Transmedia Storytelling - Week 6A
All good things must come to an end, as you can imagine, we are closer to the end of this assignment than ever. Actually, this is the last session that I'm going to be writing about, which is sad but at the same time liberating. Before I start talking about the workshop, I want to say that this was the hardest session out of all the rest and I don't know whether to blame to the fact that it was online learning or on the fact that it was actually a difficult lesson. No matter the reason, I think I comprehended most of the stuff I was taught and I was actually able to put them into practice in task 2 so let's get started!
As the name on the title suggests, we talked about transmedia storytelling. It might come as no surprise but I had never heard of this terminology before so the first thing I did was to, research it a bit more. What I found is that it is the technique of covering a story using different media and digital platforms (multiplatform story). Since we all have access to the web, through our portable devices, it is really easy to promote and create content that will be accessed by different audiences. The audiences have the ability to choose what content they want to access and see, so that makes it really important to have a good marketing in order to make cohesive and attractive content. But what are the key characteristics of transmedia storytelling?
1) At least 3 mediums (Instagram, posters, twitter etc)
2) The content of each platform is different
3) Interactive elements are part of the experience and they come together to form the final story.
Before I get to the examples that we were shown, I think it is worth stating something about the usage of media for promotion. The past decade, our lives are almost thoroughly based on social media and every day we are looking for something new to "consume". From what I see, all the aforementioned are basically marketing techniques for a movie, series or a game because this is something that has proven to be a really successful technique to target audiences the last few years. For example, IT 2 had a really good and successful campaign on Instagram, youtube and twitter with different clips and posters that attracted many people not only to watch the upcoming movie but the first part as well and also read the book!
I was astonished by how successful were the campaigns for Cloverfield and the Dark Knight and at some point, I forgot what was real and what wasn't. The Dark Knight was the one that I was especially fond of, not only because I love the film itself but also because I found it brilliant how they targeted the audience through the internet and the game.
However, I'm not so sure if this kind of technique would work today. People are not that motivated to run around and find evidence for something that will be revealed at the end anyway so why run for it? The latest game that was incredibly successful that had its users run around was Pokémon Go, which was a huge success in 2016. It was and still is a free game that has the main goal to walk around your area and catch as many pokemon as possible.
Comparing the Dark Knight and Pokémon Go, it is obvious that there are many psychological that play a huge role in their success. Promoting the idea of success but also the idea of belonging in a bigger group is a perfect strategy to target people that are either more introverted or that have free time to spend and have fun. Given that, Pokémon has been around for decades it was almost certain that it would be successful. If we take a look at the promotional video for Pokémon Go, we can see that it has many similarities with the live-action angry birds game.
All three of them seem to be as incredibly clever campaigns and really strategic. The hard clear target audiences and they worked perfectly. As time passes, from 2020 and on I believe it might be easier to get people to use, download or watch something as people are becoming less biased and they want to be as informed as possible.
The first step was to decide which characters I'm going to include: Red Riding Hood, the Wolf and the Huntsman. But then I thought that it would be nice to have Red Riding Hood's mom as well, and start the story on Twitter and let the characters interact for a bit. Use gifs, upload different pictures and use hashtags. The same and more pictures with funny captions could be posted on Instagram again by using hashtags and tagging the characters of the story. I, also thought it would be funny if the huntsman and red riding hood's mom had tinder because it is something that many people associate with these days. As far as it concerns the wolf, I wanted to make him a blog where he will be posting different recipes and adding some funny captions. What I thought would complete the story is the creation of a Facebook page for the village they all live in and have different people make complaints about the life there but also for the wolf.
So, in short, all of the characters have Twitter and Facebook pages. The Huntsman and the mother both have tinder. The huntsman, little red and the wolf have Instagram pages. Additionally, the wolf has a blog for recipes and the huntsman has a youtube channel for reviewing hunting equipment.
To be honest, I didn't comprehend the exercise from the beginning and it took me a while to get the hang of it. I'm still not sure if the way I did the task was correct but I'm hoping that the result is close to the one desired. I will analyze everything in my next post. :)
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| source: here |
1) At least 3 mediums (Instagram, posters, twitter etc)
2) The content of each platform is different
3) Interactive elements are part of the experience and they come together to form the final story.
Before I get to the examples that we were shown, I think it is worth stating something about the usage of media for promotion. The past decade, our lives are almost thoroughly based on social media and every day we are looking for something new to "consume". From what I see, all the aforementioned are basically marketing techniques for a movie, series or a game because this is something that has proven to be a really successful technique to target audiences the last few years. For example, IT 2 had a really good and successful campaign on Instagram, youtube and twitter with different clips and posters that attracted many people not only to watch the upcoming movie but the first part as well and also read the book!
I was astonished by how successful were the campaigns for Cloverfield and the Dark Knight and at some point, I forgot what was real and what wasn't. The Dark Knight was the one that I was especially fond of, not only because I love the film itself but also because I found it brilliant how they targeted the audience through the internet and the game.
However, I'm not so sure if this kind of technique would work today. People are not that motivated to run around and find evidence for something that will be revealed at the end anyway so why run for it? The latest game that was incredibly successful that had its users run around was Pokémon Go, which was a huge success in 2016. It was and still is a free game that has the main goal to walk around your area and catch as many pokemon as possible.
Comparing the Dark Knight and Pokémon Go, it is obvious that there are many psychological that play a huge role in their success. Promoting the idea of success but also the idea of belonging in a bigger group is a perfect strategy to target people that are either more introverted or that have free time to spend and have fun. Given that, Pokémon has been around for decades it was almost certain that it would be successful. If we take a look at the promotional video for Pokémon Go, we can see that it has many similarities with the live-action angry birds game.
All three of them seem to be as incredibly clever campaigns and really strategic. The hard clear target audiences and they worked perfectly. As time passes, from 2020 and on I believe it might be easier to get people to use, download or watch something as people are becoming less biased and they want to be as informed as possible.
Transmedia Story Part 1
Studying all of the above motivated me to try the same thing but on a fairytale. In my previous post, I analyzed how I created an Interactive story for Red Riding Hood. So why not create content for the story? I wanted to make the story as contemporary as possible. As you can see on my map I had the idea of creating different social media platforms for the characters to interact.
The first step was to decide which characters I'm going to include: Red Riding Hood, the Wolf and the Huntsman. But then I thought that it would be nice to have Red Riding Hood's mom as well, and start the story on Twitter and let the characters interact for a bit. Use gifs, upload different pictures and use hashtags. The same and more pictures with funny captions could be posted on Instagram again by using hashtags and tagging the characters of the story. I, also thought it would be funny if the huntsman and red riding hood's mom had tinder because it is something that many people associate with these days. As far as it concerns the wolf, I wanted to make him a blog where he will be posting different recipes and adding some funny captions. What I thought would complete the story is the creation of a Facebook page for the village they all live in and have different people make complaints about the life there but also for the wolf.
So, in short, all of the characters have Twitter and Facebook pages. The Huntsman and the mother both have tinder. The huntsman, little red and the wolf have Instagram pages. Additionally, the wolf has a blog for recipes and the huntsman has a youtube channel for reviewing hunting equipment.
To be honest, I didn't comprehend the exercise from the beginning and it took me a while to get the hang of it. I'm still not sure if the way I did the task was correct but I'm hoping that the result is close to the one desired. I will analyze everything in my next post. :)
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