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Nov
23
Henry Jenkins, Transmedia
Filed Under Media
LA Times’ Zachary Pincus-Roth wrote a great introduction of Henry Jenkins, the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at USC. Jenkins just arrived at USC, after 20 years at MIT.
For what it’s worth, I love it when people find ways to apply their wisdom in new contexts. Going from techie MIT in Cambridge, Mass. to pop-driven USC in Los Angeles is quite a culture clash.
Jenkins has been studying what he calls “transmedia” storytelling, “in which a story spans multiple media in a coordinated way.”
In the traditional Hollywood model, the novelization, video game or website simply restates the characters or the plot of a film or a TV show. In transmedia stories, the creators of the entertainment will use those extensions to, say, fill in the gaps in a narrative or look at events from a minor character’s point of view — all of which combine into one big story that audiences have to piece together. “It appeals to the hunting-and-gathering impulses of fans,” Jenkins says. For instance, “District 9″ has online documentaries, websites for fake alien-rights organizations and, yes, benches, all of which help drive home the human-alien divide in the film’s fictional Johannesburg. “Those benches are designed to shape our experience of the film,” Jenkins says. “They’re not just designed to get us into the theater.”
Transmedia is certainly an emerging method for maximizing the plethora of media options available to storytellers and marketers.
Jenkins acknowledges that transmedia has its challenges. Does it exclude moviegoers who just want their films to begin when they enter the multiplex and end two hours later? What if some people watch the TV show first and the webisode second, when the reverse would be much more gratifying? And can the satisfaction of piecing together these bits of storytelling ever measure up to the simple pleasure of watching the hero defeat the bad guys? “It may be that you try some interesting stuff,” Jenkins says, “but at the end of the day, our grandest ambitions aren’t going to be realizable.”
Definitely a subject and conversation I’ll be following…
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One Response to “Henry Jenkins, Transmedia”
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Brad, just happened upon your blog and glad I did. I’m a documentary filmmaker who has a project I see as bigger than one film, and had heard of the 360 label recently, but not ‘transmedia.’ There are a number of ’strands’ for people to follow in the stories that comprise the project, and a big challenge is to target an audience, when that could be quite broad. I like what they summed up on your on-line conversation with Phil Cooke on conversantlife.com – culture is greater than vision. That gives me lots to consider.