d4d-81de-459a-914c-3f4c87c8c3b5)
April 28, 2010
Ludic Narrans:Drew Davidson Talks Cross-Media Communication (Part One)One of my first classes at USC was in transmedia entertainment and storytelling and I plan to be teaching a large lecture hall class on transmedia in the Cinema School starting in the 2011-2012 academic year. My growing interest in transmedia is one of many reasons I have ended up here. I want to be closer to the entertainment industry to be able to watch some of the changes that are unfolding as this emerging conception of popular entertainment really takes root and I want to be in a position to influence the entertainment workers in training. Think about how the generation of "movie brats," such as Spielberg and Lucas, influenced the American media. For generations, directors emerged from one or another of the guilds, bringing with them specialized skill sets. Robert Wise was an editor; William Cameron Menzies was an art director; most of them knew how to work with actors, but few of them had an integrated perspective on all of the technical skills required to produce a movie. With the rise of film schools, we got directors who knew the full vocabulary of their medium, who knew how to speak to workers with more specialized skills (who often trained alongside them and spoke a shared language) and who knew the history and genres that constituted their tradition. As Hollywood begins to embrace transmedia, a common concern is that there are few people who fully understand how to tell stories or create entertainment experiences in more than one medium: comic book people don't know how to think about games, say, or television people have limited grasp of the web. My own hope is that the Film Schools will once again be the space where future media makers get exposed to a broader range of different kinds of media and also develop the social relations and vocabulary to meaningfully collaborate with others who have specialized in different modes of expression. For this to happen, transmedia entertainment needs to emerge as a subject not simply at USC but at film schools all over the country. And, indeed, I am hearing more and more from other faculty who are starting to teach such classes at their own institutions. That's why it is such good news that Drew Davidson, Director of the Entertainment Technology Center Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, has produced a new textbook designed to introduce undergraduate critical studies and production students alike to the world of what he calls "crossmedia entertainment." (Full disclosure: the book includes a short piece by me which offers my definition of transmedia.) I have long admired Drew Davidson's contributions to the space of games studies, especially through the Well Played books, which offer smart, engaging criticisms of specific games by some of the top games scholars in the world, and his earlier book, Stories in Between is a hidden gem which already poses important questions about new and emerging forms of storytelling. This new book, Cross-Media Communications: an Introduction to the Art of Creating Integrated Media Experiences will play a central role in shaping how concepts of "cross-media" or "transmedia" expression get taught, encouraging educators around the world to explore some of these intriguing concepts in their classrooms. Over the next two installments, I will be sharing this interview with Davidson about the book and about his thoughts on all things crossmedia. What are your goals for this book? Are we far enough along in identifying and explaining these new techniques that there is a space for an undergraduate textbook on crossmedia? Is the book focused on developing critical understanding, practical skills or both? . What do you see as the role of academic programs in preparing the next generation of crossmedia designers and/or in educating an audience to become better consumers of existing transmedia properties?
There has been a jumble of terminology around this topic. I prefer to use "transmedia." Frank Rose talks about "deep media." and you went with "cross-media." Do you see "transmedia" and "crossmedia" as two words to describe the same thing or as capturing different aspects of this new aesthetic?
Your discussion of "crossmedia" places a particular emphasis on interactivity. So, can you share with us what you mean by interactivity? Does this imply that other kinds of narratives are consumed passively? In a networked culture, are there any kinds of narrative which do not spark some form of participation and interactivity?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=df5da5da-e80b-48d2-aa66-39488916b917)
April 27, 2010
Hollywood Goes "Transmedia""At the heart of the entertainment industry, there are young and emerging leaders (such as Danny Bilson and Neil Young at Electronic Arts or Chris Pike at Sony Interactive) who are trying to push their companies to explore this new model for entertainment franchises. Some of them are still regrouping from their first bleeding-edge experiments in this space (Dawson's Desktop, 1998) -- some of which had modest success (The Blair Witch Project, 1999), some of which they now saw as spectacular failures (Majestic, 2001). Some of them are already having closed doors meetings to try to figure out the best way to ensure more productive collaborations across media sectors. Some are working on hot new ideas mased by nondisclosure agreements. All of them were watching closely in 2003, which Newsweek had called 'The Year of The Matrix,' to see how audiences were going to respond to the Wachowski brothers' ambitious plans." -- Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006).
A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms. By all accounts, Starlite Runner's Jeff Gomez, a long time friend and a key thinker/creator in the transmedia space, has been a key player behind the scenes lobbying the Guild to accept this new classification. The specifics of the definition of transmedia is still being debated widely, including this interesting piece on the responses of people who would be eligible for the new title and this one from long time crossmedia advocate Christy Dena. The Guild is already saying that video games were excluded from the list of potential media by oversight and that it will be amended soon to include games. Dena has raised two important criticisms of the definition -- the idea that work must straddle at least three media (disallowing projects which integrate in deep and meaningful ways only two platforms) and the emphasis on storylines as opposed to other potential kinds of transmedia experiences. The reality is that our definition of what constitutes transmedia is still very much evolving, as can be witnessed from the various discussions of the concept at the Transmedia Hollywood: S/Telling the Story conference, which was organized in March by Denise Mann of the UCLA Producers Program and myself. As we brought together people from across the media industry to discuss these emerging trends, we found some included all forms of franchise entertainment as transmedia and others had much narrower definitions which insisted that the different media platforms be integrated to tell a single story. There was disagreement about the value of various proposed terms, including not only transmedia, cross-media, and "deep media." There were recurring disagreements about transmedia as a mode of content as opposed to a mode of marketing. And finally, transmedia's aesthetics was still being defined and with it, the issue of whether this is something really new or an expansion of long-standing practices. Around the edges, you could hear hints that transmedia should be extended from a focus on storytelling to a more expansive understanding which includes notions of performance, play, and spectacle that can not be contained within a more narrative-centric definition. From the beginning, transmedia has been a site of experimentation, innovation, and exploration at the heart of the mainstream media. Many of us have seen the signs of transmedia practices emerging from some time -- mostly taking shape around forms of marketing because that's how such projects could get funded, mostly reflecting the logic of a more integrated media industry with strong economic imperatives for creating entertainment experiences across platforms. Yet, the phrase "transmedia" (and its various counterparts) have created a space where aesthetic and cultural concerns can re-enter the discussion. If media artists are going to be pushed to extend their offerings across platforms, shouldn't they be thinking about how these practices can be exploited to create richer aesthetic experiences, to support the creativity and engagement of fans, to deepen the meaningfulness of the stories and performances they are staging? As such, the transmedia discussion has always moved across registers and as a consequence, needed to be expansive, to include anyone who wants to engage with these topics and who is willing to put these ideas into practice. While the Transmedia Hollywood conference drew criticism from some quarters for having too elastic or "vague" a definition of its core concept, this very expansiveness is what allows us to bring many different voices to the table, to map diverse kinds of experiments, and to promote new innovations and explorations. From my perspective, there is a use within the academic world for clearer, more precise definitions, but there is also a value more generally for a more slippery conception, at least while we are still undergoing such rapid evolution. My hope is that the definition and borders of the concept will be debate everytime two or more transmedia advocates have gathered. I respect the value of a Guild having a clear definition of what transmedia is, and from where I sit, the PGA definition is as good a one as we are going to get right now, but I also hope that we all do what Dena did in her blog post and push back on any attempt to too quickly formalize the limits or boundaries of this practice. For those who missed the Transmedia Hollywood events, I am happy today to share with you the webcasts of the panels. We hope that these programs provide a useful resource for people in and around the media industry who are stilling trying to make sense of "all this talk about transmedia entertainment." 9:45--10:00 am
10:00--11:50 AM
12:00--1:50 PM
5:00--6:50 PM ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=65aecda8-b7f1-46a4-9b80-8b947160dda3)
April 24, 2010
Hip Hop Goes Transmedia (Part Two)Hip Hop Goes Transmedia
El Prez in one of the interviews he gave us, was comparing the scene to superheroes in comic books, aware that the fans like to see the artists get together. Indeed to push the comparison there are different factions of superheroes that also interact with each other more or less loosely. For a fan spotting the cameos in the music videos is part of the construction of this mythology. Watching the video of an up and coming rapper artist like Fashawn (who chose his name because he wanted it to sound like a superhero), it is fun to spot how many artists briefly appear, showing the wide backing he has amongst the hip hop community.
6. It's a man's world but it would be nothing without a woman Some of the female fans are the most vocal, and while some artists have specifically a more male audience, for an artist to succeed he needs to appeal cross genre. With a few exceptions for a story to be truly transmedia it should to be embraced by men and women. Despite the numerous mention of "ho's", there is an overall strong percentage of strong and intelligent women acting on the LA hip hop scene. Yeah you know if you've made it if you feature on the 2DopeBoyz ( a blog run by two guys who are very vocal about their tastes and distates) but in LA you still haven't quite made it if you haven't been endorsed by Devi Dev. A radio personality, she's like a friend with a motherly approach to the artists. As a proper journalist she masters the art of the tweet evolving effortlessly between compte-rendu of concerts, anodyne facts and conversations with the artists. She's able to tell off up and coming Nipssey Hussle about throwing gansta signs on stage. She's the voice of reason commenting on why there are too many rappers, why it's not recommended to date a rapper, and she has a wide public appeal without ever falling into demagogy.(On that chapter lets not to forget that LA Stereo was started by two women Kristin Guillory and myself). 7. We were scholars before colleges To fin out more about LA Stereo you can find us on Twitter @LAStereotv, become a fan on Facebook, subscribe to our Youtube channel and join the community http://www.lastereo.tv. Marguerite graduated from Oxford University and the Sorbonne Paris IV, with an M.A. in Art History and in Philosophy. She then worked for two years at the Cinémathèque française in Paris where she developed a passion for cinema. During this time she assisted Marc Riboud, a photographer from Magnum, with whom she explored the language of documentary. She moved to London where she lived for six years, working as a Production Coordinator on factual programs, before joining Discovery UK in the programming department. Recently Marguerite moved to L.A and completed the Annenberg Online Communitites Program MA at USC to define and develop new audiences online, particularly for documentaries. She's currently developing her own franchise LA Stereo.tv with the help of her team: documenting the rise of the independant hip hop scene, and urbansalt.com with former classmates: curating the LA street style. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2e5cc314-2014-425c-9b02-88316f0d9544)
April 21, 2010
Hip Hop Goes Transmedia (Part One)Transmedia Entertainment keeps getting more and more buzz these days -- and so over the next handful of installments, I am going to be sharing with you a range of different perspectives on the concept. Today, I am running the first of two installments showcasing the work of Marguerite de Bourgoing, one of the USC students who took my transmedia entertainment class last fall. de Bourgoing has been developing a grassroots media franchise, LAstereo.tv, which deploys YouTube and social network sites to showcase the Los Angeles hip hop scene. de Bourgoing represents the Trojan spirit at its best -- a social and cultural entrepreneur who is taking what she's learned as a media maker and deploying it to serve her larger community. de Bourgoing shared some of this work with us during the class and I've wanted her to talk about it for my blog since. In this account which follows, she both shares some of the videos she's been producing and also talks about the way LA Hip Hop artists are using new media to expand the community around their live performances. It's a perspective on transmedia we don't hear very often here and further helps us think about the impact of media convergence on our culture. Hip Hop Goes Transmedia: Seven Laws
With LA Stereo we document the current LA scene characterized by a strong rise of independent artists. Up and coming artists are using digital means to communicate directly with their fans, taking in hand their own marketing, using that power to leverage distribution deals or cut out the middle man. In parallel the independent practice of the arts is flourishing around that movement leading to what some are calling an "L.A renaissance". New digital means of expression enable the genre to multiply itself and evolve across different platforms. LA Stereo is a translation of that broader movement broadcasting everything hip hop in L.A. The team is made of a DJ (Val the Vandle), the tastemaker, a photographer (Kasey Stokes), the eye, a rapper (Belvi), the lyricist and thinking head, a journalist (Rebecca Haithcoat), and a filmmaker (myself) also the producer. Here are the seven practices of transmedia inspired by my observation of this movement in the past year or so. 1. Spread your brand: Open Mic 2. Keeping it real: be authentic yet marketable 3. Be the change you want to see 4. Collaborate El Prez in one of the interviews he gave us, was comparing the scene to superheroes in comic books, aware that the fans like to see the artists get together. Indeed to push the comparison there are different factions of superheroes that also interact with each other more or less loosely. For a fan spotting the cameos in the music videos is part of the construction of this mythology. Watching the video of an up and coming rapper artist like Fashawn (who chose his name because he wanted it to sound like a superhero), it is fun to spot how many artists briefly appear, showing the wide backing he has amongst the hip hop community.
To fin out more about LA Stereo you can find us on Twitter @LAStereotv, become a fan on Facebook, subscribe to our Youtube channel and join the community http://www.lastereo.tv. Marguerite graduated from Oxford University and the Sorbonne Paris IV, with an M.A. in Art History and in Philosophy. She then worked for two years at the Cinémathèque française in Paris where she developed a passion for cinema. During this time she assisted Marc Riboud, a photographer from Magnum, with whom she explored the language of documentary. She moved to London where she lived for six years, working as a Production Coordinator on factual programs, before joining Discovery UK in the programming department. Recently Marguerite moved to L.A and completed the Annenberg Online Communitites Program MA at USC to define and develop new audiences online, particularly for documentaries. She's currently developing her own franchise LA Stereo.tv with the help of her team: documenting the rise of the independant hip hop scene, and urbansalt.com with former classmates: curating the LA street style. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=54f406ee-808d-4a0a-a566-290e1559aa88)
March 29, 2010
More Talk of TRONSmediaA week or so ago, I shared the first installment of a series of videos, produced by Mike Bonifer, based on a conversation which I had with Tron creator Steve Lisberger. I've jokingly compared the exchange to My Dinner with Andre, except we were both so busy geeking out that we forgot to order any food! You never know what people will pick up on once your brain children move out and get their own apartments. Over the weekend, Ain't It Cool News picked up on the series, focusing on a brief exchange early in the conversation where I referenced the Scott Brothers returning to Bladerunner as a parallel to Lisberger's return to Tron. From there, fan speculation has grown that somehow I have inside information about the state of the Bladerunner sequel or that we were both confused and really meant to be refering to the Aliens sequel in production. I can't speak for what Steve was thinking about or might know, but for my part, I was drawing on a panel we did about Purefold at the Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT last November. Here's the panel in question which went into some detail about their plans for this project. Unfortunately, the project has apparently been dropped, or so I learned by reading some of the fan blogs which were responding to this speculation. In this case, like so many others, fans were much more immersed in what was going on than the academics are and thus were closer to the truth than they realized. I was bemused by the idea that I somehow had access to the inner workings of Hollywood. This blog is not focused on scoops, folks; my focus is on analysis and insights into long-term developments. I am having more and more conversations with Hollywood types since moving to LA, but they rarely tell me anythng that isn't already public knowledge. Those exchanges look more like this conversation -- the trading of insights about media change and larger entertainment trends rather than the sharing of secrets. I am not the guy to go to if you are looking for spoilers, sorry. In any case, it would have been clear that we were talking about Purefold if people had watched the full conversation, since there was a segment devoted to it later in the series. We finally start to dig into issues of transmedia in this segment, which uses District 9 and its park benches as a taking off point. In what sense are those benches part of the exposition for the movie and how do they help to shape our experiences before we enter the theater? Here, we talk more generally about the basic functions which transmedia extension plays, including some consideration of what it might add to Tron and also why Avatar is less successful at deploying transmedia than District 9. What does it mean to "geek out" on culture? And what do we learn by looking at cultural experimentation as both a fan and an academic? We talk about what it means to make transmedia as James Cameron and what it means to make transmedia as Lance Weiler, i.e. as the producer of Hollywood blockbusters and as the creator of low budget independent genre films. This next section deals with what we can learn about world building by looking at Martin Scorsese and the Three Stooges (I kid you not!). Here, Steve and I talk about what it would mean to establish the basis of a story on the web rather than via a major film release. Steve worries about the "democratization" of the arts and what it does to the creative process, while I talk about continuity and multiplicity as competing tugs on transmedia properties. We finally get back to Bladerunner and discuss Purefold as a model for collaboration between fans and professional storytellers. Steve talks about the way Hollywood calibrates around the Zietgeist and I connect this to the conception of genre. Here, Steve builds out on the differences between science fiction focused around the alien and outer space and science fiction based within cyberspace. And this leads us to a larger consideration of the politics of fantasy and fan engagement, using the Harry Potter Alliance as a point of entry. And finally, we return to Tron with Steve explaining what sets his film apart from other science fiction works in terms of its exploration of inner space and our moral responsibilities as humans over what we create. All told, this was a fascinating meeting of two minds, both obviously immersed in the worlds being created by science fiction cinema, each excited about expanding the expressive capacities of amateur and professional storytellers. I hope you enjoy watching some of these segments half as much as Steve and I enjoyed talking through these issues. Thanks once again to Mike Bonifer for all the work he put into bringing this material to the public. This whole exchange was Bonifer's brain child: he wanted to bring the two of us into the room to see what would happen; he made all of the arrangements and did all of the production work. And we all have him to thank for all of the creative labor which made these videos possible. The author of GameChangers-Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, and the co-founder of GameChangers‚ LLC, Mike Bonifer has consistently been in the forefront of emerging trends in media and communication. Beginning with his role as the publicist for the gamechanging movie, Tron, through his work as a writer, director and creative executive, his work has explored new technologies and business processes, and has always been informed by storytelling. He has studied and performed improvisation at I.O. West Theater in Los Angeles. Mike is a really cool guy who has been very involved in the launch of a Transmedia LA meet up group and has been a big supporter of the work I am doing here at USC.
March 19, 2010
Talking TronsMedia with Steven LisbergerA few weeks ago, I sat down for a conversation with Steven Lisberger, director of the original Tron, to discuss our shared passions for science fiction cinema and transmedia entertainment. Mike Bonifer organized the meeting, filmed the exchange, and edited the footage. He has gradually been rolling it out in short three to four minute chunks via YouTube ever since. I have to say that it was thrilling to me to meet Lisberger -- having long admired how far forward the thinking behind Tron had been about the directions games and digital culture might take. In the first few installments of this conversation, Lisberger shares with me some of his experiences in making Tron and also considers the current project to re-engage with these characters, their world, and their stories for the next generation. In case you've missed the news, a new Tron movie is going to hit the theaters later this year, and we are already seeing a fair amount of buzz build around it. Tron took advantage of cutting edge digital graphics to imagine forms of computer gaming which were not yet technically possible at the time. Many of us struggled to even understand what was happening in the movie because it was so far out beyond our previous experiences with things digital. In many ways, subsequent generations of game designers and digital effects artists have helped to design and fully realize many aspects of that vision. So it is interesting to imagine what Tron would mean for today's generation. This second section discusses Tron's light cycles and the challenges of communicating how they worked and what they could do to people who had yet to have an immersive digital experience. Along the way, he gives us a taste of what it was like to work with futurist designer Syd Mead. In this next installment, he describes his meeting with one of the "old men" on the Disney animation team and what a break Tron felt with what Disney had done before. And in this installment, he gets into the ways that the new Tron movie engages with the franchise, including the decision to make the new film in 3D. By the fifth and sixth installments, we begin to broaden the discussion outward from Tron to the larger context of contemporary digital culture. In part five, I hold forth about the concept of participatory culture and how it is changing the way media gets produced and circulated. And in part six, we discuss Avatar's impact on the culture, including beginning to talk about the coming wave of 3D films emerging from Hollywood in its wake. I should note here that I discuss Alice in Wonderland as a film conceived in 3D but I have since learned it was shot in 2D and thus does not fully exploit the potentials of 3D cinematography. Part Seven includes some discussion of political activism that has originated around James Cameron's Avatar and the way popular culture can become a catalyst for social change movements and Steve talks about how Cameron brought together radically different aesthetics from previous science fiction and fantasy films.
