Dec 17, 2022
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@ Steven Coulson
What are some of the main steps you take in developing your largest transmedia projects?
How do you land these sorts of jobs?
How did you land your job at campfire?
"... these web series become hybrid productions, to different degrees, integrating fan creativity in substantive ways while still progressing a particular, defined story and set of performances."
In her article “Embracing Fan Creativity in Transmedia Storytelling (LeakyCon Portland),” Louisa Stein discusses how Welcome to Sanditon encourages fan-fiction creation. Using the ‘Domino vlogging application,’ which appeared in the show’s predecessor the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, producers encourage fans to create their own characters and plots through video that immerse themselves into the story world. This activity allows fans to directly immerse themselves into the world, using the context of the show to implant their own beings within the world itself. Fan inclusion, in this instance, has allowed the story world to successfully penetrate the online sphere, offering a new and easy space for the everyday fan to become an actor or creator. However, as Stein points out, fan inclusion in the creation of content, while often successful, can develop obstacles for producers. In the example of Sanditon, co-producer, Bernie Su, is rather divided, or ‘polarized,’ in fan creation’s affect on the show itself. While this transmedia acts almost like an MMORPG—or, an interactive space for fans to engage and play—the ability to measure its success is hard. Too, the affect of transmedia on the story world can often be seen as risky business for producers and the product that they have control over. Stein is hopeful that these producers will continue to encourage fan creation, and understands that this risk taking is what could change the way we make meaning in popular culture.
Stein admires Sanditon’s attempt to encourage fan creation, as it includes some of these viewer-created videos in the show. However, as Stein even explicates in her article “#BowDown to Your New God…”, it is difficult to simply call anything transmedia when it could easily be marketing. Likewise, as Henry Jenkins shifted from calling transmedia a means to delver a story across multiple media channels, to a different way to think about the flow of content across media, it is important to dissect the transmedia to understand its true purpose: for marketing or fictional immersion and development. Unlike Stein, I originally saw this encouragement as a marketing ploy, for producers to take advantage of free viewer content to expand the show and propel the plot. Originally, I only saw the link between the transmedia and the show as a meager brand extension of the Domino vlog application into the real world.
LOST, for example, did something similar with a chocolate bar, where the Dharma Initiative brand extension acts as marketing means to make elements of the show as visible as possible in the real world. In this instance, brand extension appears as story world marketing, where the iconic fictional brand is uselessly being incorporated into the real world for increased brand encounter. However, when the show is integral on the brand, like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, brand immersion appears to be less invasive and In this example, the chocolate bar is a key symbol of the story world itself, acting as a core element of the plot and fictional world of the film. And, despite being a huge LOST fan, the Chocolate Factory’s chocolate’s inclusion in the real world is more ‘allowed’ than LOST’s chocolate bar for its strong link to the fictional storyworld. Thus, producers must be careful in developing transmedia, especially when linked to fans, as they may deem the transmedia as useless or immersing.
Although I originally saw the Domino vlog application as reason itself to make it a transmedia component, its vital presence in the show itself, in fact, does encourage fan engagement at a level where fans are immersed in the world itself. Because the characters in the show themselves are asked to make videos, it puts the viewer in their shoes, rather than just having the brand marketed to them. Too, it helps that fan content creation can be included in the program itself, demonstrating this change in the way popular culture may be created, reflecting for what Stein hopes.
“People’s lives don’t revolve around your brand, they revolve around life.”
In “Designing for Spreadability,” Green delineates certain elements that are necessary to make content spreadable, or popular. Since the beginning of media propagation, with film, TV, and the recording industry, creators of content have created a large amount of content in hopes that a smaller percentage would transform from a commercial commodity into a popular value. Now, with the increased use of portable devices and technologies, creators must keep in mind other factors—availability regarding time and place, portability, targeted audiences, and transmedia outlets. Green explains that creators must produce ‘producerly’ content, which, in theory, takes some of the control out of the producer’s hands. He must produce content with messages in mind, but ones that allow the audience to decode their own meanings from the text. The loose ends are what allow people to engage in the previously discussed water-cooler moment, where an exchange of ideas over content happens from relative experience. This exchange has grown in the online world, where fans can create their own content that transforms the commercial content into one more personal. Green relates fan-creation to commodity culture, where fan interaction with commercial products and content gives it personal value of shared experience, nostalgia, romance, and community. Producer content can be seen as a commodity, filled with meaning, but ultimately as a source of monetary value and brand affirmation. It is the audience that transforms it into a popularly held value that is able to be exchanged with real meaning.
