Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales http://1001tales.posterous.com tracing the roots & tendrils of storytelling today posterous.com Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:26:00 -0700 ‘Transmedia Engagement: Participatory Culture to Activism’ http://1001tales.posterous.com/transmedia-engagement-participatory-culture-t http://1001tales.posterous.com/transmedia-engagement-participatory-culture-t

The following is a talk I gave June 1 in Toronto which sprang from my ongoing interest in The Hunger Games as a transmedia campaign. I wrote an earlier blog post, ‘Why The Hunger Games is Not Harry Potter, and Why You Should Care,’ in response to finishing the novels, which were far more disturbing than I had expected. Further mulling on Geoffrey Long’s How to Ride a Lion: A Call for a Higher Transmedia Criticism and Jeff Gomez & Fabian Niciezo’s “6 Reasons Why ‘the Avengers’ is Crushing it at the Box Office” resulted in this case study on ‘Transmedia Engagement: Participatory Culture to Activism.’ Your thoughts are welcome! clearly, this campaign is getting a lot of attention & I'll post links to other current posts & articles in coming days - Henry Jenkins, April Arrglington notably, and many others.

 

 

 

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Fri, 18 May 2012 20:39:00 -0700 Liz Rosenthal - Storytelling in the 21st Century on Vimeo http://1001tales.posterous.com/liz-rosenthal-storytelling-in-the-21st-centur http://1001tales.posterous.com/liz-rosenthal-storytelling-in-the-21st-centur

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Fri, 18 May 2012 20:29:00 -0700 Friday Favorites: Steampunk Holmes (coming for iPad) « Ellie Ann http://1001tales.posterous.com/friday-favorites-steampunk-holmes-coming-for http://1001tales.posterous.com/friday-favorites-steampunk-holmes-coming-for
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The beautiful Mycroft Holmes, the stalwart Dr John Watson with a clockwork arm,

and Sherlock Holmes.

That’s right. THE Sherlock Holmes. With a lot of steampunk flair.

.... full post here:

http://ellieannsoderstrom.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/friday-favorites-steampunk...

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Fri, 18 May 2012 20:27:00 -0700 Transmedia Lab | Blog | When fan communities embrace the principle of storytelling 1/3 http://1001tales.posterous.com/transmedia-lab-blog-when-fan-communities-embr http://1001tales.posterous.com/transmedia-lab-blog-when-fan-communities-embr
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Excerpt from a great post by Aurore Gallarino, published on 7.05.2012

"....RPG FORUMS

The fans’ desire to adapt and extend their favourite universes is seen in non-official forums as well. On these RPG forums the fans play the characters and make them evolve in different topic areas on the website. By posting comments, the fan interacts with other fans and extends the story through messages threads posted in the different sections of the forum.

The Harry Potter 2005 RPG forum, for example, has a storyline which takes place in the world of Harry Potter but set several decades after the events narrated in the official story.

Extract from the pitch: “Many years have passed since the great battle which raged in Hogwarts and opposed evil against the young Harry Potter. May his soul rest in peace, those of his friends, and all his loved ones. Now we are fast approaching the twenty-second century, but what those remarkable wizards did will always stay etched in our memories. But a new era of darkness is hanging over our world …”

full post here:

http://www.transmedialab.org/en/case-study/when-fan-communities-embrace-the-p...

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Fri, 18 May 2012 20:10:00 -0700 Weyland Industries http://1001tales.posterous.com/weyland-industries http://1001tales.posterous.com/weyland-industries

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Tue, 01 May 2012 13:07:00 -0700 Why The Hunger Games is not Harry Potter, & Why We Should Care « Transmedia Camp 101 http://1001tales.posterous.com/why-the-hunger-games-is-not-harry-potter-why http://1001tales.posterous.com/why-the-hunger-games-is-not-harry-potter-why
Warning: Spoilers – lots & lots of Spoilers from the Trilogy. Don’t read if you don’t want to know.

Have you read it? The Hunger Games? the full series? been on the Facebook Capitol PN or District pages lately? Dipped into the Twitter feed #LookYourBest?

