Collaboration Between Traditional and Digital Media: Why, Who and How?
This web resource is aimed at screen content creators and digital experts considering collaborating to deliver their IP across multiple platforms, or to use newer storytelling methodologies.
First, we’ll look at why you might choose to enter this space. Then we’ll profile potential members of a multi-disciplinary team, assess what they can contribute and suggest who will be doing what.
We will go on to evaluate different ways to source members of the team, and then through a series of interviews with experienced practitioners, we’ll identify some of the issues to be aware of when working in multi-disciplinary teams.
Finally, we will discuss best practice to ensure a productive collaboration.
Why Collaborate?
Recent advances in technology have seen an explosion in opportunities for storytellers. Interactive storytelling techniques can give the user a richer experience. Content in all its forms can be distributed across a plethora of devices for maximum impact. Specific areas for collaboration might be a digital marketing campaign or a full transmedia strategy around a feature film or television show. It might be a partnership between a writer and game developer to deliver a gaming experience with added layers of meaning, or it might be a true transmedia experience devised exclusively for online consumption.
Few individuals have the range of skills and expertise to develop and produce projects that take full advantage of these tools and techniques.
Collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams is generally the only way to ensure the full skill set is available. However, these team members may come from very different backgrounds and work cultures meaning, like any good relationship, work is required to ensure it all runs smoothly.
This document contains interviews with people from both sides of the rapidly disappearing digital divide: the “linear” producers who have embraced transmedia, and the digital natives.
Most producers face a quandary at the start of a project: how far to go with interactivity, and who to go on the adventure with?
A quick tour of the landscape
There are a few terms that are used in this space with similar (or some might argue the same) meaning that can cause confusion.
- Transmedia: Generally taken to mean a project that is developed from day one to be distributed across a range of media in a unified way, with a strong element of audience participation. While some of the elements may be satisfying on their own, the user gets a much richer story experience by accessing the project on a range of media. For example, a linear version of the story on one platform may be supplemented by parallel narratives on another.
- Multi-platform production: Generally taken to mean a project that is delivered on more than one platform, but which are not necessarily unified within the storyworld. An example might be as simple as a feature film with a similarly themed online game that is not necessarily integral to the narrative. While some platforms may have an element of interactivity (for instance, users can leave comments on a catch-up TV platform) their actions won’t enrich their experience of the story in any substantial way.
- Cross-platform: Distributing the same piece of content across a number of digital devices.
- Social media marketing: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc, strategies designed to raise awareness, build a community and drive eyeballs to a key platform
- Gamification: ‘Gamification’ refers to the use of game play mechanics to encourage desired behaviours by taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to play games. It is often used in the commercial world to simply mean techniques of getting buyers engaged in “levelling up” behaviour. Players might be motivated to engage, respond or behave in a certain way in the real world thanks to the psychology of game mechanics such as rewards, communal challenges, positive reinforcement, and points.
- Games: Gaming of some description is an interesting way to extend a narrative beyond a linear property, but there are many genres played on different platforms, with a broad range of budgets. At the more economical end of the scale are social media games played via Facebook, browser games played via a dedicated url, Alternate Reality Games, games for digital download played on a variety of devices including portable and console, and through to bigger budget off the shelf video games and online virtual worlds. Australia has game developers capable of doing any of the above, but generally each developer has an area in which they specialise.
Key Question – is it native transmedia or multi-platform marketing?
This might seem like a fine distinction, and arguably comes down to the intention rather than the user experience. Ultimately the main value for producers of making the distinction is because it will indicate who creatively drives it and who pays.
If the intention is to drive audiences to a key platform with a view to increasing consumption then it seems fair to label this a marketing exercise, regardless of how fun and smart the outcome. It’s more likely that this activity is being paid for and run by the marketing team of the outfit distributing your key platform. If the intention is to create a storytelling experience to be enjoyed in it’s own right as an extension of your key platform, then your key creatives might drive it, and it may be paid for from the budget of your key platform.
It’s important to know what you want your outcomes to be: a transmedia project intended to engage an audience across a range of platforms, or a multiplatform marketing strategy, designed to bring the audience to the primary platform.
Another key difference is the duration of the project. A transmedia project demands a long-term commitment to keeping the content flowing and audiences stimulated and engaged. A multiplatform marketing strategy has an end date. The further importance of this distinction will become clear as we look at the teams and the workflows.
