Cross-Media + Transmedia Entertainment

** SHORT VERSION: I’M NOW BLOGGING AT WWW.CHRISTYDENA.COM **

Well, not quite ‘death’ but an indefinite hiatus. I’m powering down this blog for a few reasons, one of which is my desire to finish my PhD. I’ve tried for the last year and a half to do PhD writing and work and this blog, but found the mindsets are somewhat incompatable. I’ve decided therefore to close this blog down. I don’t know if I’ll bring it up again and if I do when, or whether I’ll start another one. But I do know that I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging here these past few years. I have especially enjoyed meeting many of you because of the blog, and seeing ‘cross-media’ (etc) projects become ubiquitous. Thankfully, the area has alot more people looking at it now, from alot of different perspectives. Here are some blogs that will keep you informed:

• Networked Performance: research blog that posts about emerging network-enabled practice;
• You can read and listen to news about alternate reality games and just about any online extension of a film, TV or book property on the ARGNet blog and ARG Netcast (podcast);
• Henry Jenkins personal blog and the Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of goodies from a media studies perspective about ‘transmedia storytelling’ and ‘convergence culture’ in general;
• DeMontfort University share their investigations into what they term ’Transliteracy’ at their PART blog;
• Jeff Gomez, the CEO of Starlight Runner and longtime practitioner of ‘trans-media’ projects, is now blogging regularly about his insights and experience over at the Producers Guild of America blog;
• Monique de Haas blogs about ‘crossmedia communication’ occasionally;
• Tony Walsh posts semi-regularly on alternate reality games;
• Valentina Rao blogs about crossmedia games and anything related to that at Games Across Media, and will hopefully be starting her PhD on the subject soon;
• Johnathan Gray, Derek Johnson and Ivan Askwith are blogging about everything around TV and film at The Extratextuals;
• Crossmedia Dialog is a group blog that post regularly on crossmedia in Amsterdam and worldwide;
• Faris Yakob, Adam Crowe blog about ‘transmedia planning’ and other changes to the marketing industry;
• Jak Boumans posts every single day about stuff happening in the Netherlands and worldwide at Buziaulane; 
• Max Giovognoli runs everything to do with cross-media in Italy;
• MobileCrossMedia is a blog that looks at the different ways mobile phones can network with different devices and the real world;
• If you don’t already get it, the Convergence Newsletter has regular interesting newsletters about convergence in journalism and has been my favourite newsletter for the past few years;

I don’t plan to be blogging here about events or publications I’m involved in, instead I’ll pop them on my bio site. But for now, here are some events I’m involved with, in the not-too-distant-future:

• I’ll be on the ‘expert panel’ with Mark McCrindle and Tim Flattery at Mitchell Communications Group ’s launch of ‘While You Weren’t Watching’, a documentary on changes to branded entertainment etc in which I was interviewed. The launch is private but the documentary will be put online I believe in Nov; 
• I have my own panel on ‘Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration’, and I am a panelist in Darren Toft’s panel on ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ at the Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment in Dec;
• I’ll be on the panel on ‘Cyber-Born Film’ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Festival (or DestFest) in Dec;
• In Jan 08, I’ll be a guest lecturer again for Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, De Montfort University, UK;
• In Feb 08, my essay on ‘Tiering in Alternate Reality Games’ will be published in the special issue of Convergence edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze.

For now though, I will continue to be online in a different way. I’ve started a podcast, a podcast where I’ll interview talented people working in this area. My ‘birth’ podcast is a bit awkward, but the second is a great one: an interview with Stitch Media’s Evan Jones. At the site, I also provide sneak preview information about Stitch Media’s latest project.

That is it for me here, thankyou all for sharing this time with me. I’ll see you on the other side of my PhD.

