Curiosités vues par l'atelier

Power to the Pixel was held in London for the 6th year in a row, showing the world of media production that transmedia is more than a trend: it is a logic of production and an marketing strategy that fits the needs of our global media world....

...Fictional narrative lends itself very well to the idea of cross-media development: first do the viral campaign, then build your community online, release the film and then elongate the life of your film with a game… so it can appear more flexible to this multiple packaging strategy- and maybe fictional producers are more used to think in terms of profits and life-cycles… And yet, Power to the Pixel is here to prove us that things are not so clear, and that a possible transmedia strategy is to mix fiction and factual under a unique umbrella, craftfully using different languages for different purposes . Four out of ten presentations this year were linked to factual content. Although a documentary film might not have always been the core proposition of such projects, some factual elements always seemed to be part of the mix.

This is for example the case of the soon to be launched iPad version of the War Horse book (a Touch Press & Illuminations & Egmont Press collaboration out on the 11th of November) where the core proposition is a book, but the interactive enhancement includes a timeline that allows the reader to link the story of the book with the day to day events that happened in the real world. Matching fiction (the story of the horse) with factual (what happened in the real world during the time of the story) becomes a clever educational hook to be used by teachers at school. Not incidentally, this new proposition has high chances to increase both the sells of the book and of the iPad version, making War Horse a must have for innovative teachers that do not see the book as a stand alone anymore. The film, the play and the iPad are more than mere translations of the original story: they potentially are ways to learn history, compassion, courage through a storyworld. And the iPad here is what makes the linking between factual and fiction fluid and fun: interactive tools are relational at their core and transmedia might just be about creating bridges in archipelagos .

The second thing that I have noticed this year is that films might not be the cash makers anymore. The viral campaign that preceded The Blair Witch Project in 1999 (often cited as a pioneer of transmedia) was meant to create a curiosity phenomenon so that the film would be a success. More than ten years after, the film element is not always crucial to the transmedia proposition....

Interactive: Mapping the World's Friendships

Technology bridges distance and borders. Individuals today can keep in touch with their friends and family in completely new ways — regardless of where they live. We explored these internatio...