When you are clear about the objectives for your project, the next task is how you decide what expertise you need and how to find it.
Finding Your Team
The first question to ask is whether you should try to pull together and manage this team yourself, or should you bring in a specialist (sometimes called a Transmedia Producer) or agency to be the conduit?
– Doing it Yourself:
To get a greater sense of the skills base required within your team to create a project for delivery across multiple platforms, read Gary Hayes’ comprehensive guide to creating a transmedia bible on the Screen Australia website: (INSERT LINK HERE).
If you decide to put together and manage your own team, here are some of the people you might need:
- Web Designer: someone who will come up with the basic look, feel and functionality of the project’s website or sites. It’s highly likely that you will need different versions of the website to cover mobile platforms. These are known as msites.
- Application Developer: someone who develops a mobile “app” for your project. An app is different from an msite, in that it offers a level of functionality that an msite doesn’t. For example, an app can automatically deliver updates to the user. For a good explanation of the difference, see Jennifer Wilson’s how-to guide Pocket Power.
- Web Developer: Someone who does the technical work behind your websites.
- Game Developer: Someone who will design and deliver a game based on some of your story elements. Australia has world class games expertise but different developers specialise in different types of games, so you need to be clear what you’re after.
- Experience Designer: A high-level specialist who can give you an overall specification for how the user will experience your story on different platforms and how it all fits together.
- Social Media Strategist: Someone who will work out and deliver ways of getting your content in front of your target audience using social media tools.
- Information Architect: Another high-level specialists who will look at the way information is presented on your web applications, to ensure that from a user point of view, it’s all usable and intuitive.
As you develop your ideas for multiplatform delivery, you may decide to use some or all of the expertise above. At the very least, you are likely to need a web designer and social media strategist.
Veteran film and documentary producer Sue Maslin rose to the challenge of sourcing and managing the team herself, and wrote about it in her report Convergence: Crossing the Digital Divide. (INSERT LINK HERE).
– Using an agency
If you decide to work with an agency, they will marshal all the expertise you need to execute the project. The advantage here is that you have a turnkey solution, and you may avoid getting onto a steep learning curve and possibly wasting time and money in doing so.
If you can afford to work with a digital agency, and you can find a compatible entity, it may be the simplest but not necessarily cheapest way to go.
However discussions with linear producers have suggested that there are some pitfalls, which you can read about in their comments that follow.
Where to Find Digital Expertise.
(1) Referrals
As with most positions in the screen industry, your best bet could be to talk to people involved in transmedia/multiplatform projects that have been produced recently.
(2) Online Services
- LinkedIn: Specifically the Producer’s Network within this social network for professionals which allows information exchange, job postings, notices of help required, and so on. Tends to be US-focused, but could provide some leads to locals
- AIMIA directory: The online directory has a list of companies and individuals who have expertise in transmedia/multiplatform
- The Loop: initially set up as a portfolio site for graphic designers, it has become a skills register for a wider group of practitioners.
- Game Developer’s Association of Australia: This peak industry body representing the games sector will post your requirements to their members seeking interested parties
- StoryLabs: an online community of digital mentors spanning a wide range of expertise, with founding members in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada. You can submit details of your project and will be matched with an appropriate mentor who can advise on next steps.
(3) Networking Opportunities
- X|Media|Lab conferences and workshops: A great place to meet transmedia practitioners and find collaborators. If you get into the Lab, you will network with a range of high-calibre international experts.
- AIMIA events: Very useful for seeing what other projects are in development and who’s doing what.
- Screen Australia and State Agency events: Similarly useful for networking
- Mobile Mondays: Mainly focussed on mobile content, but plenty of multi-skilled practitioners involved.
- Silicon Beach (Sydney): An event intended to match venture capital with projects. Not many screen content projects, but worth exploring.
- Social Media Club (Melbourne): Occasional meetings bring out the core of Melbourne’s social media people.
- Enterprise Connect: A government program to foster business. Have shown an interest in supporting media businesses.
- Crossover Labs: UK-based outfit who run workshops at which participants get to develop with high level mentors. Occasional presence in Australia. Digital Sydney: An initiative of the NSW Government that encourages participation and collaboration within Sydney’s broad digital ecosystem.
- Portable Symposium: An initiative from digital agency Portable where high profile industry personalities present to an audience.
