At Transmedia Lab, we’re not just imagining transmedia content, we’re creating transmedia content! In the prestigious lineage of Media Lab, which creates “technologies for a better world”, our aim is, on a more modest perimeter, to create content for a “digital” audience.
Never before have we had access to, and consumed so much content, especially images. Screens are everywhere and they are multiplied: each household has on average 4,4 screens available! These screens complete each other depending on context and use: direct TV for the family, video on demand, catch up television, “user generated content”, shorter mobile content etc… Our emotional experiences from all these different environments change, improve, diversify.
The content, however, doesn’t yet seem to have taken full advantage of these multi screen uses, and is usually still conceived for one main medium. But the mutation of audiences is accelerating, driven by the influence of the young generations. It’s been recently proven that a teenager has the ability of doing 5 different things at the same time on different screens! 15% of video is being watched otherwise than through a television screen, and this percentage is twice as high for the youths!
Today, there are real possibilities for enhancing content for a transmedia storytelling. Through complementary stories taking place across several media, using different angles adapted to the different media, the consumer can discover a universe with multiple ramifications; he can continue living the story through Internet, embodying this participative culture: he becomes the “spect’actor”.
Transmedia storytelling begins with the writing: developing episodes with the different screens in mind, offering stories with open endings, providing the Internet users with dramatic “material”. It’s also a question of mobilizing collective intelligence and creating a community around the content: developing the audience returns between media, encouraging virality with annotations and “tagging” of the videos, offering games that are massively multi-user friendly (alternate reality games).
The idea of Orange Vallée with this blog, is to unite our energies around transmedia content. We want to create an open tribune to reflect on new ways of working, a place of exploration and audacity bringing together players from different worlds. Our final goal is to come together to create value for the consumers: by serving their uses, by creating communities that they will bring to life, by bringing together creators and audiences.
Manifesto ! by Nicolas Bry, Marc Guidoni, Jean-Yves Le Moine
(C. Moreau) 