By Part Nine, we are back onto transmedia, discussing the ways advanced publicity may help frame and shape audience expectations and how different audiences bring different kinds of knowledge with them into the theater when they engage with the new Tron movie.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1a1ecca7-cede-4c4f-a48b-d9d0ae1e71a2)
March 10, 2010
Vidding Kung Fu Panda in ChinaFrom time to time, I use this space to showcase the global dimensions of the kinds of participatory culture which so often concern us here. When I first started to write about fan culture, for example, the circuit along which fan produced works traveled did not extend much beyond the borders of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and perhaps Australia. American fans knew little about fan culture in other parts of the world and indeed, there was often speculation about why fandom was such a distinctly American phenomenon. Now, fans online connect with others all over the world, often responding in real time to the same texts, conspiring to spread compelling media content from one culture to the other, and we are seeing a corresponding globalization of fan studies. Yet, some countries remain largely outside of field of view, because of language barriers, cultural differences, political policies, and alternative tech platforms. Consequently, most of us know very little about how fan production practices have spread to China -- which is too often described in terms of its piracy of American content and too little discussed in terms of its creative repurposing of that content to reflect their own cultural interests. So, I am really excited over these next two installments to share some glimpses into fan culture in China -- specifically focusing on the vidding community there (but also discussing other forms of fan participation.) These two posts were created by Lifang He, an Annenberg student who took my transmedia entertainment class in the fall and who is doing an independent study with me this term to expand her understanding of the concept of participatory culture. Here, she talks about how Kung Fu Panda got read in relation to the economic crisis in China, and next time, she will tackle the array of different fan responses to Avatar. Kung Fu Panda vidding and Chinese fan culture In this paper, I'm going to write about a Chinese vid based on a movie Kung Fu Panda as it is a great example of fan made extensions in China. I'll introduce the background of the movie, discuss the relationship between the vid and the original movie, and also I'll talk about fan's role in the vidding and Chinese fan culture. Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 animated comedy movie directed by John Stevenson and produced by DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. It tells a story of a clumsy panda bear Po, who unenthusiastically works as a waiter for his father's noodle restaurant and eventually achieves his dream and becomes a master of martial arts. According to Sina Entertainment (2008), this movie achieved significant monetary success after it was released on July 20, 2008 in China, which had hit approximately 14 million USD box office sales in the first ten days. This Hollywood made Chinese movie is much better than other Chinese made Chinese movies, which proves American's leading ability to create entertainment and market Chinese culture. The movie is filled with Chinese elements. The key character Panda is China's national treasure and the other characters in the movie such as the monkey, snake, red crowned crane, tiger and mantis are the classic representatives of Chinese martial arts. Moreover, the Chinese imagery was used so well that Chinese audience felt very excited to discuss how great the movie is. As a famous Chinese film director Lu Chuan commented on his blog, " the movie brought big laugh to Chinese people. It was a big surprise. Our familiar culture is no longer a burden for the creativity, instead it becomes an active and vivid entertainment" (Lu Chuan, 2008). In response to the success of the movie, a lot of discussion was generated online between the audience and the animation filmmaker after its first release. Fans posted reviews on their blogs and discussed their favorite characters on Bulletin Board System (BBS). Also hey used Photoshop software to make posters with different themes such as Harry Potter, Lust, Caution, Pirates of the Caribbean, which attracted a lot of buzz. They also created music videos and wrote lyrics to compliment the movie, which were posted on social networking sites. After knowing that The Kaboom of Doom, a sequel of Kung Fu Panda, has been currently in pre-production and will be released in 2011 (Wiki, 2009), fans started to make their own versions of the movie. Among all of these fan activities, producing vids and sharing with other fans on Chinese social networking sites is one of the most popular ways for them to express their love to the movie. They wrote scripts, re-edited video clips using the original footage and did the voice over to tell a new story. Unlike American viding culture that has a relatively long history, Chinese vidding only emerged a couple of years ago owing to the video sharing websites such as Youtube.com, Tudou.com. There's no centralized grassroots community for vidding in China and Chinese vidding culture is very casual. An example to help exemplify how fans use this to publicize their opinions is a vid called Gu Piao Panda (Stock Panda), which is widely spread online and applauded by the fans. Gu Piao Panda is a three-minute short film, which links Po to China's unsound stock market and tells a parallel story about stock panda. The story starts from a scene that Po was a legend in the stock market, but it turns out that it is just a dream. In reality, he is a rookie stock investor and his money is all tied up in stock because of the global recession. Po is so sad that he goes back home to talk to his goose father and his father persuades him to withdraw money from the stock market because of the bearish market situation. Po has a strong belief that he will become a guru in the financial world someday and the only reason he hasn't achieved that yet is because he hasn't met his teacher. His father has no choice and encourages him to attend a stock master competition at somewhere in the mountain. Po tries so hard to get into the competition and there are three competitive groups --- the happiness group with monkey in it, the fighting group with tiger in it and the desire group with red crowned crane in it. These three groups represent the three different types of stock operators. Then, Po attends the competition and finally his teacher finds him and teaches him how to become a successful fund manger. In the vid, the creator doesn't show an ending in the video, and instead he poses a question that if Po will become a stock master finally. There are many similarities between the original movie and fan made vid. First of all, both of the film and fan vid chose Po as a main character as he is a good character to conceive the new stories and has become a prototype based on which fans have developed distinct characters in various contexts. In Kung Fu Panda, Po is an every Panda who masters some area through his persistent effort. Gu Piao Panda is a rookie stock operator and finally achieves success as a stock master. In other vids such as Real Estate Price, the key character panda is portrayed as a junior real estate developer who finally becomes a hero to save the real estate from subprime lending crisis. Moreover, the storylines of the two movies are very similar. Specifically, Gu Piao Panda creates a story that Po is a rookie stock operator who wants to become a stock master. In Kung Fu Panda, Po is a worker at his father's noodle restaurant who wants to become a kungfu fighter. Also, they both fight for an evil in the two videos. In Gu Piao Panda, he fights for the stagnant stock market. In Kung Fu Panda, he fights for Tai Lung. Furthermore, Po attends the competition to become a master in two movies either as a kung fu master or financial guru. In the original movie, he fights for a kung fu secret book. In the vid, he fights for two cars as the competition awards. When examining the video clips, it is apparent that fans use the same video clip to convey the same meaning in the different context. They just choose the video clips they like from the original movie to tell their stories. Other vids such as Real Estate Price, Kung Fu Competition, Certificates are all associated with the current social issues to tell different stories. Real Estate Price Kung Fu Competition
This parody is so popular that fans keep spreading it online because there's so much fun in the video. Some popular terms and events used in this vid are funny in the context of Chinese culture. For example, they use the word "Niu Bi" (newby) to describe how successful Po is in the stock market in his dreams. They also use the word "Tao" (trapped in the market) to explain that his money is all tied up to the stock account. Real figures are also incorporated to make the audiences feel more attached to the story. For instance, Po's goose father persuades him to withdraw the money because the current stock index is above 2000 points - which is where the Chinese stock market was registering at that time when this vid was made. In addition, they use Dong Bei language, a northern Chinese dialect that often associated with Chinese cross talk to voice over the video. This brought more joy to the audiences, especially during the global depression era. Gu Piao Panda and other vids are great examples showing that Chinese fans' role has changed from audience to active producers. They are not just passively receiving the information, but becoming publishers. The Internet has become a platform for them to distribute their works. This emerges an Internet culture called kuso, which is very popular in China. Kuso, originated from a Japanese word, is a popular subculture in China that deconstructs serious themes to entertain people (Wiki, 2009). Some interesting quotes from ESWN Culture Blog that can explain the popularity of Chinese kuso culture are, "Kuso is people deconstruct burning satire." "Kuso is an art criticism loved by people". "Kuso is people's ordinary, yet interesting, spiritual pursuit." (Soong, Roland & Qing, Huang, 2006) The most classic case of Chinese Kuso culture is a fan-made short movie called The Bloody Case That Started From A Steamed Bread based on a famous movie Wu Ji (The Promise) directed by Kaige Chen. A Chinese fan, Hu Ge, felt disappointed with Wu Ji and made his own spoof right after the movie was released. This fan-made movie joked about the film Wu Ji and dominant serious journalistic work, attracting huge fan following. From this fan made film, kuso has become more and more popular in China and represents a type of Chinese fan culture in the Internet. There are two main reasons can account for the popularity of kuso culture in China. One important reason is that Chinese youth are suffering from social pressure and kuso provides a way for them to relieve themselves from the real pressure. They are a new generation who is tired of serious mainstream culture and kuso becomes a way for them to express themselves online. Moreover, kuso requires less technical skills and technology requirement and cheaper cost of movie production makes it possible for fans to make their own videos. Also the video sharing websites give the audiences a good platform to distribute and create a huge opportunity to show their own works. Lifang He is from China, where she received her undergraduate degree in Journalism. After college, she was hired by two global advertising agencies Wieden & Kennedy and Euro RSCG Worldwide. At these agencies, she worked as a strategic planner for a variety of international brands including but not limited to Nike and Nokia and gained experience in consumer and market research and developing brand strategies. Since August of 2009, she has been pursuing her Master's degree in Communication Management at USC Annenberg School for Communication. It was while attending a USC class taught by Henry Jenkins that her academic interest turned toward transmedia planning and studying fan culture. Her specific areas of interest in these fields revolve around digital culture, brand communities, and how brands relate to and engage fans. References: Kung Fu Panda Ticket sales(2008). Sina entertainment. Retrieved Dec.10, 2009 ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e3038901-49a5-4647-98fc-a7e6255949ea)
March 8, 2010
On Anti-Fans and Paratexts: An Interview with Jonathan Gray (Part Two)In the second part of the interview, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jonathan Gray talks about his new book, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. Don't know what a Paratext is -- you will soon, as Gray explains how everything from "Oscar Buzz" to action figures help to shape the meanings and emotional experiences we have in relation to the films and television shows we watch. There was not an Oscar given last night for best paratext -- as long as the evening was and as outraged I was to see that Roger Corman (who happened to have trained two of last night's best director nominees -- Cameron and Bigelow -- as well as such recent winners as Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard) and Lauren Bacall (Lauren Fraking Bacall) were given their special Oscars at a separate event! Yet, it is hard to imagine Avatar making the money it did, a low budget genre film like District 9 making the list at all, or for that matter The Hurt Locker building up the critical support it did in the absence of well-crafted campaigns designed to warm us up to these particular projects. And given the huge grosses that Alice in Wonderland took in this weekend, we certainly might pause to pay respect to the creative promotion that the film has received in the months building up to its release, even though much of the press is going to ascribe the box office purely to the growing public interest in all things 3D. So, this interview seems particularly well-timed, even though, in fairness, I should note that Gray answered these questions some weeks ago and might have new things to say today precisely on these topics.
I draw the word from a book of that title by Gerard Genette, a French literary theorist. He was interested in all those things that surround a book that aren't quite the "thing" (or "the text") itself. Things like the cover, prefaces, typeface, and afterwords, but also reviews. His subtitle to that book - "Thresholds of Interpretation" - is the intriguing part, since it suggests that meaning might be constructed and might begin at these textual outposts, not just at the site of "the thing itself." And that in turn offers a pretty radical proposition, namely that the item that we're studying, whether it be a film, television show, book, or whatever, becomes meaningful and is interpreted in many sites, some arguably even more important than the site of thing itself. The purpose of the book, quite simply, then, was to examine those sites. You write in the introduction, "While many consumers deride the presence of hype and licensed merchandise as a nuisance, we also rely upon it, at least in part, to help us get through an evening's viewing or a trip to the multiplex." In what sense? In what ways do such materials shape our experience of films and television programs? Let's take the trailer as an example. We've all seen thousands of them. And when you do, you often hear evaluations from the crowd around you. That's because everyone is judging the film before it's even been released. But they're not just saying "wow" or "ugh" - they're learning something about the characters and whether they can identify with them, about the genre of the film, about the kind of world that it's set in. In short, they're getting a pre-view of the film's basic components, and it's thus being constructed as a meaningful entity for them. When the film finally comes along, it doesn't begin with a fresh slate; rather, its viewers have a history with it. They've come with expectations, with engagements with certain characters, and with an idea of how to make sense of it. Indeed, in many cases, they'll already be enjoying the film, as played with in a beautiful way by an Onion News Network parodic item about Iron Man trailer fans being worried about the studio making the trailer into a feature-length film. I've spent some time in the blog over the past few months reflecting on the benches that were erected in anticipation of District 9 and the ways they contributed to narrative exposition and shaped emotional reactions to the film, well beyond their roles as pure promotion or publicity. I take it you would read these as classic examples of paratexts. How would you explain their contributions to District 9? Those are great examples, since they put you into the world. When you're faced with a bench that tells you one kind of being isn't allowed there, it opens up a history, at least in the U.S., of segregation, and of racial intolerance. We like to pat ourselves on the back and think that it's all behind us, but such benches haunt us with the notion that it's not. If you're Black, I'd guess there's a sore wound that's opened. And if you're liberal and White, there might be some liberal White guilt over your potential complicity with the segregation: do you really want to sit on that bench now? You note that paratexts can be "entryway" or "In medias res." Early discussions of transmedia storytelling focused on nonlinearity -- suggesting that the parts could be consumed in any order -- but more recently there's been a focus on notions of seriality and temporarily. What might your book contribute to that discussion? What I'd hope readers would see is how many different media the story can be told over. It's not just the "big" media, like film, television, books, comics, and videogames - trailers can also play a part here, as can opening credit sequences, or DVD bonus materials, posters, ad campaigns, or, as we've discussed, benches. When we recognize that, we move towards realizing how audiences have always been intimately familiar with serial storytelling and with transmedia. We're all already well-trained to keep shows on hold for years, inbetween trailers and film and bonus materials, so I'm dubious when I hear complaints about audiences being unable and unwilling to deal with seriality and transmedia. You suggest that audience-produced artifacts -- such as fan vids or spoilers -- can be paratexts that help shape the meaning of the work. Your emphasis there is not so much on how they resist official meanings but rather how they shape our interpretations of the primary text. An old school cultural studies approach might talk about this as a struggle over meanings or as competing bids for interpretations. How do you think about the relationship between commercial and amateur paratexts in the age of participatory culture? I don't mean to foreclose the possibilities of resistive readings. But someone very smart and way more knowledgeable about fandom already wrote Textual Poachers, and if there's only one thing that many people in cultural studies know about slash fanfic it's that it's supposed to be doing interesting, resistive things with gender and sexuality (I say "supposed to" only because some don't believe that). So when I came to the chapter on fan-created and -circulated paratexts, I didn't need to make that point. Instead, I wanted to focus on how one can use paratexts to cut one's own groove through a text in a way that isn't necessarily working against the producer's version, but that is personalized nonetheless. Many relationship and character study fanvids, for example, don't necessarily repurpose a character, but they do ask us to stop and think about that character and his or her history in ways that the official text, in its breathless progression, may not have time to do. I don't mean to suggest that this is either the dominant form of fan use of paratexts, or even one that's necessarily changed in a more obviously convergent media era. But it might help cultural studies to back away from some of the desires for an orcs vs. hobbits style bad-and-good battle between The Industry and The Fans, and to focus on smaller, humbler moments of repurposing. Critics in the 1980s talked about television series such as He-Man, Masters of the Universe as half hour commercials for toy lines, suggesting that the commercial tie-ins stripped them of any real meaning or narrative interest. Your work suggests something different -- that the toys become vehicles for extending the meanings of a series into everyday life. How have action figures impacted our interpretations of blockbuster movies like the Star Wars franchise? Star Wars is a great example here, since what we had was a text that was seemingly put on ice (or should I say put in carbon-freezing?) for three years between each film. That's a long time in a child's life, so excellent or not the trilogy likely wouldn't have held the attention of those of us who were kids at the time if it weren't for the toys. The toys kept Star Wars alive by transferring the story and the world to the playground, and hence by keeping that galaxy from drifting far, far away. We've just ended The Oscar season. To what extent is "Oscar buzz" a kind of paratext for more "serious" or "middlebrow" forms of cinema? I'm glad you asked, since I find it amusing when people hear the topic of my book and quickly pronounce that they hate "that stuff" (hype and paratexts). They'll often list the blockbuster of the moment for illustration, so right now everyone claims to despise Avatar when they want to impress me with the height of their brow. But there is no such thing as a text without paratexts. So it's not a question of preferring a text without paratexts - it's a question of which paratexts are one's poison. Oscar buzz is great for the middlebrow audience, New York Times reviews, buzz at Cannes, or even what their film prof says works for some, and for others it's trailers and huge billboards. So there's no escaping paratexts. If we think we live in a media saturated world, the films and shows are only a fraction of that world - the paratexts are everywhere. Jonathan Gray is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he researches and teaches on various aspects of television, film, and convergent media, including satire, comedy, audiences, and textuality. His most recent book is Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (NYU Press, 2010), though he has also written Television Entertainment (Routledge, 2008) and Watching With The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (Routledge, 2006), and is co-editor with Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson of Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era (NYU Press, 2009), with Robin Andersen of Battleground: The Media (Greenwood, 2008), and with Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World</em>. He also blogs at The Extratextuals and Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture.
March 4, 2010
On Anti-Fans and Paratexts: An Interview with Jonathan Gray (Part One)If you are interested in Lost, The Simpsons, The Daily Show, Star Wars, Fan Studies, or Transmedia Entertainment and you are not reading the work of Jonathan Gray, then you aren't doing it right! And let's face it, if you weren't interested in at least one of the above, then you probably have simply stumbled onto my blog by mistake. Given that I am interested in all of the above, I keep stumbling onto Gray's work and each time I do, I come away a little better educated than I did before. Gray has got to be one of the most productive -- and provocative -- writers working in media studies today. This guy really is an extratextual! And he's someone I'm finding myself working with more and more. He's a member of the Convergence Culture Consortium network of scholars; he's edited several books where my essays have appeared; and he's been working behind the scenes to help pull together our Transmedia, Hollywood events this month. And he's now teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I did my PhD. So, it's a pleasure to share this interview with you. The first installment covers everything from his recent work on parody, popular culture, and politics to his long-standing interest in fans and anti-fans. Mostly, Part Two focuses around his significant new book, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (NYU Press, 2010). I wrote a blurb for this book, so I got to read it months ago, but it is just now hitting the shelves and starting to have a real impact on how we theorize and criticize everything from movie trailers to action figures. Jonathan, you are a highly prolific writer who has published books on a broad range of topics. What do you see as the unifying theme(s) running through your work?
One of your primary contributions to the space of fan studies has been to focus attention on "nonfans" and "antifans." Why have these groups been neglected in audience research for so long? How do they relate to older categories like negotiated and oppositional readers? And what do they add to our understanding of fan culture? Functionally, fans tend to be easier to study, at least from a cultural studies, qualitative perspective. When one is going to spend a portion of one's life sitting down and chatting with people about their media consumption, or reading their postings online, it's understandable that one would gravitate towards those audiences who are most literate about their subject, and most excited. "Snowball" sampling tends to pick up more fans too, since they can often be keen to be interviewed. Theoretically, a lot of qualitative audience research was motivated in part by a desire to show media consumers as not so hopelessly lost in the system as some suggest, and thus it was rhetorically important to make that case with fans.
That complaint, that The Daily Show and its colleagues take viewers away from hard news, always seems to forget that very few satiric shows actually compete with the news in timeslot. It also seeks to blame satire for the failings of the news. If people aren't watching the news, it's not because Jon Stewart is doing magic tricks in the circus tent down the road: it's because the news is often a seriously debased entity, reporting in a slack, half-ass way, addressed to an older white male audience, often with little interest in others, in a manner that is often the true circus act. So first off, I'd respond to that criticism by saying that if satire TV is so often being compared to the news, that's because the news is doing something wrong. And if people are trusting Stewart more than many newscasters, the productive question would be what is the news doing wrong and what is Stewart doing right, not how is Jon Stewart responsible for the fall of democracy. Satire TV mostly focuses on the role such programs played under the Bush administration. We are now a year into the Obama administration. How has his presidency changed the relevance and tone of The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and other such programs? Why are there not shows about Obama in the same way that Lil Bush made fun of his predecessor? Satirists aren't going after Obama as much, as you note. Which is a pity, since every person in power needs to be subjected to a satirist's sting. I'm a big fan of the medieval Fool model. But we're in a two party system, and therein lies the problem, since too often it requires a binaristic way of looking at politics, whereby criticism of one "side" becomes, whether it wants to be or not, support for the other. On one hand, then, if your job is to make fun of stupid things said and done by people in power, how could you be expected to see the Democrats when at times you need to look through Rush Limbaugh is encouraging people note to donate to Haitian relief since it'll only embolden Obama, when Rudy Guiliani and Dana Perino are claiming there were no terrorist attacks under Bush, when Glenn Beck is being Glenn Beck, when Jonah Goldberg is saying the Na'vi should've been Catholic in Avatar, when Sarah Palin thinks universal healthcare is a secret Nazi "death panel" plot, and when Dick Cheney is doing his best Emperor Palpatine impression? As they did under Bush, the Republicans just give way too much A-grade material to satirists. And on the other hand, if your sympathies lean left, as most satirists' do, it must prove hard to focus on Obama when it means supporting the Birthers and the Tea Baggers as a result. You've written about "news fans" and I find myself returning to this concept in trying to think about the cult that currently surrounds Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Are we at a moment where reactionary politics is fueled as much by the fan followings of talk show and news personalities as it is by Washington-based leaders? It certainly seems that way, doesn't it? Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity on the right are all doing pretty well. And I'd bet that more folk on the left identify with Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann than with many politicians. Rumor has it that Lou Dobbs is even planning a presidential run [shudders]. Granted, few other fan objects get the chance to "cover" their fans on a weekly basis, so there is something of an echo chamber effect. But the more that we find political mobilization looking like fandom, the more that we need to think seriously about the connections. Liesbet Van Zoonen has an excellent book called Entertaining the Citizen in which she broaches the topic, Cornel Sandvoss has done some thinking about this, and you have too. But sadly the folk who study fans and the folk who study politics and journalism have been so successfully segregated from one another in most instances that there's nowhere near enough analysis along those lines. Jonathan Gray is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he researches and teaches on various aspects of television, film, and convergent media, including satire, comedy, audiences, and textuality. His most recent book is Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (NYU Press, 2010), though he has also written Television Entertainment (Routledge, 2008) and Watching With The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (Routledge, 2006), and is co-editor with Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson of Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era (NYU Press, 2009), with Robin Andersen of Battleground: The Media (Greenwood, 2008), and with Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World</em>. He also blogs at The Extratextuals and Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture.
March 3, 2010
Don't Miss Transmedia, Hollywood Conference March 16Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story is a one-day public symposium exploring the role of transmedia franchises in today's entertainment industries. Transmedia, Hollywood turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means. Co-hosted by Denise Mann and Henry Jenkins, from UCLA and USC, two of the most prominent film schools and research centers in Los Angeles, Transmedia, Hollywood will take place Tuesday, March 16, 2010, on the eve of the annual Society of Cinema & Media Studies conference, the field's most distinguished gathering of film and media scholars and academics (March 17--21, 2010) in Los Angeles. By coinciding with SCMS, Transmedia, Hollywood hopes to reach the widest possible scholarly audience and thus create a lasting impact in the field. It will give cinema and media scholars from around the world unprecedented access to top industry professionals and insight into their thinking and practices.
Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story Since then, Hollywood has created countless new transmedia titles, everything from Batman to Star Wars - an evolution only accelerated by the advent of digital convergence. While transmedia, in one way, vindicates the logic of the integrated media conglomerate and activates the synergies long hoped for by the captains of industry in charge of Hollywood's six big media groups, it may also prove to be more than they bargained for. Engaged, "lean-forward" consumers--coveted by advertisers and entertainers alike--are not content simply to watch traditional media but rather, they produce their own videos, remix other people's work, seek out those who share their interests, forging concordances and wiki's, fan fiction, and various forms of interactivity that are still in their infancy and that corporate Hollywood is just beginning to explore. Copyright law, guild rules, and the conventions of audience quantification are frequently operating at cross-purposes with these new, expansive sets of cultural-industrial practices. As the demise of the music industry shows, active audiences and technological advances can create an explosive combination, powerful enough to bring down an entire industry. The entertainment industry wants to embrace this new, active consumer while ensuring its own survival by seeking to recreate familiar rules of what is considered "valuable" and "entertainment" within traditional business models. Transmedia, Hollywood turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means.
