Transmedia Storytelling

Abstract

This article focuses on the history and development of transmedia storytelling. Rooted in the distant past when storytellers first began to use media in addition to words to craft their tales, transmedia storytelling has expanded through the cross-platform development of franchised stories and through the participatory culture made possible by the Internet. Educators have found the form particularly suited to fostering skills widely considered essential for students' success in college and the job market and have adopted it for classroom use. As transmedia storytelling has gained in popularity, concerns about protecting the integrity of stories and the copyrights of those who claim ownership of them have become a controversial issue.

Overview

The history of storytelling stretches back into ancient time, earlier than the eighteenth century B.C.E. when the earliest version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was recorded, to a time when tales existed only in the oral tradition. Narrative has offered human beings a means by which to impose order on experience and a way of transmitting social and cultural meaning. For millennia, storytelling, whether oral or written, was text-based, but the late twentieth century saw tellers of tales incorporate technology into a new form known as transmedia storytelling, a weaving together of the elements of story across multiple media. Transmedia storytelling is difficult to define in exact terms because there is no definition upon which the artists, storytellers, game designers, publishers, educators, and scholars engaged in the activity agree.

The term was coined in stages. Henry Jenkins, a media scholar and a leading voice in transmedia studies, credits Marsha Kinder, another media scholar, with first using "transmedia" in 1991 to describe the cross-media systems that had developed around popular children's characters such as the Muppet Babies and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jenkins coined the term "transmedia storytelling" in 2003 when he was director of the Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He argued that the generation who had grown up making connections in core narratives that moved across games, television programs, movies, and books, with no one medium viewed as superior to others, was likely to demand this feature in the entertainment these consumers enjoyed as adults (2003). He later defined transmedia storytelling as a narrative that "unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole" (2006, p. 95).

The most immediate association with transmedia storytelling may be the entertainment products that have used multiple platforms to tell a story, but the twenty-first century has also seen educators employ transmedia storytelling in the classroom as a teaching and learning tool. They have discovered that transmedia narratives develop multiple literacies—textual, visual, and media (Herr-Stephenson, Alper, Reilly and Jenkins, 2013). Building these literacies through transmedia play, a larger term than transmedia storytelling, fosters imagination, experimentation, and critical thinking. Students engaged in transmedia play with stories and with non-narrative puzzles and video games become not merely consumers of information but also participants in creating new information through connections, explorations, collaborations, and other forms of imaginative—and productive—play. Such play is not limited to the regular classroom; it can also occur in after-school programs, on field trips, and at home (Herr-Stephenson et al., 2013). Within these contexts, transmedia play "is approached not as a frivolous activity, but as a meaningful and important mode of interacting in the world" (Herr-Stephenson et al., 2013, p. 15).

Applications

Films. Jenkins offers a detailed analysis of The Matrix franchise as a definitive example of transmedia story telling. The franchise consists of three movies by the American film directors, screenwriters, and producers the Wachowskis: The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (May 2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (November 2003). It also includes The Animatrix (June 2003), a series of nine animated short films set in the world of the Matrix (Jenkins, 2006). The Wachowskis were also heavily involved in the creation of a series of comic books set in the world of the Matrix, written and illustrated by different artists, including Geof Darrow, concept artist on all three Matrix movies. Video games include Enter the Matrix, produced in conjunction with the second and third films, The Matrix: Path of Nemo, and a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. From prerelease ads that sent consumers to the web seeking more information through the Internet discussion groups, each piece of the world contributes something new and connects to other elements. Only viewers who had played the video game could interpret some clues in the films, and backstory was accessible only to those who had watched animated shorts via web downloads or on DVD (Jenkins, 2006). The multiple texts work together to create what Jenkins describes as "a narrative so large it cannot be contained within a single medium" (2006. p. 95).

Once Jenkins explained his concept of transmedia storytelling, other scholars pointed out that although it may have been an unintentional move by their creators, other narratives had engaged in transmedia storytelling prior to The Matrix. Star Trek's move from television series to feature films, toys, animation, games, novels, conferences, and a themed attraction in Las Vegas spanned three decades (Gutierrez, 2012). Another wildly successful, albeit unintentional, example of transmedia storytelling is the Harry Potter franchise. What began as a seven-book children's fantasy series by British author J. K. Rowling expanded into a multi-billion dollar franchise to include feature films, music, toys, clothing, food items, video games, videos, podcasts, mobile apps, a theme park, museum exhibits, conferences, ancillary books, an online archive of Harry Potter fanfiction that boasts more than eighty thousand stories, and websites. Foremost among the last is Pottermore, an interactive joint venture of Rowling and Sony that offers exclusive content, including alternate endings and original short stories about the characters by Rowling.