How to Ensure Productive Collaboration
A multi-disciplinary team can be comprised of individuals from different work cultures and may be disadvantaged by each not understanding enough about the role of others.
Like any working relationship, a multi-disciplinary team needs care and attention in order to be fruitful and harmonious.
What follows are x tips on how to ensure productive collaboration, determined via interviews with practitioners on the frontline.
1. Working collaboratively with a different type of profession.
Christy Dena:
Transmedia projects often involve professionals from different industries or artforms working together. Most people are skilled in a certain industry, such as film, TV, digital, or gaming. A producer in an industry knows the top professionals around, standardised work processes, and everything that makes up its creative ecology. When you create projects that involve more than one medium — such as a feature film and a game – then the development and production process now involves two different sets of industrial practices. This is what makes transmedia development and production hard: it involves working across silos. Not everyone is capable, or interested, in doing this successfully.
Nathan Anderson
Some of the big things that I’m aware of when I think about the understanding that different producers would have about traditional and emerging interactive platforms is a primary difference around the production techniques or the expectation about completion of the project. When you’re making a film or TV series you get to picture log off you deliver your project and the content is essentially complete. What interactive platforms allow us to do is have an ongoing connection with the audience and, and that therefore means that it’s not finished and any means in fact when you release it, in fact it’s only at the beginning of the cycle in terms of its maturation and development from the creative point of view. So once you start interacting with the audience you then have an opportunity to optimise the experience through further development.
It’s a fundamental shift in thinking about when about what happens you produce the media with interactive platform. You have to understand that release means the market is probably one of the first steps you should be thinking about as opposed to one of the final steps as it is for traditional media.
Sue Maslin
There is an emerging a class of digital media that have that expertise to liaise between the film and TV producers and the digital media companies… we had a really good talk after all that, she said she probably could have saved you all that of your roof but maybe half or more.. and we had money in the budget for a digital producer, but as always happens in these things the first thing that goes is your line producer, or digital producer and then you end up doing the lot as the producer… And the but that was a really false economy in some ways.
All I can tell you is that it’s happening the world over… I’ve been invited to speak at a conference in Canada, which is specifically for producers of traditional media about exactly these kind of issues around convergence and trying to properly address the opportunities.
Jennifer Wilson
One thing I would say is that Transmedia skills delivery is about a technical skill set in digital. I look at the process of creating in your content and I don’t understand half of it…. I’m sure they’ve got more people than they need and they seem to spend ridiculous amounts of money doing stuff that I don’t think they need to do when I know that people can make films for $16,000 and they (the linear producers) have exactly the same view of digital. So they don’t understand what is a front developer and what is a backend developer and why do you have and why do you have user experience and what is information architecture. And so this could be a point where you just go “ you know your business, we trust you. Trust is, for me, the big issue.
Jenny Lalor
We have different ways of working, and unless that’s very clear upfront in the working relationship, it can cause significant problems further down the line. Some examples of those are producers of TV series who produce detailed budgets with line items for everything they spend and they pretty much keep to that budget. As line items get moved around they are checked by the company. People who produce Transmedia content tender just have an overall figure with a few headings in it about where things are going to be spent, so it’s quite hard for TV producers to get their heads around where things are going to be spent…
I actually think what happens is TV producers see a budget as a budget, that’s how much money of got, that’s what I have to make this thing for. If I have a problem I’ve got to find the money from somewhere within that budget. Transmedia producers can’t seem to come from the point of view of “ I have a guesstimate. If it costs more than that, someone else will pay for it”.
You get the bill from your Transmedia producer for every change you want, unless you work out very clearly upfront exactly what is being delivered for the money that you’re paying them and how many iterations of that they are going to do for that money.
Lisa Gray
Some of the issues that linear producers have when working together with transmedia people are..understanding deliverables and audience relationships- once you deliver linear work, it is usually the end of the production for the work- with multiplatform producers, it’s only half way. This core difference can impact deliverable expectations, budget allocation and creative execution.
2. Understanding the difference between the budgeting and scheduling processes for linear and transmedia projects.
Lisa Gray
When I started out in multiplatform, there was a huge difference between multiplatform budgets and linear budgets. As Multiplatform becomes a lot more prominent the budget are getting bigger. If your idea is multiplatform, it is easier to access global money as well.
