Transmedia Practice: a Collective Approach [1 ed.] 9781848882614, 9789004374133

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Transmedia Practice

Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard Dr Ken Monteith Advisory Board Karl Spracklen Katarzyna Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter

Kenneth Wilson

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris John Parry S Ram Vemuri Peter Twohig

A Research and Development project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/research/research-nexus/ Culture and Community Nexus ‘Football and Communities’

In collaboration with

2014

Transmedia Practice: A Collective Approach

Edited by

Debra Polson, Ann-Marie Cook, JT Velikovsky and Adam L. Brackin

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2014 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-261-4 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2014. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction: Understanding the Collective Approach Debra Polson and Ann-Marie Cook Part I

Sustaining Future Practices Transmedia as ‘Unmixed Media’ Aesthetics Christy Dena

Part II

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3

The Business Case for Transmedia Joanne Jacobs

17

Measuring Online User Engagement: The Limitations of Web Analytics Ann-Marie Cook and Debra Polson

25

Multi-Platform Storytelling and the ‘Niche’ Market: Producing Low-Budget Transmedia Projects Natalie Krikowa

35

Intersecting Contexts of Transmedia Practices Transmediated Educational Futures: Case Studies in the Use of Transmedia in Educational Contexts Hart Cohen

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Produsage of Transmedia Stor\ZRUOGV Stephen Barrass

63

Transmedia Toe-Dipping: Kiss Kill by Jeni Mawter Jeni Mawter

71

Transmedia Activism: Exploring the Possibilities in West Papua Tanya Notley and Alexandra Crosby

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Video Installation as an Immersive Storytelling and Story Sharing Experience Diane Charleson

89

Two Successful Transmedia Film Case Studies: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012) JT Velikovsky

103

The Dead Boy’s Narrative Transmediated Toni-Matti Karjalainen

119

Zombies, Run! Rethinking Immersion in Light of Nontraditional Gaming Contexts Clare Southerton

131

ARG for ARG’s Sake: The Authenticity of Non-Commercial Alternate Reality Games Adam L. Brackin

143

War Games: Interactive Discourses of War in Videogames Daniel Binns

153

The Impact of Game Design in Generating the Value of Virtual Items Ping-I (Adam) Ho

163

Introduction: Understanding the Collective Approach Debra Polson and Ann-Marie Cook The use of different media platforms to tell stories has become standard practice in the contemporary digital landscape. The constituent parts of such transmedia projects have value in their own right, but the resulting compositional ‘whole’ generates a unique interface which facilitates dynamic experiences that have captured the attention of creative professionals, industry stakeholders, researchers and others with an investment in new media practices. Regardless of whether these projects are called transmedia, multi-platform, cross-media or something else, there is no denying their profound impact upon the traditional relationship between media producers and audiences, and upon digital content and the devices used to produce and consume it. Transmedia is the product of interaction across multiple disciplines, leaving very few fields of theory and practice unaffected. Consequently, there is a temptation to amalgamate these creative practices into a singular discipline, especially in academic institutions who see this as an opportunity to re-kindle and re-market outmoded curricula. This publication presents an alternative, collective approach that supports an emerging community and promotes the intellectual and professional diversity that underpins transmedia. Under this approach, rigid disciplinary demarcations become porous fields whose contours exist in constant flux as a result of engagement with other knowledge systems and practices. Our collective approach embraces the knowledge and experience that emerges from fields and disciplines connected to transmedia whilst avoiding the limitations that arise from discipline-centric methodologies. The transmedia collective embodies a multidisciplinary approach that supports the investigation of questions around emergence, implications and potential for future development. This volume presents an ideal opportunity for a collective of researchers, emerging artists and industry practitioners to explore together a diverse range of issues pertaining to industry development, audience and user engagement, research methods, curriculum development and the diverse contexts and uses of transmedia products. In section one, Sustaining Future Practices, we explore emerging models for defining stakeholder needs, understanding resource requirements and measuring the value and success of transmedia productions. Grassroots, independent and industry producers play equally crucial roles in promoting innovation in transmedia. Yet the needs, opportunities and challenges associated with each sector have yet to be fully understood. The chapters in this section shed light on factors that are vital to the sustainability of this mode of media practice regardless of the size, scope or resourcing of the project. Christy Dena’s ‘Transmedia as “Unmixed Media” Aesthetics’ demonstrates that the gathering of these practices reveals an important phenomenon that has emerged in the activities of individuals and companies, with varying aesthetic and economic motivations and skill. In ‘The

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__________________________________________________________________ Business Case for Transmedia’, Joanne Jacobs highlights the importance of presenting a strong business case that articulates the value of transmedia in terms of return on investment and measurable audience engagement. Ann-Marie Cook and Debra Polson in ‘Measuring Online User Engagement: The Limitations of Web Analytics’ take the view that traditional audience metrics are ill-equipped to capture the complex nature of participation across multiple platforms. They examine why innovation in the identification and assessment of user engagement is vital to the success of both individual projects and the sustainability of this mode of media production as a whole. Natalie Krikowa in ‘Multi-Platform Storytelling and the “Niche” Market: Producing Low-Budget Transmedia Projects’ uses the case study of the web series The Newtown Girls to highlight the challenges of producing projects for ‘niche’ audiences that are marginalised within mainstream media contexts. She also demonstrates how transmedia storytelling sets a new benchmark for participatory culture by giving audiences agency over their media consumption. The second section, Intersecting Contexts of Transmedia Practices, uses the juxtaposition of a diverse collection of case studies to transcend not only the debates about how to define transmedia, but also the professional and disciplinary boundaries that impose artificial constraints upon the way transmedia projects are approached and understood. Tussles over nomenclature and the criteria used to define what constitutes transmedia may have a certain intellectual appeal, but making such concerns the focus of attention can foster narrow meanings of transmedia and leave participants more resolved in their own views rather than open to embracing other ideas. Approaches that impose a monolithic conceptualisation of transmedia or single it out as a discipline unto itself are illsuited to a creative practice whose diverse production methods and applications resist such impulses for containment. As an alternative, the case studies featured in this section approach transmedia from a range of perspectives that reveal common threads, concerns, applications and practices that might otherwise be ignored or simply misunderstood when viewed in isolation through a single disciplinary lens. It also offers related projects that may fall outside the category of multi-platform experiences but which nonetheless can inform the initial development of transmedia productions. Thus, the chapters in this section have been grouped thematically in order to highlight both the versatility and expansiveness of transmedia practices. By demonstrating the range of values and applications of transmedia projects the case studies underscore further the importance of embracing business models that recognise and exploit the interdisciplinary nature of transmedia in order to achieve true sustainability. The first group of case studies deals with transmedia projects associated with the fields of education, health and activism. Hart Cohen in ‘Transmediated Educational Futures: Case Studies in the Use of Transmedia in Educational Contexts’ demonstrates how learning is an embedded feature of all storytelling. In ‘Produsage of Transmedia Storyworlds’ Stephen Barrass discusses projects that

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__________________________________________________________________ enabled students to build a framework for the peer production and social curation of transmedia storyworlds. Jeni Mawter in ‘Transmedia Toe-Dipping: Kiss Kill by Jeni Mawter’, reveals the transmedia storytelling approach behind her young adult realistic fiction novel Kiss Kill (2012). The story explores a disintegrating and explosive relationship in which narcissistic personality disorder deliberately provides multiple openings into the story for co-creation, and where multiple platforms invite reader/fan engagement and participation. Tanya Notley and Alexandra Crosby in ‘Transmedia Activism: Exploring the Possibilities in West Papua’ analyse two transmedia activist projects that address social justice issues in West Papua (Papuan Voices and The Freedom Flotilla to West Papua), raising new possibilities for what may constitute transmedia activism whilst questioning assumptions that equate transmedia storytelling with fiction. Transmedia projects derived from the fields of visual arts, film and music comprise the next group of case studies. Diane Charleson in ‘Video Installation as an Immersive Storytelling and Story Sharing Experience’ uses three case studies to argue that, as with transmedia, the form, viewing space and content of the video installation medium provides an immersive environment for the viewer to ‘read’ the images at their own pace and become self-directed in their responses to the images and the meaning making that ensues from them. JT Velikovsky in ‘Two Successful Transmedia Film Case Studies: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012)’ addresses the question of what makes a successful transmedia production by investigating how transmedia contributed to the phenomenal success of two feature films. Toni-Matti Karjalainen’s ‘The Dead Boy’s Narrative Transmediated’ explores the strategies used by Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish to construct narratives through music albums, live concerts, social media and film. He examines specific storytelling practices and fan reception associated with the Imaginaerum concept. We conclude the section with a group of case studies that examine intersections between transmedia and games. Clare Southerton in ‘Zombies, Run!’ Rethinking Immersion in Light of Nontraditional Gaming Contexts’ examines the mobile running game, ‘Zombies, Run!’, and demonstrates the need to rethink traditional notions concerning game and transmedia immersion. Adam L. Brackin in ‘ARG for ARG’s Sake: The Authenticity of Non-Commercial Alternate Reality Games’ compares participants’ perceptions of what is a ‘valid’ or ‘authentic’ experience in ARGs. Daniel Binns’ ‘War Games: Interactive Discourses of War in Videogames’ examines the influence of cinema on two video games: Call of Duty 2 (2005), and Spec Ops: The Line (2012), providing a justification of the videogame as both art form and media form. The intertextual influence of both Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1899) and the film Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Apocalypse Now (1979) is noted. In ‘The Impact of Game Design in Generating the Value of Virtual Items’, Ping-I (Adam) Ho argues for the need to reconsider the ways game design can generate the value of virtual items inside and outside Huizinga’s ‘magic

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__________________________________________________________________ circle’. The collective approach advanced in this volume positions transmedia as something dynamic. As it absorbs the current trends and advances in the constituent disciplines it undergoes constant innovation. Unlike a fixed discipline, transmedia is continually shaped and reshaped by the participation and contributions of the entire community of stakeholders. This book, therefore, seeks to initiate an ongoing dialogue into the opportunities and challenges associated with sustaining this vital creative industry.

Part I Sustaining Future Practices

Transmedia as ‘Unmixed Media’ Aesthetics Christy Dena Abstract What is ‘transmedia’? This chapter attempts to understand what this phenomenon is from a transhistorical perspective. The transhistorical nature of media combinations is interrogated in light of media specificity and in relation to the key phenomena of Intermedia. Transmedia is argued to be a transhistorical urge towards unifying that which has been artificially estranged. Key Words: Transmedia, cross-media, cross-platform, art theory, historicism, transdisciplinarity, intermedia, telematic arts, media. ***** 1. Towards Understanding the Transhistorical Urge of Transmedia Transdisciplinarity is the “intellectual space” where the nature of the manifold links among isolated issues can be explored and unveiled, the space where issues are rethought, alternatives reconsidered, and interrelations revealed. 1 Transmedia and cross-media are now commonplace in both academia and creative practice. In the last decade, there have been a number of theories put forward by media, game, narrative, art and semiotics researchers to understand what this phenomenon is. Media theorist Henry Jenkins has popularised what he calls ‘transmedia storytelling.’ 2 Narrative theorist Jill Walker Rettberg explores what she describes as ‘the emerging form of distributed narratives.’ 3 Marc Ruppel observes new structures that he describes as ‘cross-sited narratives.’ 4 Glorianna Davenport recognises ‘very distributed stories.’ 5 Game theorist Jane McGonigal focuses on ‘ubiquitous games,’ games which (among other characteristics) are ‘distributed experiences: distributed across multiple media, platforms, locations, and times.’ 6 More recently, Markus Montola explores the nature of a pervasive game as a ‘game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally or socially.’ 7 Semiotician Jay Lemke interrogates ‘the distributed franchise as a new kind of intermedium.’ 8 Artist and theorist Peter Hill observes ‘superfictions, 9 and artist and theorist Andrea Zapp groups together the practices of international artists under the term ‘networked narrative environments.’ 10 One could argue these theories are observing different phenomena. A franchise engineered by a conglomerate has nothing to do with a collaborative sticker novel initiated by two blokes tinkering with Word. A fiction expressed through the

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__________________________________________________________________ cinema and console games is markedly different to a work expressed across a few websites and a live event in a forest. Or are they? I argue these are not isolated phenomena. Indeed, I believe the nature and breadth of transmedia practice has been obscured because investigations have been specific to certain industries, artistic sectors and forms. The gathering of these all practices reveals an important phenomenon that has emerged in the practices of individuals and companies alike, across artforms, genres, industries, time and countries, with varying aesthetic and economic motivations and skill. 2. Beyond Media Specificity To keep our scope to transmedia projects, let’s begin by looking at how media, art, and gaming studies have recognised projects that involve a combination of distinct media. These media combinations include: old and new media, networked media and installations, virtual environments and the real world, art and non-art media. In media studies (which has traditionally focused on so-called mass media), the specific media combination that has been a focus is old and new media. Scholarship in the area has predominately been concerned with the displacement effects of new media. Mohan J. Dutta-Bergman, for instance, explains that theories about the relationship between the Internet and traditional media conceptualize ‘a dialectic, a manifestation of the tension between the two opposing philosophical forces of stability versus change.’ 11 Dutta-Bergman continues, explaining how media scholarship frames the Internet and traditional media with recurring discourses of supersession, constancy and displacement. 12 To combat this leaning, Dutta-Bergman explores the notion of media complementarity: where consumers don’t choose one medium over the other, but consume both. 13 Other theorists have also avoided seeing media through a supersession or competitive lens, but through an industrial and cultural convergence lens. This lens finds new and old media are characterized by their interrelations and dependencies. Of note is Dan Harries, who has characterised the ‘interaction, augmentation and interdependence arising between what can be roughly deemed as “old” media and “new” media producers’ as being ‘some of the most prominent aspects of contemporary media.’ 14 Jenkins also explains that ‘[i]f the digital revolution paradigm presumed that new media would displace old media, the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in more complex ways.’ 15 In gaming there is a growing interest in the combining of new, digital or networked media and live events. There is pervasive gaming, and what is previously called mixed reality, augmented reality or trans-reality games: which are ‘games that combine virtual gaming with game experiences staged and played in physical environments.’ 16Before trans-reality gaming emerged with such force, artist and theorist Andrea Zapp edited a collection of essays on what she described

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__________________________________________________________________ at the time as ‘networked narrative environments.’ 17 Invoking the traditional artist space of the gallery or theatre as a point-of-departure, Zapp describes the networked aspect of these works as being ‘public installations and theatrical spaces that are linked to the Internet,’ and the environment as the ‘physical installation architecture,’ with both combining ‘real and virtual role-play.’ 18 Other researchers and practitioners have highlighted the combining of multiple networked devices and public spaces in general. In 2000, for instance, the Interactive Cinema Group of the MIT Media Laboratory outlined what they term ‘very distributed storytelling’: ‘the narrative of the future will take place simultaneously in multiple venues: on networked computer workstations, in large-scale public spaces, and on small mobile devices.’ 19 These specific media combinations are evident in earlier art theories and practices as well. In 1980, artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowintz installed their ‘public communication sculpture’, ‘Hole-in-Space.’ 20 As pedestrians walked past the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, they realized the building windows were not mirroring them but were in fact broadcasting images of other people. Those other people were located at The Broadway department store, Century City, LA. As soon as each city realized they were actually communicating live (via satellite), cross-country communication ensued. Jokes were made and families and friends who hadn’t seen each other for decades reunited, remotely. Hole-in-Space is a pivotal example of what art theorist Roy Ascott later called ‘telematic art.’ Ascott explains that telematics describes ‘computer-mediated communications networking involving telephone, cable, and satellite links between geographically dispersed individuals and institutions that are interfaced to dataprocessing systems, remote sensing devices, and capacious data storage banks.’ 21 Artists who utilize such technologies engage in telematic art. Art theorist and critic Edward Shanken describes the features of Ascott’s telematic art in ways that resonate with rhetoric about contemporary practices: they permit ‘the artist to liberate art from its conventional embodiment in a physical object located in a unique geographic location;’ it ‘provides a context for interactive aesthetic encounters and facilitates artistic collaborations among globally dispersed individuals;’ and it ‘emphasizes the process of artistic creation and the systematic relationship between artist, artwork, and audience as part of a social network of communication.’ 22 But sometimes it isn’t networked technologies and environments that is the combination touted by theorists. In his essay on ‘intermedia,’ artist and scholar Dick Higgins highlights the combining of art media and life media. 23 For Higgins, there are ‘aesthetically rewarding possibilities’ for employing art media and life media such as a painting and a shoe together. 24 What are the reasons for combining such media? Shanken’s discussion of Joseph Kosuth’s 1970 work The Seventh Investigation (Art As Idea As Idea) – a work that involves a gallery installation,

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__________________________________________________________________ billboards, and a newspaper article – is relevant here. Shanken explains that Kosuth’s work investigates ‘the relationship between art and non-art ideas, the vehicles by which they are expressed, and the semiotic networks that enable and delimit their meanings in multiple contexts.’ 25 Irrespective of whether the media employed is life media (Higgins’s shoe) or mass media (Kosuth’s newspaper), the aesthetic impetus at play here (among others) is often to import non-art media into an art context and vice versa, to see how this changes our experience of the artwork, our understanding of art, and our understanding of life. Such experiments were at the time, according to Higgins, ‘relatively unexplored.’ 26 Indeed, a new or other media can be any media that is traditionally not considered art, or any media that is simply new at the time. For instance, early photography in the 1920s was described by historian Martyn Jolly as involving ‘an ever-changing mix of established media and emerging, “cutting edge” technologies.’ 27 Similarly, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during a ‘period of conglomeration within the media industries,’ writers of literature and performers in theatre were experimenting with the new medium of radio, and even attempting stories that were simultaneously performed on air and printed in magazines. 28 Observing these recurring responses, some theorists have conceptualized new media not as a specific technology but as a transhistorical phenomenon. For instance, Australian new media culture theorist and critic Darren Tofts posits that ‘cyberculture is an instance of an ongoing tendency to alteration, a re-configuration of what it means to be human in the context of technology.’ 29 Likewise, in his foreword to an edited collection, science-fiction writer William Gibson states that ‘[m]ultimedia, in my view, is not an invention but an ongoing discovery of how the mind and the universes it imagines (or vice versa, depending) fit together and interact.’ 30 When addressing the question of whether new media refers to specific technologies or any recent media, new media artist, theorist and critic Alan Sondheim claims that it is perhaps instead a state of mind: What I would honestly propose is that new media is not a _field_ but a _filter_. In this sense, fifty years from now, there would still be new media—not as a discipline, but a loose domain critiquing and producing within and upon whatever has come along at that point. In this sense, new media is not a discipline or noun or product or production but an ongoing process. 31 The same arguments have been put forward about practices related to transmedia. Theorist and critic Gene Youngblood explains that intermedia ‘has more to do with attitude than technology,’ 32 and Higgins argues that intermediality is not distinct to the 1960s, but has ‘always been a possibility since the most

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__________________________________________________________________ ancient times’ and will remain ‘a possibility wherever the desire to fuse two or more existing media exists.’ 33 The point of these discussions is to highlight that the urge to combine distinct media occurs throughout time, in mass entertainment and independent arts, with any media that happens to be new or different at the time (sometimes relative to the practitioner). While the particular media utilized entail different skills and result in very different experiences, it is the greater phenomenon of the urge to combine distinct media that is of concern here. This methodological positioning removes media specificity and so enables the study of a transhistorical and transartistic phenomenon. But what does combining mean? 3. Transmedia as “Unmixed Media” Aesthetics The distinct media characteristic of transmedia practices is invoked intentionally to denote the nature of the media being employed and the nature of the end-product. That is, transmedia practitioners employ separate and different media. These different media remain distinct, in that the end-point experience often involves the traversal of media that are haptically distinguished. This phenomenon is different to related practices such as intermedia, which involve the combining of distinct artforms with the result of a material fusion. Transmedia practices can therefore be characterized as unmixed media. In 1965, Higgins introduced the term intermedia to ‘offer a means of ingress into works which already existed, the unfamiliarity of whose forms was such that many potential viewers, hearers, or readers were “turned off” by them.’ 34 It is a significant notion to discuss because its introduction coalesced a long-standing aesthetic approach. As Jack Ox and Jacques Mandelbrojt explain, Higgins did not invent intermediality, but ‘he named the phenomenon and defined it in a way that created a framework for understanding and categorizing a set or group of likeminded activities.’ 35 Fluxus artist and theorist Ken Friedman concurs, arguing that Higgins coined intermedia to describe ‘the tendency of an increasing number’ of the ‘most interesting artists to cross the boundaries of recognized media or to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms.’ 36 Intermedia works brought together what had been artificially estranged: Much of the best work being produced today seems to fall between media. This is no accident. The concept of the separation between media arose in the Renaissance. The idea that a painting is made of paint on canvas or that a sculpture should not be painted seems characteristic of the kind of social thought—categorizing and dividing society into nobility with its various subdivisions, untitled gentry, artisans, serfs and landless workers—which we call the feudal conception of the Great Chain of Being. […] We are approaching the dawn of a classless

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__________________________________________________________________ society, to which separation into rigid categories is absolutely irrelevant. 37 The creation of works that combine conventionally separate artforms and/or media is a somewhat political as well as aesthetic act: Thus the happening developed as an intermedium, an uncharted land that lies between collage, music and the theater. It is not governed by rules; each work determines its own medium and form according to its needs. The concept itself is better understood by what it is not, rather than what it is. Approaching it, we are pioneers again, and shall continue to be so as long as there’s plenty of elbow room and no neighbors around for a few miles. 38 Not all practices that bring together different media and artforms are intermedia though. Higgins distinguishes between mixed media and intermedia according the degree of integration. Opera is an example of mixed media for it has ‘music, the libretto, and the mise-en-scene’ which are ‘quite separate: at no time is the operagoer in doubt as to whether he is seeing the mise-en-scene, the stage spectacle, hearing the music, etc.’ 39 On the other hand, intermedia practices involve a fusion to the degree that elements cannot be separated. In her essay discussing her father’s theory of intermedia, Hannah Higgins reinforces this notion of fusion with her argument that intermedia ‘refers to structural homologies, and not additive mixtures, which would be multimedia in the sense of illustrated stories or opera, where the various media types function independently of each other.’ 40 An example she cites of fusion is the blending of musical and visual techniques in Jackson Mac Low’s A Notated Vocabulary for Eve Rosenthal (1978). 41 It is important to note too that the distinctions from opera are, among other functions, an attempt to distance intermedia from German opera composer Richard Wagner’s ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ or ‘total work of art’: The true Drama is only conceivable as proceeding from a common urgence of every art towards the most direct appeal to a common public. In this Drama, each separate art can only bare its utmost secret to their common public through a mutual parleying with the other arts; for the purpose of each separate branch of art can only be fully attained by the reciprocal agreement and cooperation of all the branches in their common message. 42

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__________________________________________________________________ The difference between Wagnerian practices and intermedia has been further articulated by Jürgen Müller. 43 Since Müller’s writings on this topic are not in English, I refer to Joki van de Poel’s discussions of Müller’s argument on the difference between ‘multimediality’ and ‘intermediality’: He makes, like Wagner, a distinction between multimedia and intermedia along the lines of the functioning of media next to each other (Nebeneinander) and with each other (Miteinander). With Nebeneinander he means that the separate media function within a larger production but maintain there own qualities, concepts and structure, whereas in the Miteinander variant the different media function in an integrative way. The media take over each others structure or concepts and are changed in this integrative process. 44 (original emphasis) This notion of separation, or more appropriately retention of separation, is actually a key trait of transmedia projects. So, despite a higher-level congruency between transmedia and intermedia, it is the fact that media remain distinct in transmedia projects that differentiates them from Higgins’s intermedia. Therefore, while transmedia projects do share a concern with bringing together media and artforms that are distinct, in transmedia projects each distinct media retains its manifest nature. Fusion does exist in transmedia projects, but it happens at an abstract level. It is characterized by a conceptual synthesis of separate media rather than an assemblage or transformation at the expressive or material level. The peculiar challenge of this approach is to bring together elements that are disparate, incompatible or isolated, in a way that retains their independent nature. This approach does not try to change that which is manifest, but tries to find connections at a level that reconfigures them conceptually. The objects change, but that change happens around the materials, within the minds of those who design and experience them. Unity is perceived, variety is manifest. 4. Why Does This Transhistorical Urge Happen? Practitioners have, throughout time, endeavoured to work with more than one medium. A crucial part of my research, therefore, is to investigate the historical context of the apparent contemporary practice described here as transmedia. Rather than see past phenomena as being an early stage of some ideal present, the past is presumed to be of equal and significant importance to understanding contemporary phenomena. Indeed, it is in fact the same phenomenon emerging in different ways at different times. Many theorists considering the relationship between current and past phenomena have reached a similar methodological conclusion. Literary theorist and author Umberto Eco argues that postmodernism is not specific to a

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__________________________________________________________________ point in time but is instead a ‘Kunstwollen, a way of operating,’ and that ‘every period has its own postmodernism.’ 45 What is the ‘way of operating’ that unites transmedia, intermedia, expanded cinema, and Gesamtkunstwerk? Higgins argues that intermedia will remain ‘a possibility wherever the desire to fuse two or more existing media exists;’ 46 and marketers, journalists and creators alike have across time spoken of ‘integration’ and ‘synergy.’ It is perhaps the urge to integrate that is a long-held desire that emerges continually across time. Integration, though, can only occur in the context of isolation. Friedman explains that Higgins coined the term intermedia to describe artists that ‘cross the boundaries of recognized media or to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms.’ 47 Semioticians Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen explain that the rise of multimodality is characterized by practitioners who ‘use an increasing variety of materials and [who] cross the boundaries between the various art, design and performance disciplines, towards multimodal Gesamtkunstwerk, multi-media events, and so on’ 48 Walker Rettberg and Montola both propose that contemporary phenomena is characterized by creators crossing boundaries of existing singular narrative or game norms. Perhaps more accurately then, it is an attempt to integrate media that have not been considered an artform by the majority (what was seen as a purely transmissive medium, for instance, an everyday media, or an advertising platform). It may also be an attempt to integrate what has not been considered a form of expression by the creator (what is outside of their current practice). In many ways, then, the discussion about the desire to cross boundaries is an observation of people attempting to move beyond constructed divisions. In this sense, the urge to unify what cannot be unified is a complex and complimentary response to the urge for hierarchical estrangement. It is an urge that is not the privilege of artists alone, but in their hands can atone for many. The poet (who may also be dancer, singer, magician, whatever the event demands of him) masters a series of techniques that can fuse the most seemingly contradictory propositions. 49

Notes 1

Massimiliano Lattanzi, Transdisciplinarity: Stimulating Synergies, Integrating Knowledge (Geneva: UNESCO Documents and Publications, 1998), iv. 2 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

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Jill Walker Rettberg, ‘Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks,’ in Internet Research Annual 2004, ed. Mia Consalvo and Kate O’Riordan (Brighton: Peter Lang, 2004), 100. 4 Marc Ruppel, ‘Many Houses, Many Leaves: Cross-Sited Media Productions and the Problems of Convergent Narrative Networks,’ paper presented at Digital Humanities 2006 Conference, 4-9 July 2006, Paris-Sorbonne. 5 Glorianna Davenport, et al., ‘Synergistic Storyscapes and Constructionist Cinematic Sharing’ IBM Systems Journal 39 (2000): 456-469. 6 Jane McGonigal, ‘This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century’ (PhD diss., University of California, 2006), 43. 7 Markus Montola, ‘On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Pervasive Games and Roleplaying’ (PhD diss., University of Tampere, 2012), 121. 8 Jay Lemke, ‘Critical Analysis across Media: Games, Franchises, and the New Cultural Order,’ presentation, First International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis, Valencia, Spain, 5-8 May 2004. 9 Peter Hill, ‘Superfictions: The Creation of Fictional Situations in International Contemporary Art Practice’ (PhD diss., RMIT, 2001). 10 Andrea Zapp, ed., Networked Narrative Environments: As Imaginary Spaces of Being (Manchester: Metropolitan University, 2004), 12. 11 Mohan Dutta-Bergman, ‘Complementarity in Consumption of News Types Across Traditional and New Media’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 48 (2004): 42. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 41. 14 Dan Harries, ed., The New Media Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), ix. 15 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 6. 16 Craig Lindley, ‘Trans-Reality Gaming’, presentation at the Second Annual International Workshop in Computer Game Design and Technology, Liverpool, UK, 15-16 Nov 2004. 17 Zapp, Networked Narrative. 18 Ibid., 12. 19 Davenport, et al., Synergistic Storyscapes, 457. 20 Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole-In-Space (Electronic Café International, 1980) viewed 16 April 2008, http://www.ecafe.com/getty/HIS/index.html. 21 Roy Ascott, ‘Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?’ in Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, ed. Edward A. Shanken (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 [1990]), 232.

