This week in class, we worked on our transmedia assignment, as well as worked through quite a difficult reading. The reading was by Renira Gambarato and was actually quite a hard one to get through. Honestly, it sort of lost me at the bit with the algebra…

…but after picking it up again, there are a couple of things I can take from it. The main of which is that “a transmedia story could be seen as a super system composed of nested systems”.

• The super system is the transmedia storytelling: the interaction and participation of the audience and on what platform.
• The system is the story: plot character, genre, location etc.
• And the sub-system is the character: hero’s journey, character arc, demographic.

Also, the unfolding of content is what is important. If certain elements don’t add to the story then they are not necessarily important. The story needs to bring together people who share common interests and goals. They need to want to interact with the story. The relationship between the audience and the story falls under two categories, the first of which is interactivity (where audiences view the story but aren’t able to change it) and participation (where the audience engages and have an impact on the story). An example in the reading was Sofia’s Diary which is a multiplatform production by BeActive. What it is, is Sofia asking for advice from the audience about how to survive high school. Through the use of online blogs, twitter, texts, magazines etc, the content of Sofia’s Diary was able to be effected by what the audience gave back (i.e. a ‘participation’ relationship between the audience and the story). Gambarato goes on to explain that because members of the audience may have impacted the direction in which the production went, they felt that they owned a certain part of the story and hence had a greater respect, involvement and appreciation of the story.

Something else which I took from the reading was that Gambarato states that a transmedia story needs to have at least 5 main areas in order to be engaging. I do believe our story has that many areas and so will hopefully be somewhat engaging.