by Anne Larroque , published on 14.09.2009

Transmedia implies interdisciplinarity and transversality, says Jean-Yves Le Moine in his last post. I completely agree on this need for interdisciplinarity – and most certainly for curiosity, openness and flexibility on behalf of the future transmedia players, as well as professionalism and expertise. We must act both in depth and in width in a way… Ouch?

Better yet: technologists and creatives must work hand in hand, adds Xavier Couture quite rightly. The unlikely alliance of the Griot and the wrench, the magician and the technician, the poet and the blacksmith…

We imagine Assurancetourix forming a dynamic duo with Cétautomatix and we already smile, thinking of the funny confrontation… “epix”! And yet… can a creative player really be so if he doesn’t master the media, if he’s not a little bit of a technologist? And can a technologist really go to the end of his vision if he doesn’t transform it, if he’s not a little bit creative?

So are we squaring the circle of this double alliance of technique/creativity and expertise/interdisciplinarity? I don’t think so, and I have a very optimistic vision of the topic. I’ve always been a passionate storyteller, naturally curious, I’ve gone from novels to news, music and advertising before becoming a screenwriter (sorry for the confessions, we don’t know each other yet). Even while I was already writing novels I went to the United-States to learn how to write. Surprise: they turned me into a… technician. A technician of storytelling, or maybe I should say an “artisan”; the narrative art being an art rather than a technique in the proper sense of the word. Make no mistake, the raw materials I was working with to “build” stories were still humans, emotions, imagination and the “dramatization” (in the etymological sense of the term) of life; but I learned how to write with images, sounds, lights, actions and dialogues, to plan from the writing stage, for the needs of the production manager, director, actors, director of photography, sound engineer, editor, etc, and first and foremost, for those of the audience, all with the ultimate purpose of serving the story I was writing as best I could.

Not the “film”, as strange as it may seem, but the “story”. Everyone, from the star to the supporting actor, from the director of photography to the costume designers, first serve the “story”. The screenwriter like everyone else. He’s not the “author”, he’s the “writer”, even if he came up with the idea or the concept. An idea (or even a synopsis) has no value as long as it’s not completely scripted. JJ Abrams and his acolyte Lindelof were first “writers” before becoming “creators”, even if they didn’t come up with the original idea. The strength of Lost is the way they tell this story, not the concept itself.

Anglo-Saxons (but it’s also true elsewhere than in the UK or the US) consider that a screenwriter that doesn’t take the time to learn the “tricks of his trade” remains an amateur. It creates “expectations” that can sometimes seem rigid or arbitrary – such as, to quote the most trivial one, the famous “Courier 12 simple interline, fixed spaces and borders in inches” which nonetheless serves the purpose of offering a universal pre-formatting of the text: thanks to that, we know more or less that a script page is more or less equal to a minute of film (and it works: a 110 page script generally turns into a 110 minute film!…) (if you add the 19,6% French tax, it also works!).

At the end of the day, the 12 screenwriters sitting in a room working on episodes of Lost, Battlestar Galactica or Six Feet Under, all have the same sharp mastery of their craft, so much so that their “techniques” have become second nature. In the same way, they all share the same vision of the story they are serving. Starting with this solid common base, they can then let their creativity run wild, knowing that it will be able to play on a perfectly prepared terrain.

I’ve been using these creative techniques since… well, I was a student when I discovered them, and the best image I can use to explain how they work is a physical one.

At first glance, Imagination is like water: fluid, versatile, elusive and shapeless. When it comes in contact with inappropriate temperatures it evaporates or solidifies, it’s therefore important to keep it at the right temperature, and this is mostly a question of ego and motivation. But more important yet, it has to be channeled: actually, it’s very simple: creativity that isn’t contained gives us…a puddle. Even if we get 12 times more of it in the same room, it will still be a puddle (a big puddle, but nothing more). However, when it’s limited, channeled, directed, constrained, it can give us the fountains of Versailles. The finer the pipes, the higher and stronger it will burst. In other terms, the more precise and mastered the “constraints”, the more chances the imagination has of exceeding itself and reaching new heights.

This is precisely where I think storytellers and technicians can find each other, in creativity. Since a good storyteller will welcome technical constraints with delight: it will give him tons of ideas!… And transforming reality, taking up challenges, constantly imagining new solutions is the daily reality of developers and all technicians. And what if tomorrow, we asked them all to exceed themselves to serve a “story”? My weakness is to think that they would do it with even more heart than they do to reach “simple” (?) marketing objectives or budgetary constraints. This happens everyday in the world of videogames or animation. This is why ARGs are blooming in the US and the UK thanks to little groups of passionate people who are spending sleepless nights on the subject.

Interdisciplinarity is naturally born from this encounter. It already exists. And if the story is good, the audience will follow as long as they are slightly guided in the beginning. Is it more complicated for transmedia? More complex, for sure, but more complicated, I don’t think so.  In fact, it’s very important for it not to be complicated…

But, hum, maybe I’ll stop here for tonight, it’s already a little bit long…