If you have, you may have noticed something really odd. If you’ve read the first book (now in theaters near you &amp; soon to be released in IMAX!), then you know that Katniss Everdeen volunteers to be a tribute to save her sister, Prim, from certain death.</p><p>In the first novel, we see the poverty of District 12, learn about the uprising of the 12 Districts against the Capitol, the ensuing annihilation of District 13, the brutal subjugation of the remaining 12 Districts and the founding of the Hunger Games as a reminder of the destruction that rebellion and civil war lead to.</p><div>Image</div> <p>

In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ story exemplifies what I have come to see as the moral core of children’s literature, which I have taught roughly twice a year for 10 years now. The power &amp; the truth of children’s lit lies in the valuing of a child’s pov, which in the ‘real’ world, we adults view as immature, naive, ignorant, etc etc, in contrast to the more mature, nuanced &amp; complex understanding adults have as a result of experience and more time spent on earth.

The moral core of good children’s lit is the absolute assertion of the value of the individual relationship against arguments of sacrificing one or many for the greater good. You see this in Huckleberry Finn, where Huck cannot betray the immediacy of his friendship with Jim, even though he believes helping a runaway slave is wrong & will land him in hell. It’s there in The Golden Compass where Lyra always commits to helping those who are being victimized, and she consistently positions herself against the adults in power who kill the weak for the greater good: the children at Bolvangar, Roger… Philip Pullman makes this contrast explicit in Mrs. Coulter’s and Lord Asriel’s complete lack of empathy for those they torture & use respectively.

This moral core is fundamental to Rowling’s Harry Potter series, as Harry, Hermione, Ron & Dumbledore’s Army consistently chose to fight Voldemort’s totalitarian regime. And most importantly, what Rowling makes absolutely clear is that her characters assert their love for one another, and that those bonds exist as an aspect of identity and community that are worth self-sacrifice, as Harry shows us in the final book, but never the sacrifice of others as symbolic or token substitutes.

So, if you’ve only read The Hunger Games, the first novel seems to hew closely to this model. The Hunger Games are an annual sacrifice of two youths for the greater good, Katniss’ volunteering for her sister is a self-sacrifice that saves her sister from experiencing a horrible death played out as spectacle for the entertainment of the Capitol and which the Districts are obligated to witness....

Read my full post here:

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Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:30:00 -0800 What I’m looking forward to in 2012 - Part 1: Prison Dancer! Interactive Web Musical (new video & links added) http://1001tales.posterous.com/what-im-looking-forward-to-in-2012-part-1-pri http://1001tales.posterous.com/what-im-looking-forward-to-in-2012-part-1-pri

 

I’m assuming you’re all over this by now as this new web series & video trailer have been getting tons of global buzz in the last few days. But if you don’t know about it, you should.

 

Inspired by a real video of 1500+ prisoners in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines dancing en masse to Michael Jackson’s Thriller (49+ million views), Prison Dancer is a 12 part interactive video series that will launch in March 2012. The trailer launched on YouTube six days ago, is now over 50,000 views, and has been picked up as viral video of the week by Fox News, “hot” on Trendhunter, and featured on Australian TV. Part of its appeal seems to be what co-writer and director Carmen De Jesus describes “as one of the first post-Dr. Horrible “made for web” musical web-series.” You know from the trailer that this is going to be a funny, campy, no-holds-barred production that will play up the romance and the drama in a way that reminds me already of John Waters’ musical homage to the 50s delinquent teen movie, Cry Baby (watch that one for an early singing Johnny Depp!). 

 

Now, one genius aspect of this production is its in-built global reach. Produced in Toronto, it taps audiences across national boundaries. One of the series’ stars is Mikey Bustos, a superstar in Canada and the Philippines who Americans might know better as “that guy who did the Filipino accent tutorial on the Internet.  

 

Producer Ana Serrano took a moment to answer a few questions and now I’m totally intrigued!:

 

SO: Prison Dancer is described as an interactive web series - that could mean interactive video where web videos have some kind of interactive interface to play with content flow or it might also include interactive participatory strategies for crowdsourced, fan-generated content - without giving too much away, are you playing with the latter idea? It would seem to be a genius project for that.

 

AS: We are playing with both ideas. One of the key interactive tools we are using is Youtube’s annotation tool. This allows folks to turn Youtube videos into clickable assets. For Prison Dancer, most of our episodes have interactive branches from them. However, these branches either provide more backstory to the characters or allow our audiences to engage with experiences they can then use to claim as their own and share back with the community. Think karaokified musical.