In the above clip, Don Draper in Mad Men gives a compelling Ad pitch for a photo reel. The company is Kodak, and they are looking to have “the wheel” in the name of the product for sentiment towards the wheel, or one of the first major technological innovations. With a sappy speech and an inclusion of his own family photos, Draper successfully convinces Kodak to change the name of their product to ‘The Carousel’. “It’s not the wheel,” he says, “its The Carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels—around and around, and back home again—to a place where we know we are loved.” His pitch compels the entire room, and the Kodak representatives are so convinced they have nothing to say. By playing on nostalgia, and incorporating his own personal form of the word, he is able to demonstrate the product as a producerly text in itself. Although quite literally it is a projector that displays photographs, he shapes the technology to be a bearer of personal content, unique to each user. He positions the brand, or commodity, as inherently ‘revolving around life,’ or personal. In doing so, he transforms a product into a mode of exchange, and essentially a product of popular culture.
HBO's Ex-Nun Comedy
In light of our discussion on HBO and its prevalent themes of sex, violence and the illicit, I thought this recent HBO development was interesting. Playing on themes of sex and religion, HBO is further developing the illicit of its brand into the realm of religion.
The untitled comedy would star the Saturday Night Live alumna [Molly Shannon] as a nun who makes the difficult decision to leave the convent and confront life in the outside world. Shannon’s character became a nun after getting her heart broken at 18. Now she is an utterly innocent woman in her early 40s who has never had sex and has to discover the modern world in all of its tawdriness. “It’s James Joyce meets Judd Apatow – a female 40-Year-Old Virgin with a huge dollop of Catholic weirdness thrown in,” Long said.
Although HBO appears to be successfully continuing its branding strategy, is it actually doing so? Can this sort of programming be considered quality TV? While it is necessary to see the production itself to consider it so, comments on the article and I predict this show to be a bust if launched. HBO is clearly playing on its 'right' to use illicit material; however, is the illicit enough to maintain viewership?
Check out this article for more info
Transmedia as the DNA of TV
“In cases when the paratext adds nothing or harms the narrative or storyworld, we can more easily criticize the paratext for being merely a marketing tool; in cases when the paratext adds to the narrative or storyworld and develops them, we have a more complex entity.”
In the conclusion of Jonathan Gray’s Show Sold Separately, Gray looks at different sorts of paratexts, unincorporated and incorporated ones, where the paratext either adds nothing or builds on the story world, respectively. He draws several conclusions from looking at different examples; he primarily looks at Heroes, which began the brainstorming process for content in tandem with means of production that involve the use of incorporated paratext. Heroes was a particularly successful example, as it released information about the storyworld over time on its various outlets, but also eventually on the primary TV show, assuring less cultish viewers that they were not missing out on anything.
After reading about some of the major successes shows have had using paratexts, it seems as if unincorporated paratext could be even more risky than developing a storyworld that viewers must commit to. In his Domino’s/Gotham City Pizza example, the cross-marketing promotion by simply branding the pizza differently did nothing to add to the storyworld. Instead, it acted simply as means to reify both brand names by incorporating the two in a meaningless, and ‘cheesy’, way. The proliferation of two brands, a huge pizza corporation and widely known film, can readily be seen as annoying, as an unnecessary and obvious stamp of industry dollars. On the other hand, as we have seen, marketing in an all-inclusive and creative way can truly yield attention, via engagement and interest.
This slap-in-the-face branding, that I frequently find annoying, can be seen in several other outlets besides TV. Lately, music videos--and essentially every one of pop-stars--feature brand names, in unlikely and unnecessary places, for long durations of camera time. In Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” music video, amidst an intense club scene, the camera flashes to a mac computer on a stage, which is scrolling through the website, PlentyOfFish.com. Not only does the shot happen twice, but it interrupts the mood of watching the video and the scene itself (to the point where I remember its installment 3 years later). In this sense, the marketing, which is completely unattached to any story, can be seen as destructive. While incorporated paratext is thoughtful and viewers can engage with it as another sort of media, this type of unincorporated paratext can act as negative marketing for a brand (and arguably the pop-star herself).
Transmedia characteristics
“By incorporating a hierarchy of mystery, Lost ensures that viewers can determine how deep they want to travel ‘down the rabbit hole.”
In the 4th and 5th chapters of Smith Aaron’s Transmedia Storytelling in Television 2.0, Aaron demonstrates several facets of LOST that mark its successes and failures as a transmedia production. Producers were quite successful in their endeavors to expand the show and its story world, as noted by The Lost Experience and The Bad Twin. Others, however, were a bit less successful in continuing the story, despite their economic successes, like the first few Lost novels, which acted as episode extensions. These outlets were meant for the propagation of fans, to maintain fan interest, to market the show, and to most creatively expand the LOST world. However, these outlets would have been completely futile if it hadn’t been for the show’s primary driving force--its mystery.
