Transmedia Storytelling

Today we looked at transmedia storytelling, largely looking at the views of Henry Jenkins. Transmedia storytelling is simply having a story or stories of a given fictional world told across multiple media, the example we were shown was the Matrix. The Matrix has had it's stories told across film, games, animation and comics, all adding to the story created for the first film. Henry Jenkins says 'There is no one single source or 'urtext' where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe', which is due to all the different media telling there part of the story, each having it's strengths and weaknesses, and having an entire coherent world created for the story.

Henry Jenkins has discusses 7 principles of transmedia storytelling.

1. Spreadability vs Drillability

Spreadability is when the subject has 'horizontal ripples', gaining the attention of a large number of people, an attracting factor which can advertise and expand a subject to a much larger number of people. Drillability is meant for much fewer people in generally, often the more die hard fans. As the name suggests, it is much deeper, and is often a way for fans to dig deeper and learn/speculate and gather more knowledge on the subject.

2. Continuity vs Multiplicity

Continuity is simply where across the transmedia setting, the story takes place in one world, each piece and story being additive to the story of a single world to build a coherent and in depth world. Multiplicity is where multiple stories can told across multiple universes, often seen in comic books as a good example, where some things can be different from the "main" universe story.

3. Immersion vs Extractability

Immersion is the ability to become deeply invested into a world, almost escapism into the fantasy universe of your subject. Extractability is the ability to take assets out of the fantasy world and into the real world, through the use of toys, models, and various other merchandise.

4. Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding put simply is the concept of fleshing out the world in which the subject is contained. This is often done in a very encyclopedic fashion, creating facts and constants of the world, which allows for multiple characters, stories etc. to all be created in one constant universe.

5. Seriality

Seriality is the idea of creating transmedia narratives which are consecutive in chronology, ending on cliff hangers and hooking the audience into the next release.

6.  Subjectivity

Subjectivity is where there is a focus on an unexplored dimension of the fictional world, Henry Jenkins uses the example of Bounty Hunters in Star Wars. Another example is a Mas Effect comic with follows the story of Aria T'loak, a very small character in the game series. other examples include mock websites and advertisements of fictional matter to help advertise the subject. Another good example of this is an advertisement for a cybernetic eye replacement from Deus Ex: Machina, where newspapers reported this advertisement as real and something we will see in the very near future.

7. Performance

Performance is the participation of both creators and fans in taking what is supplied from the fictional world, and creating more content, or piecing together content that has been supplemented through the media.

The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (Well, Two Actually. Five More on Friday), 2009. HenryJenkins.org [online] Available at: <http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html> [Accessed 19 October 2013 ].

Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: The Remaining Four Principles of Transmedia Storytelling, 2009. HenryJenkins.org [online] Available at: <http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/revenge_of_the_origami_unicorn.html> [Accessed 19 October 2013 ].