The biggest differences between multiplatform schedules and linear is that with linear, once the project is delivered- that’s it. It can’t change, and your production team finish. With multiplatform, once phase one is delivered, the main product can (and should) change while it is live, to further cater for your audience needs. Make sure when you are putting together your budgets for this that you always put money aside to respond to the audience that are engaging in your multiplatform product.
Christy Dena
A transmedia budget depends on the elements involved. If you’re creating a feature and a digital game, then the budgeting standards of each of these would be included, as well as any transmedia roles (writer, designer, producer, consultant), and any transmedia development labour, and any costs involved with implementing asset sharing systems.
Jenny Lalor
We have different ways of working, and unless that’s very clear upfront in the working relationship, it can cause significant problems further down the line. Some examples of those are producers of TV series who produce detailed budgets with line items for everything they spend and they pretty much keep to that budget. As line items get moved around the company checks them. People who produce Transmedia content tender just have an overall figure with a few headings in it about where things are going to be spent, so it’s quite hard for TV producers to get their heads around where things are going to be spent…
JENNIFER WILSON
From a production point of view, traditional producers are used to the idea that they have a budget, they will spend the budget, and at the end of the budget having been spent they will have delivered. And in Transmedia of course, you ideally only want to spend a portion of the budget to the point where you deliver so that you can have a lot more budget to change it and let it play out. The delivery in trans media is the start of the consumer engagement process. Delivery takes place in two parts – there’s the development and production before you go live and then there’s the development and production from the point that you go alive while it’s being played. So if you have a budget it has to go to the end of both of those production cycles. Linear concept producer as are used to the idea that the money is all spent at the end of the first one, but the point that you go live when you hand it over and people start to see what you’ve done that’s the end of the charging process.
You get people who come to you saying I want something like grand theft auto, how much is that? And you go “about 15 million” and they really don’t have an understanding that games have the same price as films and they come to you expecting filmic games with narrative for the price that you might get a $15,000 Flash installation and they want $15 million film.
Jenny Lalor
The agencies will let you put money in the budget for those things now, but still probably not at the level that it needs to be. I’ve worked on shows where if you were lucky you might have a couple of hundred thousand in the budget for it, but that’s a strategy actually costs more like 500,00- 1 million. It can be really expensive. I’ve got a show that I’m working on at the moment, where the multi-platform budget is more than then another film I’m working on–the whole budget for the film. I think the strategy is going to work, it’s needed on this particular show, but you need someone who is prepared to fund it
3. The pros and cons of putting together your own team or working with an agency.
Sue Maslin
Life would be a lot easier if you just outsourced to digital natives…. but I came through the whole philosophy of trying to enhance practice through convergence, so for that reason I’ve stuck at it, I don’t know whether I will continue to stick at it, but for the moment I’m sticking at it, because I believe that the creative possibilities are enhanced by convergence.
There is an emerging a class of digital media that have that expertise to liaise between the film and TV producers and the digital media companies… we had a really good talk after all that..and we had money in the budget for a digital producer, but as always happens in these things the first thing that goes is your line producer, or digital producer and then you end up doing the lot as the producer..but that was a really false economy in some ways.
More and more we are finding (that digital companies) are operating more and more on the service company model and they are not interested in operating on what the film and TV collaborative model has been. That model only works in house with digital media companies and only then in a way that meets their business objectives.
We went to 3 different Australian companies who are not interested in working with the writer-director conceptual artist in a creative collaborative environment – what they’re wanting is a brief and scoping document based on that brief, they want a sign of meeting based on that brief, then they go away and create the work and that is the complete antithesis of the culture that is endemic to film and television in this country.. Where you don’t just have a sign off and then get the cinematographer to go away and should the rushes…
That’s not how it works, so we had to go offshore to find a high end digital company – and Hit Lab are really at the top of their game- that was prepared to work in a creative collaborative model and actually have the writer and director in the lab and working alongside the developers, the technicians – they were phenomenal!
Out of that emerged the augmented reality project that we launched at the Adelaide film Festival.
In a commercial environment here in Australia, which is very very competitive, you know digital media companies can earn huge amounts of money and they’re absolutely don’t have to be at the high end of R&D and risk-taking that the creative collaboration often requires at the early stages of development.
