Preview

Transmedia Storytelling

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1447 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Transmedia Storytelling
Transmedia Storytelling 101
By Henry Jenkins
I designed this handout on transmedia storytelling to distribute to my students. More recently, I passed it out at a teaching workshop at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. I thought it might be of value to more of you out there in the community. Much of it builds on the discussion of that concept in Convergence Culture, though I have updated it to reflect some more recent developments in that space.
For those who want to dig deeper still into this concept, check out the webcast version of the Transmedia Entertainment panel from the Futures of Entertainment Conference.
Transmedia Storytelling 101
1. Transmedia storytelling represents 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.
2. Transmedia storytelling reflects 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 has an incentive to spread its brand or expand its franchises across as many different media platforms as possible. Consider, for example, the comic books published in advance of the release of such films as Batman Begins and Superman Returns by DC ( owned by Warner Brothers, the studio that released these films). These comics provided back-story which enhanced the viewer’s experience of the film even as

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Exw 330 Final Lab Practical

    • 2557 Words
    • 11 Pages

    * Hurdle adjusted to the height of the athlete’s tibial tuberosity, and the dowel is positioned across the athlete’s shoulders below the neck.…

    • 2557 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    COMCAST v3

    • 2318 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Price Waterhouse Coopers (2013). Entertainment and Media Outlook report. PWC. Accessed on 16th November 2014.…

    • 2318 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    | The major developments in the evolution of mass media during the 20th century included the radio, television, and communication gadgetry, such as personal computers, cable TV, DVDs, DVRs, direct broadcast satellites, fax machines, cell phones, smartphones, and PDAs.For a large part of the 20th century, televisions and radios where stationary devices. More recently, devices such as, laptops, ipads, and smartphones allow people to view magazine articles, radio programs, songs, TV shows, and movies, from almost any location they want. On the Internet, multiple images, texts, and sounds are digitally reproduced and transmitted globally. These devices are constantly being update to provide consumers with the newest technologies possible. The Internet and social media, such as Facebook and e-mail are other large developments in the evolution of mass media. In fact, Facebook alone has more than 500 million users worldwide. Social media allows people from all over the world to connect through ongoing online conversations, share stories and interests, and to produce their own media content. This also gives people the choice to upload photos and homemade videos, and share them with others around the world.The media convergence has allowed media marketers to consolidate multiple media services such as, cable connections, phone services, television transmissions, and Internet access, under one corporate umbrella. For example, when a company owns more than on media outlet they can have a reporter or producer to create multiple different versions of the same story for multiple media outlets. This helps companies to manage resources and maximize profits.…

    • 584 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “The Golden Age of Television” is a phrase often used to describe today’s entertainment landscape, with successful shows such as ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘House of Cards’ getting huge viewing figures underpinned by undeniably high quality content. This shift in the quality and ambition of television marks a change in its ontology but what effect has this had on cinema? 

Quentin Tarantino, Oscar winner and indie cinema legend, has, with an eye to the rise of digital projection, referred to modern cinema as “TV in public” and suggested that soon he will retire from working…

    • 1560 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    ENG 225 WEEK 2 Assignment

    • 1090 Words
    • 1 Page

    The film industry is an industry that has many demands from its audience. The writers of modern movies have a great task to ensure that their story lines are not recycled or reused. It is apparent that the writer gives the viewers a new story and stay in line with the topic that they decided to write about, in order to keep the audience interested. Films are made in the genres types, the type of genre the movie is, determines the audience the writer is facilitating. “Genre or category, and genre films are usually easily recognizable as part of a certain genre. It is because they tend to usefamiliar story formulas, character types, settings, and iconography…

    • 1090 Words
    • 1 Page
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This is a research about the media convergence applied to Toy Story. It has been carried out for the subject Media Convergence, in the faculty of Business and Communication in the University of Vic.…

    • 3021 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Different types of media can be used to present the same ideas and information, but with the use of different types of media, the ideas can be perceived as different things. The same principle comes to be true after viewing the work of “A River Runs through it” by Norman Maclean. After having observed the novel and the film, both forms of media proved to have its advantages. The novel does a much better job of accurately representing the theme of the story and allowing the reader to interpret the overall message as well as representing characters for what they should be, however the movie gains an advantage by using visual representations as well at audio to help the audience understand.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hum 176 Sylabus