The entertainment company Marvel provided another interesting example in the early twenty-first century, with various film adaptations of its comic-book superheroes becoming some of the most popular and highest-grossing films of all time. While the central superhero characters had existed in comics, animated works, toys, and other forms for decades, the films, including Iron Man (2008) and The Avengers (2012), provided updated versions. Meanwhile, some characters original to the films were later featured in comics, television, and other media, showing that the flow of adaptation went both ways. In addition, both network television shows and series on the streaming service Netflix were developed, set in the same "universe" as the films and occasionally overlapping with actors, characters, and plot points. The so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) had enormous influence on the concept of franchises, impacting both Marvel's own comics line and the transmedia efforts of rival film studios.

Literature. Some transmedia storytelling is rooted in transformations of much older texts. The novels of Jane Austen have fueled a small industry of story transformations with Austen and her best-known characters reimagined in guises ranging from sleuths to vampire slayers in print novels, graphic novels, digital books, feature films, television episodes, and anime. In 2012, Austen's most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, entered the world of twenty-first-century technology and transmedia storytelling with Bernie Su and Hank Green's The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. That story cuts the five Bennet sisters to three and transforms them into modern young women: Jane, a fashion merchandiser; Lizzie, a grad student in mass communications; and Lydia, a party girl at a community college. It also changes Charlotte Lucas to Charlotte Lu, who finds a fulfilling career at Collins & Collins, makes Bingley into Bing Lee, a wealthy medical student, and transforms Pemberley from Darcy's estate to his digital company.

The sisters must contend with student loans and job searches, and Lydia, more sympathetic than Austen's original, makes a sex video with George Wickham which he then sells online without her knowledge. Finding the right career path is as important as finding a husband for this thoroughly modern Lizzie. Jane, too, pursues her own career rather than passively waiting for Bing Lee. In fact, several critics noted that romance becomes secondary to women finding their own success in this version (Zerne, 2013). The series consisted of more than nine hours of content on over 160 videos that ran on five YouTube channels plus 35 social media profiles. The story was further extended through characters' contributions to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media that allowed for interaction with fans. The series attracted forty million fans and won several awards (including an Emmy). In a move with more than a touch of irony, the story was further expanded in 2014 when The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, a book by Bernie Su, the series' executive producer, co-creator, head writer, and director, and Kate Rorick, television writer, consulting producer on the series, and bestselling author of historical romance novels as Kate Noble.

Children, real and fictional, have routinely engaged in transmedia play. Some of the most famous children's books of the nineteenth century show young characters acting out their own versions of older stories. Louisa May Alcott's March sisters in Little Women (1868–1869) are encouraged to see themselves as John Bunyan's Pilgrim in their lives in a manner similar to their acting out scenes from The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) when they were younger. The imaginative title character of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer (1876) pretends to be Robin Hood (Tom's source is probably the 1841 Robin Hood and His Merry Foresters by Stephen Percy and Joseph Cundall). In the early twentieth century, the title character of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908) dramatically and riskily reenacts a scene from Sir Walter Scott's 1833 poem "The Lady of Shalott" (Herr-Stephenson et al., 2013). Davy Crockett's coonskin cap and his rifle "Old Betsy" treasured by millions of children in the mid-1950s may have been more marketing ploys by Walt Disney, who created the television series, than transmedia, but certainly the let's-pretend versions of Crockett's adventures acted out in backyards across America, often to the accompaniment of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," the show's theme song, expanded the original and thus became transmedia storytelling.

Digital Books. The digital book is a prime example of an educational tool that encourages students to develop critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. These skills, known as the 4Cs, are emphasized by the framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an advocacy group of businesses (Time Warner, Ford, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Dell, Verizon, and others); education-related organizations (American Association of School Librarians, American Federation of Teachers, Educational Testing Service, Pearson Education, and others); foundations (Intel Foundation and Oracle Education Foundation); and media groups (Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cable in the Classroom, and more) that fosters the inclusion of technology in education. They are also key skills in the Common Core state standards (Hovious, 2014).

Inanimate Alice, a digital book, has been effective worldwide in engaging students in a transmedia experience that involves an array of literacies—verbal, digital, media, visual, information, and critical (Hovious, 2014). The online episodic story, created by author Kate Pullinger, digital artist Chris Joseph, and series producer Ian Harper, features a girl named Alice growing up as she travels around the world. Created as entertainment, Inanimate Alice was quickly adopted by teachers who saw the transmedia learning potential of the book that required students to determine meaning based on text, images, sounds, and actions and provided tools to create their own content, making it possible to incorporate text, images, and sound into interactive web presentations that could then be shared through applications for iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, and Android (Rodrigues & Bidarra, 2014). Inanimate Alice, with its game-playing elements has been effective also in motivating reluctant readers, those with poor comprehension skills and those who have little interest in reading (Hovious, 2014).

Not all transmedia storytelling has to be high-tech. One K-6 media specialist encouraged students to create a "storyworld" after reading Weslandia, a Newberry Medal-winning novel by Paul Fleischmann. The world included a Facebook page where students wrote and posted updates as the protagonist Wesley, original music composed in music class to accompany the fictional character's flute playing, and games based on the novel created in physical education class (Gutierrez, 2012).