Check it out: www.ChristyDena.com  

Check it out: www.UniverseCreation101.com

New Line Cinema CEOs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne were interviewed on the Charlie Rose show. They talk about the importance of franchise sequels being equal to or better each time; online fans and Snakes on a Plane; digital on-demand cinemas; simultaneous release across media; audience testing; gambling on Lord of the Rings; merging with Ted Turner and then TimeWarner; the importance of passion…

• Charlie Rose interview

There is a new wave of cinema experiences emerging that points to the revival of the cinema event. Contrasting interactive film (which can be experienced by one person and the interaction is limited to a DVD or remote input), these cinema events require audiences to participate in some way in an event environment.

• Kinoautomat (movie vending-machine), 1967… 2007

This 1967 work by Radúz Çinçera, One Man and His House, is a film that was screened at the Montreal World Fair in a specially-constructed cinema with buttons for the audience. The film continually stops at certain points, two of the actors then come on stage and ask the audience to make their choice of direction.  This is regarded as the first interactive cinema work and is interesting too because the film was specifically designed for this interaction. However, it should be noted that the interaction (like many interactive works for various technical and skills reasons) was only the illusion of interaction. As Media Art Net observes, although a different filmic sequence was shot and screened based on the audience choice. The next choice was always the same. It has recently been revived with an English version being screened in Prague. An interview with Radúz’s daughter, Alena Çinçera , and more pics is here.

Image sourced from Media Art Net. Copyright Radúz Çinçera

• Cause and Effect , 2002/…

Inspired by Kinoautomat, Chris Hales has been creating short ‘interactive cinema performances’. Cause and Effect has been running specially-created short films since 2002 and is currently touring Poland and Finland. There is a video available for download on the site, and here is a basic description from the main page:

We experiment with various techniques of group interaction and the types of interactive film that are commensurate with it. Although using sophisticated methods, the show is designed to be portable, tourable, and suitable for most venues. Currently interaction methods enable audiences to influence films by shouting, passing around bright or coloured lights, using mobile phone handsets, waving, singing soprano and humming. A typical performance consists of around eight short interactive movies (chosen from a substantial repertoire) covering genres of video art, drama, non-fiction, education, and music. The show is both entertaining and intellectual and appeals to a wide audience demographic. It is constantly developing, with varied modes of interaction being explored and new films being regularly created. Certain films are customised for the actual theatre and the language of the country in which the show takes place during a rapid pre-production phase when we arrive at the location. This localisation adds to the audience’s surprise and involvement with the films presented to them.

Image sourced from Cause and Effect

• Lance Weiler’s “Cinema ARG”, 2006/…

As I’ve mentioned here before, Lance Weiler created a unique theatre experience for the screening of his latest film, Head Trauma. His ‘cinema ARG’ involves special screenings of the film with a band playing the soundtrack live, actors and props from the film in the audience and mobile phone interaction. It has been touring across the USA and is now expanding to the web. His latest description:

This fall the HEAD TRAUMA cinematic gaming continues. Players will interact with the film’s characters; offline, online, and via mobile devices in what is a cross between flash mobs, urban gaming, and ARGs. The game starts in late September with the airing of a special web series. The series will run across a number of outlets such as myspace, xbox, twitter, eyespot, stage 6 and opera. Then on Oct. 20th, live cinema games will play out in 10 cities across the country. Within the series are clues aka rabbit holes that lead to hidden sites, blogs, social networking pages and media. A full list of cities will be released in the coming weeks.

• MSNBC’s Newsbreaker Game, 2007

As I’ve mentioned before in my post that includes stats on its success, this example is an interactive cinema advertisement. They actually call the work ‘interactive crowd gaming’ in movie theatres. It was created by SS+K in collaboration with Brand Experience Lab for msnbc.com. Here is a video of one of the cinema events:

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All of these works show without doubt the reinvigoration of the embodied and multi-modal cinema experience. What I find exciting are the fact that many of these works (and more to come I’m sure) are being specially designed. Do you know of some other interactive cinema performances/gaming?

The Second International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment is being held in September in Perth. There will be a few great sessions but one of the keynotes looks fantastic: Professor Masa Inakage, Keio University, Japan.

