Solid tips from Jeff Gomez: Whole new worlds: Transmedia storytelling opens licensing vistas -

"The entertainment industry at large has come to recognize that young adults and kids are consuming content voraciously, in ways not dreamt of even 10 years ago - they're looking to follow the story surrounding a given property on as many mediums as possible, be it traditional TV, films, fan sites or related products. But to make a property truly work across the various platforms out there, the entertainment concept has to be conceived as bigger than any one medium and constructed with a sense of how each grand story arc will play out across each media touchpoint. Transmedia storytelling, as it's become known, is really the art that's driving this approach.

With the recent ratification of the Transmedia Producer credit by the Producers Guild of America, the announcement of Stephen King's The Dark Tower as a concept that will run across a feature film trilogy and TV series, and Sony's relaunch of Men in Black as a global cross-platform franchise, the age of transmedia storytelling seems to have truly arrived. Aspirational worlds and immersive universes are replacing consumer loyalties to movie stars and network television. Right now, the sharpest studios are planning from earliest development to build their tentpole and youth-targeted properties so their storylines will translate to an array of traditional and new media platforms, which has the potential to significantly enhance or even fundamentally change the relationship between intellectual property creators, owners and licensees.

Traditional licensing deals between property owner and manufacturer, more often than not result in books, video game adaptations or other consumer products that somehow recapitulate an element or image from the established story. T-shirts printed with logos or movie poster art, toy replicas and comic book series that deliver badly drawn versions of a movie IP or series' beloved heroes are still all too common. However, transmedia properties are helping push this model into the next decade, arguably making consumer products and promotions integral parts of maintaining and expanding the story world that drives the IP.

Of course, transmedia properties aren't hatched overnight and require long-term planning both on the content creation and media/product rollout sides. So how can high standards of quality and consistency be maintained over an entire story world while constantly expanding it and adding new creators and content along the way? I've managed to distill the construction of a transmedia world into four key steps.

* Prepare for multi-platform by expanding the story world

* Maintain the IP with transmedia planning

* Maximize value by assembling a franchise clearinghouse

* Build brand equity by validating audience participation

Expanding the story world

It all starts with getting a clear understanding of the property at hand. Who is your hero? Who is the villain? What is this fictional universe trying to say? You need to define the recurring themes, messages and archetypes that guide the central narrative of your property and describe the vision of the original creator. Take Spider-Man, for example. At its heart, the property revolves around teen superhero Peter Parker and the guilt he harbors because he let his uncle's murderer get away. In short, it's a story about a kid looking to do good in the world to make up for his past sin. Everything related to the property should stem from this vision, which can only be maintained by:

1. Making sure that the property's essence is organically woven into its every iteration, no matter how seemingly minor (i.e. a mobile phone app, or even the description on a hangtag attached to a piece of apparel).

2. Explicitly and loyally observing the canon of the property's fictional universe in all iterations (i.e. an event that takes place in the video game is referenced as having happened by characters in the movie, etc.)."

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source: http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/magazine/20100608/transmedialicensing.html