So the reading we looked at this week,titled Signs, Systems and Complexity of Transmedia Storytelling by Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, was pretty hard to digest…actually it was extremely hard to digest. In saying that, there were a lot of parts that did make sense to me when Gambarato directly related the theories to storytelling and transmedia storytelling….but my goodness when the equations got involved, my brain just said goodnight and switched off.
I feel this quote is quite relevant to my groups transmedia project, and probably all groups in fact..
‘A fundamental aspect of TS yet is the relationship between the story and people interested in it, which could correspond to the essential relationship between the constituent elements of a system and its environment’ (Gambarato, 2012 p.74).
Gambarato goes further to explain Henry Jenkins concept of ‘performance’, that being in order to gain a relationship with the audience, interactivity and participation are key elements to achieve this. Gambarato does note that these two terms are different, as an interactive project ‘allows the audience to relate to it somehow, for instance, by pressing a button or control, deciding the path to experience it, but not being able to co-create and change the story’ and a participatory project invites ‘viewers/users/players to engage in a way that expresses their creativity in a unique, and surprising manner, allowing them to influence the final result’ (Gambarato, 2012 p.74).
When reflecting on my groups transmedia story project, Project Instafame, it is evident that our project falls into the first category mentioned, being a interactive project. My worry at this stage is that the story is engaging enough for an audience to want to navigate through to the final instalment and I know I am not the only one thinking this in my group, perhaps a topic for discussion in our next group meeting.
Me reading Signs, Systems and Complexity of Transmedia Storytelling by Renira Rampazzo Gambarato.
This week nothing was set in class, so we had the chance to work away at our Transmedia final assignment, Project Instafame.
At this point in time we are still wrapping our heads around the story and how it will be dispersed through our different social media platforms.
We have started to draft up a rough timeline on butchers paper, in order to visualise the actual timeline of events and also fill in the gaps between the significant moments in Emily’s life.
Our group has decided to set up a meeting outside of class, as well as using class time next week to kick off the narrative of Emily’s tumblr posts. Fortunately thanks to Tumblr, there is a function that enables users to que up as many posts as they like and schedule them for when the user wishes it to be posted. As a group we plan to have all Emily’s tumblr posts finished and scheduled through the tumblr, so each team member can focus on her other social media profiles as the real time events play out over the three week narrative.
This will be the main priority for this coming week.
I am really looking forward to getting our story started, I look forward to depthing the character of Emily and making her seem as believable as possible. I think it will be an really interesting experience.
The story of Emily Doee is a dark satire of the widespread obsession with internet fame or better yet, ’instafame’. The story is inspired by the superficial and edited nature of the internet, which has become the norm in this day and age. Teenagers feel the need for gratification in ‘likes’ , anonymous validation and it makes you wonder that surely this has a dangerous effect on self-esteem and self-worth, yet it seems to be embraced so intensely by naive inexperienced youth. Through our character of Emily, we want to show an extreme caricature of the online lives of attention-starved teenagers. By taking this story to the extreme, we hope to highlight how absurd this culture really is.
Emily’s idol, Kylie Jenner
The video of Brendan Jordan, that inspired the project is a perfect example of this notion of ‘instafame’ and the urge for teens to feel important through validation on the internet. Which is why I personally love that we have chosen essentially a ‘nobody’ to base our whole project around from a viral video that actually made a kid (Brendan Jordan) internet famous and has become a somewhat mini celebrity, modelling for American Apparel and having a very successful youtube channel.
Through the different social media platforms of Tumblr, Instagram and Qoome, we want to develop a believable and life-like presence of a teenage girl that is creating herself a new online identity. We also want the audience to take on the role as someone wasting time online, ‘stalking’ someone for personal entertainment and sick self indulgent pleasure.
Each different social media plays a important part in the overall story of Emily Doee as each will represent a different version of Emily. Instagram being the perfectly curated life of Emily, Tumblr being the personal thoughts and emotions expressed to anyone that will listen and Qoome, a platform for people in Emily’s life to be express there feelings towards her, putting her in the context of the world around her. By using these multiple social media profiles, the audience will have to guide themselves through each new content posted to understand the full transmedia narrative of Emily Doee.
I also want to note a point that was not covered in the pitch earlier this week, the use of the ‘remix’ theory will be prominent throughout the content in our transmedia narrative. All images used will be found images as well as other various internet content, and by using tools such as ‘reblog’ on Tumblr. We will be appropriating each content to fit within Emily’s portrayal of her life, which is very typical in this internet day and age, as anything can be used and uncredited. Which includes the character Emily herself, we chose her ‘image’ from a video found on the internet and is now the face of the whole project.
Within the group we made the executive decision to share each of the job roles, with a rotating roster each week. Since we are dealing with three different social media platforms, each week a member of the group will be assigned to one of Emily’s different social media profiles and will be responsible for maintaining the content that is posted, in order to keep up the facade of a real girl updating her social media in real time. The group decided upon this decision in order to keep the work load between team members fair and balanced as due to the nature of the different profiles, some may be a lot more work than others and would be unfair if it was not rotated between each members evenly.