9:15--9:45 am
Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Moderator: Denise Mann 2:00--3:00 PM
Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Moderator: Denise Mann
Registration General Public: To register and for more information, please go to: www.tft.ucla.edu/transmedia-conference
February 5, 2010
How to Get Academic Credit While Attending San Diego Comic-Con: An Interview With Matthew J. SmithToday, I wanted to share with you a fascinating experiment in media education which is conducted each year as part of the San Diego Comic-Con. I've written about the centrality of Comic-Con as a meeting point between fans and producers and as a site where academics interested in promoting the study of comics co-exist side by side with dealer's rooms and discussions with comics creators. This past year, I had a chance to consult with two students who were part of a program being offered by Matthew J. Smith, a comics scholar who teaches classes in media studies at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH. Every year, he organizes a team of students who conduct individual and collective ethnographic projects trying to make sense of the complexity and diversity of Comic-Con. He's now in the process of recruiting students for this year's program so I told him I'd help him spread the word. What follows is an interview with Smith about his ethnographic instruction and about the culture of Comic-Con. At the end, I tell you where you can go to be considered as a recruit for this educational program. Can you give me some sense of the approach you take to teaching ethnographic research on the ground at Comic-Con? Students are responsible for several readings before they get to San Diego, so that we can have an informed discussion about ethnographic tools when we meet. But from our first night onward, students are thrown into the deep end of the pool, being asked to record observations and make modest interpretations starting with "Preview Night" on the floor of the convention hall floor. Thereafter, there's a good deal of note taking, and of course talking through observations and constructing interpretations with peers in daily "Breakfast Briefings." After the first few days, students are encouraged to compliment their observations by doing interviews with informants. Some students find their individual topics evolving as we progress through the week, which is just fine with me! However, they do have a week to process the experience and think through their material more before their final narratives are due.What goals do you set for your participants? My primary goal is to help students become more media literate for having had the experience. Popular culture is created and marketed with them in mind. If nothing else, I really want them to be aware of their role in this process and exercise greater agency in their future interactions with it. Comic-Con has emerged as perhaps the most important interfaces between the entertainment industry and the public. What shifts have you and your students noticed in terms of the industry's engagement with fans in recent years? What stands out to me is the way in which Con is now a multi-media experience in and of itself. I'm not just talking about the multiple media industries that are represented on site, but the way that Con is experienced by both those who are physically there--supplemented by constant Twittering, for example--and also by those who are elsewhere around the country. I return from San Diego feeling like one of the fortunate few who get to attend the Super Bowl, as friends and colleagues come up to me and say, "I saw Con on TV (or read about it online or got the feed) and knew you were there." For that moment, I am the coolest person in the room.Within the more than 100,000 people gathered at Comic-Con, there are representatives of a broad range of different fan subcultures. How do you and your students deal with the diversity of different fan interests represented? Some students find the scale overwhelming for the first few days. Given so much to process, I encourage students to focus their individual projects on areas of interest to their individual intellectual interests or pop culture tastes (e.g., Marvel Comics panels). With some filters in place, the stimuli become a bit more manageable. However, I love it when students start to look out for things for one another. Often at our "Breakfast Briefings" they begin to ask one another if they are aware of this event or that person's signing appearance in the hall latter in the day. These moments of overlapping interest really make us a learning community within the 100,000 person crowd.Many attending the con now beline to the major presentations in Hall H and Hall 20. Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg of what goes on at Comic-Con. What aspects of Comic-Con culture have emerged through your collaborative research efforts that we would miss if the focus was only on the major events? Where to start!? My students have found nooks and crannies of popular culture that I would not have thought to explore in twenty trips to Con. Let me share a small sample of some of the project titles to give you a sense of what they have focused on in the past: • Twitter as a Means of Direct Dialogue between Creators & Fans • Aggressive Marketing & its Impact on Consumers at San Diego Comic Con • "State Your Name and Your Purpose": The Talk of Marvel Comics Fans • Fanbois at Comic-Con: Queer Consumer/Producer Interface & the Intransitive Writing of Comics • Hollywood Comes to Comic-Con International: An Examination of Glamour & Glitz • Video Games: On the Bottom Looking UpComic-Con is one of the most racially diverse fan gatherings I've ever attended. Has your research offered any insights into how and why this con attracts more minority participants than most other fan gatherings? In three years my students have initiated eighteen different projects, and while a number have investigated demographics like gender and sexual orientation, none have addressed race explicitly. It's a great topic that some student could investigate this summer! My own impression is that California's diversity helps set up the climate for Con's diversity. Beyond that, is it that popular culture fans judge you by your interests first and not the color of your skin? There has been a dramatic increase of female attendees at Comic-Con in recent years, partially in response to Twilight and True Blood, and this has generated some tensions with long-time attendees. What insights has your team's research yielded into these sources of friction? I'm waiting for the student who wants to tackle this project! Over the last two years my students and I have certainly noted the outright hostility directed towards the Twilighters and found ourselves at a loss for how one minority (the comics fan) can turn on another. Is it anger at the encroachment of Hollywood on the Con finding an outlet at long last? Is it a matter of gender? Is it that the cross-over between interests doesn't quite overlap as much as other groups present (e.g., a video gamer can also be a comics fan)? I hope we have a student or two who will want to tackle these kinds of questions this summer.Your students give a public presentation of their findings every year as part of the Con. How has the Comic-Con community responded to their representations of their norms and practices? How does this public presentation impact the kinds of work your students do? The reception for my students has been tremendous. Whereas most academic presentations are lucky to draw an audience larger than the number of presenters behind the dais, my students typically draw a crowd of 80+ curious minds. The best audience members are those who want to challenge or extend my students' claims, weighing their own perceptions against those of my students. I love to see that kind of interaction as the students are challenged to either further defend their conclusions or engage in expanding/refocusing their thoughts. I think knowing that a public presentation is an integral part their task focuses their work for the week that we are there and makes them accountable to an audience of more than just me as the instructor.Critics might argue that the duration of a con is not sufficient time to really immerse yourself into any kind of rich cultural community and that there are serious problems with performing "instant ethnography." What do you see as the strengths and limits of the work your team does each year? That's entirely a fair critique. I try to keep the course from making the pretension that it is the only course in ethnography one would ever need. To the contrary, I explicitly state that this experience is a mere appetizer meant to whet one's appetites for more and richer ethnographic projects in the future. In Communication Studies in particular, I see a lot of programs where students are typically trained as either survey administers or rhetorical critics, and I want to introduce them to another viable way of coming to know the world around them.What qualifications are you looking for from prospective students in your program? There are no academic prerequisite, per se, other than that one be currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program and in good academic standing at one's home institution (which usually means minimally a 2.0 cumulative higher grade point average). The course is really designed to be introductory in its approach, although I've had graduate students participate each year who report learning something new. Beyond that, I've found that the most successful students are intellectual curious, open-minded, and willing to work hard. The experience is intensive: Students find themselves on the go for five consecutive days and that takes stamina. Even so, it is terrifically rewarding to come to the end of the experience and know that you discovered something new about culture and its exercise.Matthew J. Smith teaches courses in media studies at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH, including "Graphic Storytelling: Comic Books as Culture," "The Graphic Novels of Alan Moore," and a week-long field study at Comic-Con International each summer (details of the latter may be found at www.powerofcomics.com/fieldstudy). In 2009, Wittenberg University's Alumni Association recognized him with its Distinguished Teaching Award. Along with Randy Duncan, he is co-author of The Power of Comics: History, Form & Culture (Continuum, 2009), a textbook for college-level comics arts studies courses. The two are also editing the forthcoming Comics Criticism: Methods and Applications. The Field Study at Comic-Con Application deadline is March 1, 2010
February 1, 2010
Five Ways to Read AvatarIf box office returns are any indication, I must have been one of the last persons on the planet, Earth, to see Avatar. (Returns are not in from Pandora but let's assume there's strong local interest there as well.) All I can say is that my delay was a product of being sick between Christmas and New Years and having trouble getting tickets to see a 3D IMAX screening in Los Angeles (People in LA seem passionate about hot new releases. Who knew?) By the time I got there, the talking points among my intellectual cohort and my tweet buddies had jelled around "spectacular visuals; too bad the characters and story are so flat." With this consensus view helping to counter-act some of the advanced hype, I actually found myself pleasantly surprised by Avatar and wondering why the perception of weak characters and story had become so firmly entrenched in popular perceptions of the film. Overall, the story told was a familiar one, well within genre conventions (someone called it "Dances with Smurfs") but the story was well told and I found myself drawn emotionally into the characters and their plight. As someone who has long taught classes around science fiction, I found myself thinking about the many different levels upon which a science fiction film (at least a good one) operates and the degrees of access different viewers might have to reading Avatar on each level, as well as the challenges James Cameron faced in ballancing those many different kinds of expectations. I can only sketch this in here and as I do so, I should warn you that I make specific references to aspects of the film, enough so that I want to put a spoiler warning on this for those who haven't seen it. Science Fiction as Visual Spectacle. I am always confused by people who talk about films as "relying" on special effects. We don't say a film "relies" on camera work or editing or music or acting or scripting. Special effects are part of the language of contemporary cinema. Pretty much all films deploy special effects of one kind or another, but the uncertainty about the relationship of the digital to the actual in contemporary films most often gets debated in terms of science fiction and fantasy films -- even though historical epics may rely just as heavily on special effects. In this case, the visual style is part of what makes Avatar transformative in terms of its impact on cinematic (and televisual) practices. It is almost certainly the breakthrough film in terms of our acceptance, even anticipation, of 3-d cinematography and we are already seeing films go back to the postproduction facilities to add 3D much as films in the wake of The Jazz Singer went back to see if they could add some soundtrack elements. We are hearing Lucas is already campaigning to release Star Wars in 3D overlooking the fact that Cameron carefully designed every aspect of Avatar for 3D and didn't add it as a layered on after effect. As such, the technology is necessarily foregrounded in our conversations at the film, even though Cameron's deployment of 3D is striking precisely in the ways he seeks to move it beyond a gimmick and into a technique which makes its own aesthetic contributions to the film. My son points out that while previous 3D films emphasized the projection of things into the space of the audience (with the result that we remain aware of being in a theater at all times), Cameron's approach is to deepen the space behind the screen and thus to pull us into a more immersive relationship to the story space. We never have that moment of wanting to reach out and touch the projected image or seeing it hovering over the head of the person seated in front of us -- both experiences which foreground the space of the theater -- but rather we see the space open up before us and mentally we are drawn deeper into the story. I was lost in the film from the opening shots foreword, feeling a much more immediate relationship to what was happening than I could have imagined in a 2D film. By the same token, the extensive use of digitally generated characters made them feel much more a part of the landscape of the film as compared to say the stand alone insertion of Golem in the Lord of the Rings series which always remained a self-conscious spectacle, even as I recognized how well executed it was. The story of jacking into an avatar body helped to guide us through the shifts in perception we experienced and soon, I came to accept the aliens as simply part of the reality of the film. They did not feel like cartoon characters inserted into a photorealistic landscape. Vivian Sobchack has deployed the term, "special affect," to refer to moments in science fiction films where the characters stand slack jawed in wonderment at some special effect which is unfolding around us, often in ways that are abstracted from denotation or physical referent. I am thinking here, for example, of the opening up of Vger in Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, the closing moments of 2001: A Space Oddysey, or the extended human-alien exchange at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are similar moments where the character's wonderment about an alien realm are aligned with our fascination with the special effects in Cameron's The Abyss, which is in some ways his least satisfying contribution to the genre. But, Avatar, by and large, doesn't fall into this trap -- even with the spiritual dimensions that are integral to the narrative. And that's in part because the special effect/affect always maintains an intellectual dimension. In that sense, calling it "eye candy" or "visual spectacle" does not do justice to the film's accomplishments. Science Fiction as World Building. Pandora is such a fully realized world. Taking a decade to make the film gave Cameron an unprecidented chance to think through every dimension of this world -- the ecological system with complex and plausible constructions of alien fauna and flora, the cultural system of the Na'Vi as seen through the lens of both anthropology and comparative mythology, and the language of this people which was constructed for the film by a USC linguist, Paul R Frommer. Some critics have noted that science fiction tends to deal with events that occur on a global or cosmic scale -- massive transformations of the established order -- and as a result, the characters are often reduced to secondary importance. They are often witnesses to the unfolding of large-scale change -- in many cases, a visitor from outside the world in question who must learn its contours and come to understand the stakes in the conflict or changes occuring. In some cases, the characters are made to stand in for something larger than themselves (see allegory below) and as a consequence, they become mouthpieces for communicating different thesis or arguments about the nature of the change being depicted. Those fans interested in world-building do not care, seeing characters as vehicles for exploring the world not for telling a story. In the world building, Cameron is drawn to the epic scope and anthropological focus of a good number of recent science fiction novels -- I am reminded of the works of Octavia Butler, C.J. Cherryh, Orson Scott Card, and Kim Stanley Robinson, mong others, who have depicted alien worlds and their inhabitants in particular rich and vivid ways. Science Fiction as Allegory Science fiction is a genre that asks questions, probes values, and maps the relationships between core institutions and practices. At its best, it helps us to think in more sophisticated ways about the world around us because it opens us up to new perspectives and imagines what might happen if things we took for granted were destroyed (in appocalyptic stories) or altered (as in stories about alien or future socieities). In that sense, science fiction stories are often described as utopian or dystopian. Cameron's trick in Avatar is to construct a film which is both -- depicting the Na'vi society as a utopian alternative to what humans have done to Earth (though he cut out the scenes on Earth which were intended to provide some of that contrast). In doing so, science fiction does build on central debates of our time and invites us to read what unfolds as allegorical. There are several debates about the film which circle around this allegorical reading -- such as the question of whether the film is in a tradition of "white messiah" narratives where a liberal white must join causes with minorities or third world populations in order to help them progress to the next level, whether the film is anti-American and anti-business in its depiction of the destruction of Pandora by an Earth-based military-industrial complex, and whether the film is anti-Christian (as the Pope argues) or pro-environmentalist in the ways it depicts a people whose spiritual life centers around their relationship to the natural realm. Those who dislike the film often seem fixated on one or another of these levels, understanding it as offering a simple, one dimensional ideological statement. I am not going to argue that these questions do not surface around the film, but I think that reading science fiction works as allegories often flattens the characters (so that they confirm more fully to this thesis) and denies the complexity of the work. Clearly, there are some flat characters who embody particular extremes -- the military commander comes to mind here -- but Cameron as a director is strong enough that he offers a more complex picture of the military as a whole and increasingly shows this character as pushing further than the rank and file are ready to follow. True we do not get whole sale mutiny though we do have a notable defection from his ranks and many of the reaction shots show increased discomfort, moral concern, rather than depicting all of the military members in the film as simply gung ho on large scale destruction of a people. There's similar suggestions that the corporate leader here is feeling prickles of consciousness as the events unfold, suggesting a more dynamic character than we would see if we simply described this as an "anti-corporate" title. There are also hints that the anthropologists are not as "purely good" as some readings of the film suggest, especially around the comments that the Na'vi people they had met before had not been able to listen and learn, implying the paternalistic and interventionist values of anthropology in its more colonialist period, though here we get a strong sense of the character's capacity to learn and adapt to their changing understanding of the situation. Our protagonist is the character who is shown to be most capable of changing and adapting, starting out with a fairly cynical relationship to the mission, more than willing to be a double agent, and only gradually coming to see the world through a very different lens. Cameron's protagonists, then, are not locked into embodying a thesis so much as they show the capacity of learning and adapting, which is often the highest value in science fiction stories of all kinds. Science Fiction as Speculative Fiction. Science fiction as a genre asks "what if" questions and answers them by envisioning alternative possibilities. Avatar, for example, depicts a world where there is very little technology in our sense of the word yet much of what we use technology for gets performed through the interface between man and nature. There's a long tradition of organic or biological conceptions of technology, which provide the raw materials for Avatar, which uses "network" and "interface" languages throughout to describe the bonds which the Na'vi form with the mother tree or with the Banshii. Though this approach may seem "new agey" when read in relation to our planet where such "communications" are a matter of faith, Avatar changes the terms of this debate because the Na'Vi's ability to communicate with plants is the reality they experience, a reality the Terrans dismiss at their own loss. This is not about faith vs. science, in other words, but rather about the inadequacies of our science to grasp other realities we might encounter. For me, this is what keeps the film from being patronizing to the Na'vi: when Neytiri tells Jake that he needs to learn and really listen before he can understand their people and their planet, she is telling the truth, and by the end of the film, the major failure of the military-industrial complex is that it rejects these claims as superstition without fully investigating them. Similarly, while the protagonist of Dances with Wolves can not change his race, the protagonist of Avatar can change his species, paving the way for a more sympathetic representation of post-humanism. I was struck by the contrast between the closing battle in Cameron's Aliens where Ripley, in her battle suit, confronts the alien (and we are totally on her side) and the final confrontation here where a similarly armoured Colonel Miles Quaritch does battle with the "monster" and in this case, he is the alien invader while our sympathies lie with the nonhuman character. The first counts on our revulsion over nonhuman biology, while the new film embraces the posthuman. Here, we experience science fiction not as an allegory for our reality but as the mythology for another reality, one which follows its own rules and logics. Science Fiction as Melodrama. One of Cameron's real strengths as a filmmaker has been his ability to fuse science fiction or action conventions with those from melodrama. I offered a complex analysis of the roles which melodrama played in a single sequence from Aliens in a recent article I wrote with Matt Weise for Cinema Journal. Cameron's early films in particular spent their first segments setting up an ensemble cast of characters, defining their antagonisms and bonds, and suggesting the dynamics of a particular working group community. That's what comes in the first parts of Aliens and The Abyss in particular, and he does something on a smaller scale in setting up the family unit in Terminator 2 (and adding others to the mix as the film progresses). There's a much more abridged version of this process in Avatar -- basically everything that happens before we leave the compound. From there, Cameron is able to layer reaction shots onto action sequences, allowing us to see how various characters are reacting to what's occurring over time and through this process, reminding us of the stakes of the action for each participant. Aliens is his most satisfying version of this process at work, where Cameron may juggle more than a dozen character's responses to the first raid of the alien's stronghold. Avatar is not as strong in this regard, but the emotional impact of the final battle sequence occurs because we've formed emotional relationship to a range of human and Na'vi characters and so every moment of physical conflict comes attached to emotional issues. This focus on the melodramic often sits badly with those who are drawn to science fiction as a genre which celebrates the rational, the intellectual, and the technological. The more a viewer is drawn to science fiction as world building or as speculative fiction, the less likely they are to appreciate the more melodramatic aspects of Cameron's work, yet these techniques open the films to viewers who might well not be engaged by a pure science fiction work. Often, when I hear people smacking down on Avatar's characters, I see signs of this tension, a dislike of the roles that romance, say, plays in the film, or a tendency to see the prologned death scenes as a bit over the top. For me, this stuff is what I love about Cameron -- he's so good at upping the emotional ante in his action scenes compared to most other American directors working in the genre. The closest counterpart might be John Woo. So, there you have it. Cameron is trying to balance and satisfy at least five different sets of interpretive expectations which sit uneasily in relation to each other. Clearly most viewers experience the film first and foremost on the level of audiovisual spectacle and thus this is often the first thing anyone wants to comment on. How they feel about the plot and characters, though, has to do with which of these other levels enter into our interpretation. I am not saying that the characters and plot here are as good as Cameron's best work -- for my money, Aliens -- but they are better than the general consensus seems to indicate. For those of you who enjoy my writing about science fiction, check out Religion Dispatches, where I am joining three other scholars for an ongoing conversation about Caprica, the new series from the producers of Battlestar Galactica. So far, the discussion has been fascinating and we are just getting started.
January 26, 2010
Announcing Transmedia, Hollywood:S/Telling the StoryConference Overview: Co-hosted by Denise Mann and Henry Jenkins, from UCLA and USC, two of the most prominent film schools and research centers in Los Angeles, Transmedia, Hollywood will take place on the eve of the annual Society of Cinema & Media Studies conference, the field's most distinguished gathering of film and media scholars and academics, which will be held this year in Los Angeles from March 17 to 21, 2010. By coinciding with SCMS, Transmedia, Hollywood hopes to reach the widest possible scholarly audience and thus create a lasting impact in the field. It will give cinema and media scholars from around the world unprecedented access to top industry professionals and insight into their thinking and practices. Location: USC Cinematic Arts Complex, Los Angeles Conference Summary: Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story As audiences followed stories as diverse as Heroes, Lost, Harry Potter, and Matrix, from one format to another--from traditional television series or films into comics, the Web, alternate reality or video games, toys and other merchandise--Hollywood quickly adopted the academic term "transmedia" and began plastering it above office doors to describe this latest cultural phenomenon. This is not to say that convergent culture and transmedia storytelling are new concepts; instead, the emergence of convergence can be traced to the 19th century when a Barnum and Bailey-style mode of entertainment first took hold, maturing in the mid-1950s with Walt Disney's visionary multi-platform, cross-promotional, merchandising extravaganza known as Disneyland. Since then, Hollywood has created countless new transmedia titles, everything from Batman to Star Wars - an evolution only accelerated by the advent of digital convergence. While transmedia, in one way, vindicates the logic of the integrated media conglomerate and activates the synergies long hoped for by the captains of industry in charge of Hollywood's six big media groups, it may also prove to be more than they bargained for. Engaged, "lean-forward" consumers--coveted by advertisers and entertainers alike--are not content simply to watch traditional media but rather, they produce their own videos, remix other people's work, seek out those who share their interests, forging concordances and wiki's, fan fiction, and various forms of interactivity that are still in their infancy and that corporate Hollywood is just beginning to explore. Copyright law, guild rules, and the conventions of audience quantification are frequently operating at cross-purposes with these new, expansive sets of cultural-industrial practices. As the demise of the music industry shows, active audiences and technological advances can create an explosive combination, powerful enough to bring down an entire industry. The entertainment industry wants to embrace this new, active consumer while ensuring its own survival by seeking to recreate familiar rules of what is considered "valuable" and "entertainment" within traditional business models. Transmedia, Hollywood turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means.
Topic: Reconfiguring Entertainment The recent news that Disney is buying Marvel Comics has sent shock waves through the entertainment industries as two companies, which have built their fortunes on transmedia experiences but for very different groups of consumers, are being brought together under single ownership. What implications does this merger have for the kinds of entertainment experiences we will be consuming in the next decade? This panel brings together visionaries, people who think deeply about our experiences of play, fun, and entertainment, people whose expertise is rooted in a range of media (games, comics, film, television) to think about the future of entertainment as a concept. Transmedia designers often use the term, "mythologies," to describe the kinds of information rich environment they seek to build up around media franchise and deploy the term, "Bibles," to describe the accumulated plans for the unfolding of that serial narrative. Both of these terms link contemporary entertainment back to a much older tradition. So, are we simply talking about a largely timeless practice of storytelling as it gets relayed through new channels and platforms? Or are we seeing the emergence of new modes of expression, new kinds of experiences, which are only possible within a converged media landscape? What does it mean to have "fun" in the early 21st century and will this concept mean something different a decade from now? In what ways will the desire to produce and consume such experiences reconfigure the entertainment industry or conversely, how will the consolidation of media ownership generate or constrain new forms of popular culture? What models of media production, distribution, and consumption are implied by these future visions of entertainment?
Using a collective intelligence model disguised as play, Alternate reality games, or ARGs, give any individual with a computer a means of problem-solving anything from global warming to the true meaning of the Dharma Institute conspiracy. ARGs also give instant "geek cred" to marketers from stuffy firms like Microsoft and McDonalds tasked with selling consumer goods to the Millennials. Are these elaborate scavenger hunts, which send players down an endless series of rabbit-holes in search of clues, teaching them how to think collectively or are they simply the latest in a long series of promotional tools designed to sell products to tech-savvy consumers? Unlike regular computer games, ARGS engage a multitude of players using a multitude of new technologies and social media formats--sending clues via Web sites, email, or just as likely, by means of an old-fashioned phone booth in some dusty, small town in Texas. For ARG creators, the new entertainment format represents rich, new storytelling opportunities, according to Joe DiNunzio, CEO of 42 Entertainment (AI, Halo 2, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest). However, for the big six media groups, the primary purpose of ARGs is promotional--a new-fangled way of selling Spielberg's AI (The Beast), WB's Dark Knight, Microsoft's Halo 2 (ilovebee's), or ABC's Lost (The Lost Experience). In other words, are ARGs simply a novel new way for the big six media groups to prompt several million avid fans to start beating the promotional drum on behalf of their favorite movie, TV series, or computer game or do they represent a new way of harnessing revolutionary thinking? In this panel, ARG creators, entertainment think-tank consultants, and media scholars will debate the social vs. commercial utilities associated with this latest form of social engagement. Topic: Designing Transmedia Worlds Transmedia entertainment relies as much on world-building as it does on traditional storytelling. Transmedia practices use the audience's fascination with exploring its richly detailed world (and its attendant mythology) to motivate their activities as they seek out and engage with content which has been dispersed across the media landscape. Recent projects, such as Cloverfield, True Blood, and District 9, have relied on transmedia strategies to generate audience interest in previously unknown fictional universes, often combining promotional and expositional functions. Derek Johnson has argued that these fictional worlds are "over-designed," involving much greater details in their conceptual phase than can be exploited through a single film or television series. This "overdesign" emergences through new kinds of collaborations between artists working both for the "mother ship," the primary franchise, and those working on media extensions, whether games, websites, "viral" videos, even park benches. In this new system, art directors and script writers end up working together in new ways as they build up credible worlds and manage complex continuities of information. What does it mean to talk about fictional worlds? How has this altered the processes behind conceptualizing, producing, and promoting media texts? What new skills are emerging as production people learn to introduce, refine, and expand these worlds through each installment of serial media texts? And how do they manage audience expectations that they will continue to learn something more about the world in each new text they consume? What does each media platform contribute to the exploration and elaboration of such worlds?
Most Hollywood marketing campaigns remain overly reliant on expensive broadcast television commercials to reach a large cross-section of the audience despite growing evidence that avid fans are capable of generating powerful word of mouth. In the decade since The Blair Witch Project's website became a model for engaging a core audience by creating awareness online, a new generation of marketing executives has emerged, challenging the effectiveness of top-down strategies and advocating "bottom-up," social media marketing. By fusing storytelling and marketing--ranging from ABC's low-tech, user-generated aesthetic in "Lost Untangled" to Crispin, Porter + Bogusky's polished, eye-candy approach to selling Sprite in its "sublymonal advertising" campaign--this next generation of web marketers has upended previous notions about where content ends and the ad begins. Having grown up reading Watchman comics, playing Sims, and surfing the Web for like-minded members of their consumer tribe, these new media professionals come armed with the knowledge of what it means to be a fan; as a result, they are refashioning the processes and structures that inform the relationship between audience members and the culture industry--forcing today's media conglomerates to adapt to the new realities of the cultural-industrial complex while also ensuring their own survival. Gen-Y consumers' sophisticated understanding of, but less contentious relationship with brand marketing, invites today's media marketers to embrace a revolutionary mode of selling that may impact copyright law, guild agreements, professional standards, and the global labor market. What is the future of entertainment? Will the Internet be run by top-down mid-media corporate owners or bottom-up Web-bloggers or some yet to be realized combination of both? Speakers include:
Danny Bilson, THQ (The Rocketeer, Medal of Honor, The Flash, The Sentinel) Emmanuelle Borde, Senior Vice-President, Digital Marketing, Sony Imageworks Interactive (her award-winning team of marketers, designers, producers and technologists have developed thousands of websites and digital campaigns for Sony Worldwide products, including Spider-man, 2012, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, etc.) David Bisbin, Art Director/Production Designer (Twilight, New Moon, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Drug Store Cowboy) Will Brooker, Associate Professor, Kingston University, UK. (selected publications: Star Wars [2009]; Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture [2005]; The Bladerunner Experience [2006];Using the Force [2003]; Batman Unmasked [2001] John Caldwell, Professor, UCLA Department of Film, TV, Digital Media (selected publications: Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Film/Television Work Worlds [ 2009]; Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film/Television [2008]; New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, [ 2003]; Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, (1995) Alan Friel, Partner, Wildman Harrold & Associates John Hegeman, Chief Marketing Office, New Regency Productions (spearheaded marketing campaigns for: Saw 1 & 2, Crash at Lionsgate; The Blair Witch Project at Artisan, etc.) Mimi Ito, Associate Researcher, University of California Humanities Research Institute (Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software; Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning With New Media; Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life) Derek Johnson, Assistant Professor, University of North Texas
Richard Lemarchand, Lead Designer, Naughty Dog Software (Uncharted: Drake's Fortune; Uncharted 2: Among Thieves)
Roberta Pearson, Professor, University of Nottingham (selected publications: Reading Lost [2009]; Cult Television [2004]; The Many Lives of Batman: Critical Approaches [1991], etc.) Steve Peters and Maureen McHugh, Founding Partners, No Mimes Media (recent credits include: Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Nine Inch Nails, Pirates of the Caribbean II) Nils Peyron, Executive Vice President and Managing Partner, Blind Winks Productions Louisa Stein, Head of TV/Film Critical Studies Program, San Diego State University (Limits: New Media, Genre and Fan Texts; Watching Teen TV: Text and Culture) Jonathan Taplin, Professor, Annenberg School For Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California; CEO, Intertainer. John Underkoffler , Oblong, G-Speak (technical advisor for Iron Man, Aeon Flux, Hulk, "Taken", and Minority Report). Steve Wax, Managing Partner, Campfire (Northern Lights, The Little Sister, Unmade Beds) Jordan Weisman, Founder, Smith & Tinker (Credits include: The Beast, I Love Bees, Year Zero) Admission is free to Students and Academics, $25 for general public. Register now at: http://www2.tft.ucla.edu/RSVP/ Watch this space for more information. .