We were interested in working with companies who wanted to be part of the creative challenge… But when to came to crunch time in terms of exactly how many people, how long, who you get to work with it was explained to us that this wasn’t a commercial proposition, you’ve got to fit around with what we’re doing commercially and the process was curtailed as a result. In each case it went back to give us a brief will go away and come back and tell you what the project is going to be.
The other thing that is very common in this whole area… Is all the promises in the world, yes we can do this and we can do this and then when you really find out what they can do, usually they can’t tell you what they can do, because usually you can see what they can do until they build it, then it comes back and you find that they actually didn’t know how to do it and it was trial and error for them as well.
Christy Dena
Transmedia should be done in-house if there are people capable executing it. If the team is skilled in film for instance, and knows hardly anything about digital, then they should bring in professionals to either work on their team, or contract an agency. The decision about whether professionals are brought into the production company or whether the job is outsourced is a question of resources and goals. If the production company intends to do more than one transmedia project, then they need to begin the process of transforming their work culture. This means they need to bring in all the professionals they need in-house. Whether the whole team is housed under the same roof or not, there needs to be buy-in and ownership of the transmedia vision and approach from all key personnel; and ideally at least one team-member that is ensures this happens.
Lisa Gray
It depends on the style of the project, and who your target audience is. At The Feds we employ a model, which aims to get the best people on the project if they are in or out of the office. More importantly to if they are based in the production office to if they are out of the office is to get the multiplatform producer engaged at development stage of the project. The earlier they are engaged, the better they can take advantage of how to find and keep your online audience.
Common pressure points in the transmedia team.
Jenny Lalor
We have different ways of working, and unless that’s very clear upfront in the working relationship, it can cause significant problems further down the line. Some examples of those are producers of TV series who produce detailed budgets with line items for everything they spend and they pretty much keep to that budget. As line items get moved around they are checked by the company. People who produce Transmedia content tender just have an overall figure with a few headings in it about where things are going to be spent, so it’s quite hard for TV producers to get their heads around where things are going to be spent…
Which is fine if you’re going into an all-inclusive price deal, but as projects get bigger and more money is spent on the stuff, it gets problematic. If I’m giving someone $1 million to produce Transmedia platform and strategy for my film, I want to know where that million dollars is being spent. I don’t expect to get two pages saying this is the budget–a million-dollar budget is a full budget normally. That’s how we work, but it’s not how these guys work though, so I’m not saying that they should have to conform to how we work necessarily, but there is definitely a tension there that needs to be dealt with upfront.
In television, you got a problem with the scene, you can go back relatively simply and either edit it or digitally enhance it, reshoot some of it and fix it but in cross media there’s are certain points where you can’t go back and fix things without redoing the whole process. I don’t think TV producers understand that process, so they think half way through “oh we would really like it if the character came in from the left instead of the right in that scene” without realising that for them (the transmedia team) it’s not just a matter of reshooting and re-editing, it’s completely rewriting the code to enable the character to come in from the other side.
Quite often people don’t even do very good deliverables. You get deliverables from the Transmedia producer and the producer goes “oh yes that’s fine”, but doesn’t go into them and find out exactly what they are, and at the end of their expecting something and it’s not there.
It’s a completely different language and you can’t assume that just because you know the terminology, you understand the process.
Sue Maslin
We were interested in working with companies who wanted to be part of the creative challenge… But when to came to crunch time in terms of exactly how many people, how long, who you get to work with it was explained to us that this wasn’t a commercial proposition, you’ve got to fit around with what we’re doing commercially and the process was curtailed as a result. In each case it went back to give us a brief will go away and come back and tell you what the project is going to be.
The other thing that is very common in this whole area… Is all the promises in the world, yes we can do this and we can do this and then when you really find out what they can do, usually they can’t tell you what they can do, because usually you can see what they can do until they build it, then it comes back and you find that they actually didn’t know how to do it and it was trial and error for them as well.
Jenny Lalor
I think there’s a disconnect with broadcasters, with everybody saying “oh and by the way we also need a trans media strategy along with the project you delivering, not taking into account what it costs even just to get someone to build your website not even an interactive anything, you can even afford that.
Nathan Anderson
I think one of the critical issues around some of the interactive agencies out there right now who are delivering some of this work – and they are doing a good job of it – but they are very much thinking of this from the same point of view as a traditional media producer.
If you looking at ad agencies – they create some work and they deliver it and then they don’t have any ongoing role in its management for maintenance – because it is a short term campaigns and so it might have two three-month window and on it.