As a group in the planning process of creating the character Emily, we decided upon a set list of topics, interests and inspirations that are key to Emily as a character, as well a list of dislikes and pet peeves. This resulted in the creation of our ‘bible of Emily’. By doing this, any team member will be able to logon to any of Emily’s social media accounts, refer back to the bible of Emily and post or reblog content that is not only appropriate and faithful to the character of Emily (something that she would post), but also crucial to the overall transmedia that is being told.
This week in the Story Lab, our project team was full speed ahead in preparing for our third project brief. The project, now titled ‘instafame’, was presented by my team members and myself in front of a panel of four lecturers and the rest of the class.
It was an really interesting process watching each group get up infront of everyone and how they went about there presentation. I must say I was really impressed with the creative ideas each group had come up with for their transmedia story. It was also fascinating to see the different prototypes from each group, some groups had already prepared footage or even filmed teaser trailer, other groups had created functioning websites, it was awesome!
I feel pretty positive about my groups presentation, we got all of the information across and it seemed clear and coherent enough to our panel members. Something that has always been a problem for myself is public speaking, so hopefully I personally did not speak to fast or stutter over words in my portion of the presentation. Overall the experience did help me in terms of getting confidence in a situation like that as maybe someday I will find myself in that place again, presenting in front of a panel.
So this week we had a guest speaker, Dr Troy Innocent from Swinburne University! Troy talked about to us Alternate Reality Games and his game he created that was played in Melbourne and Sydney. It was interesting hearing how players participated and how hard it was to draw audiences.
ARG’s are very impressive but they seem like so much hard work!! I hope one day I participate in an ARG!!
Stolen from (or remixed) Dan’s Twitter, https://twitter.com/DrDanielBinns/status/588576556227776513/photo/1
In this weeks class, we all took turns to present our argument that we explored throughout our Assignment 2: Research Report.
It was great to hear everyone’s thought process and what they ended up debating in their essays. The topic question I choose for my essay, was ‘The viral campaign for 2008’s The Dark Knight was incredibly innovative for its time. Is it, though, an example of transmedia storytelling?’. There was a number of other students that choose this topic question as well, so when it came to going around the room to discuss how we individually approached our essays, it was really interesting to hear the different perspectives on whether the viral campaign was an example of transmedia storytelling and how each individual argued their point.
Dan also asked us to write in this weeks blog post, our new philosophy of storytelling, that is based on the research you did….so my new philosophy is everything is a story! No matter how it’s told, everything tells a story. There are no limits or rules to storytelling, it can be displayed through so many mediums! I know that probably sounds very ambiguous but it’s very hard to define something as massive as the idea of storytelling I believe….so that is my philosophy.
In this weeks class we looked at the role of women in the ‘superhero’ story. I found this very interesting to discuss, as it combines two fantastic topics I enjoy, feminism and superheros! We looked at Wonder Woman and how she was created to represent a strong female role model that fights for love, peace and gender equality. I must say I was very surprised to learn that she was created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston in 1941, seems very progressive for its time and has definitely lead me to a new found appreciation for her character as I’ve never really been a big fan of any other DC characters apart from Batman, I grew up favouring Marvel Universe instead…
yay positive female role models!
Speaking of Marvel, we then moved on to look at the character Agent Carter, who is a part of the Marvel film universe in the Captain America films. We looked at the different mediums her character has travelled across, first starting in the Captain America film, then to the ‘Marvel Short’ and ending in her own spin-off TV series. Its interesting how she was portrayed across the three transmedia continuations. I would say she started of very strong, representing a female character that was not just a love interest which is fantastic to see in a genre that is so heavily dominated by males. As her character moves onto the Marvel short and the spin-off series, I would say her representation starts to go downhill, to the point where I would say her fight for equality becomes comical, becoming somewhat of a gimmick. I found this interesting quote online which I think makes a good point…
“While this response is obviously well-intentioned, the fervent focus on Peggy Carter’s gender (ABC’s tagline for the show is “Sometimes the best man for the job…. is a woman“) could be considered its own form of sexism, and could ultimately be damaging to the show’s quality. It brings to mind the much-researched sociological phenomenon of stereotype threat, where people from marginalized social groups experience anxiety from having their gender or race emphasized and ultimately perform worse in tests because of it.”
– H. Shaw-Williams, Screen Rant
Anyway I could rant about this for ages but perhaps I better leave it here….
Mardy, Sarah, Matt and I have chosen to base our transmedia project around a non-fictional image of person and creating a fictional life around them through the use of social media platforms such as tumblr, vine, instagram and facebook.