December 14, 2009
Harry Potter: The Exhibition, or what Location Entertainment Adds to a Transmedia FranchiseWhile in Cambridge for the Futures of Entertainment conference, my wife and I stopped over at the Boston Museum of Science which is currently playing host to Harry Potter: The Exhibition. We had both attended a fascinating presentation about the design and development of this exhibit during last Summer's Azkatraz convention in San Francisco and so we had high anticipations for the show and were not disappointed. If you live anywhere near Boston, you should definitely try to make it there for the exhibit which runs through Feb. 21. The exhibit is pricy since you have to pay a fee above and beyond the price of admission to the museum itself, but we found it more than worth it. Since my head was still filled with thoughts from two days of conversations about transmedia entertainment, the exhibit gave me some chances to reflect upon what location based entertainment can contribute to a larger cross-media franchise. Throughout, I will be making reference to some of the principles I introduced in my "The Revenge of the Oragami Unicorn" posts, so if you missed them, you may want to pause now and catch up. We'll wait up for you. First, we might think of the exhibit as an example of immersion. That is, from the very start, we are encouraged to enter into J.K. Rowling's universe as manifest in the feature film franchise. Before we enter the exhibit, one or two children are asked to step up, put on the sorting hat, and get placed into the proper "house." The museum has lovingly recreated some of the key settings, filled them with costumes and props, and thus offer us a chance to tour the fictional environment. We can, for example, enter into Hagrid's Hut and even sit in his giant chair which dwarfs even the adults in the party, or we can enter the Great Hall as it is decorated for one or another of the festive ocassions depicted in the story. The designers went to some length to minimize the number of glass cases we have to look through, prefering to situate props and costumes in their "natural" settings, such as the Gryfindor Boys Dormatory or a Quiddich Trophy Room. Some of the professor figures -- such as Lockhart or Umbridge -- get represented through their living quarters. We see the life size self portrait of Lockhart or experience directly the pink monstrosity, complete with mewing cat plates, which is Umbridge's personal quarters. As we enter and exit the exhibit, we must pass the interactive portraits which figure so strongly in the films and our entrance also takes us past the railroad car that the students take from Paddington Station to Hogwarts School. Often, a sense of being embedded in the world gets created by scale as we find the dementors towering above us when we meet Voldemort and his minions or when we see how much larger than lifesize Hagard's costumes are. There was something magical about the time spent inside the exhibition precisely because it felt as if we had left Boston and entered into the territory of the imagination. Everything was familiar because we knew them so well from the books and films so this sense of immersion was a kind of homecoming. As may already be suggested from the above, the exhibit focuses primarily around the Harry Potter books and films as a world rather than as a story. We can imagine, for example, a trip which took us through a series of vignettes which lay out the memorable moments from the narrative as a series of spectacular spaces. To a large degree, this sense of transforming events into spaces would characterize many of the earliest exhibits in Fantasyland at the Disney Theme Parks -- the Peter Pan or Snow White rides come to mind as the most obvious examples of this process. And something similar occurs often when films are adopted into video games. After all, games, amusement parks, and museums are organized spatially and our primary experience is a movement through compelling landscapes, but what gets represented in those spaces may have strong or weak narrative hooks. I will bow here before the ludologists who would argue that such spaces are not narratives -- yet we may see them as evoking familiar narratives, as part of a storytelling system, as alternative ways we experience exposition which alters our relationship to the more overtly narrative manifestations of the franchise. There are some examples in the Harry Potter exhibition which point to very specific moments in the films -- for example, there's an arrangement of the costumes which the primary characters wore to the Yule Ball which unmistakingly refers to specific events. But most of what is showcased here are recurring elements from the fictional world, scenes which appeared across multiple books or films, even if they are more central to some installments than others. There is a sense of the passing of time contributed by some exhibits which juxtapose the costumes worn by the primary characters over time, allowing us to watch the characters grow up across the series. The exhibit rewards our sense of fan mastery, both by allowing us to recognize and place for ourselves various costumes and props, thanks to relatively nonintrusive signage. It allows us to examine each artifact closely and often gain new insights into the characters, as we learn by studying Lockhart's exams and realizing that they ask about nothing other than the teacher's own exploits, or scanning the wrappers of the candies or the covers of the textbooks to see details which never really were visible on the screen but help to flesh out the world of the story. This is often what is meant when tourists comment on the attention to detail -- not simply that we get every detail we expect to see there but that looking more closely teaches us things about the world we would not know from consuming the other media manifestations of the franchise. So, we might see this attention to detail as part of the drillability Jason Mittell has described as a property of complex narrative systems. There was some tension here between the desire to immerse us in a fictional realm and the desire to provide the kinds of annotation and background we anticipate from a museum experience. There are thus video monitors at various points throughout the exhibit, creating a sense of hypermediacy (see Bolter and Grusin's Remediations). These videos offer us just in time glimpses into key scenes from the films which are evoked by the costumes, props, and settings on display. In some ways, seeing the film footage alongside the costume deepened our sense of immersion, while in other senses, it pulled us out of the suspension of disbelief since these monitors had little to do with the world of Hogwarts and everything to do with our experiences as museum goers. A greater sense of disjunction was created for me by the experience of taking the audio tour where key production people comment on and provide background on the design choices which went into the construction of these costumes and props. After all, the only justification for this exhibit occupying space in a Museum of Science, other than because of its crowd appeal, has to do with showcasing the technical skills and industrial design which went into the production. We might think of the audio tour as something like a director's commentary on the film world -- except that I always find it hard to listen to the director's commentary and remain absorbed in the fiction at the same time. In the case of a DVD, they represent different kinds of experiences, different modes of interpretation. Yet walking through the immersive exhibit space and listening to the audio tour invited us to think about what we see as real (through suspension of disbelief) and constructed (through our behind the scenes perspective). In some cases, the information provided was illuminating, inviting us to look closely at the costumes as personifying different aspects of the character's personalities, or explaining why lifesize models were created for some of the mythological creatures, like the Horntail dragon. But it always competed with the fantasy I was constructing in my head about getting to visit Hogwarts and its grounds. This is not a challenge that faces amusement park designers, for example, who are able to simply allow us to immerse ourselves in an entertaining fantasy without feeling compelled to offer educational background. The exhibit clearly functioned as a cultural attractor -- creating a shared space for Harry Potter fans to gather and have common experiences. I found myself engaged in conversations with many of the other patrons in ways I would have been reluctant to do at an art museum, say, or at the science museum in its normal mode. We had a common relationship to this fiction and in one way or another, we were fans. The exhibit also was a cultural activator, giving us some things to do -- get sorted upon entrance (if you are lucky enough to get picked), rip up a mandrake root and watch it squirm, through a quiddich ball through a hoop, and so forth. But many of us came into the museum with our own fantasy investments as well. For example, I strongly identify with the Ravenclaw House and its most famous character, Luna Lovegood. I have been "sorted" through a variety of mechanisms through the years and always end up getting placed in Ravenclaw. Over time, I've discovered many of my closest friends in Harry Potter fandom are also self-identified Ravenclaw, which put us in a minority within the fandom, which veers towards Slytherin (and Snape/Malfoy fans) or Griffyndor (with Harry and friends). Indeed, of the two children being sorted on my tour, both had proclaimed fantasies about being Gryffindor, and were so sorted. Because of this identification, though, I found myself increasingly annoyed that my house was under-represented in the exhibit -- most blatantly in an area which shows the uniforms of three of the four Quiddich team captains, but makes no mention of the Ravenclaw captain. I suppose even in fantasy you can't be an intellectual and a jock at the same time. :-{ We could accept that Luna is a sufficiently secondary character that she would not necessarily be represented but many of the other secondary characters on the same level of obscurity do find at least token acknowledgement here. The "houses" are so central to fan identifications within the Harry Potter world that it strikes me as odd that one house would be so totally neglected -- except for occassional banners -- and it suggests to me the one major misfire in an otherwise respectfully and lovingly created exhibit. Next time: Transmedia for Social Change
December 12, 2009
Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: The Remaining Four Principles of Transmedia Storytelling
These two concepts refer to the perceived relationship between the transmedia fiction and our everyday experiences. At the Studio Ghibli Museum outside of Tokyo, there's a fascinating exhibition on the history of motion pictures. Much of what is there could have been in a western museum on the same topic - various motion toys designed to capture and exploit the persistence of vision. Yet, there are also panorama boxes - little minature worlds which you have to kneel down to look inside, worlds constructed of plastic figurines in front of cellophane backdrops. On the wall, there's a quote from animator Hayao Miyazki, who explains, "just as people wished to make pictures move, they wished to look inside a different world. They yearned to enter a story or travel to a faraway land. They longed to see the future of the landscapes of the past. The panorama box with no moving parts was made much earlier than the Zoetrope." Miyazki is making the case, then, that immersion - the ability of consumers to enter into fictional worlds - was the driving force behind the creation of cinema and has fueled the development of many subsequent media. It is certainly not hard to move from the microworlds constructed in the panorama boxes to the microworlds created for contemporary video games. But if we step outside the museum proper and into the gift shop, we see another principle at play. Here, one can buy tiny figures and massive models of key characters, props, and settings from Miyazki's films, or we can buy props and costumes which can become resoures for Cosplay. Ian Condry has made the case that the toy industry in Japan and its need for extractable elements has dramatically shaped the development of anime and manga. In immersion, then, the consumer enters into the world of the story, while in extractability, the fan takes aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life. Again, neither principle is new: just as we had panorama boxes in Japan, the movie palaces which sprung up in the United States in the 1920s were instruments of immersion, offering fantastical environments within which to watch movies which were themselves often exploring exotic or faraway worlds, and we might extend immersion to include more contemporary amusement parks, such as the soon to open theme park that seeks to reconstruct the world of Harry Potter or the Dubai based theme park focused around Marvel superheroes to open in 2012 (assuming either Dubai or the world doesn't end before then). On the other end of the spectrum, we can see early examples of extractable content growing up around Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Buster Brown, or Charlie Chaplin, to cite a few examples, even around Nanook of the North (which helped to introduce the Eskimo Pie to the American buying public). 4. Worldbuilding. In Convergence Culture, I quoted an unnamed screenwriter who discussed how Hollywood's priorities had shifted in the course of his career: "When I first started you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didn't really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. and now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media." This focus on world building has a long history in science fiction, where writers such as Cordwainer Smith constructed interconnecting worlds which link together stories scattered across publications. We can point towards someone like L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz books, as someone who had a deep investment in this concept of the author as world builder. For most of us today, The Wizard of Oz is a story - really reduced to a single book from the twenty or so Baum wrote and from there, to only those characters and plot elements that appeared in the MGM musical. Baum would have understood Oz as a world and indeed, he presented himself as the "geographer" of Oz, giving a series of mock travelogue lectures, where he showed slides and short films, which illustrated different places within Oz and hinted at the events which had occurred there. Oz as a place got elaborated not simply through the books but also through comic strip series (recently reprinted), stage musicals, and films, each of which added new places and characters to the overall mix. Some of the Oz books were novelizations and elaborations of stories introduced through these other media. And consistently, the logic of these stories were focused on journeys and travel, so that the Oz franchise was constantly uncovering more parts of the fictional world. This concept of world building is closely linked to what Janet Murray has called the "encyclopedic" impulse behind contemporary interactive fictions - the desire of audiences to map and master as much as they can know about such universes, often through the production of charts, maps, and concordances. Consider, for example, this map of the character relations which have unfolded in the X-Men universe over the past 40 plus years and compare it to the complex social dynamics ascribed to the great Russian novels, such as Tolstoi's War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Pushing back even earlier, we can see this world building impulse at work in something like the Sistine Chapel Ceiling Murals, which seek to stitch together characters and stories from across many different parts of the Bible into a single coherent representation. The concept of world building seems closely linked to the earlier principles of immersion and extractability since they both represent ways for consumers to engage more directly with the worlds represented in the narratives, treating them as real spaces which intersect in some way with our own lived realities. Witness the production of travel posters for fictional locations, for example. Many transmedia extensions can be understood as doing something similar to Baum's travel lectures as offering us a guided tour of the fictional setting, literally in the case of a real estate site created around Melrose Place, or simply flesh out our understanding of the institutions and practices. Increasingly, transmedia producers are creating the media which exists in the fictional world as a way of understanding its own logic, practices, and institutions - so we see, for example, the production of fictional pirate comics within Alan Moore's original Watchmen graphic novels to show us the fantasies of a world where superheroes are a reality, or the newscasts created around the film version of Watchmen, which help us to understand the altered history created by the superhero's intervention into 20th century events. These extensions may take physical forms, as in the park benches for District 9, which helped us to experience the segregation between humans and aliens. They might include mock advertising campaigns, such as those for Tru-Blood, or political posters, such as those created in support of alien rights in District 9 or vampire rights in True Blood. And they might extend to the production of fictional media franchises and fandoms, such as Jesse Alexander has created for Sargasso Planet in his upcoming Day One miniseries.
We might understand how serials work by falling back on a classic film studies distinction between story and plot. The story refers to our mental construction of what happened which can be formed only after we have absorbed all of the available chunks of information. The plot refers to the sequence through which those bits of information have been made available to us. A serial, then, creates meaningful and compelling story chunks and then disperses the full story across multiple installments. The cliff-hanger represents an archtypical moment of rupture where one text ends and closure where one text bleeds into the next, creating a strong enigma which drives the reader to continue to consume the story even though our satisfaction has been deferred while we await the next installment. We can think of transmedia storytelling then as a hyperbolic version of the serial, where the chunks of meaningful and engaging story information have been dispersed not simply across multiple segments within the same medium, but rather across multiple media systems. There still is a lot we don't know about what will motivate consumers to seek out those other bits of information about the unfolding story - ie. What would constitute the cliffhanger in a transmedia narrative - and we still know little about how much explicit instruction they need to know these other elements exist or where to look for them. As we work on these problems, there is a great deal we can learn by studying classic serial forms of fiction, such as the serial publication of novels or the unfolding of chapters in movie serials or even in comic book series. Early writing on transmedia (mine included) may have made too much of the nonlinear nature of the transmedia entertainment experience, suggesting that the parts could be consumed within any order. Increasingly, we are seeing companies deploy very different content and strategies in the build up to the launch of the "mother ship" of the franchise than while the series is on the air or after the main text has completed its cycle. So there's work to be done to understand the sequencing of transmedia components and whether, in fact, it really does work to consume them in any order. We are, however, seeing some very elaborate plays with time lines and seriality occurring as the stories of television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, or Supernatural extend into comics, or consider the ways that each of the Battlestar Galactica films has added some new chunk to the timeline of that particular universe. 6. Subjectivity Transmedia extensions, then, may focus on unexplored dimensions of the fictional world, as happens when Star Wars games pick up on particular groups - such as the bounty hunters or podracers - and expands upon what was depicted in the films. Transmedia extensions may broaden the timeline of the aired material, as happens when we rely on comics to fill in back story or play out the long term ramifications of the depicted events (see for example the use of animation in the build up to The Dark Knight or The Matrix Reloaded). A third function of transmedia extensions may be to show us the experiences and perspectives of secondary characters. These functions may be combined as they were with the Heroes webcomics, which provided backstories and insights into the large cast of characters as the series was being launched. These kinds of extensions tap into longstanding readers interest in comparing and contrasting multiple subjective experiences of the same fictional events. We may learn a good deal about this aspect of transmedia by looking at the tradition of epistolary novels. Works like Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, or Dracula, constructed fictional diaries, letters, even transcripts. While they are contained within a single binder, they can be described as transmedia works insofar as they imitate multiple genres, including both manuscript and print forms of prose, and thus invite us to construct the fictional reality from these fragments. Typically, the author constructed himself or herself as having found these documents rather than constructed them, much as ARGs often refuse to acknowledge that they are games or works like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity pretend to be constructed from found footage. As we read such works, we are encouraged to be aware of who is writing and who they are writing for, thus using the letters or diaries to help further construct the relationships between characters. Something similar occurs when we look at the mock websites constructed around transmedia fictions - for example, District 9 was accompanied by a website for an alien rights organization which directly challenges some of the claims made by the government characters in the film and in some cases, we are seeing mock government propaganda footage as it is being "read against the grain" by these resistant organizations, thus creating a layered subjectivity. If Ghost Whispererr, the television series, is about a human woman who speaks with ghost, the webisode series, "The Other Side," shares the perspective of ghost who speak to human women. The promoters of 2012 recently sparked controversy when they created a mock educational website that while clearly marked as tied to a fictional film represented "scientific" perspectives on why the world was ending, a site which provoked responses from NASA who were concerned that it might be misleading the public about actual scientific thoughts and theories about the state of the universe. This focus on multiple subjectivities is giving rise to the use of Twitter as a platform through which fans (Mad Men) or authors (Valmont) can elaborate on the secondary characters and their responses to events represented in the primary text. We even saw this focus on multiple subjectivities extend into reality television this season when Project Runway, which focuses on the designers, added a second series, which focused on the same events as experienced by "The Models of the Runway." Transmedia texts often rely on secondary characters because it is too costly to bring the primary actors over to work in lower yield media like mobisodes and webisodes. Yet, we have a lot to learn about how to turn this into a strength by exploiting the audience's desire to see through more than one set of eyes. Battlestar Galactica's webisode series, "The Face of the Enemy," showed some of this potential in focusing around Felix Gaeta, a previously marginalized figure on the series, and creating interest as they lead into a season where he was going to play a much more central role; the episodes fleshed out his backstory, explored his motivations, and hinted at some of the future developments, all within a short and largely self-contained storyline. 7. Performance In Convergence Culture, I introduced two related concepts - cultural attractors (a phrase borrowed from Pierre Levy) and cultural activators. Cultural attractors draw together a community of people who share common interests - even if it is simply the common interest in figuring out who is going to get booted from the island next. Cultural activators give that community something to do. My classic example would be the map flashed in short bursts in the second season of Lost. Hardcore fans were motivated to create their own screengrabs, share them online, construct their own maps, and try to decipher the cryptic text and figure out how it related to the depicted events. Increasingly, producers are being asked to think about what fans are going to do with their series and to design in spaces for their active participation. Sharon Marie Ross discusses these as invitational strategies, suggesting that these can be explicit (as in the appeals to vote on So You Think You Can Dance) or implicit (as in the depiction inside the series of fans in The O.C. or mobile social networks in Gossip Girl.) But even without those invitations, fans are going to be actively identifying sites of potential performance in and around the transmedia narrative where they can make their own contributions. Indeed, much of the discussion at Futures of Entertainment this year centered around various ways that producers were engaging with these fans, supporting, "harvesting," or shutting down their own creative contributions. In my original talk, I refer to "fan performance" but it was pointed out through these discussions that producers are also "performing" their relationship to both the text and the audience through their presence online or through director's commentary. We typically think of these director commentaries as "nonfiction" or "documentary" breaking down the fiction to show us the behind the scenes production process, yet some authors - Ron Moore in the case of Battlestar Galactica or JMS in the case of Babylon 5 - deploy these platforms to expand our understanding of the fictional worlds, the characters, and depicted events, suggesting that they may also be understood as an expansion of the narrative and not simply an exposition on its conditions of production. As Louisa Stein noted at the conference, there's still much to be explored as we expand the discourse of transmedia entertainment to engage more fully with issues being raised by those working in the fan studies tradition. I can't fully elaborate on these issues now, but in the talk, I simply pointed to some examples of these fan-made extensions, such as the performance videos on YouTube where fans re-enact or lip sinc musical numbers from Glee which Alex Leavitt discussed on the Convergence Culture Consortium blog recently, or The Hunt for Gollum, a fan constructed extension of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, or Star Wars Uncut, where each fan is allowed to reconstruct a single shot from the George Lucas film, which no unfolds through a giddy array of representational strategies (claymation, lego, drag queens, manipulated or re-enacted footage). I also suggested that we can understand transmedia activism, such as that illustrated by the HP Alliance, which deploys themes, characters, and situations from the J.K. Rowling narratives to motivate real world social change, as a logical extension both of performance and of the tension between extractability and immersion. All of these represent unauthorized forms of extension which are not directly acknowledged in the primary text. Yet, a central theme running through the conference centered on how these fan productions and performances might feed back into the creation of the commercial transmedia franchise itself, with Purefold being held up as an emerging model which deploys crowdsourcing and Creative Commons liscensing to encourage viewer contributions to thinking through future directions in the series. So there you have them - seven core principles of transmedia storytelling. Is this an exhaustive list? Probably not. Some of them weren't even fully on my radar at the start of the semester. These represent insights into the various transmedia experiments we've seen so far. Some of these have drawn a good deal of critical attention, while others represent new and unexplored spaces. Most point to ways that transmedia connects to historic cultural practices and thus can draw insights from historical and critical writing on those practices. Most point to ways that the study of transmedia narrative needs to reconnect with the study of commercial industries and fan communities if we are to really understand the dynamic being created by these interventions. And most of them point to new spaces for creative experimentation. If you are enjoying this discussion of transmedia, stay tuned. More is coming next week including some previews of the work we are doing on transmedia activism. For now, you can check out two more of the sessions from Futures of Entertainment 4 which deal with transmedia issues.
Case Study: Transmedia Design and Conceptualization - The Making of Purefold
December 12, 2009
The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (Well, Two Actually. Five More on Friday)Across the next two weeks, we will be rolling out the webcast versions of the sessions we hosted during the recent Futures of Entertainment 4 conference held last month at MIT. (see Monday's post for the session on Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer). Many of the conference sessions were focused around the concept of transmedia entertainment. The team asked me to deliver some opening remarks at the conference which updated my own thinking about transmedia and introduced some basic vocabulary which might guide the discussion. My remarks were largely off the cuff in response to power point slides, but I am making an effort here to capture the key concepts in writing for the first time. You can watch the recording of the actual presentation here and/or read along with this text.