Media Design Aesthetics: Emotional and Entertaining Experience Design for the Ubiquitous Society 

Our society is in the midst of paradigm shift from mass media-based society to personal media-based society, driven by the digital revolution. Mass media and communication media are converging to form massively connected personal and everywhere media. In the personal and everywhere media, the interaction of people, artifacts, and the environment contributes to the emotional and entertaining experience in the daily life. Thus, the experience design is the core activity of media design, and aesthetics is the key component in the media design formula. The talk touches various areas of media design through the lens of content design and supporting technology research drawing on the recent research projects at Keio University, including digital cinema, ubiquitous contents, and participatory communities.

I’ll be in Perth the week before for DAC, but will try and stay for this one.

Check out: www.dimea.org

“PopMatters has put this question to our vast staff of cultural critics and have come up with a list of 50 DVDs that every motion picture aficionado should have as part of their own aesthetic assemblage. By no means all inclusive, but definitely the result of much handwringing (and film watching), our plan is to provide a guide to what’s good, and what’s grand, about these silver slices of Heaven. [...]

Here it is, divided into fives sections covering as many significant shifts in the motion picture perspective. Beginning with Part 1: Pure Classicism and moving through Part 2: The Changing Face of Filmmaking, Part 3: The Stellar ‘70s, Part 4: Challenging Convention and finally, Part 5: The Return of the Auteur, our crew hopes to enlighten you on titles and artists you may never have heard of, as well as hit on those mandatory efforts that failed to peak your interest the first time around. But it’s more than just the movie being discussed—it’s how DVD changed the way we look at it. This feature also concentrates on how supplements and commentaries, remixed soundtracks and pristine transfers revived lost or forgotten gems, while perfectly preserving those works that warrant safeguarding.”

Check it out: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/series/284/

ANGELS 

Not too long ago I posted about the Swarm of Angels project:

A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. By subscribing for £25 members become part of a revolutionary process to make an open source feature film.

Well, they’re measuring their progress with tasks completed and members gained. The second phase, early development, has just completed. In this phase:

Members of the First 1000 (all qualify who’ve joined before this deadline) will then be able to introduce members by limited invite-only until we open to the public later in Phase 3.

They’ve also released a trailer.

MONSTERS

News from the workbook project is that a couple of filmmakers — Arin Crumley and Susan Buice – have an unusual system too. They’ve made a feature film ,called Four Eyed Monsters, from credit card finance. That isn’t new. What is new is:

• They’ve put their feature film online on YouTube to view for free for 1 week:
• Spout, a movie community site, will give Arin & Susan 1 dollar for everyone who joins spout (which is free): http://spout.com/foureyedmonsters
• You can buy the DVDs and super high quality downloads at: http://foureyedmonsters.com/store (I like their bundling)

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Check out: http://www.aswarmofangels.com

Check out: http://www.foureyedmonsters.com

I stumbled across this video by Mickey Gilchrist and Scott Bartlett that is titled “transmedia”. The inference, then, is that this video is a collection of transmedia examples. Have a look:

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Now, in an effort to demythologise what ‘transmedia’ and ‘cross-media’ etc is, I’ll take the opportunity to unpack the relations between the segments presented in this video:

• Segment 1: Superman cartoon = 2D animation probably circa 1940s which is an ADAPTATION of comic books introduced in 1938 (although there may be some TRANSMEDIA expansions of the storyline);
• Segment 2: Superman movie = live action ADAPTATION of segment 1. At quick glance, the adaptation occurs on a few levels: 1) Medial (2D to live action); 2) Cultural (storyline alteration for contemporary audiences);
• Segment 3: The Simpsons cartoon = 2D INTERTEXTUAL relation (Genette) where the cartoon alludes to the Superman storyworld, also a ‘metaform’ (Johnson);
• Segment 4: The Simpsons videogame = 3D ADAPTATION of The Simpsons 2D cartoon;
• Segment 5: The Simpsons real life version & The Simpsons original cartoon = MASHUP/REMIX/INTERTEXTUAL relation (quoting) of original 2D cartoon and fan live-action APPROPRIATION/ADAPTATION/HOMAGE (source);
• Segment 6: The Matrix title sequence & The Simpsons original cartoon = INTERTEXTUAL relation (quoting) of The Matrix feature film within The Simpsons original 2D cartoon;
• Segment 7: The Matrix Lego animation = fan live-action APPROPRIATION/ADAPTATION/HOMAGE/PARODY of The Matrix live-action feature film;
• Segment 8: The Matrix feature film = excerpt from live action feature film (that is what it looks like);
• Segment 9: The Matrix videogame = INTERTEXTUAL relation (quoting) of 3D videogame ADAPTATION of The Matrix feature film within iPod interface REMEDIATION (transparency relation – Bolter & Grusin).

