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Trans media storytelling signifies a process
where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across
multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and
coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique
contribution to the unfolding of the story. So, for example, in The Matrix
franchise, key bits of information are conveyed through three live action
films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and
several video games. There is no one single source or ur-text where one can
turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe.
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Trans media storytelling redirects the economics
of media consolidation or what industry observers call “synergy.” Modern media
companies are horizontally integrated – that is, they hold interests across a
range of what were once distinct media industries. A media conglomerate which has
an incentive to spread its brand or expand its franchises across as many
different media platforms as possible. The current configuration of the
entertainment industry makes trans media expansion an economic imperative, yet
the most gifted trans media artists also surf these marketplace pressures to
create a more expansive and immersive story than would have been possible
otherwise.
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Most often, trans media stories are based not on
individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds
which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories. This
process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers
and writers. We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which
always expands beyond our grasp. This is a very different pleasure than we
associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives,
where we expect to leave the theatre knowing everything that is required to
make sense of a particular story.
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Extensions may serve a variety of different
functions. The extension may provide insight into the characters and their motivations,
the extension may add a greater sense of realism to the fiction as a whole.
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Trans media storytelling practices may expand
the potential market for a property by creating different points of entry for
different audience segments. Trans media may work to draw viewers who are
comfortable in a particular medium to experiment with alternative media
platforms (as in the development of a Desperate Housewives game designed to
attract older female consumers into gaming).
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Ideally, each individual episode must be
accessible on its own terms even as it makes a unique contribution to the
narrative system as a whole. Trans media producers have found it difficult to
achieve the delicate balance between creating stories which make sense to first
time viewers and building in elements which enhance the experience of people
reading across multiple media.
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Since trans media storytelling requires a high
degree of coordination across the different media sectors, it has so far worked
best either in independent projects where the same artist shapes the story
across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or
co-creation) is encouraged across the different divisions of the same company.
Most media franchises, however, are governed not by co-creation (which involves
conceiving the property in transmedia terms from the outset) but rather
licensing (where the story originates in one media and subsequent media remain
subordinate to the original master text.)
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Transmedia storytelling is the ideal aesthetic
form for an era of collective intelligence. Pierre Levy coined the term,
collective intelligence, to refer to new social structures that enable the
production and circulation of knowledge within a networked society.
Participants pool information and tap each others expertise as they work
together to solve problems. Levy argues that art in an age of collective
intelligence functions as a cultural attractor, drawing together like-minded
individuals to form new knowledge communities. Transmedia narratives also
function as textual activators – setting into motion the production,
assessment, and archiving information. Transmedia storytelling expands what can
be known about a particular fictional world while dispersing that information,
insuring that no one consumer knows everything and insure that they must talk
about the series with others (see, for example, the hundreds of different
species featured in Doremon,Pokemon or Yu-Gi-O). Consumers become hunters and
gatherers moving back across the various narratives trying to stitch together a
coherent picture from the dispersed information.
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A transmedia text does not simply disperse
information: it provides a set of roles and goals which readers can assume as
they enact aspects of the story through their everyday life. We might see this
performative dimension at play with the release of action figures which
encourage children to construct their own stories about the fictional characters
or costumes and role playing games which invite us to immerse ourselves in the
world of the fiction.
·
The encyclopedic motivations of trans media
texts often results in what might be seen as gaps or excesses in the unfolding
of the story: that is, they introduce potential plots which can not be fully
told or extra details which hint at more than can be revealed. Readers, thus,
have a strong incentive to continue to elaborate on these story elements,
working them over through their speculations, until they take on a life of
their own. Fan fictions can be seen as an unauthorized expansion of these media
franchises into new directions which reflect the reader’s desire to “fill in
the gaps” they have discovered in the commercially produced material to reach out
to the audiences.