Revenge of the Oragami Unicorn: Seven Core Concepts of Transmedia Storytelling
I first introduced my concept of transmedia storytelling in my Technology Review column in 2003 and elaborated upon it through the "Searching for the Oragami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling" chapter in Convergence Culture. For me, the origami unicorn has remained emblematic of the core principles shaping my understanding of transmedia storytelling, a kind of patron saint for what has emerged as increasing passionate and motivated community of artists, storytellers, brands, game designers, and critics/scholars, for whom transmedia has emerged as a driving cause in their creative and intellectual lives. We all have somewhat different definitions of transmedia storytelling and indeed, we don't even agree on the same term - with Frank Rose talking about "Deep Media" and Christy Dena talking about "Cross-media." As Frank has put it, same elephant, different blind men. We are all groping to grasp a significant shift in the underlying logic of commercial entertainment, one which has both commercial and aesthetic potentials we are still trying to understand, one which has to do with the interplay between different media systems and delivery platforms (and of course different media audiences and modes of engagement.) Whatever we call it, transmedia entertainment is increasingly prominent in our conversations about how media operates in a digital era - from recent books (such as Jonathon Gray's Show Sold Seperately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts and Chuck Tryon's Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence) to dedicated websites (such as the Narrative Design Exploratorium which has been running a great series of interviews with transmedia designers and storytellers) and websites created by transmedia producers, such as Jeff Gomez, to explain the concept to their clients. We are seeing senior statesmen across multiple disciplines - from David Bordwell in film studies to Don Norman in design research - weigh in on the aesthetics and design of transmedia experiences. All of this influx of new interest invites us to pull back and lay out some core principles that might shape our development or analysis of transmedia narrative and to revise some of our earlier formulations of this topic. Six years ago, fans and critics were shocked at the idea of transmedia as they first encountered what the Wachowski Brothers were doing around The Matrix. Now, there is almost a transmedia expectation, as occurred when fans of Flash Forward complained recently because the series introduced a Url on the air and then only provided impoverished extensions to those fans who tracked down the link. Have we reached the point where media franchises are going to be judged harshly if they do not sustain our hunger for transmedia content? Let me start with the following definition of transmedia storytelling as an operating principle: "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 its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story." Some of what I will say here will complicate this conception of a "unified and coordinated entertainment experience," as we factor in the unauthorized, grassroots expansion of the text by fans or consider the ways that franchises might value diversity over coherence in their exploration of fictional worlds. We should be clear that narrative represents simply one kind of transmedia logic which is shaping the contemporary entertainment realm. We might identify a range of others - including branding, spectacle, performance, games, perhaps others - which can operate either independently or may be combined within any given entertainment experience. During the conference, Nancy Baym asked us to think about when and how music has gone transmedia. We struggled to come up with examples - everyone of course immediately latched onto the ARG created around the Nine Inch Nails; I proposed the Comic Book Tatoo where artists and writers used Tori Amos songs as their inspiration. The question looks different, though, if we ask about transmedia performance, because most contemporary musical artists perform across multiple media - minimally live and recorded performance, but also video and social network sites and twitter and... We might also draw a distinction between transmedia storytelling and transmedia branding, though these can also be closely intertwined. So, we can see something like Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader as a extension of the transmedia narrative that has grown up around Star Wars because it provides back story and insights into a central character in that saga. (Thanks to Geoffrey Long for this example) By comparison, a Star Wars breakfast cereal may enhance the franchise's branding but it may have limited contribution to make to our understanding of the narrative or the world of the story. The idea that Storm Troopers might be made of sugar sweet marshmellow bits probably contradicts rather than enhances the continuity and coherence of the fictional world George Lucas was creating. Where does this leave the Star Wars action figures? Well, they represent resources where players can expand their understanding of the fictional world through their play. Minimally, they enhance transmedia play, but in so far as coherent stories emerge through this play, they may also contribute to the expansion of the transmedia story. And indeed, writers like Will Brooker and Jonathon Gray have made compelling arguments for the specific ways these toys expanded or reshaped the transmedia narrative, adding, for example, to the mystique around Boba Fett. While we are making distinctions, we need to distinguish between adaptation, which reproduces the original narrative with minimum changes into a new medium and is essentially redundant to the original work, and extension, which expands our understanding of the original by introducing new elements into the fiction. Of course, this is a matter of degree - since any good adaptation contributes new insights into our understanding of the work and makes additions or omissions which reshape the story in significant ways. But, I think we can agree that Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet is an adaptation, while Tom Stoppard's Rosencranz & Guildenstern Are Dead expands Shakespeare's original narrative through its refocalization around secondary characters from the play. My own early writing about transmedia may have over-emphasized the "newness" of these developments, excited as I was to see how digital media was extending the potential for entertainment companies to deliver content around their franchises. Yet, Derrick Johnson has made strong arguments that the current transmedia moment needs to be understood in relation to a much longer history of different strategies for structuring and deploying media franchises. Indeed, when I head to University of Southern California each morning to teach, I am given a forceful reminder of these earlier stages in the evolution of transmedia entertainment in the form of a giant statue of Felix the Cat which has sat atop a local car dealership since the 1920s and has become a beloved Los Angeles landmark. Felix, as Donald Crafton, has shown us was a transmedia personality, whose exploits moved across the animated screen and comics to become the focus of popular music and merchandising, and he was one of the first personalities to get broadcast on network American television. We might well distinguish Felix as a character who is extracted from any specific narrative context (given each of his cartoons is self-contained and episodic) as opposed to a modern transmedia figure who carries with him or her the timeline and the world depicted on the "mother ship," the primary work which anchors the franchise. As I move through this argument, I will connect transmedia to earlier historical practices, trying to identify similarities and differences along the way. 1. Spreadability vs. Drillability "Perhaps we need a different metaphor to describe viewer engagement with narrative complexity. We might think of such programs as drillable rather than spreadable. They encourage a mode of forensic fandom that encourages viewers to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the compleity of a sotry and its telling. Such programs create magnets for engagement, drawing viewers into the storyworlds and urging them to drill down to discover more...The opposition between spreadable and drillable shouldn't be thought of as a hierarchy, but rather as opposing vectors of cultural engagement. Spreadable media encourages horizontal ripples, accumulating eyeballs without necessarily encouraging more long-term engagement. Drillable media typically engage far fewer people, but occupy more of their time and energies in a vertical descent into a text's complexities."
Yet, Mittell invites us to think of a world where many of us are constantly scanning for media franchises that interest us and they drilling down deeper once we find a fiction that captures our imagination. Both potentials may be built into the same transmedia franchise, yet they represent, as he suggests, different dimensions of the experience, and there may well be cases where a franchise sustains spreadability without offering any real depth to drill into or offers depth and complexity without offering strong incentives to pass it along through our social networks. More work needs to be done to fully understand the interplay between these two impulses which are shaping current entertainment experiences.
I mentioned earlier that some of my recent thinking about transmedia starts to challenge the idea of a "unified experience" which is "systematically" developed across multiple texts. It is certainly the case that many transmedia franchises do indeed seek to construct a very strong sense of "continuity" which contributes to our appreciation of the "coherence" and "plausibility" of their fictional worlds and that many hardcore fans see this kind of "continuity" as the real payoff for their investment of time and energy in collecting the scattered bits and assembling them into a meaningful whole. We can see the elaborate continuities developed around the DC and Marvel superheroes as a particular rich example of the kind of "continuity" structures long preferred by the most dedicated fans of transmedia entertainment. Yet, if we use these comic book publishers as a starting point, we can see them pushing beyond continuity in more recent publishing ventures which rely on what I described in my contributions to Third Person as a logic of "multiplicity." So, for example, we can see Spider-Man as part of the mainstream continuity of the Marvel universe, but he also exists in the parallel continuity offered by the Ultimate Spider-Man franchise, and we can see a range of distinctly separate mini-franchises, such as Spider-Man India (which sets the story in Mumbai) or Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane (which stands alone as a romance comic series for young female readers). And indeed, some of these experiments - Spider-Man India, the DC Elseworlds series - use multiplicity - the possibility of alternative versions of the characters or parallel universe versions of the stories - as an alternative set of rewards for our mastery over the source material. Multiplicity allows fans to take pleasure in alternative retellings, seeing the characters and events from fresh perspectives, and comics publishers trust their fans to sort out not only how the pieces fit together but also which version of the story any given work fits within. We can compare this with the laborious process the producers had to go through to launch the recent Star Trek film, showing us that it does indeed take place in the same universe as the original and is part of the original continuity, but the continuity has to be altered to make way for the new performers and their versions of the characters. This pleasure in multiplicity is not restricted to comics, as is suggested by the recent trend to take works in public domain, especially literary classics, and mash them up with more contemporary genres - such as Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, or Little Women and Werewolves. The concept of multiplicity paves the way for us to think about fan fiction and other forms of grassroots expression as part of the same transmedia logic - unauthorized extensions of the "mother ship" which may nevertheless enhance fan engagement and expand our understanding of the original. For those franchises where there is a strong desire to police and preserve continuity, fan fiction can be experienced by producers as a threat, something which may disrupt the coherence of their unfolding story, but where we embrace a logic of multiplicity, they simply become one version among many which may offer us interesting insights into who these characters are and what motivates their behavior. In my class and at the conference, this concept of multiplicity has been experienced as liberating, allowing us to conceive of alternative configurations of transmedia, and lowering some of the anxiety about making sure every detail is "right" when collaborating across media platforms. My key point, though, would be that there needs to be clear signaling of whether you are introducing multiplicity within the franchise, as well as consistency within any given "alternative" version of the central storyline. TO BE CONTINUED
November 20, 2009
On the Pleasures of Not Belonging, or Notes on Interstitial Art (Part Two)Most current academic thinking dismisses the idea that genres are stable and essential categories, that we can determine what genre a work belongs to once and for all, and that doing so tells us all we need to know about the example in question. Instead, this new scholarship talks about what genres do rather than what genres are and describes the processes by which works get classified and reclassified over time. When these categories are deployed as a system for regulating the production and distribution of culture, The publishing industry is misusing genre theory. As music critic Simon Frith notes, "genre maps change according to who they're for... A committed music fan will soon find, for example, that she's interested in sounds that fit into several categories at once and that different shops therefore shelve the same record under different labels.... It's as if a silent conversation is going on between the consumer, who knows roughly what she wants, and the shopkeeper, who is laboriously working out the pattern of shifting demands. What's certain is that I, like most other consumers, would feel quite lost to go to the store one day and find the labels gone – just a floor of CDS, arranged alphabetically." So, for Frith, genre categories have some temporary use value in helping consumers find the music they want to hear. But those categories are also subject to recall and modification without notice and are often deployed in idiosyncratic ways, reflecting the personalities of the owners of different record shops or even the whims of the clerks who shelve particular titles. If you print the genres on the book jacket, you automatically limit their shelf life by restricting your ability to shuffle the pieces to reflect changing tastes and perceptions. The result will be as much bad business as bad art. Of course, on the consumption side, we all adopt very idiosyncratic systems for shelving our books anyway: that's the pleasure of reading someone else's bookshelves as a map of their mind, displaying what things interest them and the perceived relationships between the parts. You might think that this "shelving" metaphor for thinking about the cultural work of genres would break down quickly in a world where fewer and fewer books are purchased in brick-and-mortar bookshops and more and more of them are being bought online, where listings can be easily reconfigured, where the same book can be listed in an infinite number of categories. Paradoxically, though, genres have had a tighter hold on our imagination in recent years as the range of cultural choice has broadened and audiences have fragmented. Film historian Rick Altman tells us that far from imposing rigid boundaries between genres, the old studio system depended on the idea that the same film could appeal to multiple audience segments at a time when pretty much everyone in the country went to the movies once or twice a week. Hollywood films rarely fit into some narrowly composed category: the same film had to appeal to men as well as women, the young as well as the old, by signaling different entertainment elements ("Comedy. Romance. Action. Exotic Locales. Singing. Dancing....") Over the course of the 20th century, however, genre categories have become ever more specialized as media industries refine techniques for monitoring and targeting particular clusters of consumers. These more rigid and precise subgenres are the product of a more general tendency towards what anthropologist Grant McCracken calls "specification." Subcultures break down into smaller subcultures, niches become smaller niches in an eternal dance between our desire to differentiate ourselves from and affiliate ourselves with others who share our tastes. There are more different categories of books, records, and films than ever before; all that diversity produces an anxiety that is being met by more aggressive policing of boundaries. Using more sophisticated tools, media consumers are trying to find the "perfect choice," rather than taking for granted that a work designed for a general audience is going to contain some things we like and some things we don't. And where the market doesn't impose such specifications, we add them ourselves. Catherine Tosenberger has argued that the best fan fiction is "unpublishable" in the sense that it operates across the genre categories, aesthetic norms, and ideological constraints that shape commercial publishing. Fans self-publish in order to step outside those filters. Yet, the fan community also imposes its own categories, which help readers find the "right story" through author's notes that tell us, for example, which "ships" (relationships between specified pairs of characters) are being explored, offer a rough sense of their sexual explicitness or emotional tone, warn us about vexing themes, and so forth. And if you read the letters of comment, there's enormous anger directed at any writer who asks a reader to read a story that doesn't deliver what was promised and, even worse, gives them something they didn't ask for. All of this focus on using genres to classify and shelve works assumes that we know where one genre ends and another begins and that genre works stay where we put them. Genres may be optical illusions, which come and go like mirages, depending on the ways we look at the texts in question. In one formulation, genre classifications offer reading hypothesis: we start a book with the assumption that it will follow a certain path; we read it "as" a mystery or as a romance or as a fantasy, and as we do so, we look for those elements that match our expectations: depending on our starting point, we may notice some things or ignore them, make certain predictions or avoid them, value or reject certain elements, form or dismiss certain interpretations. Start from a different hypothesis and you will have a different experience. Some critics are rereading familiar texts through alternative logics: so, for example, queer cultural critic Alex Doty has made the case for The Wizard of Oz as a power struggle between butch and femme lesbians, Jason Mittell has read the HBO series The Wire as a video game, and Linda Williams reads pornography in relation to Hollywood musicals. Might we see such essays as interstitial criticism? For some readers, there is a certain pleasure in playing a game where all the parts match our templates (much as a sparrow feels more like a bird than an ostrich does). For other readers, there may be a pleasure in the unanticipated or the indeterminate. Let's hear it for the duck-billed platypus! Tzvetan Todorov has talked about the "fantastic" as playing with this uncertainty about classification. For instance, most ghost stories create a special pleasure from our uncertainty about whether we are supposed to believe there really are ghosts or whether we are to come up with a natural, logical, real-world explanation for the events. The pleasure, he says, is in toggling between multiple interpretations, not knowing what kind of story we are reading: there was a ghost; the narrator was crazy; or in the Scooby-Doo version, it was all a scheme by the guy who runs the old amusement park. Even when we kinda knew where the ghost story was going, the process of hiding and unveiling can be as much darn fun as a good old fashion striptease. What if we were to imagine the interstitial as another kind of indeterminacy, one that flits between genres in the same way that the fantastic flickers between levels of reality. Maybe this is what Heinz Insu Fenkel is getting at when he writes, "Interstitial works make the reader (or listener, or viewer) more perceptive and more attentive; in doing so, they make the reader's world larger, more interesting, more meaningful, and perhaps even more comprehensible. The reader, who has been seeing black-and-white, suddenly begins not only to see color, but to learn how to see other colors." Just as there are systems of cultural production where audiences express confusion if a work straddles genres, there are others where artists thrive upon and audiences anticipate mixing and matching genre elements. Take for example the so-called "masala films" that come out of the Bollywood film industry in India and are popular across Asia, Africa, and increasingly the west. The same film might move between historical and contemporary settings, might mix comedy and melodrama, might follow an intense (and disturbing) action sequence with a musical number, might mix the most sudsy romance with social uplift and political reform, and might acknowledge both Hindu and Islamic traditions. The descriptor "masala" refers to a mixture of spices used in Indian cooking. Just as one would be disappointed if an Indian dish only contained one spice, the Bollywood spectator would be disappointed if a Hindi film contained only one genre. We are seeing greater cultural churn as more and more works move across national borders, get picked up by new artists and audiences, get combined in new ways, paving the way for nouvelle culture in the same way that the global availability of spices and ingredients has led many of our best chiefs to experiment with radical departures from and reinventions of traditional cuisines. The anthropologist Renato Rosaldo has contrasted a classic understanding of cultures as so many exhibits in an ethnographic museum with a more contemporary notion of cultures as garage sales, where people push, pull, and paw over other people's used stuff before taking it home, trying it on for size, and altering it to suit their needs. Many young American consumers are using the web in search of Korean dramas, Japanese anime, Latin American telenovelas, or Bollywood films, anything that takes them outside the parochialism of their own culture. The result really does defy any classification: look at something like Tears of the Black Tiger which starts as a classic Thai novel, throws in a little opera, adds a much more intense color palette, and tells the man's story as a western and the woman's story as a '50s style melodrama to suggest that the two protagonists are living in different worlds. Globalization is simply one of a number of forces which are breaking down the tyranny of genre classifications and paving the way for experimentation within popular storytelling. In his book Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson makes the argument that the most popular forms of entertainment today are popular because they make demands on our attention and cognition. For example, a television show like Lost, one of the top ratings successes of the past decade, demonstrates a level of complexity that would have been unimaginable on American television a few decades ago; with its large scale ensemble casts of characters, its flashes forwards and backwards in time, its complex sets of puzzles and enigmas, its moral ambiguities and shifting alliances, but also its uncertain and unpredictable relationship to existing television genres. If we knew what the operative genre model was, we might figure out what's really happening on the island, but without such a clear mapping, we remain pleasurably lost. Such dramas thrive in part because they support robust internet communities where readers gather online to compare notes, debate interpretations, trace references, and otherwise have fun talking with each other. Its interstitial qualities are essential to Lost's success, even as they account for why other viewers got frustrated and gave up on the series convinced that it was never going to add up to anything anyway. Lost illustrates another tendency in contemporary popular culture towards what I call transmedia storytelling. Lost is not simply a story or even a television series; Lost is a world that can support many different characters and many different stories that unfold across multiple media platforms. As these stories move across media platforms, Lost also often moves across genres: not unlike early novels, which might be constituted through mock letters, journals, and diaries, these new stories may mock e-mail correspondence, interviews, documents, websites, news magazine stories, advertisements, computer games, puzzles, cyphers, and a range of other materials which help make its world feel more real to the reader. These transmedia works will add a whole new meaning to the concept of interstitial arts. So, to borrow from Charles Dickens (who borrowed from everyone else in his own time), this is the best of times and the worst of times for the interstitial arts. In such a world, the interstitial thrives and it withers. It finds receptive audiences and harsh critics. It gratifies and grates. It inspires and confuses. Above all, it gives us something to talk about. It opens us up to a world where nothing is what it seems and where little belongs, at least in the narrow sense of the term. We're going Out There! What happens next is in your hands. Read. Enjoy. Debate. Tell your friends. But also create. Write. Appropriate. Remix. Transform. Just leave your cookie cutters and jelly molds at home. We can figure out what shelf this belongs on later.
Bibliography Ellen Kushner, "The Interstitial Arts Foundation: An Introduction," in Nebula Awards® Showcase 2005, edited by Jack Dann (ROC/PenguinPutnam, March 2005), http://www.interstitialarts.org/essays/kushner_iaf_an_introduction.php Delia Sherman, "An Introduction to Interstitial Arts: Life on the Border," http://www.interstitialarts.org/what/intro_toIA.html Susan Stinson, "Cracks," http://www.interstitialarts.org/what/reflectionStinson.html Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (University of Texas, 1982). Heinz Insu Fenkl, "The Interstitial DMZ," http://www.interstitialarts.org/why/the_interstitial_dmz_1.html Barth Anderson, "The Prickly, Tricky, Ornery Multiverse of Interstitial Art," http://www.interstitialarts.org/what/reflectionAnderson.html Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Harvard University Press, 1998). Rick Altman, Film/Genre (British Film Institute, 1999). Grant McCracken, Plenitude 2.0: Culture by Commotion (Periph: Fluide, 1998). Catherine Tossenberger, Potterotics: Harry Potter Fan Fiction on the Internet, Dissertation, University of Florida, 2007. Alex Doty, Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (Routledge, 2000). Jason Mittell, "All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling and Procedural Logic," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (MIT Press, 2009). Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible" (University of California Press, 1999). Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Cornell University Press, 1975). Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Reworking of Social Analysis (Beacon Press, 1993). Charles Vess, "Interstitial Visual Arts: An Impossible Marriage of Materials," http://www.interstitialarts.org/what/marriage_of_materials.html Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good for You (Riverhead, 2006). Kristin Thompson, Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton University Press, 1988). John Caughie, Theories of Authorship: A Reader (Routledge, 1981). Peter J. Rabinowitz, "The Turn of the Glass Key: Popular Fiction as Reading Strategy," Critical Inquiry, March 1985.