Fans, especially casual viewers, were able to stay in-tune with the show for its dynamic character relations. But, the air of mystery, which continued to build and diminish with time, is what was able keep all viewers, and especially the hard-core fans, attracted to the show. Aaron demonstrated 4 sorts of mystery--endlessly deferred, lingering, implied, and hidden--which LOST drew from, and took advantage of in different ways to give the story livelihood, and the ability to be interacted with on a spectrum of interest. Those who are most ardent fans of the show would likely pay attention to the hidden mysteries, while less avid watchers might only dwell on the more overarching deferred mysteries. By doing so, LOST was able to attract fans across levels of interest and engagement, allowing their extensions to be quite successful. Although they might not have given much insight into the story world, besides a few things released in The LOST Experience, they gave fans more access to the world in different ways on a more everyday basis. It wasn’t essential to find out what ‘the numbers’ meant to understand the show as a whole, but if a fan was eager enough, he could have sought out that information on The LOST Experience.
Mystery must be the reason why LOST became such a successful transmedia production. The air of mystery in LOST gives strong incentive for viewers to try and understand as much as they can about the unknown in the story world, and will explore the other outlets in the transmedia production for potentially vital information. Other shows incorporate similar transmedia outlets to continue the story world, like Mad Men’s Banana Republic clothing line and Harry Potter Pottermore. These extensions, though, play on different main characteristics to continue the story, like Mad Men’s look and lifestyle, and Harry Potter’s air of magic and suspense. Which story is the most successful, I am not sure, however, each of these transmedia productions are drawing from its main, overarching ‘feel’ or reason for intrigue. LOST’s mystery is a great driving force for transmedia, as its extensions provide outlets for not only a greater delve into setting, characters and plot, but also sets up a new terrain for unanswered questions through active participation and collaboration (i.e. Lostpedia).
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=igzFW_CWKzRLr3Daaw7Osg&u=/watch?v=wMypbhXzci8&feature=share
^ Check out this video that extends the Harry Potter brand into Pottermore
Complex TV: TV as a passive medium
"Additionally, the broad (if erroneous) cultural assumption that television is a low-commitment, passive ‘lean-back’ medium would prohibit against experiments that demand more from viewers beyond just sitting and watching an episode. As complex narratives have demonstrated, viewers will actively engage with challenging television and thus producers have been willing to try more overtly narratively integrated transmedia storytelling, albeit with very mixed results."
As we have already learned, and what I have found apparent in my own media consumption, is that extended media is regularly successful media. Traversing a story across several outlets is very likely to accrue and maintain those who are interested. This makes me think of the Harry Potter series, which I followed across books and movies, and even each video game growing up. And the video game was actually one of the outlets that kept me most interested in the series on a whole, demonstrating the power of extending a story across mediums.
So I do agree that continuing any medium, including TV, across other platforms is becoming more and more vital and interactive. However, this quote made me question how active TV watching truly is, and how unlikely (or severely difficult) it can be to make highly successful transmedia story. While TV transmedia has integrated social media, comics, books, promotions, games (online and offline), and even films to increase viewership, it is the root of the story that will dictate the success of such extensions.
The root becomes apparent to me in two transmedia shows—Lost and Breaking Bad—as well as in the prevalence of reality TV. Both Lost and Breaking Bad are successful for their intense plots and dynamic characters. What gets people to continue watching is to see what unfolds between characters across the story’s time. This isn’t too different from reality TV, like Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which has extremely high viewership, and attracts watchers for its addictive family dynamics. In this sense, TV content can become highly successful on its ability to get viewers to passively stay in-tune.
Personally, the most active I have become with a show was when I watched Lost. Although Lost and Breaking Bad hold equal spots in my heart, Lost kept me engaged, for its equally amazing character dynamics and plots, but mainly for its mystery. Because producers had this major liberty in developing the show, they were able to very effectively include extensions in a most natural way, like the map all us active Lost viewers screenshot. For its mystery, I became an active watcher, and was more likely to buy into the show’s other extensions, i.e. ‘the numbers’ T-shirt, than I would have for Breaking Bad. The reason to become an addictive watcher of any show is subjective to all, but the story must possess a sort of niche like Lost’s mystery to fully harness the power of transmedia storytelling. The question then is, is the story strong enough to engage passive attention, via 'what if' strategy, or can producers increase their show's success with a riskier active engagement? Again, I believe it depends on the story itself, and what they would like to focus on in achieving success.