So, from this little analysis we can see that there the media relations exhibited are those that have been present for decades. From what I can tell, there is only one that is only one example of a weak form of expansion of a storyworld: the parody. I bring up the point of expansion because that is the contemporary understanding of ‘transmedia’, as popularised by Henry Jenkins. Jenkins’s definition of ‘transmedia storytelling’:

A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best—so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. (Convergence Culture, 139)

Transmedia storytelling, in Jenkins sense, refers to the expansion of a storyworld, with each unit being self-contained. This is actually just one type of transmedia expansion of four (4) top-level ones that I have identified. But the point about expansion is there. That is why I baulked at the video being described as ‘TransMedia’. Now, ‘cross-media’ is a term that has been around for a long time. It has many meanings to different parts of industry, different industries and different academics. I employ ‘cross-media’ to be an umbrella term that describes all inter-textual relations in a multi-platform environment: repurposing (remediation), adaptation and transmedia expansions (and more).

I find it interesting that ‘transmedia’ and ‘cross-media’ are often employed to described intertextual relations that have been present for a while. One of the reasons is that some people enter the notion of intertextual relations through these forms and so label them according to what they have just found out. Another reason is a fetish for the new. To label an intertextual activity according to notions that have been around for a very long time negates the excitement and uniqueness of it. With this analysis we can see that the activities listed in the video are not new in terms of the intertextual relations. What is new, however, is the range of media and artforms that we can employ for adaptations; the ways digital technologies enables easier appropriation of forms & the broadcasting of them; the growing preference for these forms and they way ‘official’ producers are engaging in these behaviours as well…

One thing is clear from this video though: people really do love seeing fictional worlds persist in every media platform and arts type, irrespective of the creator.

After my post about the great efforts of Lance Weiler, I’ve come across another example of good thinking when it comes to creation and distribution of what was previously called cinema. This project is called quite aptly A Swarm of Angels: 

A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. By subscribing for £25 members become part of a revolutionary process to make an open source feature film.

Here is the manifesto:

A Swarm of Angels updates the current filmmaking models of Hollywood and independent film to create cult cinema for the digital age.

Whether you call it Cinema 2.0, or Open source cinema, it’s an innovative participatory experience you can be part of.

Our vision is to bring filmmaker and fan together into entertainment communities making distinctive films based on artistic choices not marketing ones. This is not about making a couple of bucks, but about making cinematic history.

A Swarm of Angels is a third way between the top-down approach of traditional filmmaking and the bottom-up nature of user-generated content. A way for anyone to influence the creation of a professional £1 million+ ($1.8M+) feature film.

We are gathering 50,000 people in a giant new media experiment to be part of an exclusive community which funds and helps make this film. We want people to freely download, share and remix the feature film and all original media made for this project and have embraced the flexible digital-age copyright of Creative Commons toward this end.

Help invent the future of film: Join us, become an Angel.

This really is impressive. It is Kiva for Filmmakers. I’ve joined the Swarm of Angels and discovered that 2 ARG scripts have been submitted and are being considered.