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Edward A. Shanken, ‘From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott,’ in Shanken, ed., Telematic Embrace, 53. 23 Dick Higgins, ‘Intermedia’, Leonardo 34.1 (2001 [1965]): 49-54. 24 Ibid., 49. 25 Edward A. Shanken, ‘Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art’, Leonardo 35.3 (2002): 435. 26 Higgins, Intermedia, 49. 27 Martyn Jolly is cited in Robert Dixon, ‘Travelling Mass-Media Circus: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments’, Nineteenth Century Theatre & Film 33.1 (2006): 60-87. 28 Alexis Weedon, ‘“Behind the Screen” and “The Scoop”’, Media History 13.1 (2007): 43-60. 29 Darren Tofts, ‘On Mutability,’ in Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, ed. Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavallaro (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 3-4. 30 William Gibson, ‘Geeks and Artboys,’ in Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, ed. Randal Packer and Ken Jordan (New York: Norton, 2001), xiv. 31 Alan Sondheim, email sent to Empyre mailing list, 2 January 2004. 32 Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (New York: Dutton, 1970), 43. 33 Dick Higgins, Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia (UbuWeb, 2004 [1965]), viewed 25 April 2007, http://www.ubu.com/papers/higgins_intermedia.html. 34 Ibid., 52. 35 Jack Ox and Jacques Mandelbrojt, ‘Special Section Introduction: Intersenses/ Intermedia: A Theoretical Perspective’, Leonardo 34.1 (2001): 47. 36 Ken Friedman, Ken Friedman’s Contribution to Fluxlist and Silence Celebrate Dick Higgins (Fluxus, [1998]), viewed 26 January 2008, http://www.fluxus.org/higgins/ken.htm. 37 Higgins, Synesthesia and Intersenses. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Hannah Higgins, ‘Intermedial Perception or Fluxing Across the Sensory’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 8.4 (2002): 61. 41 Hazel Smith and R. T. Dean, Improvisation, Hypermedia, and the Arts since 1945 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 164. 42 Richard Wagner, ‘Outlines of the Artwork of the Future: The Artwork of the Future,’ in Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality, ed. Randall Packer and Ken Jordan (New York: Norton, 2001 [1849]), 4-5. 43 Jürgen E Müller, ‘Intermedialität’, Formen modener kultureller Kommunikation (Münster: Nordus Publikationen, 1996).

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Joki van de Poel, ‘Opening up Worlds: Intermediality Reinterpreted’ (PhD diss., Universiteit Utrecht. 2005), 36. 45 Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 66. 46 Higgins, Synesthesia and Intersenses. 47 Friedman, Ken Friedman. 48 Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (London: Arnold, 2001), 1. 49 Jerome Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 [1968]), xxviii.

Bibliography Ascott, Roy. ‘Gesamtdatenwerk: Connectivity, Transformation, and Transcendence’. Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, edited by Edward A. Shanken, 222-227. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 [1989]. ———. ‘Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?’ Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, edited by Edward A. Shanken, 232-247. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 [1990]. Davenport, Glorianna, Stefan Agamanolis, Barbara Barry, Brian Bradley and Kevin Brooks. ‘Synergistic Storyscapes and Constructionist Cinematic Sharing’. IBM Systems Journal 39.3-4 (2000): 456-469. Dixon, Robert. ‘Travelling Mass-Media Circus: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments’. Nineteenth Century Theatre & Film 33.1 (2006): 60-87. Dreher, Thomas. ‘Konzeptuelle Kunst und Software Art: Notationen, Algorithmen und Codes.’ Presentation at Literatur und Strom: Code Interface Concept, Stuttgart, Germany, 11 November 2005. Dutta-Bergman, Mohan. ‘Complementarity in Consumption of News Types across Traditional and New Media’. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 48.1 (2004): 41-60.

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__________________________________________________________________ Friedman, Ken. Ken Friedman’s contribution to Fluxlist and Silence Celebrate Dick Higgins. Fluxus, ([1998]). Viewed 26 January 2008. http://www.fluxus.org/higgins/ken.htm. Galloway, Kit and Sherrie Rabinowitz. Hole-In-Space. Electronic Café International, 1980. Viewed 16 April 2008. http://www.ecafe.com/getty/HIS/index.html. Gibson, William. ‘Geeks and Artboys’. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randal Packer and Ken Jordan, xi–xiv. New York: Norton, 2001. Harries, Dan, ed. The New Media Book. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Higgins, Dick. ‘Intermedia’. Leonardo 34.1 (2001 [1965]): 49-54. ———. Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia. UbuWeb, 2004 [1965]. Viewed 25 April 2007. http://www.ubu.com/papers/higgins_intermedia.html. Higgins, Hannah. ‘Intermedial Perception or Fluxing across the Sensory’. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 8.4 (2002): 59-76. Hill, Peter. ‘Superfictions: The Creation of Fictional Situations in International Contemporary Art Practice’. PhD dissertation, RMIT, 2001. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Massimiliano, Lattanzi. Transdisciplinarity: Stimulating Synergies, Integrating Knowledge. Geneva: UNESCO Documents and Publications, 1998. Lemke, Jay. ‘Critical Analysis across Media: Games, Franchises, and the New Cultural Order.’ Presented at the First International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis, Valencia, Spain, 5-8 May 2004. Lindley, Craig. ‘Trans-Reality Gaming.’ Presented at the Second Annual International Workshop in Computer Game Design and Technology, Liverpool, UK, 15-16 Nov 2004.

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__________________________________________________________________ Montola, Markus. ‘On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Pervasive Games and Roleplaying’. PhD dissertation, University of Tampere, 2012. McGonigal, Jane. ‘This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century’. PhD dissertation, University of California, 2006. Ox, Jack and Jacques Mandelbrojt. ‘Special Section Introduction: Intersenses/ Intermedia: A Theoretical Perspective’. Leonardo 34.1 (2001): 47-48. Walker Rettberg, Jill. ‘Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks’. Internet Research Annual 2004, ed. Mia Consalvo and Kate O’Riordan, 91-103. Brighton: Peter Lang, 2004. Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 [1968]. Ruppel, Marc. ‘Many Houses, Many Leaves: Cross-Sited Media Productions and the Problems of Convergent Narrative Networks.’ Presentation at the Digital Humanities Conference, Sorbonne, Paris, 4-9 July 2006. Shanken, Edward A. ‘Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art’. Leonardo 35.3 (2002): 433-438. ———. ‘From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott’. Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, edited by Edward A. Shanken, 1-95. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003. Smith, Hazel and R. T. Dean. Improvisation, Hypermedia, and the Arts since 1945. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997. Tofts, Darren. ‘On Mutability.’ Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, edited by Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavallaro, 2-5. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. Wagner, Richard. ‘“Outlines of the Artwork of the Future”: The Artwork of the Future.’ Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, 3-9. New York: Norton, 2001 [1849].

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__________________________________________________________________ Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema. New York: Dutton, 1970. Zapp, Andrea, ed. Networked Narrative Environments: As Imaginary Spaces of Being. Manchester: Metropolitan University, 2004. Christy Dena is a writer, designer, and director of transmedia and digital stories. She wrote the first PhD on Transmedia Practice. She has given keynotes, workshops, and mentored on the subject at universities and industry events worldwide.

The Business Case for Transmedia Joanne Jacobs Abstract For transmedia to be acknowledged as worthy of investment by the business world, and even by those considering a career in development of transmedia creative products, there first needs to be established a business case for the concept. This may be a relatively obvious point, but it is one which begins to unravel a series of complexities about transmedia itself—how it is defined, who are the stakeholders, how it is consumed, and what may be the measurable outcomes of engagement with transmedia content. While it may be argued that the nature of transmedia is to defy categorisation of creative product and commercial classification, and to involve the audience in content production in a manner which challenges clear authorship of a product, it would be foolish (and defeatist) to suggest that the slippery nature of transmedia products and experiences make it impossible to quantify in terms of value and Return on Investment (RoI). It is therefore incumbent upon advocates of transmedia to articulate its value, both because advocates best understand the concept, and because it will help foster production of creative transmedia. This chapter therefore seeks to inform transmedia advocates about the concept of value and the RoI of transmedia more generally. While it is by no means a template or formula for measurement of value, it is a reminder to transmedia professionals and theorists, that intangible benefits are neither valueless nor unquantifiable. The chapter includes four sections: (1) Definitions of transmedia—expressed in a manner that is intelligible for a business audience; (2) Value and cost—from an economic perspective; (3) Audience interaction and collaborative content development—how feedback and engagement systems of transmedia offer more than mere content and audience reach outputs; (4) RoI metrics for transmedia—measurable criteria for articulation of value to business investors. Key Words: Transmedia, business case, Return on Investment, RoI. ***** 1. Definitions of Transmedia It is, perhaps, important to note that the term ‘transmedia’ is not widely favoured (or indeed known) in marketing, media and government industry sectors. It is a term that has grown from academic experimentation and interrogation of storytelling, and maintains a certain fluffiness, or indefinite quality, partly because it is so often defined by what it is not. Transmedia is not a story told through a single digital medium, it is not a story told in entirety through different platforms— as may be the case for a book or game narrative, told on film.

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__________________________________________________________________ Instead, transmedia is storytelling through multiple (digital and/or experiential) platforms, where each discrete and usually platform-specific component of the story contributes to the narrative as a whole. Because user interactions and audience-driven content affect and shape transmedia experiences, it is also crucial to recognise their part in narrative development. Transmedia is thus inherently collaborative; it is story development by a number of authors, that generates mutually desirable (and beneficial) experiences for all participants. But this (largely conceptual) definition of transmedia is problematic when attempting to articulate its value to potential investors. From a business case perspective, the very complexity of transmedia lends itself to definition with the use of terms more commonly used and understood. Thus for the purpose of building a business case, I argue that transmedia should be defined as: Audience engagement with content that requires consumption of multiple content platforms as well as interactions with other participants, to complete the story. From a business perspective, the above definition fulfils a number of functions: 1. it defines the business product as a collaboratively developed story; 2. it defines the potential authors of the consumer experience as both initiators, and audience; 3. it notes that the fulfilment of any transaction between a provider and consumer of a transmedia experience occurs when/if the story is complete. The importance of these three extrapolations will become clear later in the chapter. 2. Value and Cost Development of a business case for transmedia inevitably involves articulation of value. Unfortunately advocates for transmedia may not be familiar with the distinctly economics-based definitions of ‘value’ to be able to support the basis for a business case. It is therefore useful to distinguish between economic types of appraisal. Value: financial benefit from a good/service; Utility: aggregate sum of satisfaction or other intangible or semiintangible benefit that an individual gains from consuming a given amount of goods/services;

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__________________________________________________________________ Price: market rate at which goods/services are exchanged; Opportunity cost: the value of the best alternative that is not adopted/consumed—i.e.: the benefits that are forgone by not choosing to adopt/consume; Economic cost: amount paid for a good/service when compared with alternatives. This includes variable, fixed and marginal costs. The differing cost types are also important, as value is dependent on the quantity of production of goods/services, as well as potential lost profit from failing to invest in an emergent opportunity. Fixed cost: the unchanging expenses that are involved in the production of goods/services; Variable cost: the expenses that are involved in the production of a good/service that change in accordance with the scale of production; Total cost: the aggregate of fixed and variable costs; Marginal cost: the difference between the total cost of production of goods/services based on quantity of production— ie: the cost of producing one more iteration of a good/service. Thus from an economic perspective, value needs to be calculated with RoI. While experiential benefits (utility) and behavioural trends (opportunity cost) can impact on RoI, the calculation of RoI is expressed in solid financial terms; total cost, compared with total value. For transmedia then, calculation of RoI becomes a matter of determining the financial benefit of investing in transmedia storytelling, when compared with other (usually single-channel) narrative forms, and doing so in a manner that considers the costs of failing to adopt. It all sounds so simple. The problem arises when we consider the practical uses for transmedia in business-industrial contexts. While storytelling can be used for a range of business purposes, transmedia storytelling has a few clear commercial applications: • • •

Marketing activities (brand stories, advertising, market research); Professional Development (corporate induction and education, collaborative problem-solving); Commercial content development (traditional, content-driven experiences accessed through multiple digital platforms).

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__________________________________________________________________ Of these, only professionals from the commercial content development category are likely to have a clear understanding of the opportunities embedded in transmedia. And given existing investments in traditional content channels (e.g.: print, broadcast media, film) among these professionals, the costs associated with adoption of transmedia techniques may appear to be greater than the potential RoI. Further, misunderstanding of the utility of transmedia tactics can lead Marketing and Prof Dev professionals to mistake transmedia for ‘just another channel’ of broadcast-style messaging. Thus any calculation of the value of transmedia can being skewed by the context in which it is being considered for deployment. For commercial content developers, transmedia may be perceived to be a high risk investment which involves high variable costs (development of expertise across content channels, risk to the narrative experience of poor audience engagement), as well as high marginal costs (difference between cost of production for ‘old’, single-channel media and cost of production for transmedia products). The RoI of such an investment opportunity would be difficult to justify. For marketing and professional development sectors, transmedia may be perceived merely to be a new channel for distribution of a controlled narrative (rather than engagement with audiences and facilitation of consumer-driven content augmentation), so unnecessary resourcing the moderation of content would artificially drive up the costs of production and again the perceived RoI would be reduced. The value of transmedia, for all applications, may be unworthy of the investment. It thus becomes necessary to correct valuations on the basis of utility, opportunity cost and business optimisation value. 3. Audience Interaction and Collaborative Content Development A key, but often underplayed characteristic of transmedia is the fluidity of narrative structure achieved through audience interaction. Multi-platform storytelling is enhanced by the pervasiveness of the story across content channels, as well as the involvement of audiences in helping to shape the narrative. This is significant when preparing the business case for transmedia, as the involvement of the audience in helping to shape a story changes the level of commitment among consumers to the narrative product, and potentially to brands accessed within the course of pursuing the narrative (in-story brand mentions, or devices/services used to access the story). Transmedia consumption is therefore less likely to be affected by churn, and the multi-platform characteristics mean that advertisers can potentially reach consumers through a range of channels. The same drivers that encourage audiences of transmedia to commit to the story are those that can alter audience receptivity to advertising messages, however subtle. Advertising efficacy has long been considered a product of involvement and persuasiveness 1. The depth of personal involvement for an audience member in the

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__________________________________________________________________ advertising message is directly proportionate to perceived intention to purchase as well as advocacy. While transmedia itself is not, in and of itself, an advertisement, it is content which can either be a channel for product placement, or the narrative may refer to brands in a manner which affects brand recall, brand perception and/or intention to purchase. Given the multichannel characteristics of transmedia for demonstrating brand values and reinforcing brand messages, the efficacy of transmedia as an advertising channel is potentially high. And in spite of resistance to advertising in multichannel and particularly internet-driven communications, the receptiveness of audiences to brand messaging is still potentially high among transmedia audiences purely as a result of involvement. Shankar and Balasubramanian noted in their work on mobile marketing that consumers are receptive to brands where they experience benefits of engaging. 2 In the case of transmedia, the narrative itself acts as a direct benefit for the consumer, thus openness to marketing is increased even in channels where consumers are traditionally resistant to marketing, such as mobile communications. In addition to the audience retention and advertising message receptivity characteristics of interactive storytelling, there is also the ‘shareability’ of transmedia that is appealing to investors. Increasingly, the success of any content marketing campaign is being measured by mentions and interactions on social media channels. Murdough notes that social media are a key mechanism for determining how best to interact with audiences, and measurement of brand mentions on social media in terms of reach, discussions and outcomes will generate insights on how a business can leverage their audience. 3 For transmedia, shareability of the narrative is increased by the number of platforms where the narrative is accessed, as well as the deep involvement of the consumer in the tale. Finally, the collaborative narrative development opportunities of transmedia can dramatically influence audiences in favour of specific brands and messages when the consumer invests in narrative development. Much like reinforcing past purchase decisions, consumer involvement in narrative development links reputation of any brand embedded in the narrative, with that of the transmedia contributor. This is a bargain entered into by all contributors to a transmedia narrative; the success of an individual’s contribution is dependent on its congruence with the existing narrative. But once it is embedded in the narrative experience, then the integrity of both the contributor and the story become interlinked. If the success of any transmedia tale is proportionate with the number of people exposed to the story, then the reputation of any contributor to the story is inevitably affected by the success of the narrative. Provided we assume that contributors are likely to want to maximize the audience for any transmedia tale, then the reputation of the contributor will be dependent on the integrity of the entire narrative, including their contribution, and any brand mentions or messages implied or contained therein. This collaborative storytelling then is key to the

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__________________________________________________________________ business proposition for transmedia: multichannel experiences that involve consumers in narrative development necessarily tie the reputation of consumers to any brands referenced in the story. Such deep consumer involvement and content shareability should be a particularly powerful incentive for investors in transmedia. Based on earlier defined appraisal terms, transmedia may be deemed to be generating: Value: increased content consumption from product sales; Utility: high involvement which reduces churn and potentially increases shareability and brand awareness from shared content; Increased price for content: as loyalty rises, likelihood of supplementary revenue generation from content increases (merchandising, games, add-ons, etc); Reduced costs of production: as content is developed collaboratively, there is less need for capital investment in content. 4. RoI Metrics for Transmedia The final problem of expressing the business case for transmedia rests with identification of appropriate criteria for measurement of RoI. Clearly, any metrics chosen should be aligned with business objectives, and not with more qualitative perspectives on the narrative. While qualitative components may have utility, and impact on overall profitability and engagement of a transmedia product, the metrics used in assessing transmedia products should take such utility into account. Value, as noted above, is affected by costs including opportunity costs, reach and audience involvement. As such, criteria directly associated with these costs of production should reflect all qualitative measures. Thus transmedia value should be reckoned with criteria that characterize the involvement of audiences. The following metrics could be considered: • • • • • • •

Interaction complexity (number and depth of audience interactions) Sentiment among the audience community of contributors Brand presence/mentions across engagement channels and within contributor content Authority/reputation of contributors Cost per acquisition for transmedia audiences (Reduced) costs of content development Comparative opportunity costs of isolated (traditional) media

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__________________________________________________________________ Several of these metrics are a product of other metrics. For example: •

•

•

Interaction complexity is a measure based on the ratio of vibrancy (percentile of interactions among existing audience of fans/followers) to deep conversations (percentile of repeat interactions among all interactions) Sentiment is based on positive or emotive language being used in conversations around the narrative appearing in social channels. It can further be refined as a measure of sentiment among contributors to the narrative when compared with general conversations. Authority among contributors can be a product of reach and reputation as indicated by vibrancy of engagements with contributors’ own audiences.

This combination of action and reach oriented metrics is more useful than standard measures of sales versus cost of production, or potential reach of any transmedia production, because the level of involvement is proportionate with the level of trust in the narrative and all brands associated with the narrative. Projections for revenue for transmedia productions (as well as on-sales of merchandise, in-narrative products and so on) should therefore be expressed as a multiplier of audience involvement, rather than mere audience reach. Of course, the fluidity of transmedia makes the business proposition harder to articulate than for a simple book, film or television programme. But difficulties in articulation of value should not dissuade advocates from considering the potential value of deep involvement and audience investment in a transmedia narrative, and brands associated with transmedia stories. While the benefits of transmedia go beyond the (financially) valuable, and perhaps even the utilitarian aspects of narrative consumption, the opportunity costs of failing to express the business case for transmedia are too great to ignore.

Notes 1

See Robert J. Lavidge and Gary A. Steiner, ‘A Model for Predictive Measurements of Advertising Effectiveness’, Journal of Marketing (1961): 62, Richard E. Petty, John T. Cacioppo, John T. and David Schumann, ‘Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement’, Journal of Consumer Research (1983): 145, Anthony G. Greenwald and Clark Leavitt, ‘Audience Involvement in Advertising: Four Levels’, Journal of Consumer Research (1984): 591. 2 Venkatesh Shankar and Sridhar Balasubramanian, ‘Mobile Marketing: A Synthesis and Prognosis’, Journal of Interactive Marketing 23 (2009): 118-129.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3

Chris Murdough, ‘Social Media Measurement: It’s not Impossible’, Journal of Interactive Advertising 10.1 (2009): 127.

Bibliography Greenwald, Anthony G. and Clark Leavitt. ‘Audience Involvement in Advertising: Four Levels’. Journal of Consumer Research (1984): 581-592. Karrh, James A., Kathy Brittain McKee and Carol J. Pardun. ‘Practitioners’ Evolving Views on Product Placement Effectiveness’. Journal of Advertising Research 43.2 (2003): 138-149. Kuhn, Kerri-Ann and Nigel K. L. Pope. ‘The Effect of Video Game Placements on Brand Attitude’. Proceedings of American Marketing Association Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference (2010). Kumar, A. J. ‘3 Social Media Metrics Your Business Should Track’. SocialMediaExaminer, 2013. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-social-media-metrics-your-businessshould-track/. Lavidge, Robert J. and Steiner, Gary A. ‘A Model for Predictive Measurements of Advertising Effectiveness’. Journal of Marketing (1961): 59-62. http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~tecas/syllabi2/adv382jfall2002/readings/lavidg.pdf. Murdough, Chris. ‘Social Media Measurement: It’s not Impossible’. Journal of Interactive Advertising 10.1 (2009): 127. http://jiad.org/download9751.pdf?p=127. Petty, Richard E., Cacioppo, John T., and Schumann, David. ‘Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement.’ Journal of Consumer Research (1983): 135-146. Shankar, Venkatesh and Balasubramanian, Sridhar. ‘Mobile Marketing: A Synthesis and Prognosis.’ Journal of Interactive Marketing 23 (2009): 118-129. Joanne Jacobs is COO at 1000heads Pty Ltd, the Sydney office of the world’s largest Word of Mouth agency (http://1000heads.com/). Joanne has been a technology consultant, ran a social networking production house, and was COO of HiBROW. She spent more than 13 years teaching communications and strategic use of information technology, and researching E-commerce, e-communications policy and Internet Marketing. http://joannejacobs.net/.

Measuring Online User Engagement: The Limitations of Web Analytics Ann-Marie Cook and Debra Polson Abstract The ability to identify and assess user engagement with transmedia productions is vital to the success of individual projects and the sustainability of this mode of media production as a whole. It is essential that industry players have access to tools and methodologies that offer the most complete and accurate picture of how audiences/users engage with their productions and which assets generate the most valuable returns of investment. Drawing upon research conducted with Hoodlum Entertainment, a Brisbane-based transmedia producer, this chapter outlines an initial assessment of the way engagement tends to be understood, why standard web analytics tools are ill-suited to measuring it, how a customised tool could offer solutions, and why this question of measuring engagement is so vital to the future of transmedia as a sustainable industry. Key Words: Audiences, data collection, engagement, Hoodlum, metrics, multiplatform experience, SLiDE, transmedia, web analytics. ***** During a three-month pilot study, members of Queensland University of Technology’s Mixed Reality Research Team worked closely with multi-awardwinning transmedia producers, Hoodlum Entertainment, to assess online engagement around the multiplatform experience created for the Hoodlum/Fox8 television series, SLiDE (2012). The project involved assessing methods for defining engagement, generating case studies of transmedia productions and the companies that created them, reviewing the existing tools for collecting and analysing web analytics data, developing case studies for data visualisation and analysis, engaging in a platform-by-platform assessment of how users had engaged with SLiDE and offering recommendations for future projects. For obvious reasons, being able to track the performance of specific platforms and determine what worked (and what did not) was of foremost interest to Hoodlum. However, for us, as researchers, the most significant discovery had nothing to do with the series itself, but rather with the limitations of current industry practices for defining, measuring and quantifying the value of online user engagement. Indeed, the experience raised more questions than it answered, thus setting the groundwork for further research. This paper offers a benchmarking exercise that outlines our initial assessments of the way engagement tends to be understood, why standard web analytics tools are ill-suited to measuring it, how a customised tool could offer

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__________________________________________________________________ solutions, and why this question of measuring engagement is so vital to the future of transmedia as a sustainable industry. Although time and space do not permit a full discussion of Hoodlum or the content of the SLiDE series, it is worth noting the company’s position in the industry and the significance of the series within the context of Hoodlum’s own creative development. Since their establishment in 1998, Hoodlum has built its industry profile on designing online games and multiplatform experiences that exemplify a commitment to ‘telling stories and connecting with audiences in bold new ways’. 1 The quality of their productions for commercial brands, feature films (Salt and The Bourne Legacy), and television series (Lost, Dance Academy, Primeval, Spooks, Home and Away and Emmerdale) has won industry accolades that include BAFTAs, Emmy Awards and Webby Awards. SLiDE marked the start of a new phase of activity for Hoodlum because, as series co-producers, they were responsible for generating the content of episodes as well as the accompanying multiplatform experience. Playing to Fox8’s target demographic of 18-30s year olds, SLiDE’s stories follow the madcap antics of a group of five Brisbane teenagers. While there are lashings of drama around family relationships, pregnancy and the pressures of growing up, the show offers a fun, comedic take on the experiences of adolescence. This sensibility of fun permeates the multiplatform experience Hoodlum created to extend the show’s stories beyond the weekly episodes. The experience was created around an official website that included weekly instalments of games, polls, music, original webisodes, behind the scenes shorts, a graphic novel and still images, 2 a Facebook page, 3 a You Tube channel, 4 character Twitter accounts, 5 and two character-centred platforms: a Tumblr dedicated to wannabe glamour girl Scarlett Carlyle 6 and a MySpace page dedicated to aspiring music journalist Tammy Lane. 7 The official website reveals Hoodlum’s ambition to create a rich, interactive space in which users could engage with the show and each other: The SLiDE website is your backstage pass to everything SLiDE! Each week there’s loads of brand new story content that takes you further into the world of SLiDE…You can connect with your friends and other fans of the show through Facebook and Twitter and share your favourite SLiDE moments. And you can always have your say by commenting or chatting to other members of the online community. So remember that SLiDE never sleeps! When the show ends you (and your friends) can continue the party here… 8 The series aired between the 16th of August and the 18th of October 2011, but despite fan support and Hoodlum’s interest in doing a second series, Fox8 announced in February 2012 that the show had not been re-commissioned.

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__________________________________________________________________ 1. Defining Engagement Reaching users and generating ‘engagement’ around a multiplatform experience are the most obvious goals for producers, but the particular ways in which a producer defines engagement and uses their assets and resources to achieve it vary from company to company. Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik has argued that is impossible to formulate a definition of engagement in ‘a standard way that can be applied across the board’ because existing definitions are ‘either too broad (to cover every nuance) or too narrow (hence very unique).’ 9 Nonetheless, Dave McClure’s Startup Metrics for Pirates, which bills itself as ‘something of a bible for startups’, emphasises five key metrics: acquisition, activation, referral, retention and revenues. 10 Acquisition refers to the number of visitors who come to the site from other channels. Activation concerns the pleasure of the initial experience. Retention tracks whether users return to the site. Referral evaluates whether users like the site enough to tell others about it. Revenues pertain to the monetisation of user activities on the site. These dovetail nicely with the standard metrics available on Google Analytics. Google collects a great deal of valuable information about users and their online behaviour. It offers insights into demographics (location and language), users (unique, new and returning), page views, frequency and recency of usage, dwell time and page depth, technology (browser, network and mobile device used) and visitor flows across a website’s pages. While such information is tremendously valuable, it generates a rather incomplete picture of how users interact with multiplatform experiences. The primary problem is that this data can only tell stories about engagement in quantitative terms. For example, tracking how much time is spent on a page, what pages are viewed and how users move between those pages certainly yields insights into usage. However, it reduces engagement to simple exposure (are users viewing it and for how long) and series of mouse-clicks. It sheds no light on what users actually feel, think or experience; nor does it support analysis of different types of user behaviour or non-monetary conceptions of value. Indeed, the variance and complexities of user engagement necessitate an analytical approach that can account for different types, levels and degrees, and identify the value accrued by each. Not all forms of engagement are equal and any robust approach to measuring engagement should include some sort of taxonomy with categories based on frequency and duration of activity, nature of the contribution, and effort/personal investment. Ideally, tools should support a producer’s efforts to identify different levels of engagement based on specific activities around the show. This might include a taxonomy that distinguishes between: • Casual users, who watch the show and visit websites occasionally without taking an active interest in ongoing

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__________________________________________________________________ •

•

•

•

storylines, characters, news and other fans. Interested users, who watch the show regularly, visit websites regularly though not daily, share links with friends, and possess a general sense of show news without seeing themselves as part of the fandom. Dedicated users, who watch the show regularly, visit the websites daily, stay current on news and other fan activities, ‘Follow’, ‘Like’, ‘Retweet’ and post on social networks, and consider themselves part of the fandom. Creative users, who are ‘die-hard fans’ that watch the show regularly (usually multiple viewings of episodes), follow news about the show and cast, participate in community discussions, communicate with the show’s producers in an effort to influence the handling of characters and storyline, generate and post original content such as fan fiction, fan videos, Tumblrs (blogs) and websites. Entrepreneurial users, who may or may not be fans but whose activities involve the high level, creative production of showrelated websites and merchandise.

