If you're a transmedia enthusiast you may be wondering why there's been no massive campaign rolled out around J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness. The Wrap has the reason:
Competing ambitions between Paramount, CBS and Abrams' production company Bad Robot over merchandising surrounding the first film in the rebooted "Star Trek" franchise led the director to curtail plans to turn the series into a multi-platform experience that spanned television, digital entertainment and comic books, according to an individual with knowledge of the dispute.
Further down the article there's quotes from transmedia luminary and Starlight Runner CEO Jeff Gomez. The author of the article even surmises that the inability to get a multi-platform experience going is what motivated Abrams to jump ship for Star Wars.
TL;DR: It’s not J.J.’s fault, his people said they fixed it!
Hey gang, I don't usually like to just drop a press release here but since it's a travel day (and there was that NPR piece earlier) I'm going to have to give in to the Dark Side for a second.
Here's the brief: Welcome to Sanditon made its debut today, with a massive Twitter push and the first video on YouTube. We talked with Executive Producer Jay Bushman about the series and transmedia a little over a week ago, and now there is the following announcement about the team behind Sanditon and TheLBD partnering with the new Theatrics platform, which will enable fans of the new show to "create (their) own characters and interact directly" with the story.
I need to dig into this, but I also need to dig into the Grapevine. Have at it:
Jay Bushman isn't just a member of the transmedia community in Los Angeles he's also the founder. Okay, co-founder, but still.
Bushman was the transmedia producer on the mega-popular web adaptation of Pride and Prejudice known as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and is now the Executive Producer and co-showrunner on the mini-series followup Welcome to Sanditon. Sanditon, like The LBD, is an adaptation of a Jane Austen work. Only in this case it is an unfinished novel.
Watch Jay and myself as we talk about the challenges of adapting novels–unfinished or otherwise–into transmedia works, the state of multi-platform storytelling, and whatever else our nerdtacular brains light upon.
Today we spoke with Alex LeMay (@thealexlemay) the CEO of The Shadow Gang who call themselves a “new breed of entertainment studio”. The company has built a new one stop shop– or turnkey– platform for creating multiplatform storytelling experiences called Galahad.
Catch the archive of our discussion with LeMay about the road that led to Galahad. Hint: it leads through film, TV, advertising and a multi-platform campaign for the book BZRK.
Case in point, Face Dance, a motion capture based interactive animation experiement. Partcipants get to control a virtual Michael Jackson avatar… with their face.
Playwright and experience designer James Carter (@jdcarter) is debuting the second in his series of transmedia plays–NY_Hearts– in Park Slope, Brooklyn this weekend.
Part walking tour, part love story, NY_Hearts offers people a new way to discover NYC by stepping into the characters’ shoes. Set in four different NYC neighborhoods, participants enjoy drinks and other surprises from local businesses, which are featured in an audio story shared over mobile devices. Other bits of the story include character websites, online character vlogs, original music and visual art.
It’s a great time to be into transmedia and in New York this month. Between Tribeca’s Storyscapes and Carter’s project there is a lot to see. Hmm… maybe I should have Kickstartered a trip to NYC for this week.
NY_Hearts: Park Slope folds in experiences in the neighborhood–drinks and a few surprises–into the ticket price. The “curtain” lifts on the self-guided love story at 2PM every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through May the 12th.
So earlier today I waxed poetic about EVE Online and how the company behind it, CCP, is using feedback from fans and user generated content to help define its ficitonal universe.
What should I find warming my inbox but a pitch by Disney for their new “Kingdom Keepers Insider app”.
This groundbreaking app will give fans the ability to follow along as Ridley Pearson writes, voting on plot points, character involvement, and locations – even contributing ideas for dialogue!
Now I had no idea what Kingdom Keepers was until about five minutes ago, and I’m definitely not the target demographic for a kids fiction series about the holographic dream projections of teenagers who fight Disney villains for control of the theme parks and cruise ships.
Okay, I was ONCE in that demographic, but that was at least a year ago.
What’s fascinating here is that at the very least there is an attempt to create the appearance of direct interaction between creator and audience. This for a work that is aimed squarely at a generation that has never known a world without the internet.
The massively multiplayer game EVE Online is a siren song for sci-fi fans looking to lose themselves in a starfaring society. Those who grew up on Star Trek, Star Wars and the Wing Commander games can’t help but feel the pull of the 10-year-old game and community.
That decade, however, can act as a barrier. The EVE Universe is complex. Thick novels that detail the thousands of years of history. Massive factions made out of real players who have competed with each other for a decade. Layers of lore–that’s the gaming term for backstory–which is as daunting to some as the elaboarate continuties of comic books and Doctor Who are to others.
At least that’s how I feel about EVE.
[Read up on the transmedia strategy the game's makers are using to combat this after the jump.]
The National Film Board of Canada have been crafting one fascinating transmedia experience after another. Last year’s Bear 71 was an immersive film experience that communicated the plight of wild bears in human populated areas. It really wowed us at Sundance.
The NFB’s next big installation project is A Journal of Insomnia, and it will make its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival’s inaugural Storyscapes venue.
Now streaming: the archive of our Google Hangout On-Air with Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny, one of the designers of the new audio adventure game FREEQ (iOS/Android).
I first encountered Sifteo Cubes back at IndieCade last October, and spent some time playing around with the little blocks which I first mistook for iPod Nanos.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and promise you that this will be the first of two posts on Present Shock, the Douglas Rushkoff book that has been getting a mountain of attention in the tech press since it was released earlier this month.