Christy Dena
Transmedia projects often involve professionals from different industries or artforms working together. Most people are skilled in a certain industry, such as film, TV, digital, or gaming. A producer in an industry knows the top professionals around, standardised work processes, and everything that makes up its creative ecology. When you create projects that involve more than one medium — such as a feature film and a game – then the development and production process now involves two different sets of industrial practices. This is what makes transmedia development and production hard: it involves working across silos. Not everyone is capable, or interested, in doing this successfully.
Jenny Lalor
I always give an example to people when we are having this conversation of when I was building my house I got a call from my builder because the frame was up and you have to choose the colour of the roof. I said “why, is it because it’s going on this week, but there are no breaks?” And he said, “no no it’s because the roof is on before the bricks go up”. Now not in a million years would you ever this have spotted that… If you didn’t know. So that’s the kind of thing that people don’t understand is when things happen and the point at which you can change things and the cost implications of changing things. So for instance in one part of the process it might be very simple and relatively inexpensive and your Transmedia producer might be very happy to make lots of changes and then there’s a point after which every time anything changes it actually becomes really time-consuming and costs them time and money to do it.
4. The benefits of a Transmedia approach.
Lisa Gray
Multiplatform storytelling gives you an opportunity to talk to your audience, rather than talk AT your audience. Who liked to be talked at? Also, today’s audience have plenty of “passive” entertainment to choose from, but its the entertainment the audience can interact with (ie comments on YouTube, add to their Facebook) seems to be popular- if you give your audience a chance to be part of the storytelling, then your audience will take ownership over your content- Not only proud to talk about it but more than likely subsequently buy the “DVD” or the “T-shirt”.
Nathan Anderson
Another thing to bear in mind is that marketing budgets also don’t need to have a significant requirement to deliver a return on investment as long so increasing the audience for the primary platform then they’re doing their job then the requirement to return any kind of revenue isn’t there.
Producers should understand that a well executed Transmedia plan should contribute to your regularly and not really drain on your production budget.
So it’s not about thinking of this as another mouth to feed necessarily, but it’s about thinking of this as another market that can be exploited for your IP.
Traditional media producers if they want to simplify the whole Transmedia process is to think about it as story it’s not about anything more complex than that. In the same way that a great story leads to a great media project when it is executed properly essentially it’s the same thing. So it’s just thinking about from the raw idea, what is a story about and how can it be leveraged and realised across as many touch points as possible. If they can keep that in mind then it becomes potentially a less daunting prospect because it’s not necessarily a language that traditional media producers aren’t familiar with–story is key to developing a good property.
Really Transmedia is not changing that anyway it’s still about the story, in fact it’s more about the story than ever and the technical execution of that is about finding the right people to help you with but really it should always be true to the story and good Transmedia properties do that. It’s not about technical wizardry it’s about story.
Jenny Lalor
Plus remembering that cross-platform should never be done just for the sake of it, you shouldn’t be doing it just because everyone’s doing it. People think “Ooh, I have to have a website” so they build a website and it’s got the character names and what they do, who they are and storylines about them, but people don’t think about using the medium to actually drive an audience to the TV, because at the end of the day, TV producers are funded by networks, and the networks are driven by ratings.
Christy Dena
I have found short-cutting the why should we do this, and going straight to how you do it, inspires more people to delve into the area. Getting writers, designers, producers and directors to share their stories on the creative challenges they faced and how they’re expressing themselves via this combination of media, attracts the kind of professionals who will do something meaningful with it.
5. Deciding on a native transmedia project or a multiplatform marketing strategy.
Christy Dena
A “transmedia native” project is one that is designed to be transmedia from the beginning. It doesn’t mean it is implemented as transmedia in the beginning as each element may take time to secure finance. A non-native transmedia project describes single-medium projects that have other elements added later. For instance, a feature film is written to be entirely self-contained and then a game is added. This approach virtually never works because there are stories/experiences that are suitable for a transmedia implementation and ones that are not. A transmedia writer, for instance, thinks episodically because the story does not end at the end of the film, novel or episode.