The assumption is that as users move from casual, to interested, to dedicated, to creative their value grows because such a move signifies loyalty to the show, involvement in activities that help to market the show and a deeper level of engagement. However, efforts by some producers to restrict the way fans use copyrighted content, especially in entrepreneurial contexts, demonstrate the need to look carefully at the value propositions associated with different levels of engagement and determine what each of these types of behaviours offers in terms of tangible and intangible benefits to producers. Tools are needed to facilitate more in-depth investigations into other aspects and values of fan engagement. These might include the contributions of anti-fans. The primary goal is to generate positive interest in a show, but negative perceptions can also have value in terms of engagement. Even those who are critical are still watching and talking about it, thus, creating an atmosphere that prompts fans to rally in response. The value of anti-fans is worth examining so that producers can capitalise on the full range of reactions—even the dislikes. Assessing show-centred engagement versus community-centred engagement is another aspect worth exploring. One critical aspect of the online platform’s value lies in its capacity to generate interest, build audiences for both the show and the advertising that supports it. An additional level of value can be found in the way platforms encourage the development of communities of fans whose initial interactions around the show give way to other social bonds that sustain the community even after a show ends. Platforms that create communities of like-

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__________________________________________________________________ minded individuals can leverage that support by encouraging members to follow other shows. These migrating communities have the potential to form a core constituency of viewers that a can mobilised if producers understand the preferences and dynamics that underpin them. Agency and active engagement might also be explored to determine what value is attached to followers as potential agents who speak on behalf of a show by disseminating information about stories and by engaging with characters’ twitters via mentions and retweets in ways that affect their own followers in a ‘ripples in the pond’ effect. The problem is that these sorts of analyses rely on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research that the standard web metrics simply don’t support. 2. The Limits of Web Analytics Google Analytics offered a very incomplete picture of engagement because of the way it collects data and the sort of data it targets. The platform-specific focus of the tool means that it has a limited capacity to track engagement as users move across the multiplatform experience. Cobbling together reports from Google and applications like Hootsuite and Twiangulate facilitated a basic comparative analysis. However, assessing the accuracy of that data and collating it into a visualisation model that highlighted key stories about what worked and what didn’t was a cumbersome, time-consuming process. Many questions about movement between platforms simply couldn’t be answered with the metrics we had at our disposal. Performing that analysis at the end of every project would be timeconsuming exercise that may or may not be completed in time for producers to incorporate lessons learned from one project into the next one in the pipeline. There is no basis for visualising the pathways and volume of traffic between platforms or measuring different levels of user engagement across those platforms. Even when tools record a spike in activity on a particular page or platform, they have no explanatory powers to shed light on the factors that influenced user behaviour. While segmentation techniques offer a close up of specific aspects of the data, there capabilities for tracking discrete components of the multiplatform experience such as characters, actors and individual platforms are limited. Equally limited are the options for visualising the data in ways that deviate from pie charts, line charts, pivot tables and bar graphs, which are better suited to quantitative information. Indeed, not only do the analytics tools fall short when it comes to collecting and qualitative data, they do little to support efforts to take the data about current and historical user activity further as a basis for making predictions about future behaviour. The development of sustainable business practices depend upon a producer’s ability to assess the value of online users in terms of loyalty and marketing function; identify which platforms generate the greatest return on investment; generate predictive models that can be used in the planning of future projects and communicate the value of platform development to stakeholders. Metrics like

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Measuring Online User Engagement

__________________________________________________________________ unique users and dwell time are certainly part of that big picture, but better data collection and visualisations models are clearly needed. 3. Prototyping a Custom Solution We reached the conclusion that we needed a customised visualisation tool that would collect and organise data specific to multiplatform projects by aggregating data across a number of platform reporting tools. Such a tool should ideally encompass not only platforms developed by the transmedia producer but also sites developed by fans. We also wanted to create a visualisation tool for multiplatform experience projects whose top level is comprised of people, platforms and content. People would include characters, actors, audience, distributors and creators. Platforms include television, Facebook and other relevant social networks, literature, cinema and other media that might be included in the multiplatform experience. Content refers to discreet media texts employed within the platform, such as tweet, a You Tube video, a Facebook post, an email, a television episode, etc. Core content is produced by the creators multiplatform experiences to advance the narrative, while complimentary content generated by audience members offers further contributions to the experience. Equally important is the timing with which the components of the experience are introduced and how they interact with and impact upon each other. Being able to combine, filter and sort these elements in multiple ways we can better understand the value of certain components of a project. It also offers insights into the relationship between the timing of the release of components and user activity associated with them, which further highlights the efficacy (or, indeed, failure) of assets as catalysts for engagement. In collaboration with Hoodlum we have developed a number of design scenarios experimenting with the ways in which data can be visualised and manipulated to tell a more refined story about the value of user engagement with certain project components and activities. This experimentation will serve as the basis for future research. 4. Conclusion The prominence of exposure-driven, quantitative measures of online engagement is hardly surprising in light of the way that mass media has traditionally defined success in terms of capturing the attention of audiences. However, as Philip M. Napoli argues, ‘a consensus is emerging among various stakeholder groups that established exposure-based approaches to conceptualizing media audiences are inadequate.’ 11 The fragmentation of audiences and the autonomy they enjoy to determine the terms on which they consume and engage with media has created an imperative to develop new currencies. This has led to the emergence of what Napoli calls the ‘post-exposure audience marketplace’, where

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__________________________________________________________________ the exposure dimension has become a diminished component of a much broader, more multidimensional conceptualization of the audience, in which the pressures provided by both the transformations in the dynamics of media consumption and the development of new audience information systems simultaneously serve to both reduce the prominence of exposurebased approaches and facilitate the institutionalization of alternative analytical approaches. 12 The research undertaken by the Mixed Realities Research Group in cooperation with Hoodlum has underscored the importance adopting alternative analytical approaches. By highlighting the limitations of web analytics as a means of assessing user engagement and flagging specific ways in which new tools can cater to the needs of producers, the study has provided a blueprint for further work. The sustainability of transmedia production in any context, but particularly as a standalone production rather than as a marketing spin-off, depends upon having data that makes a case for the engagement and value generated by multiplatform experiences. Thus, this is an opportune moment for researchers and industry practitioners to work together to arrive at analytical approaches that are best suited to the dynamics of multiplatform engagement and the new media landscape.

Notes 1

Hoodlum Entertainment official website, accessed 4 April 2012, http://www.hoodlum.com.au. 2 SLiDE official website, last updated 2011, http://slide.fox8.tv/site/index.php. 3 SLiDE Facebook page, accessed 4 April 2012, http://www.facebook.com/SLiDEFOX8. 4 SLiDE You Tube Channel, accessed 4 April 2012, http://www.youtube.com/slidefox8. 5 In addition to the general account for the show https://twitter.com/SLiDEFOX8, each character had his/her own personal account. 6 The Scarlett One (blog), last updated October 2011, http://thescarlettone.tumblr.com. 7 ‘Gig Monkey’, MySpace, last updated October 2011, http://www.myspace.com/gig.monkey. 8 ‘About’, SLiDE, last updated 2011, accessed 4 April 2012, http://slide.fox8.tv/site/about.html. 9 Avinash Kaushik, ‘“Engagement” Is Not A Metric, It's An Excuse’, Occams Razor (blog), 1 October 2007, http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/engagement-is-nota-metric-its-an-excuse/.

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__________________________________________________________________ 10

Dave McClure, ‘AARRR! Mixpanel for Pirates (updated!)’, Mixpanel (blog), 15 November 2012, http://blog.mixpanel.com/2012/11/15/aarrr-mixpanel-for-pirates/; See also McClure, ‘Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR!!!’, Slideshare, 8 August 2007, http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version. 11 Philip M. Napoli, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 7. 12 Ibid., 149.

Bibliography ‘Gig Monkey.’ MySpace. October 2011. http://www.myspace.com/gig.monkey. Hoodlum Entertainment official website. 2011. http://www.hoodlum.com.au. Kaushik, Avinash. ‘“Engagement” Is Not A Metric, It’s An Excuse.’ Occams Razor (blog). 1 October 2007. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/engagement-is-nota-metric-its-an-excuse/. McClure, Dave. ‘AARRR! Mixpanel for Pirates (updated!).’ Mixpanel (blog). Accessed15 November 2012. http://blog.mixpanel.com/2012/11/15/aarrr-mixpanel-for-pirates/. Napoli, Philip M. Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. SLiDE official website. Accessed 4 April 2012. http://slide.fox8.tv/site/index.php. SLiDE Facebook page. Accessed 4 April 2012. http://www.facebook.com/SLiDEFOX8. SLiDE You Tube Channel. Accessed 4 April 2012. http://www.youtube.com/slidefox8. SLiDEFox8 Twitter Account. Accessed 4 April 2012. https://twitter.com/SLiDEFOX8. The Scarlett One (blog). October 2011. http://thescarlettone.tumblr.com.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ann-Marie Cook is a researcher and tutor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology. Debra Polson is a senior research fellow and senior lecturer in Creative Design at Queensland University of Technology.

Multi-Platform Storytelling and the ‘Niche’ Market: Producing Low-Budget Transmedia Projects Natalie Krikowa Abstract Film and television industries are utilising the multitude of alternative entry points (outside of traditional media) to capture and retain their audiences, however online digital storytelling has also impacted the way ‘niche’ audiences are accessing and engaging with their content. Multi-platform storytelling is not just another potential revenue stream to maximise financial return; it provides possibilities for forming communities for those who might feel marginalised or silenced. It is setting a new benchmark for participatory culture; giving audiences the power to navigate and negotiate their own media consumption. This chapter explores how transmedia and multi-platform narratives are providing a depth of immersion that ‘niche’ audiences (such as lesbian audiences) desire. These audiences actively seek out content to consume and communities to participate in outside of mainstream media due to the lack of representation in traditional media. For queer audiences, there is more content available on the Internet and content producers are able to distribute content using online and mobile technology to gain access to this instant global audience. Key Words: engagement.

Transmedia,

audience,

multi-platform,

niche,

community,

***** 1. Introduction I first became interested in transmedia through my own consumption of web series and online gaming. As an addict of social and online media, I spent more time consuming media online than I did in the traditional mediums of film, television and radio. As a writer and producer of independent queer content, I have explored many avenues of self-expression from journalism and blogging to performance and film. In 2012, I co-created, wrote and produced The Newtown Girls, a web series set in the real-world suburb of Newtown, Sydney, but about fictional characters and situations. 1 As a low-to-no-budget media producer, primarily creating content specific to the ‘niche’ lesbian market, I have found that the most challenging aspects of transmedia production are navigating the terminology, constructing a development process, and producing content specially for a marginalised audience. Creating story worlds or narratives for a community that craves participation and content they can immerse themselves in, requires engagement across multiple platforms. This however is extremely difficult (in my experience) with the limited funds

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Multiplatform Storytelling and the ‘Niche’ Market

__________________________________________________________________ available for projects aimed at niche audiences. To begin with, these productions rarely involve the traditional mediums of film and television due to the sheer expense of producing content for these platforms. The projects seem to revolve around the Internet, utilising the relatively inexpensive mediums of web sites, web series, social media, comics, and even animations and games. These non-industry projects rely heavily on crowd-funding, private investment or self-funding to get the project made and, as a result, imposes limitations on what can be produced. This chapter takes a look at the current state of media production in Australia, with specific reference to the understanding and use of transmedia within the media industry and how non-industry projects are utilising multi-platform content to engage niche audiences. I will be using my web series project, The Newtown Girls, to highlight some of the constraints that are placed upon projects that are not aimed at the mainstream market. 2. Navigating Terminology: Transmedia, Multi-Platform and Cross Platform Much debate surrounds the multitude of buzz words used when discussing transmedia including new, online and digital media production and distribution practices; with uncertainty around what distinguishes transmedia production from multi-platform or cross-platform production. There is no one definition or one agreed upon idea and this becomes problematic for academics and practitioners alike. The term transmedia is not new and has been widely discussed and used in various forms, especially over the past 15-20 years when discussing digital or new media. The term transmedia was originally coined by Marsha Kinder in 1991 in reference to Julia Kristeva’s theories on intertextuality and multiplicity. 2 But former-MIT media studies professor Henry Jenkins appropriated the term in the context that we use it today. Transmedia storytelling is commonly accepted as the process of spreading a narrative across multiple platforms with each platform strand adding to the overall narrative experience. In 2011, Jenkins revisited his 2003 definition of transmedia storytelling being ‘…a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience,’ 3 to suggest that there is no real transmedia formula. He now believes that transmedia refers to: …a set of choices made about the best approach to tell a particular story to a particular audience in a particular context depending on the particular resources available to particular producers. 4 While his new definition appears convoluted, he suggests a process that focuses on story and audience, in consideration of the technology available. Earlier in 2006

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__________________________________________________________________ he described transmedia storytelling as ‘storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a fan's understanding of the story world’ 5. By using different media formats, he believes transmedia creates entry points through which ‘consumers can become immersed in a story world’. 6 Even as he is discussing transmedia storytelling he is using branding (or marketing) language (e.g. consumers). This undercurrent of commercial validity and the desire for franchising to maximise return on investment seems inextricably linked to transmedia. As transmedia production increases, more studios and funding agencies are embracing and exploring new storytelling techniques to extend the audience experience and build upon a product’s franchise. In 2012, Screen Australia (Australia’s government funding body) released guidelines for Multi-Platform Programs, providing a framework for how they intended to assess projects requesting funding. In those guidelines they provided the following definitions: .

Cross Platform - Using multiple digital media to distribute a single piece of content (e.g. an episodic series available online as well as broadcast) Multi-Platform - Content created to exist on different platforms in different forms (e.g. a TV program with a website delivering separate audiovisual content; a feature film with an associated game - each platform explores the same storyworld but does not simply retell the same story) Transmedia - A story experience told across multiple forms of media, with each element making distinctive contributions to a user’s understanding of the storyworld as a whole (e.g. reaching a particular score level in an online game unlocks the next WebSeries episode. The audience must move across platforms in order to fulfil the experience). 7 The other term appearing most often alongside these, in industry debate, is immersive. As Mike Jones from Portal Entertainment explains, ‘the terms Immerse and Immersive themselves mean to plunge into, to be surrounded or saturated by, to be engaged in an active experience.’ 8 It is a term that he sees as evocative and audience-centric, focusing on how an audience member experiences the story and how they should feel about that experience - i.e. - they should feel immersed in it.’ His work instead focuses on ‘World, Multiple Media, Role-Play and Real-Time’, that is:

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__________________________________________________________________ • An holistic storyworld that can generate multiple and ongoing narratives and points-of-view. • Draws multiple media types and platforms into a unified experience. • Allows the audience to take part in the story in an active and meaningful way. • Uses real-time parameters and pressures. 9 Jones is suggesting that producers of media content should first consider the desired audience experience rather than the platform, device or technology to be utilised. For example, what time of the day the audience will engage with the story, whether it will be at home or in the office, and whether they need to multitask or focus on one story element at a time, will impact greatly on the type of experience that is designed. Whilst I agree with Jones’ choice of focus, and feel that the Screen Australia definitions are out of date and very much biased towards the delivery of the content and where it is accessed (platforms, mediums, technologies etc.), I also believe that these terms provide a foundation for understanding how story operates within each of these delivery mediums. Once there is an understanding of the various platforms and their inherent possibilities, it is easier to concentrate on how an audience might experience the story. Audience experience, I believe, is the key to distinguishing transmedia stories from the traditional single, cross or multi-platform stories. This is certainly how I have distinguished the various project experiences that I have created. 3. A Process for Developing Low-Budget Transmedia Projects We live in a world of new new media and are seeing many trial and error practices for transmedia projects. The industry franchising and branding models are easy to identify, analyse and report on, however there are many micro-budget projects from independent producers which are scattered around the internet, which are not as easily identified and therefore not widely reported on. I believe these micro-budget projects are important in understanding the spectrum of transmedia practices. Because transmedia utilizes various platforms, the traditional production roles of writing, producing, and directing, for example, have become blurred. As more jobs in transmedia production are increasingly required across the industry, greater numbers of practitioners with a broad host of skills across those disciplines will be needed. These positions are currently listed on job-seeking sites such as LinkedIn and Screen Hub 10 as Digital and Emerging Technology Managers, Multiplatform Designers, Social Media Campaign Managers, and Digital Media Communications Strategists, to name a few. Companies are looking for candidates with cross-platform, multi-platform, and social, digital and online media knowledge and skills. It would seem prudent then, given the skills required for these positions, that we re-think how we prepare our industry professionals.

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__________________________________________________________________ Screenwriters, for example, would benefit from a more balanced understanding of narrative structures across all platforms (television, film, web, games etc.) as well as project management, in order to write effectively for transmedia and multiplatform experiences. Practitioners from low-budget production backgrounds already understand the importance of having cross-discipline skills, as many take on multiple roles in order to complete a project. With respect to the recent increase in transmedia production there have been many books written by producers and creators of content, which provide insight and advice on best practice. The most recent significant contributions were made by Frank Rose in his book, The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood. This was followed by Nuno Bernado’s, The Producer’s Guide to Transmedia and most recently Andrea Phillips’, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia. All three of these texts provide an array of tools for practitioners wanting to make a career in transmedia production. Rose’s text focuses on Hollywood productions and discusses the changes in the media landscape from an audience perspective, whilst Bernado’s takes a very practical approach to being an independent producer of transmedia content and walks the reader through the stages of production from funding and developing through to producing and distributing content. I found Bernado’s hands on guide to be useful, but heavily focused on the practicalities of production; where Phillips’ Creators Guide focused on the necessity for creativity and innovation; demystifying the processes and prompting the reader to think outside the box and create a new future for storytelling. I am interested in creating a transmedia development process that combines both the practicalities of production but which is driven by creative inquisition. This would follow a three-phase process of constructing a story world, designing the audience experience you wish to create and then finding the platforms and technologies best suited to deliver that experience. Table 1: Three-phase process for low-budget transmedia development Story world

Experience

Delivery

By building the story world first and constructing a world with pressures, rules and contemporary issues, I then have access to a multitude of possible plots for an unlimited amount of characters across time and space. I can explore the various platforms available and design a user-experience for the audience that provides multiple entry and exit points, and that can be used for niche audiences and mainstream audiences, as well as platform-specific audiences.

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Multiplatform Storytelling and the ‘Niche’ Market

__________________________________________________________________ 4. Producing for Niche or Marginal Audiences In a 2011 interview with Latitude° (a research centre undertaking an innovation study on the future of storytelling), Brooke Thompson said: An important area for me is understanding the opportunities in niche versus mainstream; is it worth a company’s money or will they get a strong return by going after niche versus going after mainstream audiences? Personally, I think there’s a lot of value in going niche—and that it’s something transmedia is natively prepared to handle. We’re asking for an audience that is very heavily invested, whereas a mainstream audience is more casual. 11 In Australia, the niche lesbian audience searches online for their local content as it does not exist in Australian-produced mainstream film and television. By the 1970s Australian television was leading the rest of the world in terms of queer representation, but content today is unfortunately sparser than in previous generations. There has been no significant lesbian storyline on primetime Australian television in the past few years. This has resulted in many Australian lesbian filmmakers turning to self-produced, self-funded production models designed specifically for online digital distribution. Web series such as Generation L (2011), QueersLand (2012), and The Newtown Girls (2012) have found a way to tell episodic stories around lesbian-themed content by using hybrid television production models that allow for engagement with audiences over a long period of time. Consumers of lesbian content are seeking out the narratives they desire online as this is now the principal location; with media aggregators such as YouTube and Blip TV having fewer restrictions on what content can be uploaded. Through The Newtown Girls I have been able to develop and reflect on my own production processes, from developing the storyworld through to evaluating audience engagement. The light-hearted comedy was created to tell a story that the lesbian community of Sydney (and indeed many lesbians around the world) could relate to and see themselves represented in. The first season was told through 10 webisodes. Viewers could follow and interact with the characters on Twitter and vote to decide on whom they wanted the protagonist to end up with (romantically) at the end of the series. An interactive Google map on the website allowed audiences to see where we filmed in Newtown as well as the businesses who sponsored the series by donating goods or services. The first season was a way to formulate and test development, production and distribution strategies and assess the engagement of the narrative itself. In 6 months, The Newtown Girls received over one million views, on 2 main channels (YouTube and Blip TV), reaching audiences in over 190 countries. As of January 1st 2013, The Newtown Girls had received over 1.4 million views in 200

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__________________________________________________________________ countries. The YouTube analytics indicate that 85% of viewership is female with USA leading in viewership. Interestingly Saudi Arabia is number 2, UK number 3, followed by France, Germany, Brazil and Australia respectively. 68% of the views occurred on the YouTube website with 30% on mobile devices. 12 Measuring the audience data with regards to the amount of eyeballs can be misleading in determining the successful engagement of the narrative, so I also considered the level to which the community created their own work. I found that fans of the series had appropriated the content through discussion forums, fan art and fan videos, where the main characters were shipped in different pairings than what appeared in the show, in order to satisfy their own desires for the characters. From the experience of producing The Newtown Girls I have been developing a transmedia project process which is designed to provide an overall approach for creating transmedia experiences: Table 2: Five-phase process for low-budget transmedia production Assess

Bible

Create

Deliver

Evaluate

A. Phase 1 The first phase is to assess whether the narrative idea works as a transmedia project. The assessment phase is based on the traditional brainstorming process of any creative project, but asks the writer/producer to think specifically around the individual and overall experiences they wish to deliver to the audience and how they might create those experiences utilising the platforms available. B. Phase 2 Developing a storyworld bible is the next phase of the transmedia project development process. This process of fleshing out the story world and clearly outlining the world’s rules and pressures, characters, settings, genres as well as the experience timeline, shared narrative links, entry points and exit methods as well as the creative components of scripts, storyboards, art assets and production logistics, is integral to understanding the conceptual and practical requirements of the transmedia experience. C. Phase 3 The third phase of creation can only begin once funding has been assigned. The creation of assets will fall into either world assets (assets that will exist across all of the platforms, e.g.: branding, character design etc.) and individual platform/experience assets (assets specifically designed for the various platforms they exist on, e.g.: animations, comic strips, audio-visual material etc.).

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Multiplatform Storytelling and the ‘Niche’ Market

__________________________________________________________________ D. Phase 4 The delivery phase of the process is pretty self-explanatory, requiring the producer to have a strong grasp of the projected delivery/experience timeline, whilst remaining flexible and receptive to the audience’s engagement of the narrative. It is vital that there is a clear launch plan in place and a clear understanding of how the audience will be obtained and maintained, and monitored for how the narrative can be amended to suit their needs and wants. E. Phase 5 The final phase of the transmedia process involves an evaluation phase. This should begin immediately following the release of the first narrative element and work parallel to the release of the various project or narrative strands as they occur. Knowing what is working and what isn't while the narrative is still being experienced will allow the producer to adapt and amend the future experiences as best as possible – and this is one of the key benefits of transmedia and multiplatform production. 5. Conclusion The Newtown Girls web series, whilst not initially appearing to be a transmedia project is expanding its transmedia experience in the second season as new avenues for audience engagement, interaction and participation are pursued. The main narrative is looking to be expanded to possibly include a short animated series, livestream chats with the characters, a book club app (for iOS and Android), an Aurasma 13 map of Newtown that will provide hidden videos, unlocked by audiences with clues from the series, and a possible Mass Participation TV or a Shared Story World narrative experience following the conclusion of the web series. Unlike the tried and true production methods of short films, the world of lowbudget transmedia production is still very much in its infancy. It is projects like The Newtown Girls that provide training grounds for testing development, production and distribution methods. What The Newtown Girls has provided is evidence that further practice-led research is required to evaluate the possibilities that transmedia has in providing spaces for communities (especially those marginalised) to participate in, and engage in dialogue.

Notes 1

The Newtown Girls, produced by Natalie Krikowa. Full episodes available to view at http://www.thenewtowngirls.com. 2 The term transmedia was originally coined by the post-structuralist Julia Kristeva in her text, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (1980)

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__________________________________________________________________ and later appropriated by Marsha Kinder in her text, Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games (1991) when investigating intertextuality in literature studies. 3 Henry Jenkins discusses his own relationship with the troublesome terminology surrounding transmedia in his blog. (accessed September 4, 2012). http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html. 4 Henry Jenkins, Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. 1 August 2011, (accessed September 4, 2012) http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html. 5 Henry Jenkins discussion of transmedia storytelling can be found in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006) on pages 93-97 6 Henry Jenkins further discussion in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006) on pages 93-97. 7 Screen Australia. Program Guidelines: Multiplatform Porgrams. Funding Guidelines, Australian Government, 2012. 8 Mike Jones is a screenwriter, novelist, creative developer, blogger and consultant across traditional and new media projects, with a particular interest in interactive, episodic and multi-platform development. He is the Head of Story for Portal Entertainment UK and lectures at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. See http://www.mikejones.tv/journal/2013/1/28/storyworld-immersionbefore-plot-platform.html (accessed January 29, 2013). 9 Mike Jones, blog post, Storyworld & Immersion Before Plot & Platform. See http://www.mikejones.tv/journal/2013/1/28/storyworld-immersion-before-plotplatform.html (accessed January 29, 2013). 10 LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 200 million members in 200 countries. See http://www.linkedin.com. Screen Hub is Australia and New Zealand’s leading media news and job website. See http://screenhub.com.au. 11 Brooke Thompson interview by Kim Gaskins (25 October, 2011), Future of Storytelling Expert Series: Transmedia Engagement 101. Available at: http://latd.com/2011/10/25/future-of-storytelling-expert-series-transmediaengagement-101-with-experience-designer-brooke-thompson/. 12 See Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/thenewtowngirls) and Blip.tv (http://www.blip.tv/thenewtowngirls 13 Aurasma is the world’s leading augmented reality platform, using advanced image and pattern recognition to blend the real-world with interactive videos, animations and art called ‘auras’. See http://www.aurasma.com.

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__________________________________________________________________

Bibliography Bernado, Nuno. The Producer’s Guide to Transmedia: How to Develop, Fund, Produce and Distribute Compelling Stories Across Multiple Platforms. Ireland: Beactive Books, 2011. Generation L. February 27, 2011. Accessed September 17, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/GenerationLshow. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006/2008. ———. Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. 1 August 2011. Accessed September 4, 2012. http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html. ———. Transmedia Storytelling 101. March 22, 2007. Accessed September 4, 2012. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html. Jenkins, Henry, and Mark Deuze. ‘Editorial: Converegence Culture.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2008): 5-12. Jones, Mike. Storyworld & Immersion Before Plot & Platform. January 28, 2013. Accessed January 29, 2013. http://www.mikejones.tv/journal/2013/1/28/storyworld-immersion-before-plotplatform.html. Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games. California: University of California Press, 1991. Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. QueersLand. Directed by Paul Geoghegan. Performed by Leah Pellinkhof and Rhys Emmett Rathbone. 2012. Phillips, Andrea. A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences Across Multiple Platforms. United States: McGraw Hill Professional, 2012.

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__________________________________________________________________ Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. United States: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Screen Australia. Program Guidelines: Multiplatform Porgrams. Funding Guidelines, Australian Government, 2012. The Newtown Girls. Produced by Natalie Krikowa. 2012. Thompson, Brooke, interview by Kim Gaskins. Future of Storytelling Expert Series: Transmedia Engagement 101 (25 October, 2011). Natalie Krikowa is a doctoral candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is also a screenwriter, filmmaker and educator. Her current research is investigating transmedia production for marginalised audiences.

Part II Intersecting Contexts of Transmedia Practices

Transmediated Educational Futures: Case Studies in the Use of Transmedia in Educational Contexts Hart Cohen Abstract The standard account of Transmedia Communications aligns it to multi-platform delivery of media unbounded by context or purpose. This has drawn attention initially to storytelling strategies designed with an interactive end-user interface in mind. The significant articulations of transmedia communications range from commercial enterprise leaning towards pop culture genres as well as non-fictional advocacy (http://transmedia-activism.com/) projects interested in using narrative strategies for social change. Cutting across these initiatives are projects designed specifically for the educational market notwithstanding that learning is a presumed embedded feature of all storytelling. My specific interest in this chapter is to examine transmedia initiatives that define themselves as primarily educational projects for an education market. I am looking at examples of companies and projects with attention to the due diligence taken by them with respect to the educational values that lie at the base of this work. Through an ethnographic engagement with these providers, I ask: What are the credentials that would qualify an organisation to provide educational materials to its target end-user group? What kinds of transmedia projects are being launched to enhance learning outcomes for the target end-user group? What are the specific links between transmedia strategies and learning outcomes? What forms of evaluation are in place to guide best practice in achieving the learning goals of the target end-user group? On the basis of this research, I hope to offer a view as to the bonafides or otherwise of a significant growth in the use of transmedia to service educational outcomes. Key Words: Transmedia, education, story-telling, convergence, play. ***** 1. Introduction: Web 1.0 to 3.0: Where Young People Meet, Play and Learn Henry Jenkins, in his 2011 Ted Talk1 made the following points: He states that the web’s social media facility is above all a meeting place for young people.These locales are now production hubs with many young people acting as media producers. Jenkins’ research has identified that young people have the skills and knowledge required to produce media for the web.2 The statistics bear this out in that 65% of teens make media content for the web’s social media. In his talk, Jenkins identifies 12 social skills and cultural competencies needed and often shown to be part of a young person’s repertoire as web-media producer.

