Transmedia: Storytelling for the Digital Age

Joe Berkowitz:  "Christopher Markus and Steve McFeely, of Captain America: Civil War and the next Avengers, discuss the Marvel movie long game."

Saba Hamedy:  "Over the weekend, Indigenous Media released a feature-length horror thriller.  But the film didn't bow in theaters or on a streaming service. Instead, it was quietly uploaded onto Snapchat."

Mark Wilson:  "Does Samsung's remote parenting app show how VR will connect us, or keep us apart?"

Iain Simons:  "This remarkable new artform – the offspring of pretty much every media form that preceded it – has found its way into almost every part of our lives. For a form that’s so ubiquitous, progressive and so loved by many, it seems extraordinary that we still need to make a case for videogames as a key part of modern culture."

Emily Jenab:  "Is there ever truly an ethical way of presenting someone’s suffering? The ethics of speaking for others, of sharing and benefitting from someone’s own words, is not a definitive set of rules."

[Image via Amazon.com]

Simon Staffans:  "Storytelling and media [...] definitely have a future. It’s just going to be a future that is nothing like what we know now."

Clive Thompson:  "Emoji assist in a peculiarly modern task: conveying emotional nuance in short, online utterances. “They’re trying to solve one of the big problems of writing online, which is that you have the words but you don’t have the tone of voice,” as my friend Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist and author, says."

Kevin Kelly:  "Blockbuster MR and VR worlds will require the highest level of world-building. The inherent freedom of the audience to move around, to peek at the underside of things, to linger and appreciate the details, means that great effort and skill will be needed to preserve the chain of persuasion for all the things that make up that world."

DRC:  An in-depth look at virtual reality, mixed reality and the future of world building.  [This is a long read but well worth the effort!]

Shona Ghosh:  "Virtual reality isn't just expensive to produce, it's completely overturned traditional methods of storytelling on film. Here Aardman explains how it's rethinking narrative when the viewer is in control."

Christopher Chabris:  "We play games for many reasons: the thrill of victory, the excitement of competition, the experience of being “in the zone” that comes from complete immersion in a mental challenge. But we also play for the chance to create a story."

Kent Bye:  "Conflict and growth is the heart of drama, and a lot of films and video games use the trope of external combat to express this. But Rob [Morgan] sees the potential to explore stories in VR and AR that are much more about internalized emotional conflicts within the main protagonist / player of the experience."

Bogar Alonso:  '“My job is to inspire viewers to make the choices I want them to make,” says [Eric] Darnell. “At my best, I inspire the viewers to look where I want them to look when I want them to look somewhere specific. And when they do, I give them something interesting to focus on and surround that point of interest with other elements that the viewer will naturally compose into the shot that I want them to compose. If I do my job well, ideally, 100 percent of the viewers have the same experience.”'

Elizabeth Segran:  "These brands were built on Instagram. They share their strategies for creating a loyal following and driving sales on the platform."

Zack Sharf:  "For many, Snapchat is a fun photo-sharing platform best known for its wacky filters and geotags, but for a growing population of filmmakers and artists, the social media app is the new frontier for indie moviemaking and distribution."

Liz Nord:  "No matter how you feel about it, virtual reality filmmaking and experiential storytelling is happening. And it's getting better and better. No longer just a gimmick, filmmakers are using the technology to serve the story instead of the other way around."

John Fink:  "We discuss the thrilling multimedia documentary experience at Tribeca, along with select highlights from the festival’s VR arcade."

Adario Strange:  "The film is short, but doesn't skimp on major movie style cinematic special effects and editing, delivering a peek at what big virtual reality movies may look like in the near future."

Damon Beres:  "Everyone takes snapshots on their iPhone, but maybe they should aim a bit higher. Smartphones are becoming a powerful tool for filmmakers who want to tell stories without spending thousands of dollars on high-end equipment."

Christine Grové talks with Jeff Gomez about the power of transmedia storytelling for brands.

"Transmedia Storytelling is a model that will create various access points for consumers to get to your brand. It’s a process of engaging an audience across numerous forms of media through the artful and well-planned use of multiple-platform storytelling. And it can be applied to any brand of any size."

Scott Beggs:  "Going behind the scenes has become the scene. Trailers have become the true first act of any movie. Casting announcements introduce us to characters now. Filmmakers and showrunners gamble with their creative license when they let loose a cliffhanger."

Megan Carpentier:  "Study lays bare the fact that women are given far less dialogue than male actors – because it’s men who still get to tell the stories that form our cultural narratives" ...

Sharang Biswas:  "Will games ever really let us tell our own stories? And if they did-- what would that even look like?"