#duture

am i the only one

believing that star trek is just how the future will look like

Let yourself be happy.

Everything that has been is in the past.  Everything that is now is here.   Everything that will be is in the future.

Living in the present means you are aware of your surroundings, you are aware of your actions, you are aware of everything around you.

Let yourself thrive on what is.  Honor your obligations.  Fulfill your duties.  This is your reality.

True happiness comes…

We’ll begin our day with a story on our phone. On our sub­way ride to work a new char­ac­ter will be added to the story and we’ll learn all about him on a tablet com­puter. At lunch we’ll catch up with the character’s newest adven­ture on our office com­puter via Face­book. Later in the day the story takes an unex­pected turn—and we’ll learn about it from a dig­i­tal bill­board. Before going to bed we’ll plant the seeds for tomorrow’s devel­op­ments while play­ing a video game on our tele­vi­sion. This is transmedia—the future of storytelling.

“The bound­aries between game­play and sto­ry­telling, single-platform and multi-platform, real and vir­tual, author and audi­ence, are all dis­ap­pear­ing as we speak. It’s all fic­tion. Some­day we’ll just leave it at that.” Jeff Wat­son

A trans­me­dia project is one in which the audi­ence has to seek out, find, and con­sume dif­fer­ent pieces of a nar­ra­tive across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal plat­forms and for­mats in order to fig­ure out the full story. The sto­ries unfold using dif­fer­ent media, smart­phones, tablets, comic books, aug­mented real­ity, 3D-projected, or live per­for­mances. The “gap” between the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal worlds is now closed. But that’s noth­ing new as video gamers have treated the “real world” as another “platform.”

Trans­me­dia requires col­lab­o­ra­tion between artists (writ­ers, motion graphic design­ers, video edi­tors, web devel­op­ers) and view­ers who can alter sto­ry­lines by influ­enc­ing a character’s deci­sions and by becom­ing char­ac­ters them­selves. View­ers can sub­mit sto­ries to pro­duc­ers, and even crowd-fund the projects they like. Never under­es­ti­mate an audience’s crav­ings for more control.

Keep in mind that telling one story in one medium and then repli­cat­ing the same story in another medium is NOT trans­me­dia. Cross-platform sequels or adap­ta­tions are not trans­me­dia. That’s called media shift­ing and it’s an entirely dif­fer­ent concept.

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Trans­me­dia pro­duc­tions dis­perse sto­ries across mul­ti­ple tech­nolo­gies, but each deliv­ery chan­nel needs to be self-contained, mean­ing that users don’t need to read the comics to enjoy the film and vice versa. Mobile apps would com­ple­ment, not sim­ply repli­cate, TV-viewing expe­ri­ences. A key con­cept is that all of the con­tent must always be linked together and synced with each other. Trans­me­dia projects may start small (mobile apps for exam­ple), and then branch out using dif­fer­ent, big­ger medi­ums (fea­ture films or real­ity TV shows). A sec­ond key con­cept is that all chan­nels need to cre­ate a uni­fied and coor­di­nated expe­ri­ence, while pro­vid­ing a unique con­tri­bu­tion to the story.

Decent recent trans­me­dia efforts include “Con­spir­acy 365” and “Slide,” which is an Aus­tralian teen drama series that offers addi­tional online con­tent via mobile apps con­nected to Face­book and Twit­ter. Webisodes before and after TV shows are also avail­able on YouTube. “Year Zero” is an even more inter­est­ing exam­ple; an alternate-reality game based upon a Nine Inch Nails album, and cre­ated by the team respon­si­ble for the first-person shooter Halo 2 video game.  

But before sto­ry­tellers embrace this mul­ti­lay­ered approach, they need to come up with really good sto­ries. That has not changed and will never change. To develop com­pelling trans­me­dia expe­ri­ences there needs to be great char­ac­ters or inter­est­ing worlds. Spi­der­man is a good exam­ple of the first, and the Lord of the Rings exem­pli­fies the sec­ond. Most Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez nov­els have both, and much more.

The real-time, always-connected mul­ti­player expe­ri­ences will trans­form sto­ry­telling to a more mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tory art. I am very inter­ested to see how tra­di­tional notions of author­ship will change, and how devel­op­ers and pro­duc­ers will deal with the increased chal­lenges of coor­di­na­tion and consistency.

“The way we relate to imagery is chang­ing. Our new rela­tion­ship is less about wit­ness, evi­dence and doc­u­ment and much more about expe­ri­ence, shar­ing, moment and stream­ing.” Stephen Mayes, VII Photo Agency.

I find this topic fas­ci­nat­ing and would love to con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. Please add your ques­tions and com­ments below.

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