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__________________________________________________________________ Jenkins notes the changing intra-web as described by Gary Hayes and others:3 The move from from Web1 to Web 3.0. Web 1 is largely a one–to-many mass communication model and Web 2.0 an interactive communication (blogs, social networking) model. Web 3.0 is the creative and semantic WEB with its immersive virtual worlds. Jenkins is interested in how the social media and gaming in particular can cross over from entertainment to education. Through assuming a character’s persona, adherents can effect real acts of influence on global issues. Jenkins ends his talk with the question: ‘If these initiatives around Web 3.0 help to mobilise citizenship, should not they be allowed into the classrooms?’4 This is the starting point for my chapter. 2. Educational Past/Educational Future Can we predict what education will be like in the future? By education, I mean the mutual practices of teaching and learning. One of my earliest experiences in Australian education was with the adult education institution known as the Workers Education Association whose classes were given in the evening.5 I learned an important lesson here given that my teaching and learning experience had been as a lecturer in a community college and as an undergraduate and then postgraduate at university. The nature of the conversation appeared richer in a ratio to how distant the people in these evening classes were from mainstream education. It was their life experience that informed their interests and responses, and their contributions always felt to me to be truthful, meaningful and immediate. This model of the learner is served well by the Web-based learning platforms because it supports information exchange anytime and anyplace. The flexibility of web-based platforms also supports the idea that learners can be different in their propensities and pace. This places a syllabus of topics or agenda of learning in a precarious status of being the lesser of the key aspects of learning practices. For the teacher’s role, I prefer a term from chemistry, the catalyst.6 Certain chemical combinations only come to fruition with the introduction of a catalyst. The individual elements may contribute to the process, however the catalyst is an enabling force in the equation, but no more important than the original elements themselves. 3. The Future-Present For those for who, classrooms are a necessity, they are so because learning as a first principle, is based on communication and this suggests a strong emphasis on real-time face-to-face interaction within a contiguous space. To test this first principle, I would like to examine an exemplar of non-classroom transmediated educational experiences for how they stand up to a series of questions about their ability to establish success in learning in whatever way they determine. The point is not to foreclose on these experiences as non-traditional and outside the

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__________________________________________________________________ mainstream, but to assess what it is that is educational at all about them, and how transmediation may assist with enhancing these educational values. 4. Games The example is based on visits to a media and game company, Tribal Nova.7 Tribal Nova develops and markets educational online services and games for young people (often pre-schoolers). They partner with major media partners in North America and Europe: PBS in the United States (www.pbskidsplay.org), Editions Bayard in France (www.bayardkids.com) and CBC in Canada (www.kidscbcwonderworld.ca). Their strategy is to extend and combine characters that populate children’s shows and extend them through games and other online engagements. Their mission statement emphasises: ‘…products and services that are truly educational and can make a difference in a child’s development…’8 The idea of combining games and educational values is not a new one. Brown and Thomas invoke Johan Huizinga, the great philosopher of play, in order to explain why the role of play should be significantly expanded within our educational institutions. Huizinga argued that play is crucial to the development of all human culture, both sacred and profane. Brown and Thomas claim that, All systems of play are, at base, learning systems. They are ways of engaging in complicated negotiations of meaning, interaction, and competition, not only for entertainment, but also for creating meaning.9 Huizinga, who said, ‘Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing’, would no doubt agree. One example can be drawn from the USA in which a large fund was made available for application by media groups to provide educational media in a variety of modalities. The following was how the types of projects were described on their website: In FY 2010, this program featured three new emphases: 1) applicants were invited to submit proposals for the development of innovative transmedia programming—that is, the use of television and other media such as the internet, mobile devices, games, and print in interconnected ways; 2) applicants were invited to develop programming in reading and/or mathematics that would be designed to increase the literacy and/or numeracy skills of low-income children ages two to eight years old; and 3) support for programming and outreach, which had been split into separate competitions in 2005, was merged so that grantees would be creating outreach activities in support of their own programming efforts.10

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__________________________________________________________________ In response, the makers of children’s TV hit Yo Gabba Gabba! (2007),11 Wildbrain, in collaboration with WTTW Chicago, pitched UMIGO, a transmedia educational gaming initiative (multi-platform games, assessment tools for early childhood). 5. UMIGO: Transmediated Education The following material was accessed through discussions with Ms Reisa Levine, production manager at Tribal Nova, a transmedia development company specializing in educational materials. The following summary of the UMIGO franchise, its graphical and transmedia connections and engagements outline the main assets used by the UMIGO brand and also the assessment system devised to track feedback given by children’s progress in their learning to parents. They term the tracking and feedback part of the package, KidCore.12

Image 1: UMIGO website. © 2013. Image Courtesy of Wildbrain The United States’ Department of Education ‘Ready to Learn’ Initiative13 targets children of 6-8 years from low-income settings. Their emphasis is on supporting the development of basic math skills and principles and they are interested specifically in the use of transmedia methods to achieve this. The transmedia approach suggested by UMIGO include a web-platform with a number of games, a mobile app where a number of other games could be accessed, board games, music videos, animated shorts and books. These were developed for year two of the program intended for primary school students. At the end of year two, the ‘Umiverse’ contained 4 mobile games, 4 web-based games (2 were programed in Flash and 2 in HTML5 integrated into a webplatform); music videos accessed via iTunes and the website; songs written and

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__________________________________________________________________ performed by legendary artist Bootsy Collins; a board game, and colouring books with characters and relevant themes. The challenges for the company in delivering these services were based on the idea that there are experiences that lie between the fun of games and the challenges required for learning. Finding the right combination of these drives the design and production of the transmedia world that make up the array of affordances for these learning environments. The project involves multiple partnerships with companies of different competencies and strengths but who all seek to contribute to a multiplatform approach to effective learning outcomes.14

Image 2: Tribal Nova transmedia graphic. © 2013. Image Courtesy of Tribal Nova 6. The ‘KidCore’ Back-End Analytics Platform (Tribal Nova) The company has developed this platform over years of refinement and continuous investments. KidCore is a set of interrelated software modules that perform the following business logic and backend functions: It assesses student performance in real-time, provides the intelligence to adjust content difficulty levels in real-time, tracks progress in completing content and in acquiring the related skill(s), provides built-in analytics to track usage by content type, skill and other identifiers, reports to administrators, educators and parents through two methods: push (e.g., email notification) and pull (e.g., on-demand reports on a website or app), recommends digital content to the student or educator based on a

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__________________________________________________________________ student’s prior progress, assignments, usage history and achievements using customizable algorithms, manages learning achievements and rewards as well as a digital content catalog.15 There are a number of key Modules that form KidCore’s backend database environment tailored to and supporting each unique online service offering. The following is a summary of a selection of the most significant: The establishment of user profiles so that each user is linked to a unique learning profile that keeps a detailed history of sessions, progress, rewards, time on task and other information. The profiles are highly customizable, giving students the ability to set up an avatar or choose a profile image.

Image 3: The KidCore Ecosystem graphic. © 2013. Image Courtesy of Tribal Nova KidCore offers real-time performance assessment through assessment algorithms. Assessment is done at the game or interactive activity level through real-time tracking of a student’s performance. The assessment modules allow students to move through activities at their own pace—increasing or decreasing in difficulty according to their performance on the games or activities. The consequence is that KidCore claims it can offer accurate confirmation that a student has mastered the skill or standard proposed by the game and that progression is taking place. Further tracking of performance is developed according to the curriculum that is set for a longer term record of progress in learning.

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__________________________________________________________________ KidCore also has reporting functionality in a wide variety of formats. It can be designed for teachers, parents, school administrators and other stakeholders to offer detailed individualized student records, or an overview of a class’s general performance on a given subject. Reports can be sent to teachers and/or parents as ‘push notifications,’ i.e., via email, Facebook posts, and other social media portals—and/or can be centralized as part of a teacher, administrator, or parent dashboard as ‘pull’ mechanisms. With its recommendation engine, KidCore intelligence (data) can be set to guide learners through a specific and sequenced path based on their previous performance history, or specific pedagogical objectives. The system can also allow for open exploration using built-in recommendations and/or assignments to ensure that the student works across all skills and domains. As is common in both gaming and learning environments, rewards to mark achievement and progress are important to maintain interest and incentive for further progress. A wide variety of inventory objects can be managed and distributed to a student in the form of motivators and rewards. These might be objects to decorate their personal space, or badges, or special access to a free-play activity. Significantly, a multi-platform approach is a key characteristic of KidCore which matches the transmedia environment which children inhabit. Multiple platform support in classrooms today allows students to seamlessly access their profile across multiple devices (e.g., Web, iOS, Android, SMART), whether on an iPad, Web browser or mobile phone.16 7. UMIGO as a Transmedia Property In the video on their website, UMIGO define transmedia as: Story-telling across multiple platforms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a user’s understanding of the story universe … Distinct from multimedia: the same story told repeatedly in a different medium…17 Further, the video states that ‘Transmedia creates a world that can be shared with different experiences on different media platforms in an entertaining and educational way.’ These are validating definitions of transmedia that tally with other definitions provided by children’s media commentators (see below). There are a number of points made on the UMIGO website that suggest the company is interested in researching assessment models for application to its model of learning through games. UMIGO states that its interest in research is to exploit the many new possibilities for educational content that digital platforms provide, including but not limited:

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__________________________________________________________________ • To engender greater interactivity between the program and the child, making UMIGO more engaging as well as deepening the child’s learning moments through ‘reflection’ and other pedagogical means; • To embed analytical tools that provide real time feedback; data that will not only drive the interactions presented to the child but also report to the child’s caregivers and educators, thus facilitating their engagement in the child’s development; • To provide a tiered learning pedagogy that the child progresses through as their skills improve—all in a game format which children instinctively understand from their experience in the electronic gaming world; • To determine the impact of multiple platforms on learning; that is, whether the effect of play on several different platforms produces performance outcomes that are additive or multiplicative.18 These mission statements are consonant with the idea that games on digital platforms offer fertile territory for taking a resource that is already strongly embedded in popular culture and using these affordances for learning experiences and a means of offering feedback about those experiences. The greater interest in testing on a national scale in countries such as Australia (NAPLAN) and the United States suggest that the interest in tracking learning outcomes will continue to be a key component of all learning systems developed in this way. On the question of whether mediated or unmediated learning will dominate this space, UMIGO suggests that there will be both an interest in how unmediated learning takes place with these devices, but also in finding new ways to make these technologies appropriate for formal, mediated settings such as classrooms. Further, UMIGO is interested to know whether the use of media-based interventions allows for a ‘continuum of learning’. By this they mean that as the content delivered via media platforms moves seamlessly from the classroom to the home, is there value added in extending the child’s learning hours and opportunities? 19 8. Transmedia and Trans-Generational Cultures David Kleeman, President of the American Center for Children and Media is keen to point out that contemporary producers of children’s media think transmedia organically, often without even having to mention the term. This, however, this was not always the case: …transmedia should be ubiquitous. Still, the term teetered on the brink of buzzword, lacking the intellectual foundation to

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__________________________________________________________________ distinguish it from cross-platform, brand synergy, or simply ‘my TV show has a website’.20 So he goes on to quote Jeff Gomez on transmedia who states, ‘…that content be developed and distributed in ways that “leverage the specific features of that platform”.’21A longer blurb for transmedia is found on Gomez’ company website.22 Kleeman is keen to point out how contemporary transmedia producers’ approaches bespoke a coherent development process, in which pieces of the story were parceled out to the appropriate platforms from the start, rather than beginning from one device. This now seems to be a common strategy in transmedia companies. But most interesting is his analysis of a generational shift in the way that transmedia has found its niche among young producers whose companies are making product in this way but who were held back by a generational gap until the technology itself made transmedia a reality. The distributed forms of storytelling and gaming followed. As Kleeman points out, Today’s producers: [those aged] 25-35 were teenagers around 2000—the stories of 2000 were made by producers of the TV generation—linear/visual. Gaming; PS2 released 2000; XBox Live; networked gaming in 2002. New generation production tools includes, mobile smart media; broadband everywhere; affordable and easy-to-use production tools; social networks to extend and democratize storytelling; and much more … Transmedia is sourced from the audience for the audience.23 9. Conclusion: Further Questions for Researching Transmediated Education With the future of education bound up with digital media platforms, should the providers of these affordances be credentialed in some way? What are the credentials that would qualify an organisation to provide educational materials to its target end-user group? Mainstream education has a scaffolded system of credentials for those who teach and administer educational programs in schools. Currently the digital space is one where there is the possibility of contiguity from home to school. This allows for the development of learning devices by many who are outside the conventional credentialing system. How long this can continue will depend on the trend toward embedding these devices in mediated classroom experiences. While there seems to be no specific accreditation of companies intending to provide educational products to the marketplace, companies do claim to have in-house expertise on educational outcomes and high profile research organisations in educational assessment are usually part of larger funding applications. Further they all must comply with highly regulated aspects of the contexts within which they work, privacy legislation, children’s protection law and many others.

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__________________________________________________________________ Perhaps one of the key developments within transmediated education are the strategies devised to maintain and track learning outcomes. Learning outcomes become trackable across varied platforms and that is a priority with the company I researched. These appear to offer parents quite a bit of up-to-date and in some instances real-time tracking and feedback on the child’s performance within learning environments to do with literacy, language and maths in a pre-school and school age demographic. The current testing regimes in many countries for schoolage children testify to the importance that parents attach to them. The reason most often given by government representatives is that the testing regimes enable policy development in targeting problem areas where schools could receive more funding to assist with the mitigation of those problems. Parental rationales tend to be more about intervening into their child’s education to improve outcomes, so it is wise for transmediated education companies to enhance their product with tracking strategies like the ones referred to above. Not all commentators or educators favour national testing where the one-size-fits-all approach is said to disadvantage those who do not perform well on tests. In this way, the digital platforms sold as being more adaptable for diverse styles of learning also serve a mainstream focus when it comes to tracking outcomes. Best practice in supporting the achievement of strong learning outcomes is part of the evolution of companies who seek to occupy this space. The companies examined above have relationships to researchers and others who provide feedback on their products. The question as to whether companies in the transmedia education space should be subject to greater regulation is a difficult one to assess in that as a commercial entity, costs of engaging in the research that lead to best practice would be subject to the overall envelope of any particular project. As the clients are high profile and exposed to public scrutiny, there is strong incentive for these companies to achieve and maintain best practice, and as alluded to earlier, in particular, in developing effective feedback on learning outcomes to parents as a high priority. We could well ask what kinds of impact the current technological stage will have on all forms of social and political institutions given the penetration of digital media into all walks of life. In this sense the impact on education has been felt as a direct challenge to classroom-based linear education such that this form of educational experience is already undergoing significant change.

Notes 1

TEDx talks NYED—Henry Jenkins. Web-video accessed via TEDx Talks YouTube channel, viewed 30 May 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa0XRlw

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__________________________________________________________________ 2

Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education in the 21st Century (Chicago: Macarthur Foundation, 2006), viewed 21 January 2013, http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9CE807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF 3 http://www.personalizemedia.com/articles/web-30/ 4 Ibid. 5 Established in NSW in 1913, and originally working in partnership with the University of Sydney, the WEA was a movement founded to promote the higher education of working men and women. At its heart, WEA Sydney remains a nonprofit community-based adult education organisation, and all those who support the ideals of an educated democracy are encouraged to get involved in the governance of the association, viewed 21 January 2013, http://www.weasydney.com.au/. 6 Thanks to Bob Hodge for this insight. Personal Communication. 7 Tribal Nova has recently been bought by the prominent educational publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, viewed on 21 January 2013, http://www.tribalnova.com/ 8 Tribal Nova notes: `We have designed a ground-breaking platform that allows us to track a child’s progress, report its progress to parents or teachers and recommend games based on the child’s profile. But technology is not all, our team has built over time a unique expertise in creating and developing ground-breaking, high quality, secure environments and educational games that set themselves apart from what is usually available to children on the internet.’ Ibid. 9 Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011), viewed 21 January 2013, http://newcultureoflearning.com. 10 Ready to Learn Television Website, viewed 21 January 2013, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/rtltv/index.html 11 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0877512/episodes?season=1 12 http://umigo.info/ 13 Ready to Learn Television Website. 14 This information was gleaned from personal interviews with Tribal Nova’s production manager, Ms Reisa Levine in January 2013. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Unigo.com, viewed on 21 January 2013, http://www.umigo.com. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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__________________________________________________________________ 20

David Kleeman, ‘Is There a Transmedia Generation Gap?’ Children’s Technology Review 20.149 (August 2012): 4. 21 Ibid., 4. 22 Starlightrunner.com, viewed 21 January 2013, http://starlightrunner.com/transmedia. 23 Childrenstech.com, viewed 21 January 2013, http://childrenstech.com/blog/archives/10016.

Bibliography Gruber, Tom. ‘A Translation Approach To Portable Ontologies’, Knowledge Acquisition 5.2 (1993): 1-27. Harry Potter Alliance Website. Viewed 21 January 2013. http://thehpalliance.org/what-we-do/. Hayes, Gary. PersonalizeMedia Website. Viewed 21 January 2013. http://www.personalizemedia.com/articles/web-30/. Hodgson, Matthew. The{app}gap. Viewed 21 January 2013. http://www.theappgap.com/beyond-web-20.html Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education in the 21st Century. Chicago: Macarthur Foundation, 2006. Viewed 21 January 2013. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E04B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF. Kleeman, David. ‘Is There A Transmedia Generation Gap?’ Children’s Technology Review 20.149 (August 2012): Viewed 21 January 2013. http://childrenstech.com/blog/archives/10016. Taylor, Scott. ‘ISTE 2012: Sir Ken Through A Mirror Called Twitter’, Children’s Technology Review 20.149 (August 2012): Viewed 21 January 2013. http://www.360kid.com/blog/2012/08/iste-2012/. Thomas, Douglas and Brown, John Seely. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination For A World Of Constant Change. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. Viewed 21 January 2013. http://newcultureoflearning.com.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ready to Learn Television. Viewed on 21 January 2013. http://www2.ed.gov/programs/rtltv/index.html. TED Talks. Viewed on 21 January 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa0XRlw. Tribal Nova Website. Viewed on 21 January 2013. http://www.tribalnova.com/. UMIGO. Viewed on 21 January 2013. www.umigo.com. Workers Educational Association website. Viewed on 21 January 2013. http://www.weasydney.com.au/. X-Media Lab website. Viewed on 21 January 2013. http://www.xmedialab.com. Hart Cohen is Director, Research and Postgraduate studies, School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney. His research spans broadcast, on-line and print media. He is co-author of Screen Media Arts (OUP 2009) and founding editor of the Global Media Journal (Australian Edition).

Produsage of Transmedia Storyworlds Stephen Barrass Abstract Transmedia production follows a film model, with a Director in command of a hierarchy of content creators who develop parts of the story for different platforms. However, transmedia audiences are participatory and actively contribute to the development of the story as well. If this active participation was taken further, could the audience actually produce its own transmedia story? This chapter explores a model of user led production, called produsage, in transmedia storytelling. This exploration is done through teaching-led research projects with more than 100 students in Cross-media Production in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The first project involved the students in an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that extended a graphic novel with websites and interactive emails. Midway through the game the Director invited the students ‘behind the curtain’ to contribute additional backstory for the characters. The trans-media format allowed the students to contribute graphics, animation and soundfiles. In the second experiment, students digitally overlaid stories on a giant walk-though map of Australia in the Garden of Australian Dreams (GOAD) at the National Museum of Australia. The geo-located content was accessed on a mobile device using the Layar Augmented Reality browser. The third experiment situated the storyworld on the University campus, and focussed characters, and interactions between characters, as a vehicle for peer production and collaborative storytelling. These experiments have led to a developing framework for the produsage of transmedia storyworlds. Key Words: peer production, transmedia, extendable storyworld, collective creativity, fandom, social media, geol-location, augmented reality, alternate reality games. ***** 1. Introduction Transmedia storytelling is characterised by the delivery of different parts of the story on multiple platforms. The complexity of transmedia led Screen Australia to commission experienced producer Gary Hales to write the Transmedia Production Bible which is ‘predominantly aimed at the producers, who have responsibility for the overall direction of all key areas, and should inform the input they need from their various multi-disciplinary team members.’1 The Bible presents a production model similar to that used in television, film and computer games, with a Producer/Director at the head of a hierarchy of content creators in specific roles. Transmedia Storytelling is also characterised by the active participation of the audience. This interaction can allow the audience to influence the development of

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__________________________________________________________________ the story as it unfolds over time, and contribute original content. The blurring of the line between passive consumption and active production in the Open Source Software movement, Blogs and Wikipedia was termed produsage by Axel Bruns2 who identified the characteristics of: 1) Open participation: the content can be freely developed by the community. 2) Fluid heterarchy: direction is by ad-hoc meritocracy, rather than central leadership. 3) Palimsestic and granular content: the content is never complete, and is in a continuous process of development that can be overwritten. The content is divisible into granular components that can be independently produced by diverse contributors, rather than from a small core team. 4) Common property: content is treated as common property and each contributor receives individual reward through an informal merit system such as a sense of seniority for the amount and quality of contributions. A version of produsage can be found in the production of a feature length parody of a Star-Trek movie by a group of Finnish film-makers in 2005.3 The success of this movie led to the development of the Wreckamovie.com site, which has peer-produced several more films released in cinemas around the world. Wreckamovie has shown that the produsage model can be successfully applied in film. This raises the question of whether produsage could also be applied to transmedia? Could a transmedia story be produced by a participatory audience, without direction? What sort of framework would be required to enable this to happen? Would produsage transmedia be different from other forms? The following sections describe a series of experiments in the produsage of transmedia stories with cohorts of 100 students enrolled in Cross-media production at the University of Canberra in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The first experiment involved the contribution of content ‘behind the curtain’ to an online Alternate Reality Game. The second experiment involved the digital overlay of a network of stories on a walk-through map of Australia at the National Museum of Australia, using the Layar Augmented Reality browser. The third experiment overlaid a storyworld on the campus of the University of Canberra using posters leading to characters designed to engage fans. 2. Alternate Reality Games and Extendable Storyworlds Alternate reality games (ARG) blend fiction with reality using characters on social media and email, websites, telephone calls, newspaper ads, and props. The players interact with the characters, and each other, in response to events in real

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__________________________________________________________________ time, and play is directed by the game designer’s, known as ‘puppeteers’, who create the content, often on the fly and in response to the audience. The entry point into an ARG, called a ‘rabbit hole’ is designed to attract curiosity while maintaining a ‘this is not a game’ aesthetic that blurs the line between fiction and reality. The students were instructed to find a ‘rabbit hole’ and participate in an ARG to gain experience with multi-platform storytelling. A link to an active ARG was found on the Unfiction.com site that provides information about past, current, and upcoming ARGs. The link led to a Job Personality form that asked for contact details. Several days after filling the form an email was received from the job site, and the game began to unfold through a series of online puzzles that lead to a graphic novel called Old Soldiers.4 The student’s participated in the ARG over the next six weeks, and their contribution was recognised by the Director, Kevin Stone, in a blog post titled Aussie, Aussie, Aussie: I keep track of my stats, and like any good puppetmaster, its VERY useful to see who’s playing your game and what they are saying. It can GREATLY help run a game, and help people when they are stuck, or help you if you’ve messed up. I am getting a TON of people from the land down under, one problem, their board is behind a firewall at a University, So I can’t monitor, or see how they’re doing. Frustrating. Its strange to do it blind. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this issue?5 In an email exchange with Producer Kevin Stone about the problem, we also discussed the development of transmedia content by the participatory audience. He suggested the possibility to contribute graphics, and animations to the backstory of the characters. This suggestion highlighted the potential that the ARG could allow individual contributions to the multi-platform content. 3. ABC Pool, Augmented Reality and Collective Storytelling The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) site Pool was designed as a ‘place where people share media and collaborate on projects.’6 Members could propose a project, and invite collaborators to contribute text, images, soundfiles and videos. An ABC Producer curated items for public broadcast on radio and television, and the online audience could record ‘likes’ to promote content. The site included a capability to geo-locate items that could be accessed on a mobile device using the Layar Augmented Reality (AR) browser. The potential of geo-located storytelling was promoted by a call out for the ‘My Tribe: Journeys’ project on mobile storytelling using geo-located media.7 At that time we were discussing transmedia projects with Cath Styles, the education outreach officer at the National Museum of Australia (NMA). The byline of the NMA ‘where our stories live’ suggested that it could be a place for

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__________________________________________________________________ personal stories that responded to the museum collections. Cath mentioned that WiFi access to the internet was being installed in the Garden of Australian Dreams (GoAD), which is a walk-through map of Australia that where one footstep equals 50km. The two main layers in the GoAD are a roadmap and an aboriginal language map that interweave ‘the Great Australian Dream’ with the aboriginal ‘Dreaming’.8 Other map layers include vegetation, soil and geology, explorer tracks, electoral boundaries, weather on Australia Day 1998, and the dingo-proof fence. There are also more symbolic items, such as the word ‘home‘ written in different languages, plantings of oaks to represent immigration, and references to painters and paintings. There is no signage in the space, and the meaning of the GoAD has been intentionally left open to interpretation. The brief for the project was to select 5 places in the GoAD that had personal meaning or resonance, and to produce original text, image and sound to connect these elements into a narrative journey through the space. The students were able to access each other’s work through online portfolios of work in progress, and the shared project on Pool. Within a month, the GoAD was digitally overlaid with more than 500 images, text and sounds that could be accessed through the Layar AR browser on a mobile device.9 The collection of stories had themes of family, holidays, memories, ancestry, and immigration, and even included a story from an Iraqi student who had spent time in the Woomera Detention Centre. The map connected the individual Journeys into a whole, without the need for explicit Direction. On the other hand the journeys all stood alone, and the whole was more like a collection than a cohesive story. 4. Designing the Produsage of an Emergent Storyworld The third experiment situated the transmedia storyworld on the campus of the University, with a potential audience of 10,000 staff, students and business people. The collaboration was guided by the IDEO design thinking process.10 IDEO is a human-centred process with stages of Problem definition, Ideation, Discovery, Interpretation, Prototyping and Evolution. The question ‘can we use Transmedia Storytelling to Inspire a Culture of Sustainability on the UC campus?’ was intended to provide a basis for the collaborative development of a cohesive story. The design process was implemented through four half-day workshops. The first workshop, led by Sustainability Officer Beth Mitchell, introduced issues such as food miles, global food security, fair trade, organic waste, community building, and transport, along with upcoming campaigns such as ‘Switch it Off’, and ‘Dress for the Weather’. The students then identified potential audiences on the campus that included international, remote, local, post-graduate, and special-needs students, lecturers, administrators, maintenance workers, visitors, cafés, bookshops, banks, restaurants, the pub, day care, the health centre, printing services, sports clubs, societies, bike riders, car drivers, bus travellers, and joggers.

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__________________________________________________________________ The second workshop was led by Emma Beddows, who provided insights into theory and practice from her thesis on transmedia audiences, where she found that characters are important, and that dedicated fans follow characters across platforms, with the example of the transition from the final TV episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the extension in comic book format.11 In the Ideation stage of the process the students identified major media platforms that would be the most natural and organic for a niche audience, and brainstormed characters that might engage fans from that audience. In the third workshop, Tracey Benson presented interdisciplinary art projects that involved performances, and the integration of physical and digital media.12 In this workshop the students placed their character in relation to the other characters, on a grid with axes of simple to complex personality, and pro-sustainability versus anti-sustainability attitude. This overview of the characters, included super-heroes, monsters, animals, garbage bins, hipsters, maintenance staff and others. The students then worked in self-selected groups to create a digital instantiation of their character on two or more platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr or Blogger. In order to generate character driven stories they were encouraged to have their characters friend other characters like themselves, and to leave provocative comments on the sites of characters with the opposite point of view. This produced alliances and rivalries that could be the basis for emerging stories. However the stories also needed an audience. The students created graphic posters of their character, with a sustainability message and a link to the online platforms that was placed to capture an audience. The final workshop presented case studies by Emma Keltie who was a producer of The Newtown Girls which had more than 1 million hits,13 and Karla Conway who produced the 35 Degrees 17 South which was an Augmented Reality Theatre performance at the National Gallery of Australia.14 Over the next four weeks the students evolved the story through the release of new sustainability messages on posters, interactions between characters online, and interactions between characters and the audience. The Great Maintaino engaged a fan base through graphic posters, an online comic, stickers placed near light switches, and communications with other characters, with the content contributed by a team of five collaborators.15 Earth Killer Ken,16 added rivalry through opposing stickers demanding the lights be left on, humourous posters, and online comments attacking the Great Maintaino. Sustainability Man featured MC Sustain in an animated video,17 while Franco the Fair Trade Farmer asked coffee drinkers to ask for fair trade coffee at the university cafes.18 The poster blitz created a buzz of activism, and removal of posters raised issues around the freedom of speech and the unsustainability of paper wastage by posters. Some of the characters were more developed than others. but there was an overall impression of a coherent story collectively produced by more than 100 co-creators.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Conclusion Transmedia Storytelling is characterised by the delivery of different parts of the story on multiple platforms, and the engagement of an active audience to piece the story together. The general approach to transmedia production is a film model with a Director in charge of a hierarchy of content developers. When students who were playing the part of a participatory audience in an ARG were invited behind the curtain to also create content for the characters it raised the potential of an alternative Produsage model for transmedia production. This observation was followed up in the subsequent project, where students created individual responses to the cultural content in the Garden of Australian Dreams. This led to the realisation that the map provided a framework for collective creativity that did not require explicit direction. It also led to the observation that the production was a collection of stories, which had emergent themes, but no coherent narrative. The final project aimed to build a coherent story through character driven narratives about sustainability on the university campus. These experiments have identified issues for the produsage of transmedia storyworlds: • Transmedia is multi-platform, and provides opportunities to contribute granular content in different media based on different skillsets. • Transmedia is participatory, and naturally provides for user led content and fan extensions. • A map and geo-location can provide a framework for an extendable storyworld where individuals can contribute granular content tied together by locations. • Character driven narrative enables extension by multiple authors. • Fans follow characters across platforms. • Interactions between characters, and with the audience, can generate emergent stories. • Transmedia characters situated in a real community can engage niche audiences. In an article on collective creativity, Liz Sanders proposes that the creation of socio-technological frameworks within which others can express their creativity is an important new role for artists and designers.19 In future work we will continue these experiments with the aim to develop a framework for the produsage of transmedia storyworlds.

