What is a transmedia team?
by Julien Aubert, published on 8.04.2010
This evening, the Social Media Club is organizing a conference on Digital Storytelling at which I will be talking about the new types of job profile associated with transmedia, and more specifically with ARGs. If you can make it, come to La Cantine at 7pm. For more details, visit the SMC blog.
This will be an opportunity for me to talk to you about the new types of job that transmedia writing and production are bringing about.
After being lucky enough to meet him at Power To The Pixel, I was able to ask Lance Weiler just what is involved in the role of Story Architect.
Story Architect “How can you identify the individual story and creative elements (which will be part of the story) and then find ways of conveying them and generate emotion?”
The Story Architect is most certainly a job of the future. The future well-being of transmedia will depend on the training of people who, like Lance Weiler, are simultaneously authors – directors – producers – project managers – Web architecture designers – social media experts – specialists in new distribution methods – actors – community moderators. Consequently, the narrative concept will be an inherently transmedia construct embodied by a person who is able to sustain the same vision throughout an entire project as it is the case in more traditional productions.
And all this in order to create content which reflects what the audience does and adapted to what it consumes. To construct a story in a way that guides the audience towards a shared social experience.
The problem here is clear: not many people possess Lance Weiler’s talents. At present, it is the responsibility of a number of different team members to ensure coherence. To give you a glimpse of what a dream team might look like, I shall take the ARGs as an example. And more specifically, the ones which offer an extended experience, that is to say ARGs which extend or penetrate deeper into a storyworld which the audience is already familiar with. In the case of the ARG “Why So Serious?” launched for the release of the film “The Dark Knight”, the team responsible for the ARG was able to call on a very rich universe which had already been used by a number of different media with a very large fan base (the Batman “brand” has already been established for 70 years).
At Power To The Pixel, I was also able to talk with Steve Peters and Maureen McHugh, experience designer and lead author respectively of the ARG “Why So Serious?” and co-founders of No Mimes Media. The descriptions below are therefore based on the experiences they reported.
Experience Designer: a “super-project manager” transmedia #story #time #media
“The Experience Designer considers the entire story that is to be told and decides how each part is to be structured and delivered in a way that gives the player a rewarding experience.” He or she must be able to conceptualize the entire experience offered by the ARG and imagine all the interactions between the story and the players. In the same way as Web designers whose task is to design sites, Steve Peters’ mission is to organize the way players navigate through a world made up of the blogs, Web sites, Facebook pages, forums, “real-life” events, e-mails and SMS messages which constitute the ARG.
Lead Author: ensuring consistency between the original narrative world and the ARG
The author of an ARG works in close collaboration with the authors of the movie/series/video game which is to be turned into an “extended experience”. Together, they identify the puzzles, places and characters that are to be taken further. It is the author who guarantees that the experience remains consistent with the original storyworld (respect for the original source) and who is responsible for formalizing the ARG scenario.
Unlike more traditional productions, the author of an ARG participates in the writing of every aspect of the experience. The author must be an integral part of the operating team since he or she is often involved in the animation of Web sites or of fictional characters with an online presence. The author must be aware of player feedback at all times and be responsive enough to adapt certain elements of the story to the way the game is developing online, almost in real time.
Web Architecture Designer
Transmedia, along with all the new forms of digital storytelling, requires one key technological building block. The Internet will centralize all the data accumulated during the experience. When solving a puzzle unlocks a Web site or video, or an e-mail sent to a character results in an (automated) response from that character then the concepts of data mining, semantic Web, organization of information come to the fore. The interactive mechanisms that are involved require the design of a genuinely made-to-measure Web architecture.
The Web Architect’s task is to make the “user path” dreamt up by the Experience Designer a reality. However, it is easy to see that the Web Architect’s input during the writing phase is crucial, because we demand that transmedia provide us with new, disruptive experiences. If it is to surprise us then the use of new technologies or new Web services (which harmonize with the storyworld) is crucial.
Community Managers
They breathe life into the fiction; they are the voice of the project. They embody the characters, run the blogs, pass on content-related ideas, moderate the forums and listen to what is being said on the Web. They have the difficult task of bringing the fiction to life (by being reactive) and have to know how to act while remaining faithful to the source, on the one hand, and simultaneously allowing room for the creativity and culture that can develop within the communities, on the other.
In a transmedia project, it is the experience that creates the story and not the other way round as in a traditional narrative. The activities performed by the Community Managers are therefore an important part of the experience, during which they work closely with the author and the creative team.
Web Communications Manager
The Communications Manager’s task is to recruit new players. In the blogosphere, it is often the Community Managers who are incorrectly considered to be responsible for informing influencers of the launch or progress of an operation. Since transmedia is intrinsically bound up with the Web, it is self-evident that it is the Internet media that are the first to convey the message and redirect their audiences towards the story. To do this, the Web Communications Manager assumes responsibility for forging partnerships with influential media (blogs and topic-specific portals) which are in tune with the ARG’s target group.
A brief note about transmedia production
Transmedia producers must have a great affinity with the social media, be aware of the new drivers of growth on the Web and the free/premium concept that governs it as well as of the new distribution methods.
Transmedia producers work together with a variety of broadcasters: video broadcasters on the Web, mobile broadcasters, cinema, television, console manufacturers, etc. While the majority of ARGs or transmedia experiences are currently financed through marketing budgets, it can be seen that this cost is gradually being assimilated into the production of the original work. In the case of brands, transmedia can be used to link services to the brand message (educational content, establishing contacts between users, support centres, generation of familiarity with the brand universe). While taking care, of course, to communicate in a coherent way across each of the employed media.
Finally, with transmedia, we need to take a completely new look at the way copyright is handled in France. Maybe we should take the model used by video game producers as our starting point. In a game, the developers and graphic designers are just as important as the screenwriter or the level designer. Should we incline towards the model used in the English-speaking world which very properly embraces the concept of “pools of authors” and in which the various members of the creative team are salaried, with their contributions to the project not being subject to copyright but instead remunerated in the form of royalties?
Julien Aubert is co-founder of the site Fais Moi Jouer which is devoted to new gaming experiences. The site has now been analyzing and commenting on news from the world of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) for a year. Julien recently co-founded Story Factory, a business which studies and analyzes new trends in the field of native Web content.