The fictional character will be an exaggerated example of the youth of today, those who are obsessed with internet fame and online gratification. The initial idea behind our story is that this fictional character will have been featured in the background of a viral video, the result of this triggering their obsession with creating an online persona.
In this weeks class we looked at the process of adaptation, in particular we focused on The Animatrix and this weeks reading by Umberto Eco titled “Casablanca”: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage.
The Animatrix is a really interesting example of a adaptation, as it was not made by its original creators, The Wachowskis, but was given their tick of approval. The adaptation is told through the medium of anime, and really adds to the original film, The Matrix, as it serves a prequel mini-series. We discussed in class the many evident ‘push off points’ in The Animatrix that directly linked to The Matrix film and also how audiences are able to recognise this. An example of this is shown in the second story, The Second Renaissance Part II. The audience is able to see the ‘pods’ that the humans are kept in which is of course known as the Matrix, which is a very key part of the film and also directly thinks the adaptation back to its source.
Due to the philosophical nature of the story of The Matrix, it really gives the potential for possibilities of adaptation and giving it the ‘cult’ film status. In the Umberto Eco reading, he discusses what he believes makes a ‘cult’ film. One of these beliefs is that the film must provide a ‘fully furnished world’, which is key to a successful adaptation. In order for a story to be able to be told through trans-media storytelling, the original source must have a strong and rich story-world. It is quite evident that the film The Matrix has a strong storyworld, not only was it adapted to the anime short series but it was also adapted to various video games and graphic novels.
I must say I really enjoyed The Animatrix, such an interesting concept and visually how it’s told through the art style of Anime is just so cool! I will definitely watch the rest of the mini episodes when I get the chance…
In the age of post-broadcast television, the concept of ‘complex narratives’ became increasingly popular in the 1990’s as TV shows began to move on from episodic formats, as seen in sitcoms and soap operas, into sophisticated storytelling better known as ‘quality TV’. Shows such as The Sopranos and other HBO branded programmes (“it’s not TV, it’s HBO”) were at the forefront of this movement. In the rise of ‘quality TV’ programmes, the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired in the U.S in 1997. The concept of the show was adapted from the 1992 film of the same name by it’s creator Joss Whedon. What made BtVS stand out from other ‘quality TV’ programmes of this era was it’s unique ability to remix so many different conventions from genres such as horror, comedy, teen-drama, action adventure, just to name a few, creating its own ‘mega-mix’ as well as its use of transmedia story-telling, leading it to create the intricate story-world that is known as the ‘Buffyverse’.
The concept of ‘remixing’ is evident throughout the narrative of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. First of all it’s initial idea is an adaptation of the ‘vampire’ story, which has been remixed throughout different forms of media since the 1800’s. Yet BtVS does not always follow the predictable conventions of a horror story (like one involving vampires) would usually follow, a great example of this being the character Buffy herself. Physically her appearance is one of the most predictable cliches of the horror genre, the pretty blonde girl who is killed in the first act. But Whedon changes the game by remixing this archetypal character, explaining that idea was to “…create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim” (Whedon, 2001).
The show’s ability to remix conventions from many genres, in particular its combination of ‘teen drama’ and ‘horror’, set it apart from any show at the time and still stands to this day. As explored in Laura Suitsted’s essay Breaking Conventions to Build the Buffyverse, the show’s early seasons prominently make use of the metaphor that ‘High-school is hell’, a well known trope to the teen genre. But Whedon remixes this idea by making it far more literal, that high school is hell with real monsters in fact. An example of this is the episode The Pack, where the main ‘pack’ of bullies at Sunnydale high become possessed with the spirit of a cruel hyenas and then literally prey on the weak students by eating them. Or the episode Witch, when Buffy befriends a girl named Amy in cheerleading tryouts who is under intense pressure from her mother, a former head cheerleader in her day, to make the squad. After failing to make the team, it is revealed the mother is a witch who switched bodies with her daughter, saying that Amy was wasting her youth, so she took it for herself, which no doubt is an unique take on the pressures of being a teen.
Buffy Season 8
Whedon’s ability to create the in-depth story world that is the ‘Buffyverse’, is aided by his use of transmedia storytelling. The story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was continued on in the spin-off series Angel, which followed the character of Angel and his backstory, an important part of the Buffy story-world. BtVS lasted till season 7 but Whedon continued the story on to a graphic novel titled Buffy Season 8. All of these forms of media that depict world of the Buffyverse work because they all follow the ‘coherent set of rules within the universe in which the story takes place’ (Suisted, 2005).The result of this combined with its remixing of genre is what lead BtVS to its massive cult following as well as an accredited academic field, which both stand strong till this day.
References:
– DVD Episode Commentary “Welcome To The Hellmouth” Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 20th Century Fox: Whedon, Joss, 2001.
– Suisted, Laura. (2005). Breaking Conventions to Build the Buffyverse. Available: http://www.watcherjunior.tv/01/suisted.php. Last accessed 15th Mar 2015.
