In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), Henry Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling as storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a fan's understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, transmedia creates "entrypoints" through which consumers can become immersed in a story world.
Source: Wikipedia
A few days back, I had a Transmedia Moment. It was during my morning commute by tube train, while deep in the clay strata of London. A “Transmedia Moment”, no doubt, and the first time it’s so obviously happened to me, which says everything, given “Transmedia” as Published Theory is a full half-decade old.
There’s a new movie coming out, at the time I hadn’t heard of it, and what I saw adjacent the tube panel ads for Adult Education courses and Wellman vitamins and the latest Techno-Packed Tablets was... The Clear Pill.
The Clear Pill – Tube card panel... as story world “entry-point”
My thought process went something like this...
That’s the guy who was in The Hangover and The A-team, B-Lister Bradley somebody. He’s in a new movie called The Clear Pill? Or he’s “face-ing” some pharmaceutical pick-me-up? If the latter, surely his agent has dictated a European ring-fence so it doesn’t trash his Stateside Movie Star image?
Two seconds more reading and a spoof ad, tactically placed, became clear. Only, The Clear Pill is not the name of the movie. The only piece of copy that wasn’t pure fiction is where it suggested I visit www.showfilmfirst.com, type in “Limitless”, and nab me some preview tickets.
For the record, “Limitless is a 2011 American techno-thriller directed by Neil Burger, starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. It is based on the 2001 novel The Dark Fields”.(Source: Wikipedia).
What I liked about my one single tube card experience is how it fluttered at the edges of a still very buzzy idea.
The fact “Transmedia” is still buzzy has (I suspect) everything to do with it being a Broad Beam Ambition, and that few-to-none have really cracked it.
Jenkins’ Convergence Culture is no by-the-numbers How To Guide. Putting Transmedia theory into practice remains largely unsatisfying, much like Man’s attempts to conquer outer space.
Transmedia: “It’s media Jim, just not as we know it.”
Transmedia Thinking anchors itself to The World of Story, the ambition principally being one of how you can bring “story to life” in different places, in a non-linear fashion. The marketing of Motion Pictures is the most obvious application, where Transmedia maintains there’s a Bigger Picture Opportunity to punting a Big Picture.
Transmedia theory, applied to a movie launch, is all about promoting The Story, not the "due date of a movie starring...” In an industry built on the conventions of Stars Sell Movies and their name sits Above the Title, Transmedia thinking is anti-conventional and boldly purist.
People crave the ride of a Great Story. Transmedia purports: start the ride early, way before the journey to the movie theatre. Hook people in with The Story Conceit. Turn any number of media “touchpoints” into a non-linear Narrative Ecosystem. Media becomes a tapestry. “The Story” a golden thread stitched in any number of directions, to create an immersive, multi-sensory shroud.
But you see what just happened?
Yes, in that last paragraph. The Common Transmedia Trap, getting all giddy and over-excited and “metaphoring” like crazy, still fixating on the Big Vision as theory and not practice.
And what was that about a shroud?
Let’s back it up a bit.
Simplify.
I call it the Bow Tie model, which I think can rather neatly map the delivery of a Transmedia Solution.
The Bow Tie model structures every event into 3 parts, a Before, During, and an After.
Every event, as common-garden-variety as “Going to the Movies”, still has a Pre and a Post – and both can be used to serve the Marketing End Game of box office takings, of getting popcorn-munchers into seats.
Consider Transmedia and the marketing of movies within the Bow Tie model.
In the Pre, it’s all about mystery, tease, some reveal, and reward through discovery, the marketing equivalent of studio pitching early adopting consumers with a movie idea (only one that's already been turned into a movie).
The story "outside" the movie theatre, the story in “bite form”, like a tube card snippet, and maybe some choice semiotic seeding, guerrilla stenciling some story emblems perhaps, all serving to build intrigue and hype and fan boy cyber chatter.
Symbol-Seed-Tease.
In the Pre Moment, you want people to know everything and nothing about the movie. You want them exposed to any collateral that creates a vivid sense of the movies style and its premise. You don't ideally want them exposed to the movies major visual moments and killer lines. These should all come in the context of “The Event”, sitting in the dark, marveling In-the-Moment of watching.
Take a movie like Indecent Proposal (1993). It was always going to do very tidy Box Office because its one-line premise conjured the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue that made people want to see what Demi Moore would do. The premise alone was perfect fuel for The Pre.
And then there’s J.J. Abrams. Cloverfield (2008), Super 8 (2011), J.J.’s not capable of launching a new movie without loading The Pre full of Transmedia fizz-bombs.
The Post is all about self perpetuation, indulging the feel good of in-the-know early adoption; encouraging all those good Pass-It-On behaviours and “OMG!” First-Person-Proclamations. More fizz-bombs, but these from the Early Adopters stoking The Pre-Moment for the Late Majority.
Before I reached the end of my morning commute, I considered how easy it could be to export Transmedia beyond the marketing of movies, say into a broader entertainment space, into the story-telling of theme parks and public attractions, zoos and aquariums for example. It’s not even a stretch, to take the theme park beyond the walls of the theme park, to create “virtual experiences” that ghost the real thing.
Imagine roller coasters with mini-cams mounted to the front carriage, beaming first person experiences direct... to digital escalator panels. One ride, juxtaposed against another. Imagine projecting real time images of a shark tank in an underground tube station.
Rather than taking the park beyond the park, Disneyworld has focused on the Before in an absolute sense, capturing the emotions of The Pre in their current UK TV campaign. I defy any parent to be immune to this brand of magic.
On April 6, 2010, the Producers Guild of America announced the addition of “Transmedia Producer” to the Producers Code of Credits. A big deal that some termed “unprecedented”, it marked the first time in the guild’s 60-year history that a new credit had been added to the list.
When Limitless goes on UK general release on March 23rd, I’ll be there, suspending disbelief in the dark, only when the closing credits roll, I may just stick around to see if a Transmedia Producer had anything to with that tube card panel?
SP.
Footnote:
The Clear Pill UK tube campaign: Big dues to M2M for turning the thinking into doing. Nice one. Did you guys negotiate a Transmedia Producer credit?
Comments