 

 

SO: As you say in your Toronto Star interview, this is “a perfect property for online because it was inspired by a web video,” the phenomenally popular Filipino prisoners’ YouTube version of Thriller. It was originally written as a play for stage and you give a little detail as to the long term vision, three seasons & maybe a Broadway Show, and Prison Dancer seems to have real substance as a cross-platform project. Is there a possibility of transmedia story extensions as well? It looks like this will be a story with multiple characters and easily multiple storylines, given the setting. Oz meets Glee but pitched WAY happier than OZ. And with three seasons in mind, that would seem to give you some scope for a really amazing transmedia story.

 

AS: yes, I think the possibilities for extending character storylines well beyond the web series and stage play are enormous. The original dancing inmates already have virtual lives.  It’s not far off to see either the “real prisoners” or characters inspired by them to be hooked on their Internet notoriety and hence want to continue building a rapport with an audience rabid for their dances. So yes, part of what we are playing with is who these characters are and how they may actually be interfacing with the Web audience as individuals.

 

 

SO: Another really fabulous aspect of Prison Dancer, with what little is known so far, is that the project already has a trans-global audience, especially with the story being set in a Filipino prison and being a Canadian production. Have you and the writers given any thought as to writing for specific regional audiences? Or, if you write for a global audience, do you feel there are any specific considerations to keep in mind? Or do you just make the best damn web series you can and see what happens?

 

AS: We have very specific audiences in mind — Filipinos both at home and abroad; LGBT; and Glee/musical lovers (which arguable could be seen as slightly mainstream these days...so call it young women.) So we are writing and creating experiences with those audiences in mind only. Our thought is if we can satisfy this niche yet globally distributed sets of people we have the possibility of crossing over.

 

 

SO: Have you thought about the fact that both this current project and the CFC's interactive feature film are set in prisons? Is there a wacky backbone of interest or theme(s) running through these projects for you? 

 

AS: LMAO have not even crossed my mind! But one of our themes is really about this idea of second chances. It’s a slightly subtle take to the classic underdog story. We’re creating a story not just about underdogs, or “losers” but about people who “lost their way” (as the first song “Point of View” says) and then finds it again by changing their “point of view” of what’s worth living for. (listen to the song to get the gist though you’ll here more of the lyrics in episode 1.) Which when I talk about it like this is also similar to the themes we explored in Late Fragment. So perhaps I am attracted to redemptive tales.

 

      

So props to Prison Dancer and to the launch of Ana’s independent production company, Prison Dancer Inc, co-founded with Carmen De Jesus and Romeo Candido (who penned writer of the lyrics and music and is co-writer of the book with De Jesus). I love it when smart people do smart work.


Mikey Bustos gives a peep inside the production here:

 

 

And if you haven’t seen the original viral Prisoners of Cebu Thriller it’s here:

 

 

Other great posts on Prison Dancer here:

 

http://www.8asians.com/2012/01/06/viral-like-sars-prison-dancer-the-interacti...

 

http://www.channelapa.com/2012/01/prison-dancer-the-interactive-web-musical-t...

 

 

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Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:15:00 -0700 Mark Harris on The Lost Children & Multi-Faceted Storytelling | The Filmmaker Magazine Blog http://1001tales.posterous.com/mark-harris-on-the-lost-children-multi-facete http://1001tales.posterous.com/mark-harris-on-the-lost-children-multi-facete

The IFP’s Cross-Media ForumNYC is coming up April 19, and, as it approaches, several of its participants will be blogging for Filmmaker. Today’s first post is from Mark Harris, who will be presenting his new project, The Lost Children, at the event. Click on the link above for more info and tickets.


One of the things that excites me the most about “Cross-media,” “Transmedia” or whatever it is, is the idea of telling a story in many different ways. I know this may not fit into a lot of peoples’ definitions of these terms, but it’s an opportunity, I think.

Face on Mars

The "Face" on Mars

When I say telling a story in many different ways, I mean using Stanslavsky’s “magic if” in a slightly different way. For instance, the feature film THE LOST CHILDREN, treats the story of Evelyn Hamilton as a documentary. The events in the film are told as if they may all be in the protagonist’s head, and they may not. The “found footage” model is perfect for a case like this, where we want to audience to interpret what they’re seeing on screen. This is what makes things like UFOs, the “Face” on Mars, “Nessy” so exciting to us. These images that are not clearly distinguishable, so our imaginations go to work and build stories around them. That’s what I wanted in the feature film of THE LOST CHILDREN. I wanted to meet the audience half-way, and ask them to bring their imaginations to the table.

