‘Transmedia Engagement: Participatory Culture to Activism’

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.

 

 

 

Transmedia Experts Jenkins, Gomez, Kring, Hurd... Tell the Story to NABShow Attendees | ARGNet

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What a great day! Excellent long post detailing the talks of the day:

"For the second year in a row, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show hosted a panel of transmedia luminaries to discuss the state of the industry. This year’s panel, Transmedia: Telling the Story through Narrative Content, Games and Real-World Adventures was hosted by Henry Jenkins (Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California, and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide) and included Jeff Gomez (President and CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment), Kim Moses (Executive Producer/Director, Sander/Moses Productions and Slam Internet), Gale Anne Hurd (Executive Producer, The Walking Dead; President, Valhalla Motion Pictures), Danny Bilson (Executive Vice President of Core Games, THQ, Inc.), and Tim Kring (Transmedia Storyteller, Conspiracy for Good, Heroes)....

"...Jenkins next introduced Gale Anne Hurd, asking her to speak on any struggles with the transmedia expecations for The Walking Dead franchise. Jenkins noted that the zombie series was based on “a comic book that’s well known by comic readers, maybe not so well known by viewers of AMC, and you had to work to keep both satisfied.” Gale responded,

Genre fans are already very familiar with transmedia, because most of the properties they respond to have existed in another medium . . . look at Lord of the Rings, [and] some of the films I’ve done, including The Punisher, which became a THQ video game which started as a comic book...."

read the full post on argn.com

Jeff Gomez Reveals Secrets to Transmedia Franchise Development at CineKid | ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network

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Excerpt:

November 1, 2010 · By Daniël van Gool

"So what are the criteria for a successful transmedia franchise? Gomez argues that a successful story is told in a deep, rich, fictional world that has a defined past, present, and future. The world that consumers encounter in a novel, movie, or television series should exist beyond the boundaries of that one medium: successful examples of this include George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga. Storylines should also be compelling, and there has to be an overarching story supported by smaller stories that develop within the umbrella of that arc: Gomez praises Lost for its mastery of this storytelling model. Transmedia also has to have a convincing presentation that takes its viewers seriously, like Disney’s treatment of Pirates of the Caribbean: the level of detail of the world provides a convincing albeit historically inaccurate world that viewers can believe in, allowing audiences to accept the franchise’s crazier and fantastic moments. The world should embrace its internal logic and remain consistent throughout, which is one of the strong points of a movie like The Dark Knight, as well as a flaw of the Spiderman films. Spiderman 3 disappointed a number of fans when it abandoned the story’s underlying mythos by first establishing Peter Parker’s spider-sense and then repeatedly subjecting him to assaults from behind.

Transmedia worlds need to include timeless themes that are simple but artfully presented like The Wizard of Oz while cultivating, validating, and celebrating the fan base like Star Wars does. Gomez asks developers to include something extra for the most fanatic audience members who feel most connected to your story: give them something more to dig for. Gomez warns to be careful with market segmentations, because doing so risks may alienating a story’s core audience...."

Read the full post on ARGNet