Become an Angel: www.aswarmofangels.com

Lance Weiler, the director of the film The Last Broadcast (which has been described as the “original Blair Witch Project”) released another film last september: Head Trauma. What is interesting about the project is the STACK OF GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE with the film!! Firstly, he or the film has a presence on many social networking sites, such as MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and faciltiates community with his blog and vlog. He gives back to the community too, by providing information about DIY filmmaking on the DVD and has an “open source repository on filmmaking“. 

Second, he has a great graphic novel on the main website, which is half comic/half vignettes of the film. It feels like a cross between the “webler” that was created for Peter Greenaway’s transmedia project The Tulse Luper Suitcases using stills and audio from the film and the graphic novels used in the Heroes 360 Experience (I love the integration of the graphic novel and film narratives by the way).

Thirdly, he has created an alternate soundtrack of the film ala Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of Oz. Lance describes it at the HTMySpace site:

We created an alternate soundtrack for my newest feature film HEAD TRAUMA. The soundtrack CD is meant to be cued up with a special scene on the DVD of the movie. So if you turn down the volume on the TV and turn up the volume on the stereo you’ll get an alternate soundtrack experience.

Here is their movie describing the process. Lance calls it “a natural extension to the narrative”. This extension actually seems more like the album Haunted that accompanied Mark X. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. But back to Head Trauma. You have to go another website (www.parkthevan.com) to find the secret scene to synch the music with…and the synch scene is perfect. I really like the way link love is shared with this distribution of clues. Rather than create a whole lot of sites yourself, embed clues in sites of fellow crew etc. Share the link love. Lance sees the alternate versions, the remixing as being integral to the story too:

Philadelphia Weekly Online reports:

You’ve released a Dark Side of Oz-style alternate soundtrack CD of your film called Cursed: The Head Trauma Music Project with people like Dr. Dog, Bardo Pond and Sun Ra’s Marshall Allen. Is this screening a continuation of that?

“Yeah. Because Head Trauma deals with the fragmentation of memory, I thought it’d be cool to create other versions of the film. Movies kind of get stuck by being the same thing over and over again. A band can go and play and reinterpret their music, or fans can reinterpret it by doing covers. Films don’t have that option.”

This interweaving of snippets of memory and remixing (and sharing the filmmaking etc) is something that the team behind SMSSugarman in South Africa have been developing too. But, one difference is what Lance offers as a new cinema experience. This is where we get to cool point number four. I’ll let the the press release tell the good news:

In what has been called a cinema ARG (alternate reality game) HEAD TRAUMA is taking a hybrid of music, movies and gaming on the road for a number of special event screenings 

The event consists of three core elements.

1. A screening of HEAD TRAUMA with a live soundtrack performance by Bardo Pond, Espers, Fern Knight, Marshal Allen (Sun Ra), Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks) and others. The music is mixed live with the dialog and sound effects tracks from the film to create a new alternate soundtrack.

2. Various props and sets from the film are setup on stage and certain characters from the film will emerge from the audience.

3. During the course of the film a phone number appears on screen. When viewers call the number they begin a game that will last through the film and follow them home.

They receive a number of cryptic clues as they are asked to solve a series of riddles. The interaction involves phone calls and text messages from the characters of HEAD TRAUMA that will lead viewers to hidden clues spread across the Internet.

“We’re trying to change the cinematic experience. We want to take the concept of narrative storytelling and move it across multiple devices and screens, so it is engaging the audience in new and different ways. People have been calling it a cinema ARG and the response to the initial screenings has been amazing. Not to mention I’m always looking for new ways to scare the audience.” Says HEAD TRAUMA creator Lance Weiler.

Bravo Lance.

HT Main site: http://www.headtraumamovie.com/

Have a look at what Michela Ledwidge is doing at ModFilms, a site for people to do remixes of films. She is also working on a ‘massively multiplayer online movie’ called Sanctuary. It is described as follows:

Sanctuary is an experimental sci-fi short due for release 2006. The project, now in VFX POST PRODUCTION, is both a pilot for an ambitious feature film and a world-first exploration of production and distribution methods aimed at giving audiences greater empowerment through a next-generation story format. 

Michela is currently looking for remixers…

Check out www.ModFilms.com