So the feature film makes certain assumptions about the universe the story is set in. But, what excites me about ”Cross-media,” “Transmedia” or whatever is that the other platforms you tell a story on, are under no obligation to conform to that universe. One of the things I will talk about at the Cross media forum on April 19th is how we’re going to try having other platforms make entirely different assumptions about the universe of the story. So one platform might assume that it’s all real. Another platform might assume it’s all in people’s heads.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about this one!

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Sat, 02 Apr 2011 07:58:08 -0700 Great Recap of Andrea Phillips' SXSW Talk: Cautionary Tales in Transmedia Storytelling | Wired http://1001tales.posterous.com/great-recap-of-andrea-phillips-sxsw-talk-caut http://1001tales.posterous.com/great-recap-of-andrea-phillips-sxsw-talk-caut
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Read the full Michael Anderson recap on Wired.com, March 30, 2011

Excerpt:

"Rabbit Holes

Phillips touched briefly and humorously on the subject of rabbit holes and starting points. Many games begin with anonymous mailings to people who have posted their addresses in places like Unfiction, hoping to receive trailheads or swag. She pointed out that transmedia people are not the only people who like to send anonymous packages, punctuating this statement with a picture of Ted Kaczynski. She added that anonymity does not give people incentive to participate; in fact, it is easier to reach an audience and generate greater interest by being upfront about the origin of a campaign..."

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Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:51:00 -0700 SXSW Report » Transmedia Storytelling: Concise overview from Barbara Vance http://1001tales.posterous.com/sxsw-report-transmedia-storytelling-concise-o http://1001tales.posterous.com/sxsw-report-transmedia-storytelling-concise-o
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Sun, 30 Jan 2011 06:15:00 -0800 Grazie Henry Jenkins!: "Deep Media," Transmedia, What's the Difference?: An Interview with Frank Rose (Part Two) http://1001tales.posterous.com/grazie-henry-jenkins-deep-media-transmedia-wh-0 http://1001tales.posterous.com/grazie-henry-jenkins-deep-media-transmedia-wh-0
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Excerpt from the Jan. 28, 2011 interview:

HJ: "You draw a range of comparisons here to older, even pre-20th century forms of storytelling -- from Daniel Dafoe to Charles Dickens. What continuities and changes do you see between deep media and older forms of serialized fictions?

FR: That's a question I became increasingly intrigued with as I worked on the book. Collective entertainment may be new, but there's nothing new about entertainment that's participatory and immersive. In fact, every new medium from the printing press on has been considered dangerously immersive at first. TV, movies, books--Don Quixote went tilting at windmills because he'd lost his mind from reading too much. And in order to gain acceptance, each new medium has tried to pass itself off at first as something familiar. In his preface to Robinson Crusoe, which is generally considered the first novel in the English language, Defoe declared the entire story to be fact. Fiction was considered an inferior branch of history that had the glaring defect of not being true, so when Robinson Crusoe came out in 1719, it had to be passed off as autobiography. Nearly a hundred years passed before the novel became a generally accepted literary form in England. And then when Dickens came along in the 1830s and his publishers started putting out his novels in monthly installments, critics decried that as dangerously immersive. Bad enough that people were reading novels when they could have been engaged in social pursuits, like conversation or backgammon--but now they were going to be losing themselves in a fictional world for months on end.
But the really remarkable thing about Dickens was the way he communed with his readers. That was something serial publication made possible--and serial publication was purely a product of technology. Better printing presses, cheaper paper, trains that could deliver things reliably, rapidly growing cities with a lot more people who could read. Few of these people could afford to purchase entire books, but they could pay for short installments. An unanticipated result of this was that when books were published over a period of 19 or 20 months, readers had a chance to have their say with the author while the novel was still being written. And Dickens relished this. He took note of their comments and suggestions, and he loved interacting with them on the lecture circuit as well. One of his biographers described it as "a sense of immediate audience participation...."

Read the full interview on Henry Jenkins' blog:

http://henryjenkins.org/2011/01/deep_media_transmedia_whats_th_1.html

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