how to approach transmedia narratives

How to Approach Transmedia Narratives

BAVC, San Francisco Oct 2012

Robert Pratten CEO & Founder, Transmedia Storyteller Ltd

@robpratten

Conducttr brings your story to life

What is Transmedia Storytelling?

Storyworld

4

Storyworld

5

Your cause

Your cause

Audience at the heart

Transmedia’s Top 5 Best Practice

Discoverability

Retention Participation

ignite the Core all Appetites

How do you express your premise?

Audience participation opportunities

What will the audience do? How will they be engaged?

Companion Actor

Outsider Observer

THINK

FEEL

DO

Moral dilemmas, meaningful choices

Role-play, provide building blocks

Reflection, consideration Exploring, discovering

Incit

Incitement Bristol,UK 2012; by splash & ripple

Be surprising, playful and live?

Participatory Learning

Client’s objectives:

• Teach ethics and financial responsibility

• Self-guided problem solving

• Collaborative working

• New media comprehension

Solution:

• Simulation of real-life scenario

Students love to role-play

Fictional environmental activist

Traces of hope

Starting to Write

Scoping the project

Story development

Example

Appi Citi for TransbayFest

• Background – Something fun & “transmedia” for Transbay Fest – Theme of “Connectedness” and “Resilient Cities”

• Premise – connectedness = happiness

• Goal – Everyone to have a fun time (by connecting) – Connect people to theme of connectedness

• Participation – Casual: tweet your mood - “@MCU02 #happy4” – Deeper: find node pieces – head, heart, soul and ego

Story & Characters

• HarryHackster – protagonist

• MCU02 – Harry’s computer

• WingmanSF – Harry’s (comic) friend

• GhostSh3ll – Hackbot (villian)

Story Harry is local hipster/coder working on a tech start-up called Appi Citi Appi Citi measures the mood of the city and responds to increase the connectedness The heart of Appi Citi is a computer called @MCU02

Appi Citi

Closing night party

Opening night party

Social media participation

Characters and Platforms

• Tumblr – long form content (Story), discovery

• Twitter - discovery #transbayfest, ease-of-use

• SMS – immediacy

• Flyers - discovery

• Optional: Mobile app – discovery + stickiness

Appi Citi – initial sketch

Tweet me your mood! #happy1 thru #happy5 or if you're sad #sad1 thru #sad5 where 5 is the strongest feeling. #TransBayFest #AppiCiti

Collect 4 node pieces from around SF to become a node: Heart, Head, Soul, Ego. Tweet the codeword you find on flyers at #TransBayFest

Appi Citi - overview

Appi Citi on Mobile app

Key points

• Know your premise

• Know your audience

• Write for participation

The End

Robert Pratten robert@tstoryteller.com

@robpratten USA: +1 415 287 4150

Europe: +44 207 193 4567