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Gary P. Hales, ‘How to Write Transmedia Production Bible: A Template for Multi-Platform Producers,’ Screen Australia, accessed 23 September 2013, http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/filmmaking/digital_resources.aspx. 2 Axel Bruns, ‘Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation,’ Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity & Cognition, Washington, DC (2007): 99. 3 StarWreck, accessed 23 September, 2013, http://www.starwreck.com/. 4 See Kevin Stone, Old Soldiers, Big House Comics, 2011, accessed 23 September 2013, http://www.bighousecomics.com/. 5 Ibid. 6 ABC Pool, accessed 22 March, 2013, No longer available online. http://pool.abc.net.au. 7 ‘MyTribe:Journeys’, ABC Pool, 2012, accessed 22 March 2013, No longer available online. http://pool.abc.net.au/projects/my-tribe/. 8 Richard Weller, ‘Stepping Across a Continent’. Landscape Design 308 (2002):49. 9 Layar AR Browser, accessed 23 September, 2013, https://www.layar.com/. 10 IDEO Design Thinking for Educators, accessed 23 September 2013, http://designthinkingforeducators.com/. 11 Emma Beddows, ‘Consuming Transmedia: How Audiences Engage with Narrative across Multiple Story Modes’ (PhD diss., Swinburne University of Technology, 2012). 12 ‘Tracey M Benson’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://www.byte-time.net/. 13 ‘The Newtown Girls’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://thenewtowngirls.com/. 14 ‘35 Degrees 17 South’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://www.cytc.net/productions/272-gps. 15 ‘The Great Maintaino’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://michaelandmedia.tumblr.com/. 16 ‘Earth Kiler Ken’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://alexgeorgecrossmedia.tumblr.com/. 17 ‘Sustainability Man’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://samuelbartlett.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/reflective-blog/. 18 ‘Franco the Fair Trade Farmer’, accessed 23 September 2013, http://crossmediaproduction.tumblr.com/. 19 Liz Sanders, ‘Collective Creativity’, LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education 3 (2001): 1-6.

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Bibliography Beddows, Emma. ‘Consuming Transmedia: How Audiences Engage with Narrative across Multiple Story Modes.’ PhD Diss., Swinburne University of Technology, 2012. Bruns, Axel. ‘Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation.’ Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition, ACM, Washington, DC. (2007): 99. Hales, Gary P. ‘How to Write Transmedia Production Bible: A Template for MultiPlatform Producers.’ Screen Australia. Accessed 23 September 2013. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/filmmaking/digital_resources.aspx. Sanders, Liz. ‘Collective Creativity.’ LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education 3 (2001): 1-6. Stone, Kevin. Old Soldiers, Big House Comics. 2011. Accessed 23 September 2013. http://www.bighousecomics.com/. Weller, Richard. ‘Stepping across a Continent.’ Landscape Design 308 (2002): 4-9. Stephen Barrass is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. He holds a PhD in Information Technology from the Australian National University 1997, a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) from the University of NSW in 1986, and a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from the University of Canberra in 2010.

Transmedia Toe-Dipping: Kiss Kill by Jeni Mawter Jeni Mawter Abstract Kiss Kill is Young Adult realistic fiction. Relationships, experiences and ideas are explored through the use of multiple text types, philosophy and humour. The Kiss Kill story is about a disintegrating and explosive relationship. In these fragments lies its power, with multiple texts and transmedia giving the fragments form. Prose is combined with other narratives such as scripts, songs, notes, poems, comics, essays, texting, photos and more. Transmedia was used through blogs, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Key Words: Transmedia, storytelling, young adult, Kiss Kill. ***** 1. The Creative Process The blurb for Kiss Kill is as follows: How do you man up when you’re down? When 16 year old Mat meets Elle she seems perfect. But over time Elle becomes more controlling and aggressive. Feeling like no one will believe him Mat isolates himself more and more. Their relationship fragments then explodes.1 Stories are shaped to fit their form. The oral narratives of the past included epics, sagas, lyric poems, ritual songs, genealogies and panegyrics (praise poems) which were modified to suit a particular audience or occasion, and were often told with an intention to recycle knowledge back to the listener. With the development of writing and printing, story structures changed and moved from an oral-auralsensory focus to a visual focus. Ong notes that with print, ‘words became things’ that could be arranged on a page.2 With print, story closure was encouraged, a finality not seen in the oral tradition. Today we are in the midst of another technology explosion so that once again, stories can change. I seek to take storytelling into the future. As a futurist I am inspired by the views of Brian O’Leary and Hugh McGuire in their book A Futurist’s Manifesto,3 and by Mark Pesce who I first heard speak at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in 2010. In terms of transmedia storytelling, inspiration comes from Frank Rose’s The Art of Immersion,4 and by transmedia storytellers such as Jennifer Wilson, Jeff Gomez, Carlo Scolari, Brian Clark, Lina Srivastava, Simon Pulman, Rob Prattan, Andrea Phillips, Scott Walker, April Arrglington, Alison

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__________________________________________________________________ Norrington, Lance Weiler as well as Australia’s own Christy Dena and Gary P. Hayes. David Verela has stated that ‘the medium carries a lot of the story’s power.’5 The Kiss Kill story is about a disintegrating and explosive relationship. In these fragments lies its power, with multiple texts and transmedia giving the fragments form. Verela’s comments confirmed what I had already been experimenting with. I combined prose with other narratives such as scripts, songs, notes, poems, comics, essays, texting, photos and more. Transmedia was used through blogs, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. 2. What is Transmedia Storytelling? Definitions of transmedia storytelling differ but Simon Staffans says that transmedia ‘is telling stories over a number of media platforms, stories that are connected to a higher or lesser degree, but always connected and rooted in a common story world.’6 For Kiss Kill, Mat’s world is the story world. Not only can readers interact with the story, in transmedia they can also participate in the story. Henry Jenkins makes this distinction between interactivity and participation: ‘interactivity’ refers to ‘preprogramed entertainment experiences’ and ‘participation’ to ‘tak[ing] the resources offered by a text and push[ing] it in a range of directions which are neither preprogrammed nor authorized by the producers.’ So, to put it simple, interactivity gives the users a pre-set choice (ending a, b, or c; should the character do this or that next) while participation has users ‘do their own thing’ with the existing content – expanding it, altering it, continuing it, etc.7 Kiss Kill was written with no order. Mark Twain said that, ‘Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.’8 This appealed to me. Ideas appeared organically, were researched, created, randomly collated, and only after these processes did the novel take form. Mat’s story is a story of a boy who triumphs over a relationship with his abusive narcissistic girlfriend. The potential of Narcissism to destroy relationships (friends, family and communities) is explored, but Kiss Kill takes the traditional abuse story and inverts it so that young males can also be victims of relationship and emotional abuse, or bullying. Twenge and Campbell,9 and Twenge,10 show that there has been a rise in the incidence of Narcissism. Kiss Kill is a modern cautionary tale. Despite the subject matter Kiss Kill is humorous and heart-warming, ending with optimism. However, out of concern for my readers I can direct those in need to organisations such as ‘Headspace, Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation’ and ‘Mensline Australia’.

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__________________________________________________________________ Traditional storytelling involved ‘Listen, why I tell you a story.’ Transmedia storytelling changes this to ‘Let’s tell a story together’. Young adults (teens to twentysomethings) are adept at reading multi-platform narratives. They are used to reading non-linearly and they are used to interacting with narrative through sharing (social media) and co-creation. Mash-ups are a popular example of co-creation. Kiss Kill consciously provides multiple openings into the story for co-creation and the multiple platforms allow for engagement and participation. Readers can engage with me as the author on my blog (http://www.jenimawter.com/blog), or Mat the character on his blog http://www.whyidontgetgirls.com. Facebook, Twitter (@mawter @kisskilldigital) and Pinterest are also used for sharing the story experience. Kiss Kill readers share their creations on Mat’s blog. They have created music and recorded their own versions of ‘Thought I Knew’ as well as made a YouTube for the haunting scene ‘How Do You Define a Man?’ Individual as well as community creation is encouraged so that this story can continually evolve. As a writer I am aware that today’s young adult readers want convenience and connection. They want characters with emotional appeal, relevant to their own social networks, and about whom they care. Issues such as relationships, bullying and depression are relevant to them. In this way I targeted my reader and was actively involved in creating my audience. My ultimate goal is to build Mat’s fan base. The inclusion of the character blog deepens the audience’s emotional engagement as well as connects the character with my author brand. It inspires community comment, sharing and creation. Kiss Kill went on to leverage a community of creators, such as musicians and actors who produced the iTunes and YouTubes, and YA bloggers who wrote reviews. Transmedia is not a new form of storytelling. However, it usually involves large entertainment corporations with big budgets such as television (BBC Sherlock series, Nike promotion); film (Breathe by Yomi Ayeni); alternate reality gaming (Perplex City) or live action theatre (Clockwork Monkey). In terms of children’s stories David Levithan’s ‘39 Clues’ (Scholastic USA) was one of the first multiplatform stories published for children, but again with a sizable allocated budget. To the best of my knowledge Kiss Kill is one of the first transmedia young adult novels published. It is published for a global market, by a small publisher, on a minimal budget. As a solitary writer I needed to educate myself on: multiple platform storytelling; writing non-linear narrative; and technology developments that seem to change daily. Instead of a steep learning curve, I am on a trajectory. Traditional publishing is yet to embrace transmedia storytelling so I was delighted when Sarah Bailey launched her ePublishing house Really Blue Books and rose to the challenge of transmedia. Every step of the journey has involved forging new pathways. Traditional processes in publication, distribution, sales, reviewing, publicity, and competitions are not applicable. These words of Patrick Carman, another storytelling futurist, could well be my own:

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__________________________________________________________________ I soon discovered that innovation is a messy business filled with long stretches of doubt, countless false starts, and a constant black cloud of indecision. There was no road map to follow, no guarantee that a story told this way would result in anything more than a pile of broken parts.11 Australia does not yet have a huge transmedia community. Last year I was fortunate to attend a conference on Creativity and Technology in New York and to speak with Bob Stein from if:book New York. Through social media I can communicate with transmedia storytellers globally. Online groups such as Digital Story World, Tools of Change, Transmedia LA, as well as bloggers and transmedia storytellers keep me up-to-date with the latest developments. Last year I attended the if:book non-conference in Melbourne and was fortunate to meet with Dr Christy Dena. Australia’s App developer Karen Robertson (Treasure Kai) has been both an inspiration and support. Finally, I must make the point that not all stories are suited to transmedia. There will always be a place for traditional narrative. However, it is my belief that through daily digital technology developments Kiss Kill barely scratches the surface of possibility. It is exciting to explore new territories such as alternative income generating systems like crowdsourcing through Kickstarter, Indigogo and Pozible (Australia) instead of Advances and Royalties. Where to from here? Who knows! I’m writing my future history in the now.

Notes 1

Jeni Mawter, Kiss Kill (Sydney: Really Blue Books, 2012). Walter J. Ong, ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’, New Accents, ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Methuen, 1988). 3 Hugh McGuire and Brian O’Leary, eds., A Futurist’s Manifesto: A Collection of Essays from the Bleeding Edge of Publishing (O’Reilly Media Publisher, 10 January 2012), viewed 10 January 2012, http://www.pressbooks.com/about/booka-futurists-manifesto. 4 Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011). 5 David Verela, Digital Storytelling, Australian Society of Authors Seminar, Sydney 2011. 6 Simon Staffans, One Year in Transmedia Storytelling 2nd Ed (Blog Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, 7 January 2013), viewed 10 January 2013, http://simonstaffans.com/category/transmedia-storytelling/. 2

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Henry Jenkins, Transmedia Storytelling: Moving Characters from Books to Films to Video Games can Make them Stronger and More Compelling (MIT Technology Reviews, 15 January 2003), viewed 1 January 2013, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-storytelling/. 8 Mark Twain, Brainy Quote, Viewed 27 March 2012, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_twain.html. 9 Jean M. Twenge and Keith W. Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2009). 10 Jean M. Twenge, The Narcissism Epidemic, Blog Psychology Today, 12 May 2010, Viewed 1 January 2013, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissism-epidemic. 11 Patrick Carman, Read beyond the Lines: Transmedia has Changed the Very Notion of Books and Reading, 4 November 2011, Viewed 1 January 2013, http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/11/transliteracy/transmedia-and-itsmultiplatform-brethren-has-changed-the-very-notion-of-books-and-reading/.

Bibliography Carman, Patrick. Read Beyond the Lines: Transmedia has Changed the Very Notion of Books and Reading. 4 November 2011. Viewed 1 January 2013. http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/11/transliteracy/transmedia-and-itsmultiplatform-brethren-has-changed-the-very-notion-of-books-and-reading/. Jenkins, Henry. Transmedia Storytelling: Moving Characters from Books to Films to Video Games can Make Them Stronger and More Compelling (MIT Technology Reviews, 15 January 2003), viewed 1 January 2013, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-storytelling/. Mawter, Jeni. Kiss Kill. Sydney: Really Blue Books, 2012. McGuire, Hugh and Brian O’Leary, eds. A Futurist’s Manifesto: A Collection of Essays from the Bleeding Edge of Publishing. O’Reilly Media Publisher, 10 January 2012. Viewed 10 January 2012. http://www.pressbooks.com/about/book-a-futurists-manifesto. Ong, Walter J. ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’, New Accents, ed. Terence Hawkes, New York: Methuen, 1988. Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

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__________________________________________________________________ Staffans, Simon. One Year in Transmedia Storytelling 2nd Ed (Blog Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, 7 January 2013). Viewed 10 January 2013. http://simonstaffans.com/category/transmedia-storytelling/. Twain, Mark. Brainy Quote Viewed 27 March 2012. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_twain.html. Twenge, Jean M. and Keith W. Campbell. The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2009. Twenge, Jean M. The Narcissism Epidemic. Blog Psychology Today, 12 May 2010, Viewed 1 January 2013. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissism-epidemic. Verela, David. Digital Storytelling. Australian Society of Authors Seminar, Sydney 2011. Jeni Mawter is the popular children’s author of the ‘So!’ and Freewheeler series (HarperCollins Publishers Australia). Kiss Kill (Really Blue Books) is her first transmedia novel. Jeni teaches Writing for Young Adults at Macquarie University, Sydney, and judges the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for young adult fiction.

Transmedia Activism: Exploring the Possibilities in West Papua Tanya Notley and Alexandra Crosby Abstract Almost all of the academic and practice-based literature on transmedia storytelling is focused on fiction-based narratives. In this context, transmedia projects are seen to provide an opportunity for fictional narratives to be dispersed across multiple mediums and platforms, ideally with each medium and platform making its own contribution to the story in ways that entice and reward broad and deep levels of audience participation. This chapter considers the value of creating activist transmedia projects that seek to tell stories to, speak with and mobilise audiences across countries, cultures and languages. By engaging with some of the emerging definitions of Transmedia Activism, and examining two transmedia activist projects that address social justice issues in West Papua, we raise new possibilities for what may constitute Transmedia Activism and question the need for transmedia stories to necessarily be fiction-based. Key Words: West Papua, Indonesia, activism, transmedia, Indigenous ***** 1. Transmedia Worlds In defining transmedia stories, pioneering fan cultures and convergent media scholar Henry Jenkins focuses on the way these kinds of stories create a world or universe in which many narratives and many kinds of multi-platform interactions with audiences are rendered possible. 1 In his latest book, Spreadable Media, Jenkins (with Sam Ford and Joshua Green), highlights the many benefits of understanding not just what gets ‘hits’, ‘views’ and ‘visits’ (distribution) in convergent media environments, but rather what leads people to share content through their own formal and informal networks (circulation). Among the benefits to circulation are meaningful and influential interactions and this, the authors suggest, requires a ‘reimagining of cultural and political participation’ 2 since: The growth of networked communication, especially when coupled with the practices of participatory culture, provides a range of new resources and facilitates new interventions for a variety of groups who have long struggled to have their voices heard. 3 While acknowledging that transmedia has probably always existed, Jenkins finds that convergent digital media spaces are providing new kinds of opportunities

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__________________________________________________________________ for transmedia productions. In his analysis of The Matrix franchise as a transmedia production, Jenkins draws on the work of Pierre Levy when he calls The Matrix ‘entertainment for the era of collective intelligence’. 4 By offering audiences the opportunity to participate, not simply to consume, transmedia producers are enabling them ‘to explore complex worlds’ to have new interactions and even to develop new and productive relationships. 5 While Transmedia may be a useful term to describe a more engaged, complex and multi-faceted form of storytelling, it has also become a buzzword in the entertainment industries in recent years as a ‘neoliberal rhetoric that has emerged as marketing and business models take into account an increasingly participatory culture’. 6 In this rhetoric around transmedia the concept of participation becomes diluted and the focus on what it means to create and participate in a new world is often lost. In this chapter we wish to maintain a focus on the creation of new worlds and audience/user participation as we ask: How might transmedia productions support activism? 2. Transmedia Activism In a 2012 interview, Jenkins defined Transmedia Activism as, ‘the effort to promote social change through creating and sharing media messages across multiple platforms.’ Jenkins says that ‘right now’ there are two different forms or models of Transmedia Activism. The first form can be seen ‘as an extension of the long-standing paradigm of entertainment education’ where we see a shift in position from getting messages out to the people to one which starts ‘from a more active notion of the spectator as someone who actively seeks and shares information within their community and one who is inspired to participate in some larger project as a result of their media experiences.’ 7 An example Jenkins provides is World Without Oil (2007), a serious alternate reality game simulating the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis and generating a collaborative chronicle of public discussion about oil dependency and energy policy. In describing the initiative, Jenkins said: It established a citizen “nerve center” to track events and share solutions. Anybody could play by creating a personal story—an email or phone call, or for advanced users a blog post, video, photo, podcast, twitter, whatever—that chronicled the imagined reality of their life in the crisis. 8 While this transmedia example is based on users contributing to the creation of a fictional scenario, an alternative reality, it was designed to inspire real world participation in critiquing the problem of oil dependency. The second form of Transmedia Activism Jenkins calls ‘fan activism’ and this is where ‘grassroots organizations tap into the myth-making capacity of transmedia

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__________________________________________________________________ franchises in search of images and narratives they can use to motivate social and political change’. 9 An example he provides for this is the way activists in the Occupied Territory of Palestine adopted the persona of the Na’vi from the film Avatar (2009) to create videos that supported their critique of the Israeli occupation to reach new audiences. Jenkins has often emphasised fictional worlds in his focus on transmedia worldcreation. But what about non-fictional opportunities for Transmedia? Can nonfictional worlds also be imagined and co-created? Sasha Costanza-Chock suggests an alternative definition for Transmedia Activism which instead focuses on nonfiction narratives and the creation of social change: A process whereby a social movement narrative is dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, creating a distributed and participatory social movement “world,” with multiple entry points for organizing, for the purpose of strengthening movement identity and outcomes. 10 Costanza-Chock suggests a range of examples that would fall under this definition including the Sandy Storyline project 11 which collects and shares stories (collected across platforms) that reveal the impact of Hurricane Sandy on individuals and communities and VozMob, 12 a platform for immigrant and/or lowwage workers in Los Angeles to create and share stories about their lives and communities using their mobile phones. Indeed these two examples do allow ‘outsiders’ to experience and engage with the lives of other communities, countries, cultures; however, what’s not clear is how much audiences or users are able to participate in the act of world-making. To think through the possibilities of Transmedia Activism and the definitions offered by Jenkins and Costanza-Chock, we have focused on two projects by media activists that are seeking positive social change in West Papua. 3. Transmedia Advocacy from West Papua West Papua is the most easterly region of Indonesia and is made up of two provinces: Papua and West Papua. Since Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in 1962, the sovereignty over West Papua has been in dispute. During Indonesia’s transition from a military dictatorship over the past fifteen years, West Papua has remained under military occupation, with a strong secessionist movement claiming that Indonesia’s human rights violations are systematic. 13 An apparent lack of global interest in (or knowledge of) the movement for social justice in West Papua has left West Papuan activists largely disconnected from global social movements. 14 This, along with other factors including restricted international media and international NGO access to West Papua, low levels of

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__________________________________________________________________ internet access and poor access quality 15 means that the examples of Transmedia Activism that we use in this section do not have global reach in the way that World Without Oil or the controversial KONY 2012 16 campaign have had. Instead the examples we cite here are grassroots, low-budget initiatives that usefully help us explore the complications of Transmedia Activism in situations where global reach that loses connection to local political struggle is not desirable. These kinds of initiatives emerge in complex political and social milieus, where simplifying narratives can and do cause substantial damage to local movements and individuals. The first example we look at, Papuan Voices, uses online video, blogging software, screening events, and social media to tell stories of everyday struggle in West Papua. The second example, The Freedom Flotilla to West Papua, is a project that has been designed to use media tools to draw as many people as possible into the story of a flotilla of people, objects and boats travelling from the shores of Lake Eyre in central South Australia, to the coast of West Papua, following the path of ancient water sources. Papuan Voices is produced by EngageMedia, an Australian not-for-profit organisation established in 2005. 17 EngageMedia began planning the Papuan Voices project with its local partner Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, in 2009, to support West Papuan activists to use video production and distribution technologies effectively. The papuanvoices.net website, launched in 2012, distributes a selection of videos produced through the project as well as providing background information, study and screening guides. One of the goals is to circulate video stories from West Papua to a global audience, which requires translating them into as many languages as possible. Each video has its own webpage, where viewers are able to learn about the context of the video in English or Indonesian and discuss the content through a moderated comments section. Papuan Voices tells multiple stories in multiple languages in the same story universe (the daily struggle for human rights in West Papua) over multiple platforms, and in multiple genres. While a short video series is its primary medium, it also uses a blog, study guides and public screening events. As we have argued elsewhere, 18 this project requires and encourages global participation in local storytelling through online citizen subtitling to ensure these local Papuan stories are able to travel outside of the country and this process creates a dialogic, multilingual story universe. We consider Papuan Voices as the first type of Transmedia Activism described by Jenkins whereby the audience is brought into the storytelling process, which is ultimately about supporting education and raising awareness about a specific issue. However calling this ‘an extension of …entertainment education’ also does not seem befitting. If we take a single one of these stories, for instance, the 7-minute Love Letter to The Soldier video, and examine the way it is told across platforms, 19 we can begin to see how audiences of the story have participated in making it travel across languages and cultures.

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__________________________________________________________________ Engagement through circulation (involving translation, discussion and the hosting of screenings events) deepens the connection between geographically distant storytellers while making the media itself more ‘spreadable’. Papuan Voices is a project that focuses on encoding activist messages into narratives that try and help people understand the reality and experience of living life in West Papua so that they might have the necessary knowledge to imagine and discuss possible alternative realities, possible futures. Love Letter to The Soldier, for instance, uses the tender story of the love between an Indigenous West Papuan woman and an Indonesian soldier to connect to a global sense of injustice around the rights of women and children in conflict zones. 20 The Papuan Voices project invites participation in this story a number of ways. Visitors to the site are asked to share the information provided within their community, they are supported to translate, subtitle and comment on this video (it is now available in nine languages) and they are asked to participate in the larger project of West Papua advocacy. As this video was translated and subtitled, watched, screened and discussed, it has become connected to other contexts of oppression, along a trajectory of global empathy.

Image 1: Still photograph from ‘Love Letter to the Soldier’, (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) © 2013. Image courtesy of EngageMedia Media scholar and cultural theorist Pierre Lévy states that in contemporary social life, most of us already participate in many communities incorporating

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__________________________________________________________________ members of family, speakers of a language, citizens of a city or nation, followers of a religion, practitioners of a discipline, learners of a technique, amateurs or masters in an art, collaborators in a business or organization, fans of a TV show or videogame…. 21 For Lévy all of these communities are ‘social learning enterprises’ and ‘their creative conversations accumulate, manage and filter memories in which collective identities define each other, and the capacity for informed action answer each other.’ 22 Papuan Voices is an effort to create, through Transmedia, the necessary conditions for conversations about West Papua. This requires a particular sensitivity for a project that has, firstly, a national Indonesian audience, and secondly, a global one. Papuan Voices counters a range of stereotypes that exist within Indonesia. The mainstream opinion that Papua is primitive is evident in many forms of popular culture in Indonesia. In this context, Papuan Voices can be seen to create alternatives to the dominant narrative about West Papua within and outside of Indonesia, and an opportunity for more complex storyworlds to emerge. Our second example of Transmedia Activism, The Freedom Flotilla to West Papua, 23 demonstrates how collectively imagined futures can be coupled with collaborative action in the present through the development of unique storyworld that combines past and present mythologies and lives experiences. The idea of the flotilla is to transport sacred water collected from the mound springs of Arabunna country, fire from the old Lake Eyre and ashes from Aboriginal tent embassies across Australia on a journey following the ancient song lines across Australia and culminating in a sea voyage to Papua New Guinea (Daru). Finally, the flotilla will travel to West Papua (Merauke) where it will be made as an offering of peace to the West Papuan people. 24 The journey itself seeks to raise awareness and gather momentum to support West Papuan self-determination, human rights and freedom. The journey poster and the website rework the images of multiple artists, remixing their narratives of activism, piracy, and parties into the story of the flotilla. As this journey unfolds, it has become the subject of significant political discussion and media coverage; 25 however, we analyse it here as an example of transmedia storytelling that begins well before the physical journey (or project) commences. The initiation, conceptual development, and endorsement by Indigenous Elders from both Australia and West Papua have all been documented on the project’s website, which also offers entry points for a wide range of people to participate in various ways: by hosting events, joining the convoy of ships, contributing messages to the peace offerings, donating money or resources, or by retelling the story of the flotilla to build its mythology. The fan base of the project is evident in the success of its crowd-sourced campaign, run through the website Pozible.com, which by June 2013, had achieved its target goal, raising more than AUD$25,000. 26

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Image 2: Freedom Flotilla Campaign Poster, © 2013. Available at http://freedomflotillawestpapua.org/resources/graphics/, (CC BY 3.0 AU and printed here with permission) We view the flotilla as an artistic proposition about the world, drawing on different stories and discourses and also creating new ones, and pointing to the different possibilities that can open up when a story is told, not as a ‘truth’, but as an unfolding or perhaps imagined collective experience. While it does build a storyworld over multiple platforms, through interaction with its audience, it also brings fiction and non-fiction together. It creates a story through its telling, drawing on multiple, complex, overlapping and possibly contradictory mythologies and histories. In doing so, it asks how Indigenous storytelling from two locations can interact with a shared activist agenda. The outcome of this project will be determined by its fans, and also by the real and evolving situation in West Papua. The Freedom Flotilla to West Papua introduces an exciting combination of

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__________________________________________________________________ storytelling forms based on Indigenous histories and storytelling practices. It is storytelling that proposes new possibilities for freedom and collaboration in ways that are transformative. 4. The Limits of Transmedia Activism We think our two activism examples from West Papuan do more than is outlined by Jenkins in his description of ‘two types’ of Transmedia Activism (by using both fiction and non-fiction and by allowing participants to take the story across languages and cultures); at the same time, both examples allow for audience/user participation in the storyworld, an emphasis lacking in CostanzaChock’s definition. What is also important in these two examples is that the storyworlds have been co-created respectfully, with local communities and social movements. As Jenkins notes there are risks to using transmedia for activism since storyworlds can be used to create myths and propaganda, rather than create openness and dialogue (a criticism often made of the Kony 2012 campaign, for example 27). Sam Gregory and Elizabeth Losh (2012) point out that while academics like Jenkins have been instrumental in outlining the possible and existing positive impacts of participatory culture, there remain relatively undiscussed negative consequences as well, particularly from a human rights perspective. While carefully considered and designed Transmedia Activism projects can increase the spreadability of social change narratives, ‘free for all’ conditions for video media can end up telling the ‘wrong’ story. The authors find that the problem with remixes such as Michael Jackson’s ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ showing human rights footage from Iran and Egypt, is that even when they are created with the best intentions, they also sometimes violate many practices deemed critical to human rights media including the need for: authenticity (use of trusted and verified sources), specificity of the story and experience (over generalisations), codes of conduct for the treatment of victims and witnesses (in terms of their right to privacy and to informed consent) and sufficient context (to ensure accuracy and informed understandings). These are all critical issues that need be considered if Transmedia Activism is to be further developed and utilised. 5. Conclusion: Making Transmedia Effective in Advocacy For West Papuans living in tightly controlled, militarised conflict zones where journalists and storytellers are denied access, kept under close surveillance and are restricted by technology access and quality, a transmedia approach to storytelling, such as with Papuan Voices, provides a way to bring people into the reality of West Papua with stories that can be told, translated and retold at multiple locales and scales. For activists outside of West Papua interested in collaboration, such as the creators of the Freedom Flotilla, transmedia presents opportunities for interactive storytelling that decentres conventional and restrictive narratives and

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__________________________________________________________________ borders and allows multiple points of entry that allow outsiders to learn about past histories and connections and imagine possible, new futures. As outlined, Henry Jenkins has proposed that two kinds of Transmedia Activism currently exist. In this chapter we propose a third kind of Transmedia Activism (‘co-imagining futures’) or perhaps it can more accurately be seen as an alternative definition where Transmedia Activism provides spaces that allow people to collectively imagine and participate in creating alternative futures by drawing upon fiction and/or non-fiction storyworlds and by using multiple media platforms and formats. Doing this kind of storytelling is complicated in a situation like West Papua where small-scale, unstable, activist-driven storytelling is sometimes the only information available to a global audience. This is why we argue here that this kind of Transmedia Activism must be guided by grounded knowledge—such as that provided by the Aboriginal and West Papuan elders leading the Freedom Flotilla, and supported by local networks, such as the families and communities of the Papuan Voices filmmakers—to ensure narratives are not wrongly construed or over-simplified. This chapter has not had the scope to consider whether the same values, priorities, benefits and processes that have been laid out by scholars and practitioners of transmedia storytelling can be applied to activist transmedia projects with a social change imperative; however, it has proposed some future directions for such an enquiry, by focusing on places and contexts where storytelling is critical to survival and a better future.

Notes 1

Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: NYU press, 2006), 21. 2 Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: NYU Press, 2013), 3. 3 Ibid., xiv. 4 Ibid., 95. 5 Ibid., 130. 6 Jenkins, Ford and Green, Spreadable Media, xi. 7 Cited in Le Vent Tourne, ‘Interview with Henry Jenkins’, viewed 2 June 2013, http://training-cfi-le-vent-tourne-in-ramallah.com/2012/12/27/interview-withhenry-jenkins. 8 http://worldwithoutoil.org/. 9 Ibid. 10 Sasha Costanza-Chock. ‘Open Documentary & Transmedia Activism’, viewed 29 May 2013,

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__________________________________________________________________ http://prezi.com/dxmjaijsszwx/open-documentary-transmedia-activism/. 11 http://www.sandystoryline.com/. 12 http://vozmob.net/en/. 13 Jason MacLeod ‘Pathways to Dialogue in Papua: Diplomacy, Armed Struggle or Nonviolent Resistance?’ in Comprehending West Papua (2011): 66. 14 Ibid.; Eben Kirksey Freedom in Entangled Worlds: the Architecture of Global Power (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); AlJazeera, 2013. ‘Goodbye Indonesia’, viewed 5 Feb 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/01/20131301831363 2585.html. 15 Alexandra Crosby and Tanya Notley ‘Using Video and Online Subtitling to Communicate across Languages from West Papua.’ The Australian Journal of Anthropology (forthcoming). 16 http://www.kony2012.com/. Also, for a discussion of this example by Henry Jenkins see, http://henryjenkins.org/2012/03/contextualizing_kony2012_invis.html/. 17 http://www.engagemedia.org/. The authors have both been employed by EngageMedia at various times from 2009 to 2013. 18 Alexandra Crosby and Tanya Notley ‘Using Video’. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Pierre Levy, ‘The Creative Conversation of Collective Intelligence,’ The Participatory Cultures Handbook (New York: Routledge, 2012), 101. 22 Ibid., 101. 23 http://freedomflotillawestpapua.org/. 24 Ibid. 25 From the Australian press see, for example, this article is about the arrest of people supporting the Flotilla in West Papua http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/30/west-papua-arrests-freedomflotilla/. The second article retells the story of the final Flotilla meeting of West Papua activists with Australian activists http://www.smh.com.au/world/freedomflotilla-makes-papua-connection-organisers-claim-20130913-2to9b.html. 26 http://www.pozible.com/project/14169 27 See for example this critique by Melissa Brough which questions the ethics of Invisible Children (creators of Kony2012) in promoting Transmedia Activism as a brand and a fun, hip and cool thing for young people: Melissa, M. Brough, ‘Fair Vanity: The Visual Culture of Humanitarianism in the Age of Commodity Activism,’ in Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, eds. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 174-198.

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Bibliography Al Jazeera, 2013. ‘Goodbye Indonesia’ Al Jazeera website. Viewed 2 June 2013. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/01/20131301831363 2585.html. Black, Ian and Haroon Siddique. ‘Q&A: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla.’ The Guardian, 31st May 2010. Viewed 2 June 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/31/q-a-gaza-freedom-flotilla. Brough, Melissa, M. ‘Fair Vanity: The Visual Culture of Humanitarianism in the Age of Commodity Activism’. Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times, edited by Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser, 174-198. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Costanza-Chock, Sasha. ‘Open Documentary & Transmedia Activism’. Slideshow Presentation for Sundance 2013. Viewed 29 May 2013. http://prezi.com/dxmjaijsszwx/open-documentary-transmedia-activism/. Crosby, Alexandra and Tanya Notley. ‘Using Video and Online Subtitling to Communicate across Languages from West Papua.’ The Australian Journal of Anthropology, forthcoming, 2014. Gregory, Sam, and Elizabeth Losh. ‘Remixing Human Rights: Rethinking Civic Expression, Representation and Personal Security in Online Video.’ First Monday 17.8-6 (2012). Viewed 2 June 2013. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4104. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New MediaCollide. New York: NYU press, 2006. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2013. Kirksey, Eben. Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2012.

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__________________________________________________________________ Lévy, Pierre. ‘The Creative Conversation of Collective Intelligence.’ Translation by Phyllis Aranoff and Howard Scott. The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson. New York: Routledge, 2012. MacLeod, Jason. ‘Pathways to Dialogue in Papua: Diplomacy, Armed Struggle or Nonviolent Resistance?’ Comprehending West Papua, edited by Peter King, Jim Elmslie & Camellia Webb-Gannon. Sydney: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney, 2011. Tanya Notley is a Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. She has been working as a new media practitioner, trainer and researcher since 1998. Tanya’s research is focused on understanding how information and communication technology use impacts upon social and cultural participation, public accountability and transparency, education and learning, human rights and social justice. Alexandra Crosby is a lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also teaches in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at UTS. She recently completed her PhD on cultural activism in Indonesia.

Video Installation as an Immersive Storytelling and Story Sharing Experience Diane Charleson Abstract Video installation creates an ideal and innovative platform for memory work and storytelling. In this chapter I will argue that the form, viewing space and content of the video installation medium provides an immersive environment for the viewer who can ‘read’ the images at their own pace and become self directed in their responses to the images and the meaning making that ensues from them. This will be explored with reference to my own work as a digital video installation artist. Three different works will be presented as illustrative examples of networked environments that provided an immersive experience for story-telling on the part of viewers. Key Words: Video installation, storytelling, immersion, audience, place, memory, identity. ***** 1. Introduction Video installation as a creative medium provides an ideal and innovative platform for storytelling, particularly where its creators have as their major aim eliciting storytelling from their audiences. If the installations are designed from a very personal place, providing intimate revelations of personal stories and memories, this engenders an atmosphere for viewer reflection and storytelling. This chapter will argue that the form, viewing space and content of the medium provides an immersive environment for the viewer who can read the images at their own pace and become self directed in their meaning making responses to the images. Immersed in such images, viewers are transported back into their own memories which then provide a springboard for further storytelling, thus securing a legitimacy and arena for the importance of the personal narrative. I will explore these ideas with reference to my own work as a digital video installation artist, presenting and analysing three different works. 2. The Spaces and Experience of Video Installation Transmedia storytelling and associated multimodal approaches to story content production, offer exciting, challenging and innovative possibilities for creatives in the world of storytelling. Key to such production is a move away from the dominance of the finite linear narrative to more of a concentration on engaging with a new audience increasingly media savvy and who expect and demand a greater role in the creative process. Transmedia storytelling is eminently suited to

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__________________________________________________________________ do this since it affords the audience a more integral role in the creative process and in so doing reduces the traditionally dominant voice of the auteur in storytelling. 1 There has been an emergence and use of multiple media in the common pursuit of a story or experience but discussion still predominantly focuses on the dominant role of the producers and how they can best design for this new form of media storytelling. 2 It is the producers who still largely have ownership of the experience. Traditionally video installation has fallen within the art paradigm, more usually concerned with concept than narrative, but if creators of this medium seek to elicit storytelling, then the combination of the immersive nature of the place of viewing and the form of viewer interaction can provide a rich source of transmedia storytelling. 3 This enables a network of memories and stories to be created, extended and shared. Here there is less concern with the auteur and more with the creative participation of the audience who become producers and creators rather than passive consumers or mere spectators. The immersive nature of the video installation space is central to the success of the story creating experience. ‘The ‘immersive mode’ of reception for the viewer ‘creates a sensation of a new, more powerful, experience of totality.’ 4 CoulterSmith 5 contends that these immersive qualities approach ‘the multimedia nature of film’ by including moving images, sound and narrative. He also defines a special category of ‘deep immersive installation’ capable of eliciting ‘total sensory immersion.’ 6 Bishop goes further claiming that the dark rooms of video installation ‘engulf and penetrate us’ and ‘glue us to the screen.’ captivating the viewers attention completely. 7 She goes on to say that video art is part of a cultural and technological continuum, a transmedia that comprises all the digital media that permeate contemporary everyday life and these have developed as a counter to the myriad types of distraction that confront audiences .Video installation provides an environment where ‘inattentiveness and boredom can mingle with daydreaming, trance, fascination or flight of fancy’. 8 3. New Media and Interactivity The advent of new media has provided an opportunity for audiences to experience film in a more interactive way beyond the constraints of narrative construction of time, place, character and response. These new media explore the relationship of the viewer to the screen and have at their core a reflexive intent to alter the traditionally disempowering gaze and inherent voyeurism in traditional narrative cinema and other related media. What is important therefore is the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Traditional media art with its established language has been transmuted into an artistic work with an alternative language. The viewer in turn is now placed in a position to redefine what is being viewed in terms of this new space. Increasingly the viewer, ‘experiences the space as a phenomenological gesture in which the experience is mediated through the body and its experience of place.’ 9

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__________________________________________________________________ The setting and independence of the viewer is paramount. Païni in particular argues that the very meaning of many video installations is subject to the viewer's selfdirection. 10 In many video installations, meaning-giving is contingent upon the viewer’s self-directed wandering, where a new mode of spectatorship is created that can effect a profound transformation. When the artist is concerned with narrative on a very personal micro-level, the sharing of an intimate memory in a non-linear way can act as a deep trigger for audience-directed remembering and storytelling. Here, the work of art is the catalyst rather than the focus of the viewing experience and these accords with the contemporary situation where viewers are familiar with media interactivity that enables them to control their own viewing experiences. 11 Video installation art therefore can be specifically designed with viewer response as the main aim of the work. The work must still have the power or impact to engage and stimulate the viewer but rather than trying to interpret l the artist’s intentions, the viewer determines their own meaning of the work, and thus becomes a storyteller in their own right. Traditionally the assumption has been that the artist is in control of the artistic work and that it is imperative for success of the work that the viewer must engage with it in the way dictated by the artist. However, this is no longer a productive way to understand the situation brought about by the advent of transmedia. Dominantly the network of artist/art work/viewer/space has been weighted heavily in favour of the artist, the work and the space of showing. Whilst viewers are always necessary for the artistic network to function, their place has never been a commensurate one. They do not occupy an equally powerful position in determining the work or its meaning. The viewer is relatively passive in entering the created world and is not afforded the opportunity or the means to engage in the work of meaning-giving. The artistic network needs to be altered more in favour of the viewer and this would then function to empower viewers to create their own stories. Rather than being meaning- takers they become meaning- givers through storytelling. Furthermore this relationship between video installation, the work of art, the environment and the viewer provides an ideal catalyst for memory-work and remembering and is particularly effective when it is the viewers’ story creation is the primary focus of the work. It can provide an intimate, womb- like environment that offers an experience of awe. Recent research suggests that experiences of awe stimulate a need for accommodation, and alters one’s understanding of the world. 12 By concentrating viewers in the present moment such experiences change perception and the sense of time. 4. The Spaces and Experience of Video Installation Central to transmedia storytelling is the importance of story sharing. ‘We want to know how the world looks from inside another person’s experience, and when

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__________________________________________________________________ that craving is met by a convincing narrative, we find it deeply satisfying.’ 13 We are, as a species, addicted to story. As Gottschall has found, even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night telling itself stories. 14 Intrinsic to transmedia storytelling is its ability to provide a mix of real life and fiction. At its best, it can tell parts of the same story on multiple platforms and provide multiple access to stories. It can create a reciprocal relationship between the story creator and audience where a community can extend the story beyond the control of a single creator. 15 One of the most powerful things that transmedia stories can do is shift our perspective, showing us what the events look like from different the points of view. Jenkins states that transmedia storytelling encompasses fictional worlds, providing a range of different entry points for the audience. The medium is designed so that the viewer can be involved with any part of the story at any time without being linearly directed, a partnership with the audience that is essential. I am particularly concerned with personal storytelling, family stories and stories that emanate from memory triggers. As Stone 16 suggests, family stories have existential and internal conditions. The family’s first concern is itself, but its second realm of concern is its relation to the world. Family stories about the world are usually teaching stories, telling members still at home the ways of the world according to the experiences its elders have had. Family stories seem to persist in importance even when people think of themselves individually, without regard to their familial roles. It seems that the particular human chain we are part of is central to our individual identity. It is important that we are offered opportunities to compare ourselves with others because such comparisons helps us to come to an understanding of ourselves in the wider societal context, and to understand more clearly about our own place in the world. Our response to such comparisons either encourages a sense of identification because we have had similar experiences or there will be a questioning of differences. 17 By listening to other’s stories we can learn about our own stories. Lyotard tells us that,’ a self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in the fabric of relations that are now more complex and mobile than ever before’. 18 It is important that stories of individuals do not remain untold and that they are given space to be heard, told and retold. 19 This is similar to the place of tribal myths as suggested by Levi-Strauss that attempt to create meaning and order for each person’s view of life and society. As both filmmaker and storyteller, it is important for me that the viewer is transported into their own memories and family stories and that they are left with only the traces and the urge to reconstruct in their own ways. 20 By providing an immersive environment that provides for the emergence of new stories that have been triggered by memory, the medium of video installation offers an ideal platform for transmedia storytelling.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Illustrative Examples I would now like to turn to examples of my own work that have had at the core of their creation a desire to elicit memories and storytelling. The first example is a five screen video installation Rose’s Stories, based on the stories my grandmother had told me as a child. This installation was exhibited in an art gallery space. The quite large and dark space was divided into five discreet yet interconnected screens, each providing a unique visual representation of the stories with the process of telling the stories differing in each screen. Viewers could engage with these in any chosen order and with as many distinct areas. My assumption was that there was an important relationship to be established between myself as the teller of the stories and the empathetic response of the audience. It was this interaction that contextualised the stories. My intention for my audience was similar to that expressed by Ross Gibson in relation to the video installation Remembrance and the Moving Image. I wanted my audience to ‘feel their ‘presence’ of mind transforming as their consciousness is cast back and forth between past experiences and present awareness’. 21 Screen 1 took the form of Rose’s personal photo album. This was accompanied by text, some background information on her life, and a music track. Access to the photo album allowed for interactivity thereby enabling the viewer to determine their own version of their life, and their own stories emanating from the viewing.

Image 1: Rose’s Stories: The Photo album, © 2006. Image courtesy of the author Screen 2 was set up as a storyteller’s pit, reflecting the storytelling that often takes place in the kitchen. Chairs were placed around a laminate table in front of a large projection where the viewer was immersed in images of an old woman, an elderly actress, telling stories representing Rose’s narrated stories. They were

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__________________________________________________________________ projected on continuous loop to allow the audience to choose the length of their stay and also allow repeated viewings of the stories. Screen 3 was a projection of old Super 8 home movies depicting some of the stories told in the storytelling pit. These home movies were actually recreated by me, and I re-envisioned the stories in the way my memory and imagination dictated rather than as a linear filmic reconstruction. The stories were shot as if taken by an eye-witness to the occurrences. They were projected onto an old home movie projection screen and looped to provide, once again, no beginning or ending. They represented an impressionistic interpretation using no audio cues of the stories as perceived by me.

Image 2: The Storytelling Screen, © 2006. Image courtesy of the author In Screen 4 the viewer was invited into a lounge room to sit in front of an old television that played a looped series of interviews with Rose’s children who told their versions of her stories and their own stories about Rose. These are shot in an interview style familiar to a television audience. This provided a different voice and verified ideas about self perception while questioning the veracity of remembered stories by the self.

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Image 3: The Lollies, © 2006. Image courtesy of the author

Image 4: Shirley, © 2006. Image courtesy of the author Following the viewing experience, the audience was asked to record their own stories in writing or on video. There was a wide selection of viewers, some being random blow-ins who took a quick look and left, others who lingered for a long time soaking up the atmosphere, some who returned to the exhibition many times. One Polish woman, for example, visited four times for lengthy visits each time. She said she had been haunted by the experience and that it had triggered stories of her parent’s experiences in the Holocaust. Many people wrote in the journal and

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__________________________________________________________________ many spoke to me at the gallery for lengthy periods telling me intimate family stories The second example was part of an exhibition, Digital Remembering 22 that I curated in 2008, which presented the work of six digital artists. Viewers were invited to immerse themselves in projected visual imagery that explored themes of memory, place, identity and time; to reflect on and create their own stories and to engage with the possibilities of remembering through personal narratives constituting the process of memory creation. My installation was entitled Dancing with Mrs Dale 23 and it explored the relationship between viewer and viewed where the former bore witness to a most intimate moment. Home movies that had long been forgotten were resurrected and viewed for the first time, providing the viewer with a haunting and random selection of memories that allowed for multiple readings and narratives chronicling the passage of time, rites of passage and constructed narratives of family life. The viewer was invited to stand in a small galley between two large projected moving images. One showed an extreme close up of a middle aged woman viewing her recently found home movies. As she watches her life unfolds before her eyes and she cries. She cries with regret for what is; the death of her brother, the failure of her marriage, and what could have been. The opposite screen showed these super 8 home movies played as a continuous loop. On the opening night this relationship was further enhanced by the presence of the featured woman standing in the gallery space viewing herself and at the same time viewing others watching her and her life. The open ended nature of the screening of the home movies made them accessible for the viewer and provided triggers for multiple story telling; their own memories and stories, and construction of narratives about the life of the woman whose films they were viewing This was further enhanced by the size of the images, the intimacy of the gallery and the placement of the viewer in relation to the images. Many visitors to this exhibition talked to me of their reactions to the sharing of such intimacy and of their own personal stories and memories.

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Image 5: Dancing with Mrs Dale, © 2008. Image courtesy of the author The exhibition The 17th Frame: An Australian Suburban Idyll 24 consisted of ten looped and projected photographs, still frames taken from found 8mm home movies The 8mm film ran at 16 frames per second and I created the 17th frame, the missing frame, providing a different reading from that presented in the moving image. Through this re-use practice, an alternate reading of family lives emerged that lay hidden between the frames of family produced home movies. In so doing, I placed the secret lives of the family in a public domain, allowing the viewer to enter the family and create their own stories. My aim was for the audience to find the photographs evocative and a stimulus for reflection. I re-work the home movies to explore and challenge their ephemeral nature by this de- and re-construction. 25 Still framing can accentuate the blurriness between shots; by zooming in or manipulation I can foreground the graininess which adds to the sense of dreaminess and nostalgia. Colours bleed more and actions are accentuated and isolated. ‘Ghosting’ in the image can also be created and serves as a reminder of the technology used to ‘trap’ motion. 26 These still images provide not only a glimpse of history and a stroll down memory lane but also an opportunity to define, refine, extend and contextualise who we are, where we have been and what forms our desire have taken. 27

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Image 6: The Birthday Party, © 2008. Image courtesy of the author

Image 7: The Family Gaze, © 2008. Image courtesy of the author 6. Conclusion In conclusion, I would agree with Norman who argues that discussions of transmedia storytelling should include notions of ‘participation and, invoking the creative spirit,’ everything to do with ‘free, natural powerful expression’. 28 I have argued that when the relationship between the viewer, artist, work and space is equally balanced, such as that in a video installation, an optimum storytelling

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__________________________________________________________________ experience is enabled. In this process, the place or location of viewing is important. If it is one which does not intimidate but rather facilitates the viewer’ experience, it too becomes a significant factor empowering viewers through the subjective and very personal nature of the work. In this intimate, immersive space viewers can become meaning-givers and storytellers. Such an environment goes far to help create true participatory designs coupled with true multi-media immersion that reveal new insights and create true novel experience…, enhanced through the active engagement of all, whether they be the originators or the recipients of the experience. 29

Notes 1

T. Apperley, ‘Getting Stuck On Level One: Designing A Research Method Appropriate To X Box’, University of Melbourne, accessed 25 Jan 2013, http://members.optusnet.com.au/christydena/MultichannelResources.htm. ease 2 A. Hannele, S. Kangas and S. Vainikainen, ‘Three Views On Mobile Cross Media Entertainment’, TT Information Technology, Research Report, (2012). 3 Diane Charleson, ‘Video Installation, Memory and Storytelling: The Viewer as Narrator’, Image and Narrative (Canada: Open Humanities Press, 2011), 17. 4 Nicholas De Oliveira, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, Installation Art In The New Millenium (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), 22-23. he direct 5 Graham Coulter-Smith, Deconstructing Installation Art: Fine Art And Media Art, 1986-2006 (Southampton: Casaid Publishing, 2006).n this 6 Ibid.(Ibid.) 7 Claire Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 10-12. 8 Ibid., 11. 9 Marguerite Harris, ‘Thought, Object And Experience In Film/Video Installation Art,’ Human Creation between Reality and Illusion, ed. Anna Teresa Tymeieneka (San Francisco: Springer, 2005), 185-197. 10 Dominique Païni, ‘Le Retour Du Flâneur / The Return Of The Flaneur’, Art Press 255 (2000): 33-41. 11 R. Oppehheimer, ‘Video Installation: Characteristics of an Expanding Medium,’ ,Afterimage (NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 2007), 18-22. 12 D. Keltne. and J. Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, A Moral, Spiritual, And Aesthetic Emotion’, Cognition And Emotion (2003): 297-314.. (Please fix this according to 13 Jill Conway, When Memory Speaks. (New York: Random House, 1999). (Please 14 Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). 15 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old And New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006).s according to the Chicago Style

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Elizabeth Stone, Black Sheep And Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us (New York: Times Books, 1988). 17 Adele Flood, ‘Common Threads’ (PhD diss. RMIT University, Melbourne Australia, 2003). 18 Jean-Francois Lyotard, J., The Postmodern Condition (United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1979), 5. 19 Flood, ‘Common Threads,’ 33. 20 Ross Gibson, Remembrance And The Moving Image (Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2002) 3-4. 21 Ibid,3. 22 Diane Charleson (curator), ‘Digital Remembering.’ Project Space RMIT University, 2008. 23 Diane Charleson, ‘Dancing With Mrs Dale.’ Project Space RMIT University, 2008. 24 Diane Charleson, ‘The 17th Frame: An Australian Suburban Idyll Installation,’ Kingston University UK, 2011. 25 Linda Wall, ‘Home Movies: Reel Times’ (A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfilment for the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Communication (Media) (Honours) School of Media and Communication. RMIT University. Melbourne, 2009) 26 Sean Wilson, ‘Remixing Memory: the Copied Image’, Australian Photography Photofile 77 (Australian Centre for Photography: Sydney, 2006), 35-37. 27 Ibid., 7. 28 Don Norman, ‘The Transmedia Design Challenge: Co Creation’ ACM Interaction (ACM: NY, 2010 ): 12-15. 29 Ibid. 29 T. Apperley, Getting Stuck On Level One: Designing A Research Method Appropriate To X Box (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2004).

Bibliography Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: A Critical History. New York: Routledge, 2005 Charleson, Diane. ‘Rose’s Stories: Revisioning Memories’. Melbourne, DVD, 2008. ———. ‘Digital Remembering’. Melbourne, DVD, 2008. Charleson, Diane. ‘Memory and Storytelling: The Viewer as Narrator’. Image and Narrative. Canada: Open Universities Press, 2011.

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__________________________________________________________________ Coulter-Smith, Graham. Deconstructing Installation Art: Fine Art and Media Art, 1986-2006. Southampton: Casaid Publishing, 2006. Conway, Jill. When Memory Speaks. New York: Random House, 1999 De Oliveira, Nicholas, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry. Installation Art in the New Millenium. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003. Flood, Adele. ‘Common Threads.’ PhD diss., Melbourne: RMIT University, Australia, 2003. Gibson, R., Remembrance and the Moving Image. Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2002. Gottschall, J., The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Harris, Marguerite. ‘Thought, Object and Experience in Film/Video Art’. Human Creation Between Reality and Illusion 87 (2005). Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old And New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006 Keltner, D. and J. Haidt. ‘Approaching Awe,: A Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion.’ Cognition and Emotion. California: Taylor& Francis , 2003. Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Postmodern Condition. UK: Manchester University Press, 1979. Norman, Don. ‘The Transmedia Design Challenge: Co Creation.’ ACM Interaction. New York: ACM, 2010. Oppehheimer, R. ‘Video Installation: Characteristics of an Expanding Medium. Afterimage 34. New York: Visual Studies Workshop, 2007. Païni, Dominique. Le Retour du Flâneur / The Return of the Flaneur. Paris: Art Press, 2000. Stone, Elizabeth. Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us. New York: Times Books, 1988.

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__________________________________________________________________ Wall, Linda. ‘Home Movies: Reel Times.’ (A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfilment for the Requirements of the Degree of Bachelor of Communication (Media) (Honours) School of Media and Communication. RMIT University. Melbourne. 2009. Wilson, Sean. ‘Remixing Memory: The Copied Image’. Australian Photography Photofile 77 (2006). Diane Charleson is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Australian Catholic University Melbourne Australia where she is Program Coordinator of the Media and Communication Program. She is an experienced filmmaker and is presently practicing as a video installation artist. Her research interests are research of the self, memory, identity, video installation, documentary and new media.

Two Successful Transmedia Film Case Studies: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012) JT Velikovsky Abstract A comparative analysis of the transmedia strategies of two of the top 20 RoI (Return on Investment) narrative fiction feature films: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012). On average, 7 in 10 feature films lose money; to ‘break even’, the average feature film needs to make a 373% return on investment (RoI). Yet The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012) not only ‘broke even’ (>373% return), they made a 41,383% and 9,966% RoI respectively. In theatrical cinema release, The Blair Witch Project made $248,300,000 (413 times its production budget), and The Devil Inside made $99,661,944 (99 times its production budget). Of the Top 20 Return on Investment feature films of the past 70 years, these two films are the most notable for their transmedia launch components. But how much did their transmedia elements contribute to their success in finding such a wide audience, and therefore, to their record-setting box office attendance? Notably, the only other film in the top 20 RoI films list now classified as a transmedia property is Star Wars (1977) however at the time the Star Wars phenomenon was not due to transmedia; rather, franchising and transmedia properties were subsequently developed from Star Wars. So, what exactly makes a successful transmedia property? Using the interdisciplinary critical approach and analytical method of Creative Practice Theory Narratology, these 3 films are examined, and reasons for their success explored and articulated. Creative Practice Theory Narratology is an interdisciplinary synthesis of: sociology/practice theory (Bourdieu 1993), psychology/the systems model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1996, 2006), memetics (Dawkins 1976), philosophy/ holons (Koestler 1967) and communications/narratology (selected patternrecognition methods used by various significant narratologists since Plato). Creative Practice Theory Narratology aims to empirically and scientifically explain: Why are some media dramatically more successful than others? Key Words: Transmedia, feature films, Return on Investment (RoI), Creative Practice Theory, Creative Practice Theory Narratology, StoryAlity Theory. ***** 1. Introduction On average, 7 in 10 feature films lose money; 1 to ‘break even’, the average feature film needs to make a 373% Return on Investment (RoI). 2

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__________________________________________________________________ A successful feature film (one that finds a wide enough audience to break even) is therefore rare, and a successful feature film with a transmedia launch campaign is rarer still. According to the Producer’s Guild of America (2010) definition, transmedia is a narrative published across three or more distinct media platforms: A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. 3 My on-going doctoral research involves a consilient 4 scientific and empirical study 5 of the top 20 RoI and bottom 20 RoI feature films of the past 70 years, 6 in order to determine the characteristics that might have caused the top 20 films go viral. The definition of ‘viral’ in this context is: a film that reaches the widest audience, for the least production budget. The data set of the top 20 RoI films of the past 70 years is presented in Table 1 below. It should be clarified, the purpose of using these 20 highest-RoI feature films as the primary data set is not to (simply) enable filmmakers to reap vast profits. Ironically, with these 20 films, usually the producers and distributors received the profits, rather than the filmmakers. The data set is however empirically meaningful as the set of 20 films that had the widest audience reach, for the least film production budget; it is therefore, the 20 films that empirically went the most ‘viral’. The proposed reason these films went so viral, is: due to the story within each of them, and—in essence—they are all the same story. Not only do the films all exhibit the same story structure, which correlates to the Fibonacci series and the Golden Ratio, 7 they also all have at least 20 factors in common; these 20 factors are also neither universally nor generally shared with all of the ‘bottom’ 20 RoI Films. For this reason there are perhaps useful lessons to be gleaned from this data set for feature film and transmedia storytellers wishing to reach the widest audience, for the least production budget. Or, contrapositionally, does any (film) storyteller not want their story to go viral and reach the widest possible audience? Factors such as expensive marketing, stars, Hollywood production, and ‘name’ directors are clearly not significant causal factors, as not only do 18 of the top 20 films not feature any of these, but peer-reviewed academic literature from researchers such as De Vany 8 and Vogel 9 has also shown (despite this counter-

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__________________________________________________________________ intuitive result) these factors are not causally significant in the success of a film reaching a wide audience. 2. The Top 20 Return-On-Investment Films of the Past 70 Years Table 1: The Top 20 Audience-Reach-to-Budget Films 10

Analysis: the author

2. On Transmedia There is also an important distinction to be made between media projects that are later developed into transmedia once successful (noting that sequels and franchising in other media are not ‘transmedia’ by the PGA definition)—in other words, given the PGA stipulation that: ‘These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms’, 11 notably then, the only two transmedia-on-launch films on this list above are The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012). A brief overview of their launch media is as follows:

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__________________________________________________________________ A. The Blair Witch Project (1999) Transmedia 1. 2. 3. 4.

The ‘Missing’ students poster The feature film The book The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier (1999) 12 The official web site (http://www.blairwitch.com/)

B. The Devil Inside (2012) Transmedia 1. The movie poster 2. The feature film 3. The Rossi Files website (http://www.therossifiles.com/)— with additional video and ‘factual’ content 4. The official website (http://www.devilinsidemovie.com/) The above-mentioned films would appear to qualify as transmedia, under the current (2010) official PGA definition. C. A Side Note: Why Was Star Wars (1977) Not Transmedia On Launch? Notably, Star Wars (1977) was not expected to be a hit, as creator George Lucas explained in a 1979 interview: I put in all the elements that said this was going to be a hit … With Star Wars I reckoned we should do sixteen million domestic … and if the film catches right, maybe twenty-five million. 13 The 1977 film grossed $215 million on first release, and $797 million internationally across the 1977 release, and the 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1997 re-releases. However at the time, given that the film was expected to make around $16-25 million, Lucas had a low-budget sequel to Star Wars planned, which then became a novel written by Alan Dean Foster, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1978). 14 Once the original Star Wars film actually proved profitable however, this ‘less expensive’ sequel storyline was later ignored in favour of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) storyline—and in fact even denied as Star Wars canon, for many years (until a graphic novel version, in 1995). 15 3. How to Create Successful Property in any Media: Novel, Game, TV, Film? At the risk of stating the obvious, let us examine each of these platforms, and ask if there is currently a ‘known way’ to create successful media, within any of them; the reason for doing so will soon emerge.

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__________________________________________________________________ A. How Do You Create a Successful Novel? What indeed is a ‘successful’ novel? Assuming that ‘success’ equates to (say) 100,000 unit sales (with a novel retailing at say, $10 per copy), if the author receives 10% of the cover price per copy—or $1 per copy sold (as with many traditional publishing deals)—that would mean around $100,000 for the author before taxation. However—that novel may also have taken the author ten years in terms of prior training and practise, or less than $10,000 per year of ‘lead-in’ work. Indeed, ‘internalising the domain’ from the systems model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1988-2006), combined with ‘habitus’ from practice theory (Bourdieu 1977-1993) would suggest that it first takes a creative practitioner an average of ten years to internalise any creative domain. (See also later section here on: Creative Practice Theory Narratology). However if we assume roughly ten years—and some luck—there are some elements that have been identified by various researchers as ‘potential contributing factors’ to creating a successful novel. In Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Biggest Bestsellers (2012), James W. Hall identifies various elements in a selected set of twelve bestselling novels. These criteria include: the literary version of ‘high concept’; controversial subject matter; ‘larger-than-life’ characters, on a grand stage; ‘America as paradise’; an abundance of facts, information and technical detail; secret societies—(such as ‘Opus Dei, the mafia, Catholic exorcists’); urban vs. rural landscapes and milieus; religion as a prominent story element; exploration of American national myths; protagonists who are ‘rebels, loners, misfits or mavericks’; a character who is ‘a member of a broken family’; and that ‘one key sexual encounter plays a decisive role in the outcome of the plot and in the transformation of the protagonist’. 16 B. Additional Observations on Best-Selling Novels On my Transmedia Writing Blog is a post entitled: ‘The Top 10 Common Elements in Best-Seller Novels’, examining the narratives in the popular works of Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, J. K. Rowling, James Patterson and Dan Brown. A summary of the key points in that article about the most popular works of these five best-selling authors is that all their most popular novel works feature: 1) a literary genre of suspense-mystery-thriller; 2) the hero’s journey monomyth; 3) simple (non-’literary’) prose style; 4) a revenge theme; 5) film-style scene construction; 6) end-of-chapter plot cliff-hangers; 7) ‘villain triumphant’ tropes; 8) all are ‘detective’ stories; 9) a ‘non-everyman’, elite hero; and 10) that 75% of the heroes are privileged white males. 17 In other words, a formula or technique for creating a standalone best-selling novel is still elusive; there are currently no proven ‘systems’ for writing a hit novel.

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__________________________________________________________________ C. How Do You Create A Successful Game? Similarly, are there any proven systems for creating successful games? In a 2012 Business Insider article on ‘The 10 Highest Grossing Video Games Ever’, Douglas identifies the all-time best-sellers for games (see Table 2). Table 2: All Time Best-Seller Games 18

Note that: none of the above games are part of a tripartite transmedia ‘game/film/novel’ franchise—and yet, some of them do have spinoff novels. Are there any obvious ‘patterns’ across all ten games? No. In terms of game genre, they include: war games, driving games, ‘life sim’ games—and arguably, a hybrid thereof, in: Grand Theft Auto 4. Also, arguably people do not buy games for the story but rather for the gameplay. So likewise, at this point in time, there appears to be no ‘clear guidelines’ for making a hit game, at least from examining best-seller games. D. How Do You Create a Successful TV Series? What are the most successful TV series to date? In a 2011 examination of ‘The 15 Most Watched TV Shows Of All Time (Scripted Television)’ 19 Quillen uses data compiled by USA Today, TV Squad and TV.com and notes the 15 most popular episodes to date (see Table 3). Sitcoms and TV miniseries dominate this list; much like other creative domains, the creation of successful TV series takes at least ten years to master, and in fact, often even another ten years before a TV ‘showrunner’ is able to ‘create’ their own TV show. While TV series such as Dexter, Lost, Buffy and Twin Peaks all became transmedia properties, Dexter was based on a novel, Buffy and LOST were created

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__________________________________________________________________ by TV screenwriting veterans, and Twin Peaks—whilst a cult hit—was cancelled after two seasons. If there is a formula for a hit TV series, given the amount of TV pilots that fail (the ‘initial silent population’—about which, we almost never hear, nor know) this too is clearly a difficult and expensive medium, in which to engineer success. Table 3: The 15 Most Watched TV Shows of All Time (Scripted Television) 20

E. So, How do We Create a Successful Film? Are there common story elements in the Top 20 ROI Films, and if so, what are they and, what does that imply for screenwriters/filmmakers? The questions are worth asking, as 7 in 10 feature films lose money, and 98% of screenplays presented to producers go unmade. 21 4. What did These Two Transmedia Films ‘Do Right’? (The Blair Witch Project and The Devil Inside) The Blair Witch Project (1999) was arguably the first high-RoI ‘mockumentary’ feature film to be presented as ‘a true story’, namely the story of three student filmmakers Heather, Josh and Mike who allegedly disappeared in the forest near Burkittsville while making a documentary on ‘the Blair Witch’. The film’s marketing campaign included the ‘Missing’ posters; hand-scrawled physical bulletin-board messages with tear-off phone numbers; the hoax website; The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier book containing ‘case files’ and ‘real-life’

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__________________________________________________________________ interview transcripts relating to the ‘missing persons’ investigation—and all these media presented the overall narrative conceit of The Blair Witch Project as: a successful hoax film. Mockumentary horror films were not new when the Blair Witch phenomenon occurred as antecedents of the film included the films The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980), though arguably the 1999 film triggered a revival of the ‘found footage film’ genre (of which, the #1 RoI film, Paranormal Activity—and also the #13 film, The Devil Inside—are successful examples). As with all 20 of the top 20 RoI films, word-of-mouth was the key causal factor in The Blair Witch Project’s viral film success. Had the film not been genuinely terrifying for much of the cinema audience, and critically well-received (for example, 81% on Metacritic.com, from 33 critics’ scores) 22 it is unlikely to have entered the top 20 RoI films list. In terms of other media, 1999 a ‘one-shot’ comic titled The Blair Witch Project was issued, and in 2000 another series of four comics, The Blair Witch Chronicles. Not one but three PC games followed the 1999 theatrical success of the film in 2000, namely: Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr, Blair Witch Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock, and Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale. Notably the narratives in all three games were backstories—set in 1941, during the American civil war, and in 1785 respectively. A sequel to the film, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released in 2000. Also in 2000 the novel Blair Witch: The Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr was published and in 2004, the novel Blair Witch: Graveyard Shift. A series of eight novels titled The Blair Witch Files were released in 2000-2001, featuring Cade Merrill, a cousin of Heather’s from the original 1999 film. So, what can a screenwriter/filmmaker/transmedia creator learn from The Blair Witch Project? Perhaps most importantly: had the feature film itself not been successful in 1999 due to positive word-of-mouth, possibly the transmedia that ensued may not have been produced. Which brings us back to the question, if a film is the transmedia ‘launch platform’—how do we create a successful feature film? This doctoral research project aims to propose some answers to this question by examining common film/story/screenplay patterns. The Devil Inside was a 2012 supernatural horror mockumentary film in which Isabella Rossi seeks out her mother Maria Rossi, now confined to a mental institution after a triple murder during an exorcism many years prior. Although the film made a high RoI, it was heavily panned by critics (an 18% rating, based on 19 critics’ reviews). 23 Many key criticisms referred to the abrupt way the film ended: with a car crash, and a URL suggesting that the audience ‘continue the investigation online’ at http://www.therossifiles.com/. The film, for all its aesthetic/story flaws, does adhere to the key guidelines of the Top 20 RoI feature films (notably, all the top 20 RoI films’ stories are 2-’part’, and not ‘3-Act’

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__________________________________________________________________ film story structure), 24 and yet the most positive review (58%) of the 19 reviews listed on Metacritic, by Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly, states: While this religio-horror effort does contain some nice scares, and a memorably unnerving turn from Crowley, The Devil Inside’s biggest shock arrives when it abruptly ends—just as it hits its stride. The result is a found-footage movie whose third act remains missing. 25 A. So is there Anything ‘Wrong’ with this Transmedia Model? Namely the model of: 1. A mockumentary supernatural horror genre film (such as The Blair Witch Project or The Devil Inside) 2. A pre-film-launch website, that offers additional content/ narrative/ story/ backstory 3. Additional media (e.g. a Dossier/Case File/’news’ clippings, or supplemental film footage, additional interviews, etc.) If the RoI of both the above films is a guide, the model itself works. Arguably however, audiences and critics have also become sceptical of the model as it has been over 10 years since the revival of ‘the found-footage genre’ was triggered by The Blair Witch Project. Yet a ‘narrative world’ that is introduced via a feature film—and then allows the audience to explore that world/story universe further—may never become exhausted: the success of the launch platform remains key. Which brings us full circle: How do we create a successful: novel, game, feature film, TV series; and preferably, all at once? Some useful guidelines for the components of transmedia narrative design are provided by Robert Pratten at The Workbook Project, 26 and which resembles the design of both the Blair Witch and Devil Inside transmedia storytelling campaigns combined. 5. Professor Henry Jenkins on Transmedia In a 2010 interview with Jodi Harris, Jenkins stated the following key points, revealing a more audience- (or, user-) generated transmedia approach: Ideally content produced on each medium makes its own unique contribution to the story. So this content not only becomes part of the branding, but also part of the exposition. … Thanks to the transmedia trend, fans can become part of a movie like Paranormal Activity before entering the theatre. Or bond through

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__________________________________________________________________ their frustration at deciphering a blink-and-you-missed-it map on Lost. … It’s about conveying to fans that they won’t get the whole story of their favourite show, movie, song, etc., unless they check out the videos on YouTube and the mobile campaign, etc. 27 Given the film’s reviews, it is possible that The Devil Inside campaign took this approach too far for many in the audience. 6. Creative Practice Theory Narratology In short: How did the creators of the Top 20 RoI Films (and related transmedia) do it? With this question in mind, I have formulated Creative Practice Theory Narratology as a theoretical lens for examining the common creative practices of all the writer-hyphenates 28 behind the top 20 RoI films.

Image 1: Creative Practice Theory: General Model. 29 © 2012. Image courtesy of the author

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__________________________________________________________________ Creative Practice Theory is therefore a systems model, illustrating the synthesis and integration of five key concepts in Bourdieu’s practice theory of cultural production (1977-1993) and five key concepts in Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity (1988-2006), to describe how Csikszentmihalyi’s creatological systems model and Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural production within practice theory (such as habitus) overlap and integrate, when the two major theories by Bourdieu (practice theory) and Csikszentmihalyi (the systems model of creativity) are synthesized (see Image 1). Using the Creative Practice Theory model, we can analyse how the top 20 audience reach / production budget (or: RoI) films and their related transmedia were created—combining theories from the disciplines of narratology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, memetics, communications, economics, statistics, probability, film studies and cultural studies—allowing film and transmedia storytellers to discover more effective and proven storytelling techniques. 30 For interested film/transmedia creators, the above model is elaborated further at: http://storyality.wordpress.com/Creative-Practice-Theory/.

Notes 1

Harold L. Vogel, Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide For Financial Analysis, 8th ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 71.; Arthur S. De Vany and W. David Walls, ‘Motion Picture Profit, the stable Paretian Hypothesis, and the Curse of the Superstar,’ Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 28, no. 6 (2004): 1034. 2 This 373% figure is derived by the author from the RoI formula presented in: Jehoshua Eliashberg, Sam K. Hui and Z. John Zhang, ‘From Story Line to Box Office: A New Approach for Green-Lighting Movie Scripts,’ Management Science 53, no. 6 (2007): 881. 3 PGA, ‘Producers Guild of America Code of Credits: New Media,’ PGA, Viewed on 9 September 2013, http://www.producersguild.org/?page=coc_nm#transmedia. 4 For more on consilience, see: Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1998). 5 See Dean Keith Simonton’s definition of scientific film narrative research in Great Flicks: Scientific Studies Of Cinematic Creativity And Aesthetics (2011): ‘By ‘scientific’ I mean a study that is abstract, systematic, objective, and quantitative.’ Dean Keith Simonton, Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 6. 6 The Top 20 RoI Films, (data courtesy of Nash Information Services, LLC, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php.

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JT Velikovsky, StoryAlity weblog, StoryAlity #52—The Golden Ratio / The Golden Spiral / The Fibonacci Sequence, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://storyality.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/storyality-50-3-the-golden-ratio-thegolden-spiral-the-fibonacci-sequence/. 8 Arthur S. De Vany, Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes The Film Industry, Contemporary political economy series (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 4-6. 9 Vogel, Entertainment Industry Economics, 143. 10 http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php. 11 PGA, ‘Producers Guild of America Code of Credits: New Media’, np. 12 D. A. Stern, The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier (London: Boxtree, 1999). 13 George Lucas and Sally Kline, George Lucas: Interviews, Conversations with Filmmakers Series (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 81. 14 Alan Dean Foster, Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978). 15 Terry Austin, Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye #1-4, ed. Ryder Windham (Los Angeles: Marvel Comics/Dark Horse, 1995). 16 James W. Hall, Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Best Sellers, 1st ed. (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012), passim. 17 ‘The Top 10 ‘Common Elements’ in Best-Seller Novels,’ by JT Velikovsky, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/top-10common-elements-in-all-best.html. 18 Ana Douglas, ‘Here Are The 10 Highest Grossing Video Games Ever,’ Business Insider, 13 June 2012. 19 Seth Quillen, ‘The 15 Most Watched TV Shows Of All Time (Scripted Television),’ Filmpopper.com, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://filmpopper.com/the-10-most-watched-tv-shows-of-all-time-scriptedtelevision. 20 Ibid. 21 Ian W. Macdonald, ‘The Presentation of the Screen Idea in Narrative FilmMaking’ (Leeds Metropolitan University, 2004), 190. 22 Metacritic, ‘The Blair Witch Project: Metacritic,’ Metacritic.com, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-blair-witch-project. 23 ———, ‘The Devil Inside: Metacritic,’ Metacritic.com, viewed on 9 September 2013, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-devil-inside. 24 Notably, Aristotle never said, nor implied, three acts in Poetics. See Truby (2009) on ‘Why 3 Act Will Kill Your Writing’ for more: http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/why-3-act-story-structure-will-kill-your-writingtruby-NYC .

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Clark Collis, ‘The Devil Inside: Review,’ Entertainment Weekly, no. Jan 12th 2012, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/020556644000.html. 26 Robert Pratten, ‘Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started,’ WorkBookProject.com, http://workbookproject.com/culturehacker/2010/07/07/transmedia-storytellinggetting-started/. 27 Jodi Harris, ‘Transmedia: It’s not Just for Geeks Anymore,’ iMedia Connection (2010), http://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=27116. 28 Writer-hyphenates: all the top 20 RoI film key creatives are either a writerdirector, a writer-actor, or a writer-producer, or combinations thereof, and sometimes all three at once. 29 JT Velikovsky, ‘StoryAlity: Creative Practice Theory,’ Wordpress.com, http://storyality.wordpress.com/creative-practice-theory/. 30 For more information, see: http://storyality.wordpress.com/

Bibliography Austin, Terry. Star Wars: Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye #1-4, edited by Ryder Windham Los Angeles: Marvel Comics/Dark Horse, 1995. Collis, Clark. ‘The Devil Inside: Review.’ In, Entertainment Weekly no. Jan 12th 2012 (2012). http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20556640,00.html. De Vany, Arthur S. Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry. Contemporary Political Economy Series. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. De Vany, Arthur S., and W. David Walls. ‘Motion Picture Profit, The Stable Paretian Hypothesis, and The Curse of the Superstar.’ Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 28, no. 6 (2004): 1035-57. Douglas, Ana. ‘Here Are the 10 Highest Grossing Video Games Ever.’ Business Insider, 2012. Eliashberg, Jehoshua, Sam K. Hui, and Z. John Zhang. ‘From Story Line To Box Office: A New Approach for Green-Lighting Movie Scripts.’ Management Science 53, no. 6 (2007): 881-93.

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__________________________________________________________________ Foster, Alan Dean. Splinter of the Mind’s Eye: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978. Hall, James W. Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Best Sellers. 1st ed. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012. Harris, Jodi. ‘Transmedia: It’s Not Just for Geeks Anymore.’ In, iMedia Connection (2010). http://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=27116. Lucas, George, and Sally Kline. George Lucas: Interviews. Conversations With Filmmakers Series. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. Macdonald, Ian W. ‘The Presentation Of The Screen Idea In Narrative FilmMaking.’ Leeds Metropolitan University, 2004. Metacritic. ‘The Blair Witch Project—Metacritic.’ Metacritic.com, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-blair-witch-project. ———. ‘The Devil Inside—Metacritic.’ Metacritic.com, http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-devil-inside. PGA. ‘Producers Guild of America Code of Credits—New Media.’ In, Producers Guild of America Code of Credits (2010). http://www.producersguild.org/?page=coc_nm#transmedia. Pratten, Robert. ‘Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started.’ WorkBookProject.com, http://workbookproject.com/culturehacker/2010/07/07/transmedia-storytellinggetting-started/. Quillen, Seth. ‘The 15 Most Watched TV Shows of All Time (Scripted Television).’ In, (2011). http://filmpopper.com/the-10-most-watched-tv-shows-ofall-time-scripted-television/. Simonton, Dean Keith. Great Flicks: Scientific Studies Of Cinematic Creativity And Aesthetics. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Stern, D. A. The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier. London: Boxtree, 1999.

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__________________________________________________________________ Velikovsky, JT. ‘Storyality—Creative Practice Theory.’ http://storyality.wordpress.com/creative-practice-theory/.

Wordpress.com,

———. ‘The Top 10 ‘Common Elements’ In Best-Seller Novels.’ Velikovsky, http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/top-10-common-elements-in-allbest.html. Vogel, Harold L. Entertainment Industry Economics—A Guide For Financial Analysis. 8th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity Of Knowledge. 1st ed. New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1998. JT Velikovsky is a million-selling transmedia (films, games, TV, novels, comics) writer-director—producer, and film/story/screenplay and transmedia consultant, and currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Western Sydney. http://uws.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky/

The Dead Boy’s Narrative Transmediated Toni-Matti Karjalainen Abstract This chapter presents a snapshot of an ongoing research project on Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish and their Imaginaerum concept. The study looks into the elements of the Imaginaerum and Nightwish narrative and analyses its communication through various media and contexts, including the music album, live concerts, and motion picture. The project also explores the ways in which Nightwish fans perceive and interpret the narrative through the different touch points. This chapter briefly describes selected parts of the storytelling practices of Nightwish with focus on the intended Imaginaerum narrative. It also reveals some early findings from the present study on the perception and interpretation of the narrative by the Nightwish fans. Key Words: Heavy metal, music industry, transmedia storytelling, fandom, cultural narratives. ***** 1. Introduction All that great heart lying still in silent suffering. Smiling like a clown until the show has come to an end. What is left for encore is the same old dead boy’s song sung in silence. 1 In this caption from the ‘Song of Myself’, Tuomas Holopainen, the songwriter and mastermind of the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, has again put his alter ego and a fictive character, the dead boy, on the stage. In the middle of the fantasy-laden yet personal narrative that he has been crafting for the band throughout their over 15 years long career. Recently, the Nightwish narrative was put forward through the most ambitious concept and project in the band’s 16 years long history. The concept, called Imaginaerum, is a fictive story – or a state of mind – told not only through the traditional channels of the music album and live concerts in the following world tour, but also by a full-feature motion picture. Each of these media allows a rich divergent interpretation of the story for its audience. Moreover, the band embarked in an active utilization of social media, primarily Facebook and various discussion forums to engage and immerse their fans into the narrative; to create buzz before, during, and after the album and movie releases. This multitude of Imaginaerum storytelling makes the case an interesting one for deeper analyses.

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__________________________________________________________________ I decided to take a closer look into the elements of the Imaginaerum and Nightwish narratives that Tuomas Holopainen has been intentionally built over the years: How is the narrative communicated through various media? And how may the Nightwish fans perceive and interpret the narrative and its transformations through different touch points? In my ongoing study, to put it brief, I explore the Imaginaerum narrative from three viewpoints: intent, media, and interpretation (see image 1). First, I have looked at the narrator’s idea; how the story gets crafted and explained by Holopainen and the band. Second, I am exploring the story as it unfolds through the album, live concerts, and the movie. Rich material also appears in social media and traditional music press. Third, I am conducting a global study on fan experiences. In this chapter, I briefly describe selected parts of the storytelling practices of Nightwish. In specific, I focus on the Imaginaerum narrative as intented by Holopainen and reveal some early findings from my present study on the perception and interpretation of the narrative by the Nightwish fans.

Image 1: The conceptual framework of the study on Imaginaerum by Nightwish. © 2013. Courtesy of Toni-Matti Karjalainen 2. Imaginaerum by Nightwish In terms of sales and popularity, Nightwish is the most successful rock band ever coming from Finland and the biggest export article of Finnish music in all the main markets. The band has sold millions of records worldwide and regularly plays for audiences of several thousands. In addition to Finland, Nightwish has gained most of its international success in mainland Europe and in some South American countries, but the recent world tours have reached all the continents. Imaginaerum contains a storyline that combines universal fantasy themes with the personal visions of its primary narrator Tuomas Holopainen. In addition to the

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__________________________________________________________________ music album that was released in the end of 2011 – and its music, lyrics, and visual details – the Imaginaerum narrative came to life through the live concerts of the 2012-2013 World Tour (see image 2) and the ample motion picture that was released in November 2012, one year after the album (and accompanied with a soundtrack album ‘Imaginaerum: The Score’). 2 The movie was publicly shown in its premier in Helsinki (for 10’000 eye pairs), as well as in selected movie theatres in Finland and other countries. The major international distribution occurred through DVD and Blu-Ray in 2013. 3. Communicative Intent In terms of the intent, my interest has been on the storyline of the Imaginaerum concept, particularly as Holopainen himself has explained it in interviews and various promotional contexts. An important part of intentional narrative writing is the use of familiar references, characters and themes, from the band’s earlier albums and other artefacts. Imaginaerum also comprises lots of such references, contributing to the recreation of the Nightwish universe, the imagination land and specific mythology. Such repetitive use of central themes and characters enables, if using the semiotics terminology, greater paradigmatic coherence of the narrative 3. Holopainen has coded paradigmatic meanings to lyrical, visual and musical representations, which are then supposed to be decoded from the narrative by the ‘readers’, particularly the Nightwish fans. Holopainen seems to use such references both intentionally and unintentionally to create syntagmatic constructions that support the narrative and its distinctive character. As an example, he comments on the process of such reference creation: I just like to create that kind of Nightwish world in which things are connected. There is the dead boy and ocean soul that have existed from one record to another. And small visual gimmicks on top of that. They create and expand that world. 4 To study the Intent, I have collected data from various sources: personal interviews with Holopainen, public interviews in magazines, Internet articles, and various background stories written for Imaginaerum. Cover stories occurred in all the Finnish major music magazines. Major articles also been appeared in Terrorizer, Prog (by Classic Rock), and Sweden Rock Magazine. Metal Hammer (UK) even put together a special supplement ‘Nightwish: The Making of Imaginaerum’ in its December 2011 issue. Altogether, the main body on Imaginaerum related magazine articles and reviews sums up to some 30 articles.

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Image 2: Nightwish live concert in Brussels, April 16 2012. © 2012. Image courtesy of Toni-Matti Karjalainen During the more intensive development of the Imaginaerum album, movie, and world tour, the official Facebook site of Nightwish has clearly functioned as the main platform for communication. In September 2013, Nightwish had some 3.9 million likes at its official Facebook site. The increase of visitor numbers had been rather drastic in the last 3 years, during which the album, movie and tour were increasingly marketed through contents of various kind. In October 2010, before the active phase of communication, there were 1.0 million likes at the site. Through

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__________________________________________________________________ social media, interestingly, the Nightwish and Imaginaerum narratives are cowritten and re-created together with the fans through interactive contests and other engaging activities. As further storytelling practices, the band launched Imaginaerum wine, Nightwish ‘Reino’ slippers, the co-branding deal with Battery energy drink, and extensive palette of merchandise for Imaginaerum. 4. The Narrative The Nightwish narrative is predominantly based on Holopainen’s personal vision, experiences and memories, entangled with many external references to well-known messengers of fantasy fairylands. It contains reminiscences of J.R. Tolkien and Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Disney and Tim Burton, Ennio Morricone, Neil Gaiman, Salvador Dali, and many others. All are personal favorites of Holopainen and great inspirations for his song writing. The personal background cemented also the ground of the Imaginaerum script, as described by Holopainen: Every Nightwish album is a reflection of what I am going through at the time as an individual. 5 … I was a very innocent ‘raised in a bubble’ kind of kid. I didn’t know anything about the bad sides of the world. I was just playing in the woods. I was kind of a hermit back then – a lone wolf... My best friends were Donald Duck and Frodo Baggins… I was living – and still am, I guess – in an imaginary world… When you grow up in an environment like that – long winters, a lot of snow, a lot of darkness, Northern lights, beautiful fells – of course you suck it in as your mother’s milk, and it shapes who you are… Imaginaerum is very much trying to recapture the power of imagination and innocence – to myself, to the other band members and to everybody that listens to it. 6 In crafting the concept idea for the Imaginaerum album, it was decided that the tone of the new record would be contrary to ‘Dark Passion Play’, the previous album, that in the Nightwish standards was very dark, heavy and hopeless. Imaginaerum, according to Holopainen, was set to be an album with light and hope, a celebration of beauty, imagination and power of stories. It incorporates sorrow and darkness, yes, but with light at the end of the tunnel. In the words of Holopainen: If Sanitarium is about healing the mind, Imaginaerum is about refreshing it … incorporating ‘Carpe diem’ spirit and reminding of the finesse of being alive and the beauty of memories. 7

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__________________________________________________________________ The story of Imaginaerum, as a whole, was crafted to become a kind of metaphor of life, each of the twelve songs contributing to the grand story. These ‘scenes’ were also used as building blogs for the movie that eventually ended up to be a coherent full-feature picture, instead of twelve integrated music videos that was the initial idea. Holopainen explained the essence of the Imaginaerum tracks in a commentary published in the Nightwish Web and Facebook sites. For example, the 2nd song, ‘Storytime’, takes us to: A midnight flight with a snowman through the most wondrous landscapes, like in the classic animated ‘Yuletide’ film’. The meaning of our very existence is created though stories, tales and imagination. They are at the very core of humanity. 8 The 3rd song, ‘Ghost River’, suggests that: Life is the ultimate privilege; a river filled with wonders and horrors. Love, sorrow, beauty, evil and temptation. And we need them all to survive and enjoy the journey. Good, Evil, Pain and Pleasure — members one of another. 9 The 6th song, ‘Scaretale’ introduces: Monsters in the closet, squealing pigs, hordes of spiders and flesh-ripping harpies — peek into childhood’s unforgettable nightmares- a vivid and twisted circus sideshow. 10 The 9th song ‘Rest Calm’, tells about: Memories and hope that are two things no one can ever take away from you. The sweetness of my own past is a bottomless chest of comfort and inspiration. 11 The 10th song, ‘The Crow, The Owl And The Dove’, continues with the same optimistic mood: Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me Truth (by Henry David Thoreau). Love is everything, and only Truth is our guide to a deeper state. 12 The 11th song, ‘Last Ride Of The Day’ shows us:

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__________________________________________________________________ A theme park that is just about to close, but the rollercoaster runs one more time and you get to take the last ride by yourself. It`s dark and the fireworks have just started. Moments such as these are portals to infinite dreams, of deep realisation, and ultimately the thrilling awareness of being a speck of dust in this vast swirling cosmos. 13 Finally, the 12th song, ‘Song of Myself’, speaks in the voice of an old man remembering his past, named Walt Whitman, the protagonist of the story and Holopainen’s late incarnation: Song of Myself is our homage and version of Walt Whitman`s transcendental celebration of life and existence, delving deep into a personal catharsis. 14 5. Nightwish Fans The most scenes central to the narrative are touching universal and traditional themes, as well basic emotions, but leaving space for personal interpretations. Despite the fundamental personal basis of the Imaginaerum storyline, the themes and details of the story are written for the global audience. Fans can identify themselves with the story, find it personal and touching, without having more precise understanding of the writers cultural background. After exploring the intent of Holopainen and the communication of the Imaginaerum narrative, my next step is to study how the story goes through and gets re-interpreted by Nightwish fans who have different personal inclinations, and cultural backgrounds. I decided to ask serious Nightwish fans to write up their personal interpretations and ideas concerning Nightwish, Imaginaerum album and movie, live concerts of the world tour, and other experiences in a free form. In order to recruit informants, I put up an announcement on the official Facebook page of Tuomas Holopainen that had considerably smaller number of members than the Nightwish page (a few thousands at the time of the call) but suggestively those who are particularly interested in Holopainen’s idea and artistic persona, the narrator’s intent. When the request was aired, it took only two minutes for the first volunteer to sign up. And in a couple of days, there were close to 90 informants enrolled. By date, written narratives from over 60 fans from close to 30 different countries have arrived. In addition, I interviewed, and chatted with, a number of other fans; in connection to the live concerts that I attended (in total 12 shows in Finland, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, and Japan) or met in other instances in different countries.

