Transmedia essay

‘Transmedia is a way of telling a story over a variety of media.’ It is happening all around us. We watch movies based on books, those are mostly then transferred into games, xbox games, playstation games mobile games. They print shirts, posters hell, we can even get cups with our favourite characters on them! Most of the time before they even release the movie/game etc. It is to get the public excited for the release. There are people within the companies hired purely to excite their customers, they are in charge of social networking, they run competitions, give hints to what is going to happen and most importantly interact with consumers.

A really good example of this is the Harry Potter series. After a huge success of the first book everyone turned their attention to Harry Potter. EA seemed to get it right and as the movies were coming out they were releasing a new Harry Potter game alongside, each one with better graphic and more complex gameplay. Millions of toys were produced, your everyday figures of characters as well as Lego’s etc. I even have a chess board with ‘magic’ pieces that you can move with a wand exactly the same like the chess from Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. ( no magic, they are just magnetic.) They did produce little things like costumes, cups, pillows, posters. But they did not leave it at that I think the most impressive thing they have done is give you the ultimate Harry Potter experience by organizing weeks nights in castles, with weird potion classes, uniform and witchcraft activities like just like in the books themselves. What they did differently, they did not just hire people to take care of social media but they created a website called pottermore where the writer herself! Was interacting with her fans which was a huge deal.

As a part of this brief we are to consider how we would expand on our project, where would we take it?

I got a life simulated brief which was to create a game environment. I have created an ancient Mayan city, in space. I have looked into tons of theories and stories about Mayans. One of them was about this cult, where they believe that these huge open mouth creatures were teleports to another world. I really liked that concept so I decided to go with it and everything went from there. Because my environment is based on a tale like this one there are many ways I could expand it. But in my opinion the best path to take would be the animation route. When making this decision I also considered my own skillset, I have animated in the past and I know I am able to do it. I could do a short film, it would be something similar to my vfx project because it would have to be full of special effects to make it really exciting. But I think, I would not be so confident about film or even a comic book, they aren’t my strongest skills. I could create an animation explaining the story, maybe how the civilisation happened to be out of space, I could make up a further story explaining why they left the Earth to start off with. I could make it into a huge chase where I create enemies that would hunt them through the galaxies. Considering what kind of animation I would want to do… I did think a about a stop motion animation because it would be a challenge, I have not done that kind of animation before but it is one of my favourites! Or I could make it using photographed textures to make it seem realistic. Now I think about it, it could easily become a collaboration with a music student. I always said that music makes or breaks the project. And I read an article about music storytelling and how popular it is becoming... I think this could make a great piece! I did not mean a song but more along the lines of an interesting instrumental soundtrack. But I could also consider my target audience, I could easily change it and maybe aim the animation at a younger audience and make this piece into an educational cartoon. I was always fascinated with ancient civilisations and I remember watching such things on tv and dvd’s. I think it would be quite interesting to recreate something like this.

If I was to do an animation of any kind it would mean developing the story a little further. I would have to spend a good couple of days on further research, to make sure that the story I create makes sense, it is always more believable if based on historical events, theories etc. I think it would be an exciting process because it would be me developing the whole thing on my own, I would not have to follow someone else’s theme or guidelines and I think it would be really exciting to do! Now I think about it I think it is something I might do during summer, we have quite a few weeks off uni and it is always good to keep busy, that was you don’t come back after 3 months off and forget how to use every possible software you have been using. Most importantly it would be a great thing to add to my portfolio.