    • 4897 Words
    • 20 Pages

    The course provides an introduction to the most prominent forms of media that influence and impact social, business, political, and popular culture in contemporary America. It explores the unique aspects of each medium as well as interactions across various media that combine to create rich environments for information sharing, entertainment, business, and social interaction in the U.S. and around the world.…

    • 4897 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Hum/176 Syllabus

    • 4088 Words
    • 17 Pages

    The course provides an introduction to the most prominent forms of media that influence and impact social, business, political, and popular culture in contemporary America. It explores the unique aspects of each medium as well as interactions across various media that combine to create rich environments for information sharing, entertainment, business, and social interaction in the U.S. and around the world.…

    • 4088 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hidden Intellectualism

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This changing media is discussed within the paper Copy and Paste Literacy. In it, the author, Dan Perkel proposes that, “deviating from de Certeau, Jenkins reveals how various fan groups produce tangible artifacts, such as fan fiction and “transform the experience of media consumption into the production of new texts, indeed of a new culture and new community.”...Ito (forthcoming) builds on these arguments and debate concerning active and passive media audiences and argues that “new convergent media…require a reconfigured conceptual apparatus that takes productive and creative activity at the ‘consumer’ level as a given rather than as an addendum or an exception”” (Perkel 11). A new, evolved, type of media is being examined, an example of which is fan-fiction. There are works, in the form of stories and movies, that different people become fans of. They then create new stories called fan-fiction that are based off of or come from ideas they received when viewing the original work. In this way, media is becoming more participation based instead of consumption based. The general public isn’t just consuming media, they are participating in and creating it, hence the label “new”…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Advances in media technology over the past decade and century have no doubt had a large influence on major social and cultural changes throughout the world, if we look back at what has happened throughout 2011 alone we can already see this is true.…

    • 2520 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bibliography: The Daily telegraph, Digital future and lack of funds to slash Hollywood film production, 2009 (viewed 10/4/09)…

    • 1380 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Media convergence is the mix of all mass communications. It clashes the three C’s computing, communication, and content and is a direct content for digitization of media content. It turns around the already established media and enables entirely new forms of content to emerge. The five major elements of media convergence are the technological, the industrial. The social, the textual, and the political. Technological is the most understood. It deals with the internet, smartphones, tablets, and TV’s and the digital devices. The industrial convergence deals with the big-time companies like ABC, Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, and other big time companies. In 2005 the company Myspace took over the intermix media Inc. The Social convergence is like technologies but is only for interned communication. It became more popular in the 2000s, with the 2.0 websites. The textual convergence or transmedia storytelling, and it is a narrative structure that expands through both different languages, like verbal, iconic, etc., and media, like cinema, comics, TV, videogames, etc. Stories are told through multiple platforms. There has not been a media franchise that is fully transmedia…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Technology has played a big role in electronic and digital media. Technological inventions keep companies competing in the same areas. “Digital and electronic media today is plentiful with the information highway (Internet) providing answers at our fingertips, along with cell phones that are equipped with cameras and Internet connection”(Thomas 2010). Today media has a major impact on society. Since technology is ever changing, society is forced to keep up with the technological changes and advances. From satellite television to wireless electronics, society wants all the new technological inventions ever made. Society has grown dependent on electronic products, spending less time with people and more time on the internet. Before television was invented kids were forced to play outside with the neighborhood children. Before the internet or World Wide Web, libraries were used religiously allowing everyone to research on their own and take time to read books. Digital cameras allow us to capture moments, save print and share. With inventions like memory cards, we are able to save any and everything. Today computers are used in schools for easier access to topics discussed in class. Without chemical and electronic technological inventions society would be still looking for ways to invent and create.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Media Frames

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Media frames are the primary themes that connect the different portions of a news story (headlines, quotes, etc.) into a coherent final product. The media must seduce the reader into comprehending potentially foreign concepts, topics or polices. In doing so the media frames stories to have no prerequisites for the reader, induce no perplexity, and avoid exposition; in doing so, essentially removing all instruments…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays