by Marc Guidoni , published on 15.09.2009

Volume 1 : The situation today

Volume 2: The situation tomorrow morning

Developing and producing transmedia content is a costly undertaking.

The cost of making movies is going up, just as it did when cinema went from silent movies to talkies, from black and white to colour, from stereo to 5.1 surround sound, or in our day from traditional to 3D images. So if a producer wants to develop and then put together an ab origine transmedia universe, he’ll have to spend more on R&D than for a conventional non-participatory “mono-media” programme.

Three cost factors are affected:

- The writing. It becomes a lot more complicated in that it involves more dimensions, especially that of audience participation. It would be hard to imagine how a transmedia universe could be written up by a single scriptwriter, however brilliant and gifted he might be. You need at least two of them in order to be able to simulate at least the impact of audience participation on the resiliency of the developed dramaturgy. Don’t forget: in the US, on conventional TV series that have nothing transmedia about them, you often now have a dozen writers collaborating on each episode.

- The technical “backstage”. If the script relies on special tools like the geo-localization of viewers, alternative approaches to picture- and sound-editing, and/or the micro-production of content by the public, a global workflow will have to be conceived and kept going in order to manipulate, index and manage this colossal material.

- Running the programme once it is accessible to the public at large. In other words, a producer of transmedia content cannot confine himself to supplying a PAD to a network or a silver negative to a photo lab. He has to deliver a package with programme and service components or modules: a feature film, related shorts, the first few episodes of a series, a web site, a pilot for an online game etc. And, last but not least, handling the public participation: keeping the site going, renewing content, managing interactions with the public, bloggers, social networks, advertisers and so forth.

So producers have to find new sources of funding. Transmedia has paved some new roads to explore in the search for funding:

-       Operators of content distribution: They are all affected by the potential diversity of platforms for transmedia content: TV channels/networks, web portals, movie distributors, mobile operators etc. For the producer it will be a matter of demonstrating that the transmedia content coheres with the distributor’s editorial strategy and adapting to the applicable financial model (e.g. sharing of advertising revenue on the web portal, TV channel sales, percentage of theatrical box office returns etc.).

-       Advertisers: They will want to be a lot more present and “on board” rather than merely buying a commercial on the screen from a big network. These advertisers may be patrons, sponsors or the like.

-       The audience: Viewers will be able to help fund their favourite content by making micro-payments or by taking part in related games etc.

-       Derivatives: Specific subcontractors will know how to come up with spin-offs to round out the universe of transmedia content and broaden the experience thereof to physical products.

In a word, transmedia generates new costs, to be sure, but also and above all new sources of far greater revenue – reflecting the unrivalled spread and extension of the audience in time and in various age groups.

For the pleasure of a futuristic and iconoclastic proposition that turns the usual order of distribution on its head, check out the scenario envisioned by troublemaker John Ott: here

It’ll bowl you over.