November 18, 2009
On the Pleasures of Not Belonging, or Notes on Interstitial Art (Part One)Last January, I wrote the following essay to run as the foreword for a recently published collection of short fiction -- Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing -- which was edited by an old friend, Delia Sherman. The essay offers my explanation of what we mean by "interstitial writing" and my exploration of the deforming and informing value of genre in contemporary storytelling. Over the next installments, I will also be featuring an interview with Delia about her goals for the book and an interview with some of the contributors about their relationship to the genre conventions of popular fiction. I am hoping that this series of posts will serve to introduce readers of this blog to the work of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, a really wonderful group of writers and thinkers, who are on the frontiers of contemporary popular fiction. This pendant, inspired by my introductory essay, was produced by artist Mia Nutick as part of an auction being organized around the book. For more, see http://iafauctions.com/
(Note: The following essay appeared as the introduction to Interfictions 2, the recently-released anthology of interstitial fiction from the Interstitial Arts Foundation.) "Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." Let's start with some basic premises:
Let me explain. The editors of most anthologies seek stories which "fit" within prescribed themes, genres, and topics; the editors of this book have gone the opposite direction – seeking stories that don't fit anywhere else, stories that are as different from each other as possible. And that's really cool if the interstitial is the kind of thing you are into. At the heart of the interstitial arts movement (too formal), community (too exclusive), idea (too idealistic?), there is the simple search for stories that don't rest comfortably in the cubbyholes we traditionally use to organize our cultural experiences. As Ellen Kushner puts it, "We're living in an age of category, of ghettoization – the Balkanization of Art! We should do something." That "something" is, among the other projects of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, the book you now hold in your hands. Asked to define interstitial arts, many writers fall back on spatial metaphors, talking about "the wilderness between genres" (Delia Sherman), "art that falls between the cracks" (Susan Simpson), or "a chink in a fence, a gap in the clouds, a DMZ between nations at war" (Heinz Insu Fenkel). Underlying these spatial metaphors is the fantasy of artists and writers crawling out from the boxes which so many (their publishers, agents, readers, marketers, the adolescent with the piercings who works at the local Borders) want to trap them inside. Such efforts to define art also deform the imagination, not simply of authors, but also of their readers. All genre categories presume ideal readers, people who know the conventions and secret codes, people who read them in the "right way." Many of us – female fans of male action shows, adult fans of children's books, male fans of soap operas – read and enjoy things we aren't supposed to and we read them for our own reasons, not those proposed by marketers. We don't like people snatching books from our hands and telling us we aren't supposed to be reading them. One of the reasons I don't belong in this book is that I'm an academic, not a creative artist, and let's face it, historically, academics have been the teachers and enforcers of genre rules. The minute I tell you that I have spent the last twenty years in a Literature department, you immediately flash on a chalkboard outline of Aristotle's Poetics or a red pen correcting your muddled essay on the four-act structure. Throughout the twentieth century, many of us academic types were engaged in a prolonged project of categorizing and classifying the creative process, transforming it to satisfy our needs to generate lecture notes, issue paper topics, and grade exam questions. After all, academics are trapped in our own imposed categories ("disciplines" rather than "genres") which often constrain what we can see, what we can say, and who we can say it to. Academics are "disciplined" through our education, our hiring process, our need to 'publish or perish', and our tenure and promotion reviews. Most academics read or think little outside their field of study. As Will Rogers explained, "there's nothing so foolish as an educated man once you take him out of the field he was educated in." I may gain a little sympathy from you, dear reader, if I note that for those twenty years, I was a cuckoo's egg – a media and popular culture scholar in a literature department – and that I am finally flying the coop, taking up an interdisciplinary position at a different institution, because I could never figure out the rules shaping my literature colleagues' behavior. Many literature professors may hold "genre fiction" in contempt as "rule driven" or "formula-based" yet they ruthlessly enforce their own genre conventions: look at how science fiction gets taught, keeping only those authors already in the canon (Mary Shelly, H.G. Wells, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Pynchon), adding a few more who look like what we call "literature" (William Gibson, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick), and then, running like hell as far as possible from any writer whose work still smells of "pulp fiction." Here, "literature" is simply another genre or cluster of genres (the academic mid-life crisis, the coming of age story, the identity politics narrative), one defined every bit as narrowly as the category of films which might get considered for a Best Picture nomination. I never had much patience with the criteria by which my colleagues decided which works belonged in the classroom and which didn't. What I love about the folks who have embraced interstitial arts is that some of them do comics, some publish romances, some compose music, some write fantasy or science fiction, but all of them are perfectly comfortable thinking about things other than their areas of specialization. In that sense, I do very much belong in this collection as a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler, both phrases that signal someone who does and does not fit into some larger movement. Maybe we can go to each other's un-birthday parties and not belong together. To be sure, academics are not, as Buffy would put it, "the big bad." We may have gotten inside your head but with a little mental discipline, you can shove us right back out again. Most interstitial artists ritually burned their old course notebooks years ago. They started to write the stories they wanted to be able to read, only to be told by their publisher that their book would sell much more quickly if it could be positioned into this publishing category for this intended audience and to achieve that you just need to cut back on this, expand on that, and add a little more of this other thing. I often picture James Stewart in Vertigo gradually redressing, restyling, and redesigning Kim Novak's entire identity, all the while creepily asserting that it really shouldn't make that much difference to her. That's the process those of us who sympathize with the concept of interstitial arts are trying to battle back into submission or at least push back long enough so that we can demonstrate that there are readers out there, a few of us, who want the stuff that doesn't really fit into fixed genres, though it may bear some faint family resemblance to several of them at once. Viva the mutts and the mongrels! Long live the horses of a different color! So, you are now about to enter the Twilight Zone, where nothing your freshmen literature teacher taught you applies, where we eat with the wrong forks and wear white shoes after Labor Day. But it doesn't mean that academic genre theory has nothing to contribute to our efforts as readers and writers to step across the ice floes and navigate the shifting sands of the interstitial. For the next few pages, I will be proposing a more contemporary account of how genre works in an era where so many of us are mixing and matching our preferences and defying established categories. The work of genre is changing as we speak – in some ways becoming more constraining, in others more liberating – and genre theorists are rethinking old assumptions to reflect the flux in the way culture operates. To start with Genre Theory 101, all creative expression involves an unstable balance between invention and convention. If a work is pure invention, it will be incomprehensible – like writing a novel without using any recognizable language. Don't worry: a work that is pure invention is only a theoretical possibility. None of us, in the end, is all that original; we borrow (often undigested) bits and pieces from the already written and the already read; we all construct new works through appropriation and transformation of existing materials. As Michel Bakhtin explains, we don't take our words out of the dictionary; we rip them from other people's mouths and they come to us covered with the saliva of where they've already been spoken before. Sharing stories is swapping spit. However, If a work is pure convention, it will bore everyone. While most of us feel gratified when a work sometimes meets our expectations and most of us feel somewhat frustrated when a work fails to deliver those particular pleasures we associate with a favored formula, none of us wants to read a book that is predictable down to the last detail. All artists fall naturally somewhere on the continuum, in some ways following the dictates of their genres, in other ways breaking with them. And most readers pick up a new book or video expecting to be surprised (by invention) and gratified (by convention). As they seek to satisfy our desires for surprise and gratification, genre conventions are both constraints (like strait jackets) and enabling mechanisms (like life vests). They are constraints in so far as they foreclose certain creative possibilities, and they are enabling mechanisms in so far as they allow us to focus the reader's attention on novel elements. In the Russian formalist tradition that shaped my own early graduate education, we didn't speak of "rules"; we spoke of "norms," with the understanding that a work only achieved its fullest potential when it, in some way, "defamiliarized" our normal ways of seeing the world and ordering our experience. Or in another familiar paradigm, the auteur critics embraced those filmmakers who were "at war with their materials," that is, who followed the expectations of genre just enough to continue to be employed by the Hollywood studio system but also sought to impose their own distinctive personality by breaking as many of those rules as possible. Now, let's consider how some of the writers featured on the Interstitial Arts Foundation website are confronting these competing pulls towards convention and invention as they think about their work. Some are seeking to break with the conventions of genre more dramatically than others; they each lay claim to different positions on the continuum between convention and invention. Here, for example, is Barth Anderson: "If the work comforts, satisfies, or generally meets the expectations that viewers might carry of a genre in question, then the work is genre. This might even apply to works attempting to redefine genre or works which introduce alien elements and disciplines into the genre mix... Interstitial art should be prickly, tricky, ornery. It should defy expectations, work against them, and in so doing, maintain a relationship to one or more genres, albeit contentiously.... Interstitial art is often upsetting. It rocks worldviews, political assumptions, sacred cows, as well as bookstore shelves." Anderson values surprise and sees genre primarily as a constraint. Susan Stinson, by contrast, sees the artist as moving between the pleasures of operating within genres and the freedom of escaping their borders: "The gifts of being in a genre – reading the same essays and stories; seeking out the same mentors; publishing with the same magazines and presses; writing books that share shelf space; gathering at workshops, retreats, and conferences often enough to know each other – create a common language... I've felt both embraced and constricted by the conventions of those worlds.... The interstitial idea of thriving in cracks and crevices feels like [another] kind of home. Nurturing active, creative, receptive, demanding relationships and institutions that welcome genre-bending and respect a wide range of sources, traditions, and affinities sounds so good that it scares me. The expanded possibilities for joy are worth the risks." Stinson acknowledges the gratifications of consuming genre entertainment and understands genre formulas as both enabling mechanisms and constraints. Anderson speaks about the interstitial as "prickly, tricky, ornery," while Stinson sees it as welcoming, "nurturing," joyous, and "receptive." One stresses radical breaks from the genre system, while the other is negotiating a space for singular passions within the system. MORE TO COME
November 16, 2009
How Do You Sell an Artsy Board Game?Part of the pleasure of relocating to the University of Southern California has been the chance to meet a whole new cast of characters, to discover just how intellectually diverse and interesting the students are here -- especially when you factor in that my classes attract students from across the two schools, Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and the School of Cinematic Art --- where I have an appointment. It has always been my pleasure to help introduce some of my students to my readers and give you a glimpse of the kind of conversations that take place in my classroom. A few weeks ago, James Taylor, a student in my Transmedia Entertainment class, booked time during my office hours and came in bearing a beautifully crafted box, proceeded to unpack a game board and pieces, and asked if I wanted to play. We had a great conversation about his project -- The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands -- and the thinking behind his design. What I got a glimpse into was someone who was turning the oft-neglected and modest craft of designing board games into an expressive artform. The game was one which encouraged us to reflect on the nature of play, of representation, and of gender. It was a delightful and engaging provocation, and I wanted to share it with you now. I got even more interested when I asked him what he planned to do with his game and he described the process by which he was putting the game onto the market via a microfinancing website. I thought even those of you who are not into games might enjoy learning more about the new kinds of entrepreneurship which are emerging within a networked culture. Microfinance and the Market for Independent Board Games The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands is a fantastical board game with a rich history, an unusual narrative, and surreal Victorian-style artwork. It is a board game that sits comfortably at the intersection of art, logic and literature. It pushes boundaries and opens critical discussions in each of these realms: the board art needs to stand on it's own, but also remain subservient to the game play; the story provokes questions of gender, desire, master-servant relationships, reliable narration, and the permutations of the game over a questionable 200 year history; and the game itself has a rule set that structures a peculiar mode of courtship. Yet, can a small, provocative game ever make it in the (somewhat stalled) American board game industry? Is there a market for small, art-house board games? How the Game Works - "The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands (TGSSI) is an absurd logic puzzle about crossing bridges. The bridges determine how many people can cross. The gentlemen are each trying to strain the group in order to converse with Lady Ashley alone." It is worth noting that the game is based on an old riddle. In the riddle, a farmer is trying to cross a river in a canoe with a fox, a chicken and a sack of corn. He can only take one at a time so he has to carefully plan his trips back and forth, without ever leaving the fox with the chicken, or the chicken with the sack of corn. TGSSI is a two-player game with a similar feel. Each of the gentlemen characters is trying to speak with the lady Ashley alone, and must use the bridges to constantly separate and recombine the group. A mathematician friend of ours calculated about 300,000 possible arrangements for the pieces on the board.
Matters of Academic Interest - Art & the Dilemma of Perspective - After refining the rules for several months, I met with the board artist, Dan Gray. We knew we wanted a top-down view of the islands, because that's what's best for the game-play. But we quickly found that a matter-of-fact, top-down view of the islands wasn't visually interesting - we were losing a lot of the detail and character of the locations by only showing them from above. After some thought, we decided it would be best to take a lesson from the cubists, and crack the perspective in order to accommodate the top-down play-view, while also managing to include the buildings, monuments, and ruins of the islands at mixed angles. The scale of the locations is also mixed. (For example, the octopus is bigger than the cathedral and the boat is larger than the volcano.) The result is a gameboard with a rather warped perspective. It is a top-down vantage point of the islands as though seen through a piece of wavy, distorted glass, and this distortion for the board would later serve as the inspiration for the themes of distortion that run throughout the narrative.
There were two reasons for making the game British. Looking back, it now seems like an obvious choice because of the high level of politeness built into the rule structure (the group typically moves together as a matter of decorum because it would be impolite for a character to walk off in a different direction), but there was another reason as well that had more to do with the objective. The core mechanic of the game is about stepping aside with a lady - and this is an objective that can be read the wrong way, to say the least. In light of this complication, we insisted on the word "Gentlemen" in the title, to squash any accusations of underhanded intentions. Given the high-level of social decorum, and the word "Gentlemen" in the title, the game just seemed British, so we decided to run with it. At first glance, the game appears to be a simple, perhaps ridiculous, love story in which two men are competing for the attentions of Lady Ashley. Simple enough. But questions of sexism are distributed, alleviated and then further compounded throughout all of the materials of the game. The representations of gender are contradictory because these questions are mixed with questions of the reliability of the character descriptions and the permutations of the game over it's 200 year history. Whether the game is played in a male-centric universe is a fertile ground for debate. Soon after opening the box, a player will discover that no one controls the female characters. The rules state: "the Ladies move on their own turn and move independently of the group." The phrasing (deliberately) implies that the girls are aloof and disinterested, that they do not care about this and have other places to be. But the problem of gender is unavoidable: if no one controls the Lady characters, then they do not have creative agency. Instead, they move along a set path. The question of gender in the rules sends the players outwards to explore the character booklet. According to the narrative materials of the game, it was invented by two wealthy (and perhaps mildly insane) gentlemen living on an island. They devised the rule set. This means that we are not looking at the "official rules" of a courtship, by any means, but rather we are looking at what two gentlemen, in their paired delusion, imagined those rules to be. The gentlemen characters are ridiculous enough that it's hard to take them seriously. If they weren't getting gender right, then, well, nor were they very adept at anything else. Jules is a manufacturer of distorted glass and Hodge's "maps might find their best place in a childrens' coloring book." Again, the theme of distortion (originating with the game board art) runs deep throughout the narrative and the game. A more nuanced look at gender and desire reveals even more. At the end of the character booklet, Jules suggests to Hodge that they should save themselves the "legwork" of chasing after her. He suggests that Hodge "draw up a map of these islands" so that they may resume in the "cool shade of representation." The implication here is that Hodge (the cartographer) drew up a map to serve as the game board, and that Jules (the manufacturer of distorted glass) provided the melted marbles for the pieces. The final image in the character booklet shows them playing the board game. At this stage, Lady Ashley is nowhere to be found. She has been pushed out of the frame and nearly out of the scope of the game. In the image, it is as if the two gentlemen are content to compete with each other over her as an imagined trophy and this might have been the case all along. Is Lady Ashley simply a cipher in order for the 2 gentlemen to keep score with each other? Or rather, is she a canvas on which to paint their affections for one another? Once they reach the stage of playing out the courtship as a board game, one gets the sense that the game is less and less about her. To determine if the game is in fact sexist - if the world is in fact a male-centric universe - we can find more information in the descriptions of the characters. As we know, Lady Ashley is described as an absent-minded wanderer. This is not a particularly empowering, or redemptive view of the female character, but it's hard to say whether the narrator's description is at all reliable. On a page of direct quotations, Lady Ashley states: "I simply find it odd, that not one person on these islands has asked me even a single question ... Yet clearly I am in the middle of something..." So if we can trust this quotation, and if no one has asked her a single question, then how can we possibly believe the narrator's three-paragraph description? Especially when there is evidence that contradicts even his basic description. A publisher's footnote from a 1925 version of the game reads: According to the partial memoirs of J.T. Trotwood, there was indeed a Lady Ashley who briefly visited these isles. In reality she was a naturalist commissioned by the British Royal Society to collect flower specimens. This is a more empowering view of her, but without a firm grounding in truth, one can simply not say who (between the narrator and the gentlemen and the multiple editors) is providing trustworthy information. If in fact there was a Lady Ashley to visit these islands, her true identity might be lost forever under a history of unreliable male narration. While gender remains an issue, perhaps it is easiest to allay the concerns of sexism by discounting the men. The epitaph introducing the game seems to speak on Lady Ashley's behalf. It reads, "When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools."
Owing to the loose "facts" of the game, it is quite difficult to determine the exact history, or even to count the number of diegetic layers. However, a rough estimate turns up between six and eight layers of story. We start with the original competition on these islands that was played (on foot ) by crossing bridges to speak with the lady. Because it is hard to say if there was ever a woman on these islands, the second diegetic layer is possibly what Jules and Hodge imagined in order to occupy their time. We know that at some point, the gentlemen decided to sit down and create a representation of the game, at which point Hodge drew up a map of the islands and Jules provided the pieces. Later on, the game and several historical documents from these islands were discovered, and the game was brought back to England and published by Edward B. Tickert. 100 years later I myself played a beat-up, depleted copy of the game in a pub in England and decided to seek out more information (which makes me perhaps the 4th or 5th diegetic layer.) Long-story short, I acquired the rights to republish the game. The players who buy the game are acting out the roles of Jules and Hodge as they play, well, the characters Jules and Hodge in the game. Finally, if I pass the game to a larger publisher, they will create yet a seventh layer of editorial commentary; and if we include essays and comments about the game to be included in the box...then the public discourse becomes yet another layer. The game's history relies on an elaborate, interlocking web of historical documentation surrounding different episodes in the game's discovery and development. The layers of the game create the following epistemological paradox: one can only sort through the facts of the game's history by referring to other questionable facts of the game's history. Going Transmedia - There is a nice array of transmedia elements surrounding the game. Perhaps most noteworthy is the upcoming documentary, in which several historians and professors discuss the origins of the game and it's 200 year history. We wanted to build up a rich environment of critical discourse surrounding the game. We wanted to tease out the details of this absurd British colony in the midst of which the game was created. In essence, we wanted to take a simple game and discuss it not only as a historical artifact, but also as a game based on a real events. The fun in the short documentary is in taking a fantastical game and discussing it as a very real representation of an antiquated courtship. It's an anthropological approach to a strange, fictional culture. The documentary about the islands gestures toward the game, while the game raises questions that demand further exploration in the documentary. Both of them point to other media properties. Kim Moses (co-producer of The Ghost-Whisperer TV series on CBS) describes this type of cross-referencing media as an Infinity Loop. Marketing, Micro-funding & KickStarter.com - Basically, on our financial budget, it doesn't make sense to print 500 copies of the game unless we know we have 500 buyers. We have chosen to assess the level of public and investor interest in The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands by posting it to a microfunding site called Kickstarter.com. On this site, people can preorder the game, or become benefactors. If there is enough interest in the game from the public, then we will move forward and print the first 500 copies. According to the website, "Kickstarter is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." They advertise their website as a way for project creators to "pool" their social networks and turn them into an micro-investment community. It is highly encouraged on the site to offer incentives for different levels of investment. 1. It's less risk for everyone this way. If you need $5,000, it can suck to have $2,000 and a bunch of people who expect you to be able to complete a $5,000 project.
1. How will you tell people about your project? The key to a successful project is asking your networks, audience, friends and family for help. Kickstarter is a tool that can turn your networks into your patrons; it is not a source of funding on its own. In order to preserve the integrity (and strangeness) of The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands (TGSSI), we have found this micro-investment site to be the best approach. We are selling a fantastical board game with a deep, rich story across multiple platforms. Moreover we are selling it in a country that has slim-to-no independent market for board games. It seems that the game could find it's home in high-school or college classrooms, but one can't help but notice that studying games is not a common practice in our education system. But why is that? Perhaps this last question is better left to someone more qualified to answer it. James Taylor is graduate student in Interactive Media at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. Resisting the current of digital media, he has chosen to work primarily with board games. You can order the game here.
November 9, 2009
Click Click Ranger: A Transmedia Experiment for Korean Television (Part Two)Circular Nexus of Screens Why does Click Click Ranger need this complicate maneuver over multiple forms of screens, and for what purpose? In order to dissect the discursive logic behind this nexus of screens, we need to understand the current configuration of these screens in Korea. Mobile Phones: The prodigy of Korean IT mythology. Click Click Ranger's experiment of incorporating the mobile phone into a television show directly corresponds to the recent development of Korea's mobile phone industry in the convergent media paradigm. Since ETRI and the consortium of corporations launched the world's first commercial CDMA mobile phone service in 1996, Korea has been a step ahead in exploring CDMA based technological innovations and the latest mobile media services including mobile TV (DMB: Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and Wibro (the first wireless high-speed broadband). Following SK telecom (the major wireless network provider in Korea)'s 3G mobile content service June in 2002, Korean wireless companies have explored the diverse forms of mobile multimedia content. I conveniently categorize content for mobile phone into two types: "migrated mobile content" which refers to repurposed and repackaged content from conventional media and "original mobile content" that is initially produced for mobile screen devices such as mobile cinema and mobile drama)(Ok, 2008). In the midst of industrial effort to find the 'right' content for mobile screen, these new hybrid forms of moving images explore the aesthetics of convergence that continues and at the same time disrupts the conventions of existing media forms. Mobile TV has expanded the horizon of the mobile screen by combining mobile telecommunication technology and broadcasting. While mobile phone content service and Mobile TV serve as extended venues for conventional media, the conventional media have also tried to incorporate mobile screen technologies into their formats in many different ways. Overall, the most heated concern for both parties is how to develop 'new' content that fit the condition of media convergence, which is often expressed as a 'media big bang' and 'content war' in popular media in Korea (Kim & Lee, 2005). Click Click Ranger is an early attempt to tackle this challenge on the television network side, which continued to the fever of UCC (User Created Content). Following Click Click Ranger, other television networks and popular media organizations launched similar programs such as SBS's "Uporter" system. Literally, "Uporter" means "ubiquitous reporter" and it mobilizes citizens to capture news on the street with their digital camera or mobile phone camera, which are then selectively shown through regular News shows on SBS. Click Click Ranger's use of mobile phone imaging directs attention to the multifaceted nature of the mobile phone. Notably, MSM (multimedia short message) which allows users to attach pictures or short video clips to a mobile phone message is generally discussed as a private communication tool or a vehicle to expand private space with the combined practice of blogging. Although the formation of shared 'community'- whether it is exclusive or relatively open to the general public- has also been discussed, the prevailing assumption is on the practice of 'private imaging' among individuals. Compared to this model of private imaging, Click Click Ranger's adoption of mobile phone imaging is closer to and continues the practice of "citizen journalism" only with changed technologies- from the (video) camera and to the mobile phone-. Hence, while being true to the technological premise of the medium that provides 'personal mobility' (for the mobile rangers and citizen reporters), their mobile phone imaging resides in and further serves to reinstate the value of the public. Most of all, it is the particular use of the outdoor screen with the mobile screen that distinguishes Click Click Ranger from other home-video shows or citizen reports programs and enables it to construct a broader discourse of the 'public space' out of mobile screen usage in Korea.
City Hall Square during World Cup Soccer in 2002 Okay. Click Click Ranger was able to find a way to connect the mobile phone to the television. Now, what makes this nexus of screens unique is the presence of the large LED screen as an integral part of the television show. Simply put, in Click Click Ranger, the large LED Screen technically functions as an additional outdoor TV to broadcast its program. Although the use of the mobile screen is also equally unconventional, the potential of mobile phones as screen media has already been explored in diverse ways. Yet the large LED screen, in spite of its ubiquity in urban landscapes of the global metropolis, has received little attention in the conventional media industry other than in the outdoor advertising business. Becoming one of the latest form of screen media, the Large LED screen not only succeeds the function of the commercial or public advertising that outdoor billboards once fulfilled but also continues the visual pleasure of the urban spectacle. Since 2000, the LED screen in Korea was moved from the category of 'outdoor advertising' to the 'LED display screen broadcasting,' becoming one of the 'broadcasting-telecommunication convergent media' that would be governed under the new broadcasting laws. Compared to the traditional TV at home, the experience of outdoor TV is deeply conditioned by the material condition of place, as TV screen is usually an implemented part of the architectural surroundings. That is, the location where outdoor TV displays, whether it be waiting room, subway/train station or rooftop of building, tends to predetermine the content and flow of content on outdoor TV screens. At the same time, the meaning of place is also rendered by the viewer's activity of watching TV: If in Seoul, the subway station might turn into a living room momentarily for the passengers who enjoy entertainment show clips on ubiquitous screen panels installed inside the train and/or waiting area, beyond its practical functions. In Click Click Ranger, it is the symbolic meaning of 'public space' (as in the location of Seoul City Hall) that the commercial LED screen in City Hall Plaza embodies and that Click Click Ranger systematically appropriates and reproduces. Then, why is the location of Seoul City Hall Plaza crucial for linking up-to-date screen technologies? Physically located at the busy intersection of the political and economic center of the downtown Seoul, the Seoul City Hall Plaza has served as a central place for many important national events. By running the show on the rooftop of city hall building following the fashion of 'live news report on spot,' Click Click Ranger successfully appropriates the sense of 'liveness' and intentionally adds 'moral weight - news-worthy-ness-' to the clips. This simulated urgency and liveness that supports the show's goal of being connected to everyday realities of Korea is intensified on the symbolic level since for Koreans the Seoul City Hall Plaza is the emblematic center for national identity as manifested during the World Cup Soccer tournament in 2002. The image of the Seoul City Hall above illustrates the scene of World Cup Soccer frenzy during which, with the unexpected achievement of the Korean national team going on to the semi-final, crowds gathering in front of the large electronic screens to cheer reached the point of becoming a nation-wide ritual. The intensity and enthusiasm represented by the image of the 'wave of Red Devils' (the official name of Korean team supporters as well as the icon of 2002 World Cup) left an unforgettable impression on Korean popular imaginary. In fact, many Korean scholars agreed that World Cup Soccer frenzy in 2002 does not simply reflect interest in a national sports match but rather represents a demarcating historical moment in Korean society- a culminating point to celebrate regained national pride and strength after the collapse of the economy in 1997. More interestingly, the 2002 World Cup syndrome parallels the increasing self-awareness of Korea's position as a world- leading player in the global information technology industry. It is not a mere coincidence that the 'mobile phone' and the 'screen' were two of the primary export products of Korea at the time. Led by the semi-conductor chip, various sorts of screens (PDP, LCD/LED screens, computer screens, and the traditional electronic screens) and mobile phones ranked among top three export products in 2005 (Ministry of Information and Telecommunication, 2005). The first pivotal moment when large LED screens came into the public media awareness in Korea was also around the World Cup Soccer in 2002, when it served as a key display venue for broadcasting the Korean national team's matches in public places. The large LED screen that Click Click Ranger deploys is one of the several LED screens that drew large crowds around Seoul City Hall Plaza. In its pilot episode, Click Click Ranger explicitly delivers this intertwined discourse of the screen and the nation. The show dwelled on the significance of City Hall Plaza by inserting clips of City Hall Plaza scenes during World Cup Soccer 2002 and charts with the statistics of mobile phone exports sales. In this way, the culturally accumulated meaning of the particular place of Seoul City Hall Plaza- a center of the civil and nationalistic ideology- enhance Click Click Ranger's attempt to replicate the sense of 'liveness' of live broadcasting and foreground the 'collective' meaning of being networked. All Together: Networked Public in Wired Korea Overall, Click Click Ranger represents multilayered meanings of the physical and the discursive movements of images within current Korea: images migrate from the 'micro' screen to the 'macro' screen, from private space to public space and as a result, individuals are assumed to occupy the position of citizens. For instance, in Mobile Ranger, the implication of 'private imaging' constantly changes as it travels across diverse screens: from private imaging to public exhibition on outdoor screen, and back to the private viewing on Mobile TV. In this circulation, mobile phones and Mobile TV, which represent personal screen devices, are mobilized into the formation of 'public space' by conventional media. By creating public space within the domain of private space, Mobile Ranger inevitably questions the fixity of the boundary between private and public space which is considered to be contingent on the specificity of media. When the show is eventually broadcast in mobile TV, the flexibility of the public and private space becomes more intensified. Due to the mobility given to the viewer, the previously established and spatially fixed 'public' dimension of the outdoor screen in city hall square is disrupted as the diverse viewing situations of individual Mobile TV viewers multiply the meanings of space for themselves. In the end, Click Click Ranger's complicated exhibition process does not simply aim to increase the pleasure of experiencing images, but to foreground the very technological competency of appropriating new technologies. The realization of the idea of 'connecting' these up-to-dated screen technologies symptomatically reveals the social discourse about the importance of 'networked public in wired Korea'. Considering that mobile technology becomes a source of national pride, the cultural use of mobile technology in Korea, especially mediated through the conventional media practices, often invites the individual to the formation of national identity. Not only doesClick Click Ranger resonate with the popular techno-nationalistic discourse around the mobile and new media technologies but it also reproduces it through its construction of imagined citizen within networked screens. In this way, mobile phone imaging meets television and the outdoor screen in City Hall Plaza and in this more or less blunt self-explanatory gesture, Click Click Ranger conjures up the mobile phone exactly at the center of the 'current' Korea. Works Cited
Kim, Taek-Hwan & Lee, Sang-Bok, Media Big Bang: Korea changes, (Seoul, Korea: Knowledge Supply Publishing Company, 2005) Jenkins, Henry, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, (NYU Press, 2007) McCarthy, Anna, Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space, (Duke University Press, 2001) Ministry of Information and Telecommunication, "Suchiro Bon IT 2005 ( IT 2005 by Statistics)," 29 December 2005. Ok, Hye Ryoung, "Screens on the Move: Media Convergence and Mobile Culture in Korea," ph.d dissertation, Department of Critical Studies, School of Cinema-Television, University of California, 2008 HyeRyoung Ok is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Humanities Research Institute, Irvine, working for the Digital Media and Learning Hub. Currently she is carrying out research for the Public Participation Research Network led by Joe Kahne. As a cultural studies scholar, HyeRyoung looks at newly emerging transmedia culture from interdisciplinary perspective, with a focus on the transition of cinematic tradition to digital media, mobile media culture, and transnational flow of cultural content, particularly in East Asian context.