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__________________________________________________________________ Of the informants, 75% are females and 25% men. The age of the informants varies between 15 and 55, the average being 27 years. The length of their Nightwish fandom is in average 6.7 years, spread from one to thirteen years. I also asked them to rate on a scale from 1 to 10, how serious Nightwish fans they consider they are. Answers were between 6 and 10; the average was 8.5. To view their musical taste, I also asked what other bands and music styles they like. There appeared a very wide range of bands and styles. Finnish Sonata Arctica and Dutch Within Temptation were most often mentioned. These two were followed by another bunch of Finns, the metal cello quartet Apocalyptica, and the lists of fans included tens of Finnish metal and rock bands. Over one third of the respondents, mentioned at least three Finnish bands. Finnish background, the strong metal scene in the country, and particular mythology seems to construct a meaningful part of the narrative as regarded by the fans of these bands, including Nightwish. Furthermore, I asked the fans to write freely about their connection to the band: When and how they discovered it? How did their fandom evolve? Why do they like Nightwish and what do they particularly like about in the band? What does Nightwish mean to them? What are their favourite albums and songs? And so forth. In addition, they were asked to describe, in concrete or abstract terms and in their personal view, what kind of place is Imaginaerum. What is its mood and feeling? What is the story about? What kind of associations does it bring to their mind? What are the songs, lyrics, melodies, sounds, and so on, that they find the most captivating and important? I also asked how does the story work in the context of their own culture or country, and whether they see the story as connected to a particular culture or country, or as a mere universal theme? Concerning the gigs the informants had possibly seen, they were free to tell me how did they like and experience the shows. And in particular, whether they think the gig experience adds some new meanings to the Imaginaerum story. And if so, what kind of feelings did the show and specific parts evoke, what were the most captivating parts and elements, and what could they say about the visual part of the show. The length and depth of the answers vary from a couple to multiple pages, from brief comments to deep personal narratives. It is for sure a rich data for analyses on various different aspects and themes. At the time I am immersed in the analysis, no great conclusions can be presented yet. However, it seems clear that even though I can see the Holopainen’s intent coming through in most cases, it has become obvious that the experiences of Imaginaerum and Nightwish are very personal among the respondents, Almost every narrative includes personal stories and interesting interpretation of the Imaginaerum script, events, and characters. And the experiences are often extremely strong. There are fans who have sent pictures

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__________________________________________________________________ of their Nightwish tattoos, their own Nightwish-inspired poems, life-changing experiences with Nightwish music, for instance. I have started to categorise the fan narratives, and come up with six initial grand categories: technical and background aspects, personal notions, description and definitions of the Nightwish narrative, stylistic comments on Imaginaerum, description and contents of the Imaginaerum narrative, and additional comments. This categorization will be further refined in forthcoming phases. I am also conducting another round of data collection with the same informants concerning their views on the Imaginaerum movie. 5. Concluding Remarks For the fans, the Imaginaerum narrative has for sure been a highly immersive experience. The album – through the cinematic sound landscape, rich imagery in lyrics, and mythical visuals – laid the basis for personal interpretations and identification, and the live concerts have added the social aspect to the holistic experience. Hence, the narrative gets significantly enriched when it transforms in different media channels. It also seems clear that the readers of the narrative have their own distinct ways of interpreting the story based on their personal background and depth of fandom, as well as their cultural surroundings. A fan in Finland experiences the layers of the Imaginaerum universe differently from the one in France, the US, Australia, or Trinidad & Tobago. More detailed explorations into this aspect are also made during the consequent phases of my study. The approach and talent of Holopainen weaving narratives that intertwine universally meaningful themes, characters, and emotions around strong personal experiences and stories has contributed to the construction of wide and loyal fan base over the world. And the band and their stakeholders have managed to deliver the narrative in a rich manner through the album, concerts, and the movie. Hence, Nightwish has succeeded in deeply engaging fans in the narrative. Using two metaphors, transportation and performance, from the literature (and film) studies as a reference; 15 the listeners, firstly, have been ‘transported’ into the world of the narrative using the strategic of universal referencing and personalization. And secondly, they are ‘performing’ the narrative within this world; they are called upon to the narrative, using their own experiences and skills, facts and emotions, to give substance to characters and stories. Such a co-creation of the narrative, seems to be particularly characteristic of sub-cultures that entail a construction of deliberate signs and codes meaningful for their members, but not necessarily for outsiders. The Nightwish community forms its own sub-culture that is, in wider terms, placed within the symphonic (and fantasy-based) metal and the generic genre of heavy metal music. Each of which entails its specific sign system.

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__________________________________________________________________ My explorations within these sign systems, the Imaginaerum and Nightwish narratives, as well as in the cases of many other metal bands and their fans, will thus continue. Future publications will reveal more interesting insights on the narrative constructions and storytelling practices within the popular music domain. It is easy to foresee that there will be new practices emerging – that, in particular, utilize novel interdisciplinary approaches within the context of transmedia storytelling. Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Tuomas Holopainen and rest of the band as well as Nightwish management for the support and for many memorable moments during the Imaginaerum cycle. The net wizard Carol Walker should be particularly acknowledged for enabling my access to fan stories. I also want to thank all the Nightwish fans who have shared their views and experiences and thus helped to shape the backbone of my study.

Notes 1

Caption of lyrics from the ‘Song of Myself’ on the Imaginaerum album of Nightwish, lyrics by Tuomas Holopainen. Published by Sony / ATV Music Publishing (Germany) GmbH / Potoska Publishing Ltd. Oy, 2011. 2 http://www.imaginaerum.com/. 3 Ferdinand De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). 4 Interview of Tuomas Holopainen by the author, January 2011. 5 Interview of Tuomas Holopainen in Dave Ling, ‘Nightwish: The Making of Imaginaerum’, exclusive magazine, Metal Hammer, December 2011, 17. 6 Interview of Tuomas Holopainen in Tom Dare, ‘Bless the Child’, Terrorizer, No. 217, December 2011, 27. 7 Interview of Tuomas Holopainen in Timo Isoaho, ‘Nightwish: Hollywoodiin vai avaruuteen?’ Soundi, October 2011, 38. In Finnish, translation by the author. 8 Nightwish news release, September 8 2011, http://www.nightwish.com. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Richard J. Gerrig, ‘Experiencing Narrative Worlds’, New Haven: Westview Press, 1993.

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Bibliography Dare, Tom. ‘Bless the Child’. Terrorizer, No. 217, December 2011, 27-29. Gerrig, Richard J. ‘Experiencing Narrative Worlds’. New Haven: Westview Press, 1993. Isoaho, Timo. ‘Nightwish: Hollywoodiin vai avaruuteen?’ Soundi, October 2011, 36-45. Ling, Dave. ‘Nightwish: The Making of Imaginaerum’. Metal Hammer, December 2011. Saussure, Ferdinand De. Course in General Linguistics, edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. Toni-Matti Karjalainen is a serious metal head and an internationally active researcher, writer, and lecturer within the fields of music business, design management, brand communication, cultural meaning creation, and visual culture. He currently works as Research Director at the Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. http://tonimattikarjalainen.info.

Zombies, Run! Rethinking Immersion in Light of Nontraditional Gaming Contexts Clare Southerton Abstract The concept of immersion has been central in explorations of video gaming, specifically in understandings of player experience and pleasure. However, definitions of the term have tended towards a simplistic understanding of a deep state of attention that a player either achieves or does not. Such a definition fails to account for the shifts and flows during a gameplay encounter. Recent trends in gaming towards the use of mobile devices offer a case study for exploring an immersive gaming encounter that sits outside traditional definitions of deep engagement. This chapter will demonstrate that game play could be productively characterised as a series of shifts in potential during which attention and conscious awareness are in constant flux. At times the player is concentrating carefully to complete the actions required and other times the movements become mechanical or repetitive, requiring little attention, producing a more shallow form of connection. Focusing on the smart-phone running videogame, Zombies, Run!, it will be argued that game/mobile application hybrids further demonstrate the need for a rethinking of traditional notions of immersion. These new forms produce gaming experiences that exemplify a fluid shifting awareness in the player, which cannot be characterised as deeply connected, but nonetheless involves degrees of immersion. Drawing on trends in thinking emerging from what has been called ‘the affective turn’, primarily associated with the work of philosophers Spinoza and Deleuze, I will explore the way the concept of affect can assist in this reinterpretation of gaming experiences, in light of its focus on the way in which capacities are augmented through interaction. This approach to understanding immersion acknowledges the role of both the technology and the user, considering that, through their connection, potentials for conscious awareness are transformed. Key Words: Immersion, videogaming, nontraditional gaming, affect, Deleuze, Spinoza, smartphone, application. ***** 1. Introduction Since academics first became interested in studying videogaming, immersion has been at the centre of discussions about why we play and closely associated with the pleasures of gaming. Traditionally immersion has been understood as a state of deep attention associated with enjoyment, often considered to be something that a game either achieves, or does not. 1 This definition is increasingly problematic not only because it neglects to account for the enormous diversity in

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__________________________________________________________________ the kinds of videogaming experiences offered but also fails to account for recent trends towards the use of mobile devices like smart phones, which offer games and applications that produce an immersive experience that does not fit this description. This chapter will suggest that immersion could be more productively characterised as a series of shifts in potential during which attention and conscious awareness are in constant flux. At times the player is concentrating carefully to complete the actions required and other times the movements become mechanical or repetitive, requiring little attention, producing a more shallow form of connection. I explore this shifting connection to support a conceptualisation of technology that acknowledges this on-going process of transformations. The concept of immersion is central to the relationship between humans and technology, and thus the way we understand this state will have serious implications. Focusing on the smart-phone running videogame, Zombies, Run!, it will be argued that the growth in mobile application/videogame hybrids demonstrates the need for a more fluid concept of immersion. Apps like Zombies, Run! exemplify a form of immersion that is not based on deep engagement with a screen world but rather a transformation of awareness that fluctuates throughout the gaming experiences. Drawing on concepts emerging from what has been called ‘the affective turn’, primarily associated with the work of Baruch Spinoza and later Gilles Deleuze, 2 it will be argued that the concept of affect can assist in this reinterpretation of gaming experiences, in light of its focus on the way in which capacities are augmented through interaction. In this vein of thinking I would like to propose an examination of video games that considers what games can tell us about attention and awareness, how we consciously, and unconsciously, engage with the game. In taking this approach, it is necessary to rework existing understandings of immersion in order to fully appreciate the shifting, flowing nature of attention during gameplay. 2. Redefining Immersion Though the definition of immersion is highly contested, generally the term has been considered to refer to a state of attention in which the player becomes caught up in the game. Many definitions make a direct reference to the awareness of the player, particularly their ability to pay attention to what is happening outside of the game. For example Jennet et. al. described an immersive experience as users finding the game so engaging that they do not notice things around them, such as the amount of time that has passed, or another person calling their name. At such moments, almost all of their attention is focused on the game, even to the extent that some people describe themselves as being ‘in the game’. 3

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__________________________________________________________________ Similarly Dovey and Kennedy describe immersion as ‘a loss of a sense of time, place or self.’ 4 However, the term is rarely interrogated beyond this point and often, when it is examined in greater detail, there is little consensus about what constitutes an immersive experience. 5 Uses of immersion as a concept in explorations of gaming experiences tend towards an understanding of immersion associated with pleasure and enjoyment, but gameplay cannot be characterised in such normative terms. 6 Gaming experiences in which the player feels caught up in the game are not restricted to the enjoyable parts of gameplay, but rather include in-game labour, 7 frustration and other aspects of play that, while not necessarily pleasurable, are central to immersive experiences. 8 Much scholarship also emphasises the design of the game and its immersive capacities, suggesting that immersion is an indicator of the success of the game. 9 However, considering videogaming in this way neglects a fundamental part of gameplay - the player. As Ermi and Mayra have argued, ‘there is no game without a player’, 10 and therefore to neglect the player’s role in the gameplay experience would be to return to a determinist approach to the technological, in which theorists tended to consider a technology either fundamentally good or bad for society. 11 Instead this chapter will make use of Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to technology, which focuses on the connections and assemblages between organic and technological entities. 12 To briefly outline this notion of assemblage I will draw on Anderson and McFarlane’s explanation, which describes assemblages as ‘composed of heterogeneous elements that may be human and non-human, organic and inorganic, technical and natural’, 13 which become reconstituted to create a singular entity distinct from its formative elements. Assemblages are temporary, unstable constructions 14 and it is this quality that makes the assemblage a useful concept for thinking about gaming encounters, especially considering the kind of definition of immersion I have been suggesting, which focuses on the constantly shifting nature of conscious awareness. By conceptualising the relationship between organic beings and technology as an assemblage, Deleuze and Guattari are able to think more experimentally about the role of the object, and how it figures in the encounter. 15 I suggest an exploration of video games through this lens to better understand game play as a processual state between user and machine, arguing for a theoretical approach that is open to the instability of the assemblage of gameplay and immersion. Theories of immersion can benefit from an approach that acknowledges the shifts and flows during game play between deep concentration and periods of light engagement almost to the point of inattention. Video games offer insight into the way that our attention is shifting by degrees constantly, even when it appears to be focused on a task. Videogaming involves a dynamic assemblage made up of the player, the mechanical elements of the game, the virtual world on screen, the surrounding environment and a multitude of other interacting forces.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Immersion as a Shift in Capacities Central to the gameplay assemblage are the transformations that take place from moment to moment, throughout a gameplay experience. It is these transformations that most sit at odds with traditional, rigid definitions of immersion as a state that a player either achieves or does not. Gilles Deleuze, drawing on the work of Baruch Spinoza, argued that when bodies encounter each other there is the potential for the capacities of each to be altered, and that the very existence of a body is determined by, what Deleuze calls, its capacity to affect and be affected, its capacity for transformation. 16 Videogaming can be characterised as an affective encounter during which the capacities of the player and the capacities of the technology are altered. For example, a player’s capacity to hold a conversation may be limited, but their capacity to explore the world on screen will be opened up. And it is with these transformations, these shifts in potential, that my rethinking of immersion is concerned. Deleuze conceptualises social life as in a constant state of becoming and transformation. 17 This theoretical perspective opens up new possibilities in conceptions of immersion, and videogaming experiences more broadly. Indeed Patricia Clough suggests that affective approaches to the technological offer insight into the minute, pre-conscious shifts in potential that occur within a body that is engaging with a machine. 18 Whilst conceptualising gaming in terms of transformation isn’t a new approach, theorists have tended towards moralistic discourse about the potential for negative transformations, usually in discussions around violent games. 19 In contrast, I suggest that an affective framework can assist in a rethinking of immersion as shifts in capacities are unstable and constantly forming (and reforming) the bodies involved. If we return momentarily to the simple definition of immersion outlined earlier, a state of attention in which the player feels caught up in the game, we can consider this, through an affective lens, as a shift in capacities in which the players’ attention is augmented. However, when more concrete definitions of immersion are constructed, attempting to determine the conditions in which immersion will be achieved or identifying a number of ‘levels’ of immersion, 20 the shifting nature of gameplay is lost and immersion comes to be defined quite rigidly, distinct from its origins in the flows of experience. Critiques of the current definition of immersion rightly argue for a greater interrogation of this central concept. However, these are predominantly advocating a more fixed and rigid understanding of immersion 21 that is incompatible with the dynamic, contextual, transformative nature of the experience. 4. Nontraditional Hybrid Games and Alternative Gaming Contexts The proliferation of alternative gaming contexts, especially mobile gaming, highlights the incompatibility of rigid definitions of immersion. Not only does

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__________________________________________________________________ mobile gaming transform the platform on which games are played but also where and how they are played. 22 Additionally the development of smartphone applications continues to produce forms of gaming that fall outside the definition of traditional video games but make use of game elements, increasingly calling in to question the very definition of a gaming experience. Applications like RunKeeper, which uses the GPS on your smartphone to track the distance and speed of your run or MyPlate which allows you to enter food and drink consumed to calculate energy intake, are hybrids that make use of gaming elements but take gameplay in new directions. 23 As a social phenomenon these hybrid game/applications indicate a trend towards games becoming more tied up with the world outside the screen, and challenges previous suggestions that games are a form of escapism. 24 Many of these new applications are geared towards modifying behaviour and not necessarily solely concerned with producing pleasure. Indeed the examples of hybrid games listed earlier blur the boundary between work and play, between the virtual world and actual experiences. Through an encounter with these technologies, our capacities may be altered in a way that produces different ways of being, limiting some actions and opening up others. Whilst a video game played on a console or computer requires the player to sit down and maintain eye contact with the screen, generally relying on concentration for a limited period of time, a mobile application could be used intermittently throughout the day, becoming entwined with everyday life but requiring a lesser degree of attention. These applications cannot create a deep form of immersion for the player, as a traditional game would, but instead produce a more shallow connection that is sustained for longer over time. Rather than pick up the game and play for an hour or so, these applications may only be given attention for a few minutes at a time but could bring the user back multiple times a day. Some applications, like the calorie counting app, even transform the way its users think about the food they consume throughout the day and so the application maintains a residual connection with the user even when not in use. Nontraditional gaming contexts and hybrid games disrupt the notion of a stable immersive state, as players’ experience of the game shifts according to the task at hand and the demands of the specific game. Normative assumptions about immersion as associated with pleasure, do not account for hybrid game forms that incorporate elements of labour into the game, which still form an important part of the experience, just as more varied, enjoyable parts do. 5. Zombies, Run! A Case Study Zombies, Run!, a smartphone application that mixes exercise with video gaming, provides a fascinating example of a hybrid game form that brings together these elements of labour and leisure that were mentioned earlier in this chapter. The game takes the player into a post-zombie-apocalypse world in which they play

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__________________________________________________________________ the role of ‘Runner 5’, responsible for going on runs out into zombie territory to retrieve supplies and rescue stranded survivors. To play the game you must plug headphones into your smartphone, select a mission in the application and go for a run outside. Using GPS to track your speed and distance, the story unfolds via audio-clips played through your headphones as you run. The missions can take 30 minutes or 1 hour and in between the audio-clips you will hear songs of your own selection. What makes this application most unique is that at any time during a run the player can be attacked by zombies and will have to increase your speed by 20% during the attack to survive. Zombie attacks are simulated with a warning message and then the groaning sounds of Zombies getting closer and closer until the player either evades them or is consumed. Fortunately for players, being caught by zombies isn’t the end of the world, but will result in a loss of potentially valuable supplies. Supplies collected are then allocated by the player to various buildings of ‘Able Township’, the fictional survivor’s camp, in order to level up the facilities. The game currently has more than 300,000 players worldwide, 25 a surprisingly substantial following considering that the app sells for around AUD8.00, which is substantially higher that the average app price of around AUD2.80. 26 The application currently has over 30 missions, additionally there are several extra race missions available for purchase. Players also have the option of choosing to run in ‘Radio Mode’, during which the central story clips are replaced with fictional radio broadcasters who offer information and personal stories in between the player’s own songs. 27 As the game uses GPS to track speed and distance, players can go at their own pace, even walk or ride a bike. The app can also be used on a treadmill, as the accelerometer in smartphones, like the iPhone, can function to measure speed. The game involves minimal onscreen elements, as most of the time attention is focused on where the player is running and this is makes the game quite unusual compared to most applications and games that rely heavily on visual realism. Instead, ‘Zombies, Run!’ offers some impressive voice acting and sound effects. The groans of the zombies are certainly enough to put you on edge during your evening jog. For the past few months I have been conducting an autoethnography of Zombie’s Run!, playing (or running) through the levels of the application and documenting my experiences. This autoethnography is specifically focused on the experience of playing with a hybrid game and the ways in which my awareness is augmented through play. This approach, though grounded in human experience, is open to exploring the emergent potential of the technology. Throughout my autoethnography I have attempted to remain attentive to the minute shifts in potential, the interaction of affective forces throughout the gameplay experience in an effort to understand the kind of immersion I experience. For example, whilst playing Zombies, Run! I noticed that the sound of my own heartbeat could be heard through the headphones while I ran and this sound worked with the narrative to create a sense of urgency and fear, but when a song was playing instead of the

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__________________________________________________________________ narrative clips, I was much less aware of my heartbeat. My experience of immersion was by no means sustained at the same level throughout the run. Conducting the autoethnography has also highlighted the role of the landscape in the gameplay experience. I noticed that not only did the game transform my awareness of the landscape but also the landscape worked to create a sense of ‘being in the game’. 6. Conclusion As this chapter has demonstrated, exploring games through an affective lens is especially relevant when considering the capacities of mobile application/ videogame hybrids, like Zombies, Run! to transform the way we experience the world. The diversity of in-game experiences cannot be encapsulated in the term ‘immersion’, at least in the way the term has been traditionally understood. Though there have been calls for a more concrete definition of immersion, it is evident from the growing number of hybrid games and smartphone applications that theories of immersion need to accept the unstable and contextual nature of gaming experiences. Zombies, Run! is a particularly useful example of the way newly emerging hybrid gaming forms highlight the need for a shift in thinking within game studies to explore the way that immersion is constantly changing. The trend towards gaming applications geared towards productivity and motivation also demonstrates that immersion cannot be bound up with normative ideas of pleasure. By embracing the fluidity of immersion, videogame studies can better understand the rapidly changing contemporary gaming experience and gain greater insight into the potential of immersive experiences to transform our awareness of the world.

Notes 1

See T. L. Taylor, ‘Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds’, in The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (London: Spring-Verlag, 2002), 40 – 62; Charlene Jennet, Anna L. Cox, Paul Cairns, Samira Dhoparee, Andrew Epps, Tim Tijs and Alison Walton, ’Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion’ International Journal of HumanComputer Studies 66 (2008): 641-661. 2 Patricia Ticineto Clough, Introduction to The Affective Turn, eds. Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2007), 134. 3 Jennet et. al., ‘Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion’, 641. 4 Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy, Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media (New York: Open University Press, 2006), 8. 5 Jennet et. al., ‘Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion’, 641-661.

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Alison McMahan, ‘Immersion, Engagement and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games’, The Video Game Theory Reader, eds Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (London and New York: Routledge 2003), 67-87. 7 Nick Yee, ‘The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play’, Games and Culture 1.1 (2006): 68-71. 8 Laura Ermi and Frans Mayra, ‘Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion.’ In Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views–Worlds in Play (2005), 15-27. 9 Alison McMahan, ‘Immersion, Engagement and Presence’, 67-87; Alasdair G. Thin, Lisa Hansen and Danny McEachen, ‘Flow Experience and Mood States While Playing Body Movement-Controlled Videogames,’ in Games and Culture 6 (2011): 414-424. 10 Laura Ermi and Frans Mayra, ‘Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience’, 15. 11 Andrew Murphie and John Potts, Culture and Technology (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 11-38. 12 Ibid., 31. 13 Ben Anderson and Colin McFarlane, ‘Assemblage and Geography’, Area 43.2 (2011): 124. 14 Phillip Mar and Kay Anderson, ‘The Creative Assemblage’, Journal of Cultural Economy 3.1 (2010): 37. 15 J. D. Dewsbury, ‘The Deleuze-Guattarian Assemblage: Plastic Habits’, Area 43.2 (2011): 148-153. 16 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1988), 17-29. 17 Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze (London and New York: Routledge 2002), 2955. 18 Patricia Ticineto Clough, Introduction to The Affective Turn, eds. Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2007), 134. 19 Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig De Peuter, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (Minneapolis, MA: University Of Minnesota Press 2009), xixxxv. 20 Lennart Nacke, and Craig A. Lindley. ‘Flow and Immersion in First-Person Shooters: Measuring the Player’s Gameplay Experience.’ In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share, ACM, 2008, 81-88. 21 Alison McMahan, ‘Immersion, Engagement and Presence’, 67-87; Jennet et al., ’Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion’, 641-661. 22 Dean Chan, ‘Convergence, Connectivity, and the Case of Japanese Mobile Gaming’, Games and Culture 3.1 (2008): 13-25.

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Christian Christensen and Patrick Prax, ‘Assemblage, Adaptation and Apps: Smartphones and Mobile Gaming’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26.5 (2012): 731-739. 24 Ibid. 25 Zombies, Run!’, 2012, https://www.zombiesrungame.com, 26 Rip Empson, ‘Report: Market For Paid Apps Hits $8B In 2012, While Average Revenue Per App Drops 27%’, Techcrunch, 2013, http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/22/report-market-for-paid-apps-hits-8b-in-2012while-average-revenue-per-app-drops-27. 27 Zombies, Run!’, 2012, https://www.zombiesrungame.com.

Bibliography Anderson, Ben and Colin McFarlane. ‘Assemblage and Geography’, Area 43.2 (2011): 124. Chan, Dean. ‘Convergence, Connectivity, and the Case of Japanese Mobile Gaming’. Games and Culture 3.1 (2008): 13-25. Christensen, Christian and Patrick Prax, ‘Assemblage, Adaptation and Apps: Smartphones and Mobile Gaming’. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26.5 (2012): 731-739. Clough, Patricia Ticineto. Introduction to The Affective Turn, edited by Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2007. Colebrook, Claire, Gilles Deleuze. London and New York: Routledge 2002. Deleuze, Gilles, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1988. Dewsbury, J. D. ‘The Deleuze-Guattarian Assemblage: Plastic Habits’, Area 43.2 (2011): 148-153. Dovey, Jon and Helen W. Kennedy. Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. New York: Open University Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and Greig De Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minneapolis, MA: University Of Minnesota Press 2009.

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__________________________________________________________________ Empson, Rip. ‘Report: Market For Paid Apps Hits $8B In 2012, While Average Revenue Per App Drops 27%’. Techcrunch. Viewed 2013. http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/22/report-market-for-paid-apps-hits-8b-in-2012while-average-revenue-per-app-drops-27. Ermi, Laura and Frans Mayra. ‘Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion.’ In Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views–Worlds in Play. 2005. Jennet, Charlene, Anna L. Cox, Paul Cairns, Samira Dhoparee, Andrew Epps, Tim Tijs and Alison Walton. ’Measuring and Defining the Experience of Immersion.’ International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 66 (2008): 641-661. Mar, Phillip and Kay Anderson. ‘The Creative Assemblage’. Journal of Cultural Economy 3.1 (2010): 37. McMahan, Alison. ‘Immersion, Engagement and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games.’ The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 67-87. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Murphie, Andrew and John Potts. Culture and Technology. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Nacke, Lennart and Craig A. Lindley. ‘Flow and Immersion in First-Person Shooters: Measuring the Player’s Gameplay Experience.’ In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share. ACM, 2008. Taylor, T. L. ‘Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds’. The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. London: Spring-Verlag, 2002. Thin, Alasdair G., Lisa Hansen and Danny McEachen. ‘Flow Experience and Mood States While Playing Body Movement-Controlled Videogames,’ Games and Culture 6 (2011): 414-424. Yee, Nick. ‘The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play’, Games and Culture 1.1 (2006): 68-71. Zombies, Run! Game, Viewed 2012-2013. https://www.zombiesrungame.com.

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__________________________________________________________________ Clare Southerton is a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. With a general interest in the relationship between the technological and the social, her doctoral research explores attention and inattention during encounters with technology. Her thesis is specifically concerned with smartphones and smartphone applications, exploring how habits of attention are formed around these technologies.

ARG for ARG’s Sake: The Authenticity of Non-Commercial Alternate Reality Games Adam L. Brackin Abstract The validity of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) as an effective means of reaching an audience through pull-media is now fairly well established. ARGS are a genre of storytelling derived from guerrilla marketing characterized by real-world elements, collaborative storytelling, and emergent properties, as told through leveraging social networking tools, and resulting in an opportunity for immersive agency for the player unlike any other. What often is not explored is the loss of authenticity in these games due to the overarching goal of selling a product through such pull-media marketing tactics. Interestingly, there is another type of ARG which has arisen, best characterized by its lack of commercial ties. These NonCommercial games are often seen within the close-knit ARG community as less ‘valid’ but more ‘authentic’ to the point where a subculture of non-commercial ARGers has arisen who desire to beat the advertisers at their own game and still experience immersive real-world stories. This trend is a valuable insight into the evolving nature of the ARG genre, and can be used to help inform the design process for the next generation of commercial transmedia campaigns being designed today when it is realized that ARG gives functional agency to the player and therefore gives the player more authority to participate in story decisions, and if pushed far enough with non-linear and ergodic models of gameplay, effectively gives authorship itself to the audience as gameplay transcends to roleplay. This can be visualized as a spectrum as follows: -- Increasing Interactivity & Authentic Experience ---> [ Audience Player Authorship ]

[ Audience Player Authorship ]