When people say a transmedia project is just marketing, they’re usually referring to the “other” content being created for promotional reasons only. A transmedia project is one in which all of the elements in all of the media contribute equally to the meaning-making process. If something is purely promotional, it really isn’t intended to contribute to the story at all. In the past, the majority of content created in other media was purely for economic reasons. TV shows, novels, games, and so on were all created to leverage an appealing property for financial gain. Quality control ran as far as a visual style guide and that is about it because the original creators saw all these additional elements as exterior to the main story. You can have marketing projects that are transmedia: an alternate reality game commissioned to help promote a film for instance. Such projects can be transmedia-native, meaningful and marketing.
Nathan Anderson
When you look at it from a marketing point of view it’s definitely about creating an outcome, so it’s saying let’s create an interactive extension for the property and we will call the “transmedia” because the audience can get involved. Where is its most powerful I think when it’s about the process from day one that gives an audience richer experience.
Jennifer Wilson
So to me, the best things happen when it starts up early. You are making a piece of screen content, you start off with the Transmedia produces in the beginning, and you talk about what could happen and how it’s going to work. We’ve got that with the broadcaster at the moment – we got involved with them at the script stage and so we were able to throw some things into the script that work for what we are going to do in the Transmedia space – about the multiple stories. When they start filming, we will probably start telling them about some of the things we want filmed that will work for what we want and will probably start putting up some little elements of games, some little elements of story or we will start writing the blogs of some of the characters that are assisting in our Transmedia experience and they will go out. They will be out in the public domain for people to explore. So they clearly have a marketing role, but they clearly have a story role too. And so for me the best thing is where it matches together. If you start your Transmedia at the right time it can influence the linear story. It creates rabbit holes for people to discover… So we have rabbit holes on you chewed, we have rabbit holes on a game site we have a rabbit hole in a bunch of blogs. So those sorts of rabbit holes where people go “oh that’s interesting, where does that go to?” So that for me is where it’s ideal.
6. What’s needed now to ensure harmonious collaboration.
Lisa Gray
I was a linear producer and now I am a multiplatform producer. Quite honestly, both styles producers have to make good stories with to the highest quality achievable- its just how the content is consumed by the audience its different. A linear producers relationship with it’s audience is passive, whereas a mulitplatform producers relationship with its audience is interactive. From my perspective, I think we just have to remember that its all just different ways to tell stories for our audience.
I often see the first mistake linear producers make when they want to make their first multiplatform concept is use tools that they think will make it work rather than researching if their target audience is actually “using” that tool.
Don’t just push to make something a console or an APP because it is the trendy. Research your audience and how they like to be entertained. Also, really plan your content rollout. Make sure that you are not just delivering your content to its audience the same time the linear is delivered- too much can be overwhelming for an audience, and it will loose its impact.
Christy Dena
There are hardly any transmedia producers in Australia, and even then they may not be skilled in the combination of artforms you’re working in. Therefore, there needs to be improved communication and mutual understanding between writers, designers, producers, and directors, in different industries. At present, the gaming industry is quite isolated from the film, TV, digital, and publishing industries. The more industry events that encourage cross-fertilisation would be beneficial. A good transmedia producer (writer, designer, director), is familiar with the processes of more than one industry. They understand the different jargon, artistic and economic goals, processes, people and how to facilitate getting the best of everyone. In the end, no matter what tools, jargon and processes employed, true professionals connect at the same level: a passion for good characters, conflicts, journeys, artistic design, moving your audience/players, and rewarding production processes.
Nathan Anderson
What interactive platforms allow us to do is have an ongoing connection with the audience and, and that therefore means that it’s not finished and any means in fact when you release it, in fact it’s only at the beginning of the cycle in terms of its maturation and development from the creative point of view. So once you start interacting with the audience you then have an opportunity to optimise the experience through further development.
It’s a fundamental shift in thinking about when about what happens you produce the media with interactive platform. You have to understand that release means the market is probably one of the first steps you should be thinking about as opposed to one of the final steps as it is for traditional media.
Lisa Gray
There is a very bare essential multiplatform workflow-
1) Idea
2) Decide target Audience and then decide on platform choices.
3) Select Technical partners and scope (make sure you get the best people on the job)
4) Full strategy and rollout
5) Finalise budget and timelines (make sure include $$ for moderator and adjustment to react to how your audience plays with your content).
6) Build (the workflow of this component depends on your finance strategy)
7) Release of Phase 1- develop phase 2 and assets
8) Analysis and decision making for phase 2
9) Launch phase 2 or shut down- depending on its success.