November 6, 2009
Click Click Ranger: A Transmedia Experiment for Korean Television (Part One)I am offering today's post as part of the ongoing conversation I've been having throughout the semester about transmedia storytelling practices. Below you will find the first of two installments written by HyeRyoung OK, a recently minted USC PhD, who I have met through my work with a new MacArthur Foundation Research Hub on Youth, New Media, and Public Participation. She has done some groundbreaking research on the deployment of transmedia practices in Korean television, projects which have gotten very little attention on this side of the world, but which have a lot to offer as an alternative model for how mobile technologies and public space can be deployed as part of a transmedia strategy. Click Click Ranger: A Transmedia Experiment for Korean Television By now we all know that the mobile phone is not simply a phone anymore. Since its introduction, the mobile phone has evolved into something that constantly broadens and transforms its boundary. Indeed, it is one of the most convergent media devices available that materializes the paradigm of media convergence. In most countries where mobile technology is widely adopted, the mobile phone is rapidly becoming a new outlet for traditional media industries responding to the "visions of wireless phones becoming hand-held entertainment centers." Yet the mobile phone's entry into the existing media environment is not a natural and homogeneous process. Continuing, disrupting, and mixing existing media practices to a newer form, rather, it came to terms with conventional media in heterogeneous ways depending on the socio-culturally specific contexts. Then, here comes the story of the mobile phone in Korea, the country recently known as "IT powerhouse" where the adventure of the mobile phone ever continues. The mobile phone in Korea is literally a focal point where technical, industrial, and cultural innovations to explore the 'newer' forms of media service converge (see my blog posts on general review of Korean IT practices). What is particularly unique about Korean mobile culture is the continuing emphasis on the potential of mobile phones as 'screen' media. It is not surprising phenomenon considering the weight of 'screen' related - all dimensions of hardware and software - industries in Korean society. I would like to illustrate how the mobile screen is positioned in the flux of these transmedia experiments across new and old media in a culturally specific way through the case of Click Click Rangers: aka Mobile Rangers, an entertainment program on channel MBC in Korea. Click Click Rangers: aka Mobile Rangers, is an interesting case that shows how the media content is designed to be produced/consumed based on the principle of "connecting" multiple forms of screens: mobile screen, television screen, and outdoor LED screen. Click Click Ranger is one of three sections in the popular Sunday prime time entertainment show, titled !: Exclamation Mark which was broadcast from December 2004 to August 2005 on channel MBC - one of three major television networks in Korea. In Click Click Ranger, the mobile screen is used in two significant ways: mobile phone imaging for moving image production and mobile TV for moving image circulation. Although it was short-lived, this show set up a model for employing mobile phone technology thematically as well as formally into the television program format and inspired other shows in competing networks. As a prototype, Click Click Ranger raises several interesting issues on the relation between new media technology, the existing media conventions, and culture. Taking Click Click Ranger as a starting point, let's begin to explore how Korean television mediates the mobile screen as part of the larger outdoor screen culture and thus complicates the issue of 'convergence of spaces. Click Click Ranger (aka Mobile Ranger): Capture Korea's Today Click Click Ranger's catchphrase of "Capture Korea's today" literally and symbolically sums up the goal and the structure of the show: To report the present realities of Korea. In terms of content, Click Click Ranger presents several short video clips of anonymous do-gooders and misbehaviors on the street in a fashion similar to citizen reports. These clips are captured and sent by random citizens and "mobile rangers," a group of pre-selected young college students and volunteers (in total, 100 members). Technically, mobile rangers and anonymous participants capture videos on the street and send clips 'in real time' to the studio while the program is being pre-recorded. It is reported that ninety percent of participants use a mobile phone camera and send clips through the wireless internet on their mobile phone. Most interestingly, Click Click Ranger adopts a multi-screen format of display that tackles the paradigm of media convergence by manipulating the 'flow' of content across media (Jenkins, 2007). The clips captured by mobile phone camera and selected for showing on regular television are simultaneously broadcast on a large LED screen installed over Seoul City Hall Plaza. In fact, the program itself is shot on the rooftop of the city hall building, where two MCs run the show as if they were news reporters as is illustrated in the picture above. Hence, what the viewers on a regular television set at home actually watch are alternating shots between the outdoor screen display, the MCs, and small video clips in quick-time movie format. Later on, the program re-runs on Mobile TV, particularly on the channel BLUE of Satellite DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) service on the following Monday. Following this path, the clips of Click Click Ranger finish their journey from the street to multiple screens encompassing all hot spots ('hot screens') in the current mediascape of Korea as diagram below illustrates.
Creating the Public: Private Imaging and Public Exhibition To the savvy viewers, who got used to all sorts of strategies to utilize the mobile phone for the television show by now, early attempt of Click Click Ranger may not look so fresh. What makes this show unique is the way in which it attempts to employ the mobile phone, an icon of personal media, in the service of constructing the 'public space' within a commercial entertainment. As a matter of fact, from the beginning, ! : Exclamation Mark has built a reputation for being a 'public value concerned entertainment' program. Previous and current sub-sections of the show have adopted 'human documentary' or 'news report' format in which show hosts visit and follow various people, with the goal of promoting the 'good civilian life and consciousness' in the fashion of a public service campaign. So far, its campaigns have been successful in generating issues in public discourse and have had real consequences in social life in Korea. Some of its famous campaigns include: "Let's read books," "Let's obey the traffic sign," "Let's eat Breakfast," "Street Lessons," "Open your Eyes (Donation/Transference of cornea for the blind)," "Asia Asia (Illegal worker's home visiting project)" and so on. Partially, the show's strategy to foreground public good within entertainment content reflects the unique hybrid characteristic of its network, MBC: MBC is private but at the same time closer to a public broadcasting network. It runs as a private company but is in fact indirectly owned by the government (by KBS, a major public network) and under the direct control of the Commission of Television Broadcasting. This dominant discourse of the program not only circumscribes the content of the clips in Click Click Ranger but also affects its program format. Typical clips of Click Click Ranger would feature various incidents such as violation of minor civil laws, misdemeanors, or good samaritans who help weak, elderly people at the subway station and so on. In each episode, if the best citizen is chosen among the good samaritans, the show's host calls up the mobile ranger on the scene and runs to there to give the samaritan a reward-a golden badge.
October 27, 2009
Transmedia Tacos? You Bet!
Of these papers, this one by Benjamin Burroughs caught me by surprise, since it is exploring the way that transmedia tactics are moving from the entertainment industry to other sectors - in this case, the food industry. Here, Burroughs describes the ways that a local LA vendor has become the source of fascination for highly wired local residents, creating a mystique and perhaps even a mythology around the migrations of a taco truck. Indeed, as this paper suggests, I started to hear rumors of this truck before I even moved to LA, suggesting that the spread of this information extends well beyond the local community. I would be curious to know whether readers can point to other examples where transmedia strategies are being deployed to create or promote local brands. Transmedia Tacos: Hybridity, New Media, and Storytelling The first way I ever heard about the legend of Kogi begins with two ever-present facets of my life, hunger and late nights. While deliberating on where to possibly satiate this beastly hunger at such an hour a group started talking about food and re-telling experiences of recent adventures in dining. This is where I was told about the Kogi myth. Uncle John (no relation, a local Hawaiian title for esteemed family friend) told my wife and me about his first trip in tracking down an elusive Kogi kimchi taco. He explained that the truck stops at different areas and, despite being hesitant, he agreed to go with his friend to get this taco he heard so much about. He said when his friend took him to the spot there was a really long line. He waited in the line for a half an hour and then an hour and just as he was going to get a taco they ran out. I was not only puzzled but stunned that an engineer like Uncle John was going to wait that long for just a taco. He said they go to a place and serve until they are out of meat. I found it silly to a certain degree but promptly looked at my wife as if to say, 'I got to get me one of those kim chi tacos' (and I don't even remotely like kim chi). That began our first foray into searching out the 'Kogi dragon'. I googled the thing, read the website, looked up its twitter feed, jumped in the car and literally tracked its movement to a place in Little Tokyo not far from our apartment. Uncle John would no longer be the only privileged purveyor of information. When we arrived I was awed, a huge crowd of people--a diverse cross section of Los Angelenos had converged on this taco stand at just after 11 pm at night. We waited in that line for what seemed like hours (because it was!) and I tasted the forbidden elusive fruit for the first time. I hate kim chi and cilantro but oddly enough I really like these tacos, especially the short rib tacos and kim chi quesadillas. Seriously, you should go try some. So what could be remotely transmedia about a taco? How can a taco be conceptualized as an integral part of the transmedia storytelling process? It's just a taco not a new medium, right? As we unpack the buzz surrounding this purported new media innovation, we hope to uncover through our own personal familiarity how this tiny truck stand is blazing a path for transmedia possibilities in food distribution and consumption. It is important to note that we are not looking at a mature transmedia franchise but are looking for where this my take us in an attempt to synchronize the transmedia model to more seamlessly sew together online and offline disjunctures as well as multiple media platforms. Transmedia Mechanics Kogi is first and foremost a truck and it is safe to understand the stand and its food content as the 'mothership'. Trucks are one of the oldest modes of food distribution and taco trucks have a particularly rich tradition. With a truck you can constantly be advertising and the truck can construct a unique dialogue with the consumer saying--look, we are one of you, we drive around to the same places and serve you food in your own locales. We are not different, abstract entities or identities but part of the community. However this form of appeal has seemed limited, trucks as the primary form of food distribution as a business model have largely been untenable, especially in terms of franchising and expanding a company beyond a particular locality. Kogi's uses of new mediated technology and multiple platforms of this technology have attempted to bridge the gulf between the producer and consumer. No longer is the chef a distant 'other' in the back of a large restaurant but is now in close proximity and spatially there is the perception of closeness. Taking the food to the streets takes on a form of renaissance--a return to a perhaps mythic, forgotten age when food was more interactive and participatory. The truck not only gives a sense of 'street cred' and raw authenticity associated particularly with Mexican taco stands (eating 'real' Mexican as opposed to Taco Bell, although Taco Bell has now gotten into the mobile taco stand game as well, mimicking the perceived success of these start-up franchises). Kogi also has a certain novelty about it because of its manipulation of new technology. Mobile food stands are not new to the cultural food landscape, but this recent re-articulation has been acclaimed as such because it is not just building a relationship with one community but enables a linkage to the cultural heartbeat of an entire city, even one as vast and diverse as Los Angeles. If we understand transmedia as the reading of multiple texts that help to tell a larger story can we not see the truck as a text not only in its self promotion and banners but in its very form? The truck is speaking to an age of increased mobility, flexibility (flexible specialization), and fluidity in our culture. Can we not read the taco as a text that speaks to the hybridity of a culture and society where Korean kim chi and Latino tacos are representative of larger forces of cultural fusion? Lastly, as we learned on the very first night of our taco pilgrimage, there is a sociality present in these long lines. These crowds identify and interact with each other, relating experiences with the food--what one should try, particular favorites, where else one could eat in a great blending and sense of communal participation inherent in any vibrant, lasting transmedia franchise. These sorts of informal media channels can and perhaps should be included to enlarge our understanding of transmedia. In our Kogi example this form of knowledge exchange and 'encyclopedia capacity' (Murray 1999) exists less in mediated spaces than other transmedia franchises but there is certainly potential for future transmedia food projects to explore more deeply how to connect consumers in the purely online context. Again, however, it seems important that we not de-value the informal gift exchanges of information that happen in specific communal contexts such as the public practice of waiting in line. This brings us to the next transmedia component: an online presence. So we have the taco and the stand and even the line as transmedia extensions but what ties these together is the utilization of new media technology. ' First you have the Kogibbq.com website run by the sister of one of the founding members, Aliiiice (this is how her screen name is presented on the blog). Interestingly enough, she lives in New York. She has her brother send her pictures of the food as she updates the community on what is going on with Kogi, portraying an interactive story of the growth and some of the inner workings of the company. She makes things very participatory, engaging the audience by allowing the community to help decide on the names of the new trucks, introducing the personalities of the staff, and explaining the stories behind new foods coming out. This is where Kogi adds a level of seriality (Haywood 1997). Not only is seriality built into the food process, wanting to eat more after chowing down on a tasty morsel but Alliiice gives you the latest creation from chef Roy Choi so you have a reason to go back every week. People like what they have already eaten so when presented with a new concoction they are hooked into coming back. This is also the logic behind the majority of food advertising but such grand productions lack the intimacy and trust that Alliiice has massaged by being close to the community. She participates quite deeply with the readers of the blog, often commenting herself in the comments section of the blog in a very personal and 'real' manner. What is most compelling however, is not only the intimacy, but the descriptions of the food. I have on more than one occasion sought out the truck because of what I had read. Sometimes the food is a one day special, so you are literally compelled by the pictures and descriptions to not miss the food served only on that particular day. I am currently thinking about needing to go and get the 'Ride or Die Sweet and Sour Chicken' I just read about. These are essentially food stories, narratives that shape our encounter with the product and add layers of meaning to that experience. Recently this story was put on the website about a Cuban pressed pork dish. Alliiice writes: "Once upon a time, there was a bun of Pan BLanco. A piLLow-soft, innocent loaf of angeLs' bread fresh from the warm confines of a simpLe baker's oven. It is hard not to get hungry just reading that. But this is not the only level of storytelling that is going on. The use of Twitter has moved these stories from static places online to dramatic emotion laden episodes that one can act out as adventures. A series of youtube videos sprung up around the beginning of Kogi as part of its marketing strategy but also spontaneously as active audiences filmed and put on the web their own personal treks to find the Kogi tacos.
The twitter feeds make this very participatory. There is an emotional resonance when people are given a space to play and perform as audiences feel empowered to collect the information and connect the dots of where the truck will be at any given place and time. There is a certain degree of prestige in uncovering the buzz, but also great pleasure in sharing that gift in and through social exchanges. This is mobile hypersocial technology (Ito 2008), as twitter allows for a conversation never before possible. Twitter feeds and tweets tell about the truck coming to an area, if it is stuck in traffic, if the cops made them move to a new area, or if they ran out of food for the day. People want to collect this information and have that 'insider' information on the next big eating thing. This knowledge is especially valued in eating circles as a form of status and coolness associated with the pooling of privileged information. Transmedia Futures and Cosmopolitan Aesthetics Food is compelling; it is an integral part of our lives. Although not being altogether obvious, it is not too far a stretch to contextualize the purchasing, eating, dining--the consumption practices of food as interwoven in the very fabric of our lives. Food is conducive to good stories. Food is universal and ubiquitous; we all eat (although economic and cultural stratification are prevalent and important processes beyond the scope of this paper). The consumption of food is often a highly public, commercial enterprise. Food consumption is a hypersocial activity. Living in an age of convergence culture (Jenkins 2006) where consumers are the point of convergence, appropriators and re-mixers of form and meaning, how will this shape our relation to something as recurrent as eating? A convergence culture is participatory and demands for the reorganization of production. Kogi is a small example of the new spectatorship that creative artists can maneuver to empower a deeper synergy between production and consumption (or future prosumption) as chefs and diners, food critics and passive consumers can all benefit from the increased connectivity and emotional resonance afforded through transmedia productions. What is going on is the sharing of privileged knowledge and information conveyed as a narrative construction. Perhaps we really are what and how we eat. Kogi can be representative of larger shifts and cultural trends. It is a Korean and Latin fushion cooking driven by new mediated technologies and platforms that allow for increased sharing and participating. Transmedia has a certain cosmopolitan aesthetic and democratic participation that should be cultivated as we move further into the hybridity and diversity of a networked world. Sources Ito, Mizuko. 2008. "Networked Publics: Introduction." Pp. 1-14 in Networked Publics, edited by K. Varnelis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Henry Jenkins, "Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmeda Storytelling," Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 93-130. Janet Murray, "Digital Environments are Encyclopedic," Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 83-90.
October 22, 2009
Cordwainer Smith Imagined Convergence Culture (and Viral Media) in 1964Science fiction writers do not so much invent the future as they inform it. I mean inform here in two ways - first, they give us the information we need to process issues in the present moment and to therefore anticipate some likely consequences of the choices we face as a society and second, having given a vivid picture of a possible future, they inspire scientists, policy makers, and others to reshape reality to conform to their depiction. How many contemporary technological developments emerged from designers whose imagination was incited by some science fiction novel or television series? Without Star Trek, would we have flip phones? Without Snow Crash would we have had Second Life? I have been pondering this relationship between science fiction and reality a lot this week having recent taught some short stories by Cordwainer Smith in my transmedia entertainment and storytelling class at USC. If you just mumbled, "Cordwainer who?," you are not alone. Smith's works are rarely cited today. Smith wrote short stories rather than novels, scattered them across a range of publications, and published many of them after his death. Even hardcore science fiction fans may know him only for his first published story, "Scanners Live in Vane," which is included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology which is often deployed in science fiction classes. The New England Science Fiction Association collected and republished his stories several years ago as The Rediscovery of Man. Maybe it's time for the rediscovery of Cordwainer Smith. When I first read "Scanners Live in Vain" some years ago, I was stunned. The writing is challenging and vaguely modernist, especially when compared to the hard edged realism and classicism of his 1950s era contemporaries like Robert Heinlein or Issac Asimov. He thrusts you into the world of the story without much preliminaries; he relished the strange and unfamiliar elements which are dealt with it ways that are at once defamiliarizing (in that they break from our world) and familiarizing (in that they treat these strange elements as if they were perfectly normal, even banal.) In many ways, the story's focus on the fusion of man and machine, which gets depicted with ambivalence rather than dread, helped pave the way for similar representations in the early cyberpunk movement. As I've read more of his work, I've become fascinated with the ways that he prefigured science fictions fascination with media change - digital media primarily in the case of the Cyberpunks but something very close to what I call Convergence Culture in the case of Cordwainer Smith. Consider, for example, this passage from "The Dead Woman of Clown Town" which seems to anticipate the concept of viral media: "A bad idea can spread like a mutated germ. If it is at all interesting, it can leap from one mind to another halfway across the universe before it has a stop put to it. Look at the ruinous fads and foolish fashions which have nuisanced mankind even in the ages of the highest orderliness."Here, Smith tries to capture the perspective of a totalitarian regime which seeks to manipulate the flow of information in order to prevent a shift in public sentiment towards the underpeople, a permanent underculture which exists of half-human/half-animals. Smith warns after a particularly empassioned speech on human rights of the need to reframe what is being said lest it undermine the established order: "The dog-girl was making points which had some verbal validity. If they were left in the form of mere words without proper context, they might affect heedless or impressionable minds." Published in 1964, "Dead Woman of Clown Town," can be easily read as an allegory for the civil disobedience and nonviolent protest which shaped not only the then-contemporary protests of Martin Luther King, but also a range of protest movements across Asia during the struggle against colonialism. In the story, the human, Elaine, and the dog-girl, D'Joan, lead an army of underpeople on a march which brings them into the face of armed guards, who obligingly shoot them down or in D'Joan's case, torches her alive, forcing them to confront the brutal consequences of their own discriminatory policies. Smith's depiction is particularly concerned with the psychological experience of subordination and oppression, using for example the figure of C'Mell, the cat-woman and professional "girly-girl" (escort) in "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" to deal with the ways that the enslaved must develop much greater knowledge of the dominant group than the other way around: "She had a womanliness which was truer than that of any hominid woman. She knew the value of her trained smile, her splendidly kept red hair with its unimaginably soft texture, her lithe young figure with firm breasts and persuasive hips. She knew down to the last millimeter the effect which her legs had on hominid men. True humans kept few secrets from her. The men betrayed themselves by their unfulfillable desires, the women by their irrepressible jealousies. But she knew people best of all by not being one herself. She had to learn by imitation, and imitation is conscious. A thousand little things which ordinary women took for granted, or thought about just once in a whole lifetime, were subjects of acute and intelligent study. She was a girl by profession; she was human by assimilation; she was an inquisitive cat in her genetic nature....Sometimes it made her laugh to look at human women with their pointed-up noses and their proud airs, and to realize that she knew more about the men who belonged to the human women than the human women themselves ever did." Key scenes occur at the moment when the human characters are forced to experience something of the subjective experience of the lower castes, as occurs when Elaine gets linked to D'Joan through telepathy, which is understood here as a kind of radicalization process, a shift in sympathy not unlike that experienced by many white liberals in the Civil Rights era who were motivated by the burning of black churches and the slaughter of black children to rethink a lifetime of segregationist practice. Smith's interest in the concept of information war-fare and media as a resource for political transformation can be explained by his own fascinating life story. Here's some of the details as presented by Wikipedia:
In short, Smith was the consummate political insider both to global politics and to the emergence of what Eisenhower called "the military-industry complex." He brought to science fiction complex theories of communication, psychology, and political change and at the same time, grafted them onto story traditions he had absorbed from classical Chinese literature and he had learned through his global travels. Underlying his almost surreal stories, then, is a deeper understanding of the nature of power and how governments seek to shape the subjective experience of their populations. Smith's relevance for a transmedia class is two-fold. First, Smith was a consummate world builder. All of his 32 short stories and his novel, Norstrilia, take place within a single timeline which spans more than 16000 years of future history and play out across the interconnected history of many different worlds. He depicts a future which emerges from Earth's past as our cultural traditions are revived, reproduced, forgotten, and reperformed until they have lost much of their meaning, becoming mere formalisms. In this world, he shows an acute understanding of how cultural change impacts the ways we treat each other and how we structure labor and governance. Here, for example, is a vivid passage from "The Story of Lost C'Mell," another key work in his depiction of the undermen: "Ever since mankind had gone through the Rediscovery of Man, bringing back governments, money, newspapers, national languages, sickness and occassional death, there had been the problem of the underpeople -- people who were not human but merely humanly shaped from the stock of Earth animals. They could speak, sing, read, write, work, love and die; but they were not covered by human law, which simply defined them as 'homunculi' and gave them a legal status close to animals or robots. Real people from off-world were always called 'hominads.' Most of the underpeople did their jobs and accepted their half-slave status without question.... Human beings and hominids had lived so long in an affluent society that they did not know what it meant to be poor. But the lords of the Instrumentality had decreed that underpeople -- derived from animal stock -- should live under the economics of the Ancient World; they had to have their own kind of money to pay for their rooms, their food, their posessions and the education of their children. If they became bankrupt, they went to the poorhouse, where they were killed painlessly by means of gas. It was evident that humanity, having settled all of its own basic problems, was not quite ready to let Earth animals, no matter how much they might be changed, assume a full equality with man." As this opening passage suggests, Smith treats his readers not as outsiders to whom such worlds must be explained but rather as insiders for whom these worlds are already well known. Consider the opening paragraph of "Dead Woman" which refers not only to some of Smith's other tales but also seeks to debunk existing representations of the events depicted in (yet fabricated for) his story: "You already know the end -- the immense drama of the Lord Jestocost, seventh of his line, and how the cat-girl C'Mell initiated the vast conspiracy. But you do not know the beginning, how the first Lord Jestocost got his name, because of the terror and inspiration which his mother, Lady Goroke, obtained from the famous real-life drama of the dog-girl D'Joan. It is even less likely that you know the other story -- the one behind D'Joan. This story is sometimes mentioned, as the matter of the 'nameless witch,' which is absurd, because she really had a name. The name was 'Elaine,' an ancient and forbidden one." Throughout the story, Smith offers many passages which refer outward from the current narration to discuss how the same story was told across many years, across many different media. Here are just a few examples: "Much later, when people made songs about the strange case of the dog-girl D'Joan, the minstrels and singers had tried to imagine what Elaine felt like, and they had made up The Song of Elaine for her. It is not authentic, but it shows how Elaine looked at her own life before the strange case of D'Joan began to flow from Elaine's own actions." Smith, thus, depicts a world where the most important stories flow across all available media franchises, get retold many times for many different audiences, with some details being encoded through cultural conventions and others distorted over time. Consider, for example, this description of a gesture which has become more cyptic as it has moved from real-world events to multiple media representations: "The records show his appearance. He comes in at the right side of the scene, bows respectfully to the four Chiefs and lifts his right hand in the traditional sign for 'beg to interrupt,' an odd twist of the elevated hand which the actors had found it very difficult to copy when they tried to put the whole story of Joan and Elaine into a single drama. (In fact, he had no more idea that future ages would be studying his casual appearance than did the others. The whole episode was characterized by haste and precipitateness, in light of what we now know.)"Smith's version, then, becomes not the point of origin for the story but rather a debunking of conventional versions. Not only does he imagine the event as retold many times after they occur, Smith also depicts the events as predetermined because the figures have already become encrusted in mythology. A human intelligence embedded in a computer has run a range of simulations to try to determine how the underpeople can escape their brutal fate at the hands of the human, how they might avoid death. Out of all of the possibilities, she has discovered one which leads to the best possible outcome and she has sought to prepare her followers for that eventuality. Generations have named their children "D'Joan" and have rehearsed the particulars of their mythology so they can play the roles that are required of them. When Elaine, the witch, wonders into their warren by accident, she must be instructed in her expected role and actions, and must be continually reminded her function within the prescripted narrative whenever she seeks to exert free will. Like many of the other scenarios, this script results in the death of its key participants, yet it has the chance of forcing the issue upon the oppressors and forcing them to experience powerful emotions - the pangs of conscience and consciousness - which might lead ultimately to political change. As we enter the climax of his story, Smith describes not only what happens but how it gets transmitted to subsequent generations, discussing what events were captured by cameras (and in some cases, from what angles) and describing which are preserved in archives, which have been subject to competing interpretations, and which have been restaged and commerated through paintings, video dramas, stage plays, songs, and prose. Such descriptions look forward to our own time when something isn't real until it has been transmitted through all available media channels: "Fisi, in the pictures, stands back, his face sullen. In that particular frame of scenes, one can see some of the spectators going away. It was time for lunch and they had become hungry; they had no idea that they were going to miss the greatest atrocity in history, about which a thousand and more grand operas would be written." Smith's writings, thus, anticipate our present transmedia moment and at the same time, offer a critical perspective on how stories flow across media. His own background as an expert on psychological warfare and as an adviser to the intelligence community allows him to anticipate how the spread of information can be manipulated by governments or shaped by dissent movements. In that sense, his references to alternative media presentation of his fictional events represents not simply a formal acknowlegement of the intertextual connections across all of his works but also as a critique of convergence, one written almost fifty years ago. We might read Smith's fiction as a letter sent from his generation to ours. Too bad so few of us are reading his remarkable stories. Check them out. To learn more about this remarkable writer, read Karen L. Helleckson's The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=39752049-a5c5-4d68-a4e0-619c76c55cc9)
September 16, 2009
The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part Three)This is the third and final segment of my response to David Bordwell's thoughtful analysis of some of the pitfalls and challenges associated with transmedia storytelling. Thanks to David for sparking what has been a fascinating exchange, one which has forced me to sharpen my thinking about certain key issues that I am working through for my class. Another drawback to shifting a story among platforms: art works gain strength by having firm boundaries. A movie's opening deserves to be treated as a distinct portal, a privileged point of access, a punctual moment at which we can take a breath and plunge into the story world. Likewise, the closing ought to be palpable, even if it's a diminuendo or an unresolved chord. The special thrill of beginning and ending can be vitiated if we come to see the first shots as just continuations of the webisode, and closing images as something to be stitched to more stuff unfolding online. There's a reason that pictures have frames. Again, I'd argue that Bordwell is describing a specific kind of filmmaking, one that may gain very little from transmedia expansion. Yet, as I said earlier, the aesthetic properties of texts that lend themselves to transmedia experience are world-building (as we've been discussing) and seriality. By definition, a serial text is not self-contained. It resolves one chapter and immediately plants the book that will draw us into the next. It is, as Angela Ndalianis stresses in Neo-Baroque, a work which pushes beyond its frame. Now, to be clear, the cliffhangers which have shaped many classic serial forms do depend on an understanding of where one text stops and another begins. But we can see this as an art of chunking rather than framing. They know how to break the story down into meaningful chunks which are compelling emotionally within themselves but which gain greater urgency when read in relation to the other installments of the story. We still have a lot to learn about how to create meaningful chunks and link them together across media platforms. As such, I am watching more and more vintage serials to see how they balance between self-containment and openness. This may be why transmedia seems so far to work best in relation to television, which is increasingly relying on seriality (and back story) to create a particular kind of aesthetic experience, and where it is applied to film, it seems to work best for franchises which will have a series of increasingly preplanned sequels. No one would take away the aesthetic pleasures of closure and containment, but there are also aesthetic pleasures in seriality, openness, and especially, for me, a pleasure in suddenly understanding how a bit of information consumed in one medium fits into the puzzle being laid out for us in a totally different platform. So far, transmedia texts have been most compelling while they are mid-process and have tended to disappoint when they reached their conclusion. This phenomenon may tell us something about the degree to which they rely on open-ended and serialized structures rather than the kinds of closure which is the pleasure of a different kind of fiction. The anxious fan wants to know that the producers of Lost isn't making it up as they go along, though of course, on one level, every storyteller is making it up as they go along. The hope though is for a certain level of integrity and continuity between the pieces which allows us to find the coherent whole from which the many parts must have once broken adrift. For me, though, I am also intrigued by the moment when the story is rich with possibilities, when fan speculations span out in many different directions, and when each of us has taken the parts as resources for constructing our own fictional world. I wrote about this almost 20 years ago in response to Twin Peaks: I was much more interested in the hundreds of complex theories about who killed Laura Palmer that invested fans constructed individually and collectively than I was in the official version which David Lynch and Mark Frost were forced to add under pressure from the networks. Bordwell writes: In between opening and closing, the order in which we get story information is crucial to our experience of the story world. Suspense, curiosity, surprise, and concern for characters--all are created by the sequencing of story action programmed into the movie. It's significant, I think, that proponents of hardcore multiplatform storytelling don't tend to describe the ups and downs of that experience across the narrative. The meanderings of multimedia browsing can't be described with the confidence we can ascribe to a film's developing organization. Facing multiple points of access, no two consumers are likely to encounter story information in the same order. If I start a novel at chapter one, and you start it at chapter ten, we simply haven't experienced the art work the same way. Transmedia storytellers are becoming increasingly skilled at deciding when extensions should be rolled out in relation to the franchise's "mother ship." Some plot developments do require careful sequencing. There's a pleasure to be had in watching Robert Rodriquez's Shorts in making fun of a schoolboy who claims that sharks ate his homework in an early scene and then looping back in time to discover that he is telling the truth. Even though the plot of the film shifts around the story information so we see events out of sequence, there is still a larger rationale determining why we experience these events in a particular order. The same may be said for the difference between materials released to the web before we encounter the film or television series, which often are designed to help us manage the complexity of an unfamiliar world or an ensemble-centered narrative, and those which come later in the unfolding of the franchise. Enter the Matrix comes at a particular juncture in the film series, while the multiplayer game based on The Matrix comes only after the film series was completed and the Wachowskis wanted to cede greater creative control back to the consumers to take the world in new directions. The Battlestar Galactica webisodes , "Face of the Enemy," which came on the eve of the final season went back in time to refocus us on the character of Felix Gaeta, who had been a secondary figure for most of the run, showing us the events from his point of view and revealing previously unknown aspects of his motivation, just in time to set us up for the character to play a much more central role in the series's final year. This is why transmedia "chunks" often tell us explicitly where they fit into the larger time line and why many of us prefer to read those chunks within a narrative sequence. Bordwell writes: Gap-filling isn't the only rationale for spreading the story across platforms, of course. Parallel worlds can be built, secondary characters can be promoted, the story can be presented through a minor character's eyes. If these ancillary stories become not parasitic but symbiotic, we expect them to engage us on their own terms, and this requires creativity of an extraordinarily high order. Well, yes, and these are the functions of transmedia extensions which interest me the most -- and for that matter, the ones which spark the most excitement in the industry types who seem to grasp the concepts the best. It isn't simply about the narrative; it isn't simply about filling in gaps in the plot. "Gap-filling" seems to be a special case: the parlor trick that The Matrix franchises plays with the delivery of information from the doomed Osyrus which unfolds across three different media platforms. More often, transmedia is about back story which shifts our identifications and investments in characters and thus helps us to rewatch the scenes again with different emotional resonance. More often, it is about picking up on a detail seeded in the original film and using it as a point of entry into a different story or a portal into exploring another aspect of the world. And yes, to do this well is creativity of an extraordinarily high order, which is why most transmedia extensions disappoint; they fail to achieve their full potential. Transmedia is appealing to artists of a certain ambition who nevertheless want to work on popular genre entertainment rather than developing avant garde movies or art films. It appeals to intellectually engaged viewers who are more at home with popular culture than with gallery installations. I'm curious to hear what other transmedia critics and creators are thinking about this exchange.
September 13, 2009
The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part Two)Today, I continue to share my responses to David Bordwell's recent blog post on transmedia storytelling. It is worth stressing that these are still early days in the evolution of transmedia narrative practices and even earlier in terms of our theoretical understanding of those practices. Exchanges like this one have the potential to help both critics and practitioners think more deeply about these developments. Every time I step in front of my transmedia class at USC, I feel like I am playing without a net and that's what makes the classroom experience so exciting. We are really thinking through a relatively new phenomenon together. And each set of questions which get posed will push all of us to dig a little deeper. Bordwell wrote: For one thing, most Hollywood and indie films aren't particularly good. Perhaps it's best to let most storyworlds molder away. Does every horror movie need a zigzag trail of web pages? Do you want a diary of Daredevil's down time? Do you want to look at the Flickr page of the family in Little Miss Sunshine? Do you want to receive Tweets from Juno? Pursued to the max, transmedia storytelling could be as alternately dull and maddening as your own life. Well, actually, my bet is that Diablo Cody's penchant for snarky one-liners might have been better served if Juno had unfolded via Twitter rather than on the screen, there are many excellent comic book stories which center around the "downtime" of superheroes and thus focus on their alter egos, but I catch David's drift. I don't think that every fictional work should become a transmedia franchise, though I think the approach lends itself to a broader array of genres than simply the fantasy and science fiction franchises that have been its primary home to date. For me, the core aesthetic impulses behind good transmedia works are world building and seriality. For this reason, the transmedia approach enhances certain kinds of works that have been udged harshly by traditional aesthetic criteria because they are less concentrated on plot or even character than more classically constructed narratives. It's long been a charge directed against science fiction works that they are more interested in mapping complex environments than in telling compelling stories. Many of my favorite SF novels -- Snow Crash for example -- break down into near incoherence by the end, yet they offer us richly realized worlds which I would love to be able to explore in greater detail than any one narrative allows. I might make the same argument about Martin Scorsese's The Gangs of New York: Marty got so invested in the historical background of his film that it sometimes swamps his characters and as a history buff, I kept wanting to stop the film and chase background figures down the street so that I could learn more about who they are and what they are doing. In some scenes, I was more interested in the extras than the protagonists. I recently read an outstanding dissertation written by a recent UW-Madison graduate, Derick Johnson, who talks about "overdesign" as a principle driving contemporary media franchises: his example is Battlestar Galactica, which he suggests overflows with throwaway details which convince us that the depicted vents are unfolding in a world as rich and complex as our own. Speaking at last year's 5D event, I argued that the art director takes on new importance in transmedia franchises, becoming almost as central as the screenwriter or the director, in terms of adding to our understanding of the fictional world. We could go back to Syd Mead's contributions to Bladerunner for an example where much of our appreciation of the film stems from a complex and well considered rendering of a plausible future society. So, we can see many of the extensions around transmedia narratives as examples of this "overdesign," adding greater "texture" (to use a concept Johnson draws from Ron Moore) to our over-all experience. Such extensions may or may not add something key to the unfolding of the narrative, but they nevertheless impact our overall aesthetic experience. All of this is to say that not every work should become transmedia, but we may not yet know enough to prejudge which works can be meaningfully enhanced through such an approach. Bordwell writes: film viewing is already an active, participatory experience. It requires attention, a degree of concentration, memory, anticipation, and a host of story-understanding skills. Even the simplest story gears up our minds. We may not notice this happening because our skills are so well-practiced; but skills they are. More complicated stories demand that we play a sort of mental game with the film. Trying to guess Hitchcock or Buñuel's next twist can engross you deeply. And the very genre of puzzle films trades on brain strain, demanding that the film be watched many times (buy the DVD) for its narrational stratagems to be exposed. Here, I can only agree. Indeed, Bordwell's teaching shaped my own investment in the cognitive and social/cultural activities of film consumers, giving me a theoretical vocabulary to make sense of some of the things I'd experienced in and through fandom. I don't buy the "Lean back"/"Sit Forward" distinction offered by many transmedia advocates. That said, I do think that there is an increased awareness of audience activity driving the push towards transmedia storytelling. Bordwell and others in the formalist tradition make a distinction between story and plot. The plot of the film is the sequence in which we encounter specific bits of information, while the story of the film is our mental construct which rearranges that information into a coherent sequence. So, a mystery may begin with the discovery of the body and work backwards (to show us the events which motivated the death) and forward (to show us how the detective put together the clues.) If we take this distinction between the sequencing and structuring of information, transmedia storytelling simply expands the scope of the process, allowing us to continue to collect and assemble clues once the specific unfolding of the film is completed. Yet, in a networked culture, this ongoing process of information gathering, hypothesis testing, and interpetation/evaluation takes on a more profoundly social dimension. It is no longer something that occurs in a single mind during the two hours the film is unfolding; it is something which we do together, pooling resources, and comparing notes. Mimi Ito describes this as the "hypersocial" logic underlying Japanese media mix. Clearly this process is most vividly suggested by the Alternate Reality Game, where the information scavenger hunt becomes the driving force of the entertainment experience, but we can understand the dispersion of videos about the world of District 9 as also setting a similar process in motion. Bordwell writes: No narrative is absolutely complete; the whole of any tale is never told. At the least, some intervals of time go missing, characters drift in and out of our ken, and things happen offscreen. Henry Jenkins suggests that gaps in the core text can be filled by the ancillary texts generated by fan fiction or the creators. But many films thrive by virtue of their gaps. In Psycho, just when did Marion decide to steal the bank's money? There are the open endings, which leave the story action suspended. There are the uncertainties about motivation.....Many art works exploit that impulse by letting us play with alternative hypotheses about causes and outcomes. We don't need the creators to close those hypotheses down. Geoff Long, a CMS graduate, has long advocated the use of the concept of "negative capability" to understand how gaps in the fiction incite certain forms of aesthetically pleasing speculations and anticipations. There is of course a complex dance between gaps and excesses where we are talking about narrative information. Johnson's "overdesign" may seem to provide "too much information" about the story world, yet for every new bit of information given, there are new spaces for speculation opened. We become like nagging five year olds who follow every explanation with a new question. That said, most good transmedia artists know that there are certain gaps which should not be filled if they want to maintain interest in the series as a whole. There are certainly reasons to create ambiguities and uncertanties. We may offer more clues through other media, but we certainly don't want to destroy the mystery which makes such characters and worlds compelling in the first place. Fans resent the addition of information simply to close down avenues for speculation -- take, for example, the closing chapter of the last Harry Potter novel which amounted to J.K. Rowling spraying her territory telling us who married who and what they named their children even though most of that information had limited narrative impact and simply felt like she was trying to foreclose certain strands of fan expansion. In some cases, authors are better off allowing fans to create their own narratives, since the community will generate multiple explanations, much as critics will offer multiple accounts of what motivates Hamlet or Travis Bickle to do what they do. Bordwell writes:
To me, the key word here is "sometimes." Bordwell is describing a particular kind of storytelling. It's no accident that critics of transmedia and interactivity almost always fall back on Alfred Hitchcock to illustrate their point. Hitchcock's works are certainly about control, shaping not only the sequencing of events and unfolding of information, but also playing around with the hierarchy of knowledge between the characters and the shaping of the point of view shots through which we see each moment of the film. Hitchcock famously slept on the set because he had thought all of this through before the cameras roll. So, yes, let's give Bordwell Hitchcock. But, then give me Tim Burton, whose films are often sprawling messes, because he is so much more interested in art direction and world building than storytelling. I have limited interest in the plot of his version of Planet of the Apes, say, but I never cease to be amazed at the complex thinking which went into every aspect of the Ape cultures -- a classic example of Johnson's "overdesign" and "textures" in action. The human characters amount to cursers we deploy to navigate the fictional space and in that case, I would be quite happy to be free to explore this world on my own, digging deeper into details that don't happen to be required for the unfolding of a particular story but which deepen my experience of this imaginary culture. We can call Tim Burton a bad filmmaker because he doesn't need to exert this kind of "tryanical control" over the unfolding of information, but then how do you explain the pleasurable anticipation I have for his version of Alice in Wonderland, even though I know he will once again disappoint me as a storyteller. So maybe Planet of the Apes is not a film I would go to the mat for. But if we shift media, I would argue that works like War and Peace or Moby-Dick or Dante's Inferno are much more invested in world-building than story-telling and that their authors seemed content to stop their novels dead in their tracks for pages on end as we wander through their fictionalized geography, trying to map its contours or understand the connections between scattered events. In both cases, what frustrates high school students who want them to get on with their stories is what has made them of lasting interest to critics who want to better understand the realms they are depicting. (It's no accident, I think, that some enterprising producer out there is trying to adopt the Divine Comedy into a transmedia franchise. Surely, that was Dante's plan all along.) Clearly the author always exerts a certain degree of control over the unfolding of story information, but there are some authors who seek to create a more open text and others who seek to close down varying interpretations. I would say that so far transmedia storytelling has appealed to storytellers who want to open up greater freedom of interpretation rather than those who want to totally shape the reception of their work.
September 10, 2009
The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part One)David Bordwell, my graduate school mentor and one of the leading figures in academic film studies, joined the conversation about transmedia storytelling the other week with a typically thoughtful and engaging entry that explored the strengths and limits of transmedia as an expansion of the cinematic experience. Personally, I read Bordwell's analysis as a friendly amendment and generous "shout out" to the work I've been doing on this topic, not to mention a timely one since it arrived on the eve of the start of my Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment class at USC. His greatest contribution here is to raise a series of constructive objections and challenging questions any filmmaker would need to think through before moving their film -- mainstream or independent -- in a transmedia direction. To keep the conversation on these topics flowing, I thought I would respond to some of Bordwell's arguments. Bordwell writes:
I would certainly agree with Bordwell that transmedia storytelling does not begin with The Matrix. When Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner) spoke to my students last week, he repeatedly used the phrase, "mythology," to describe the structure of transmedia narratives and others adopt a long-standing industry term, "Story Bible," to describe the documentation that organizes the continuity. Both metaphors pay tribute to earlier forms of branching or encyclopedic narrative. In Gomez's case, we might trace the concept of "mythology" backwards from the D&D games he played as a young man into the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien who clearly conceived of Lord of the Rings as modeled on structures found in folklore and mythology. I'd also argue that C.S. Lewis's writings on stories contain a lot of great insights onto the value of telling details in fleshing out fictional worlds, suggesting that modern transmedia fans might have enjoyed a rich exchange if they were able to sit down in the faculty room at Oxford in the early part of the last century. If I was having an imaginary conversation about the origins of this concept, I'd also want to include L. Frank Baum, who unfolded the world of Oz across a range of media platforms. What we now might read as a series of novels that fleshed out the Land of Oz began life as short films produced by Baum's studios, Broadway musicals, and comic strips. (See the recent republished edition of The Marvelous Land of Oz which collects the comic strip elaborations of his "mythology.") Indeed, you could argue that the shifts across media give the book series a kind of wacky incoherence, involving radical shifts in tone or theme, inconsistent conceptions of characters, and so forth. I might also want to invite Cordwainer Smith, a science fiction writer who I've long been convinced was a time traveller, since his works prefigure many of the key themes and motifs of cyberpunk. Smith developed a complex and interlocking "mythology" which links together dozens of short stories published across a range of different magazines, and he specifically depicted many of his stories as "versions" or "installments" of a narrative the reader is already presumed to understand from encountering it across a range of previous media incarnations. Smith himself wrote only prose narratives, but in his fictions, he imagines explicitly how his tales would take shape on stage or television. I would argue that the contemporary moment of transmedia has heightened our awareness of these earlier moments of authors unfolding stories across media, much as the rise of digital media more generally has led to a revitalization of the study of "old media when they were new" or the history of the book. We certainly want to understand what is new about our current push for transmedia entertainment, which to me has to do with the particular configuration of media systems and the push towards a more participatory culture. Tolkien, Lewis, Baum, and Smith all sought to model contemporary fictions on the dispersed, episodic, yet interlocking structures of classic mythology -- creating a folklore for a post-folkloric society. And so, yes, there are going to be many resemblances to be drawn between transmedia stories, informed by these creative figures, and traditional religious or mythological works. That said, many of Bordwell's examples above are simply adaptations of works produced in one medium for performance in another platform. And for many of us, a simple adaptation may be "transmedia" but it is not "transmedia storytelling" because it is simply re-presenting an existing story rather than expanding and annotating the fictional world. Of course, this distinction assumes a pretty straight forward adaptation. Every adaption makes additions -- minor or otherwise -- and reinterpretations of the original which in theory expands our understanding of the core story. These changes can be read as "infidelities" by purists but they may also represent what I describe in CC as "additive comprehension" -- they may significantly reshape our understanding of what's happening in the original work. Still, I think there is a distinction to be made between "extensions" to the core narrative or the fictional universe and adaptations which simply move content from one medium to another. Bordwell continues: The "immersive" ancillaries seem on the whole designed less to complete or complicate the film than to cement loyalty to the property, and even recruit fans to participate in marketing. It's enhanced synergy, upgraded brand loyalty. I've long ago given up trying to separate the creative and commercial motivations of transmedia entertainment, but then, all popular culture, no, all art depends on a complex balance between the two. From the start, most transmedia has been funded through the promotional budget rather than being understood as part of the creative costs of a particular franchise, even where it has been understood as performing key world building or story expanding functions. This was a central issue in the Writer's Strike a few years ago. Indeed, in so far as Hollywood has grasped transmedia, it has been in the context of a growing awareness of the urgency of creating "consumer engagement" that has been a buzz word across the entertainment industry in recent years. This is why the transmedia chapter in CC follows so closely after the discussion of "affective economics" and American Idol. Yet, as I suggested in my recent discussion of District 9, one man's promotion is another man's exposition. Increasingly, transmedia extensions are released in advance of the launch of major franchises and do some of the basic work of orientating us to the characters, their world, and their goals, allowing the film or television series to plunge quickly into the core action. Yet, even at this level, they can do other things -- creating a more layered experience by introducing us to conflicting points of view on the action (as when we learn more about alien rights protesters through the District 9 promotional materials). Most of the people in the industry who take transmedia seriously are open about the fact that they are highjacking parts of the promotional budget to experiment with something that they think has the potential to refresh genre entertainment as well as reward viewer investments. On another level, I'd say we are still at a moment of transition where transmedia practices are concern. Each new experiment -- even the failed ones -- teach us things about how to shape a compelling transmedia experience or what kinds of tools are needed to allow consumers to manage information as it is dispersed across multiple platforms. In some ways, the transmedia stories may need to be conservative on other levels -- adopting relatively familiar genre formulas -- so that the reader learns how to put together the pieces into a meaningful whole, much as the first jigsaw puzzles we are given as children take shape into familiar characters and do not have the challenges found in those designed for hardcore puzzlers.
Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communications, Journalism, and Cinematic Art at the University of Southern California. Until recently, he served as the co-founder of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More about Henry Jenkins is available here. 
|