Transmedia storytelling has proved to be a particularly effective format for young adult literature. An early and innovative example is Cathy's Book: If Found Call 266-8233 by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, published by Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, in 2006. The young adult (YA) mystery, which uses alternative reality game elements, includes Cathy's doodles and notes written in the margins of the book and also incorporates an evidence package of letters, phone numbers, pictures, and birth certificates. The book was almost derailed by criticism from such heavy hitters as consumer advocate Ralph Nader and novelist Jane Smiley over its use of Cover Girl products in exchange for promotional ads, but it found its audience. Readers thronged to the interactive website to discuss what happened after the book's end (Mcdonald & Parker, 2013).The paperback version, released in 2008, removed all references to Cover Girl products. Two sequels followed: Cathy's Key (2008) and Cathy's Ring (2009). A revamped version of the original book was released in 2010 as an app for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Chopsticks (2012), a collaboration between author Jessica Anthony and designer Rodrigo Corral, is a transmedia text that in the enhanced e-book version immerses the reader in the lives of the characters by providing access to photo albums, postcards, paintings, highlighted pages of favorite books, video clips, favorite music, and instant messages. Readers are even allowed to shuffle the pages of the book, thereby changing the order of the story and creating a personalized version of the book (Mcdonald & Parker, 2013). Amanda Havard's paranormal YA The Survivors (2011), the pilot for Chafie Press's trademark book app, enhances the story by including historical and mythological background information with images of documents dating back to the seventeenth century, a music soundtrack (including three original songs by Havard) music videos, and photographs and Google satellite maps of more than fifty locations that are part of the book (Mcdonald & Parker, 2013).

Viewpoints

Copyright Confusion and Fan Fiction. Given the many directions in which stories move as they cross platforms, it is hardly surprising that confusion and conflicts over copyrights sometimes develop. A classic example of the potential for confusion is Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978) by Alan Dean Foster, the first Star Wars expansion novel published. The story's sexual tension between Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia was not a problem at the time, but five years later, in the film Return of the Jedi, Leia and Luke were revealed as being twins. To prevent a recurrence of contradictions, Howard Roffman, the executive in charge of what became known as Lucasfilm's Star Wars Expanded Universe, established a rule that anything new added to the world could not violate what came before. This policy served as a model for the intricate, complex storytelling that became the standard for transmedia stories (Rose, 2011).

The popularity of fan fiction has complicated copyright issues. Fan fiction has existed at least since the first decades of the twentieth century when admirers of Jane Austen added new storylines to her fictional worlds, but it proliferated with easy access to the Internet. Fan fiction sites such as fanfiction.net have millions of users who post stories based on the characters and settings from popular novels and other media in dozens of languages with quality ranging from excellent to barely literate. Some authors have battled to prevent their characters from being used in this manner, but most have followed Harry Potter's creator in accepting fan fiction within limits. Rowling specifies that Potter fan fiction be noncommercial and nonpornographic. Some fan fiction has moved to professionally published titles and been adapted for other media, most notably that of E. L. James, whose phenomenally successful Fifty Shades of Gray began as Twilight fan fiction, and Anna Todd, whose After began as fan fiction based on Harry Styles of the British pop boy band One Direction.

Lawrence Lessig (2007), the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, argued that the technology that makes possible fan fiction, fan art, and remix videos that go viral is the result of the democratization of technology. He views the twentieth century as a period in which commercial interests stifled creativity and promoted a read-only culture. Digital technology in his view has reinstated a read-write culture that fosters creativity, especially among the young. He advocates a more liberal application of copyright laws in which creators concede non-commercial use of their content to avoid rigid dichotomy between any use of protected content and a wholesale ignoring of copyright protections.

Terms & Concepts

Common Core state standards: Standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics adopted by 43 states to ensure high school graduates are prepared to enter college or the workforce.

Digital book: An electronic book consisting of text, images, or both, to be read on computers, ereaders, and other digital devices, sometimes enhanced with sound, video, animation, and so on.

Narrative: A way of imposing order on events so as to render the chaos of experience coherent; traditionally uses exposition, climax, and denouement (or "unraveling") as structure.

Storytelling: An ancient form of human expression that uses words and often actions to recount a series of related events in the lives of a character or a group of characters, real or fictional.

Transmedia: Literally, across media; more recently, a description of media projects that use multiple platforms (print, film, web, etc.) to communicate an idea, a narrative, or information with greater complexity and dynamic potential than is possible in a single medium.

Transmedia play: The engagement of learners in understanding, reconfiguring, creating, collaborating, and communicating various kinds of media content across the conventional barriers that separate learning at school, at home, and in other contexts.

Bibliography

Gutierrez, P. (2012). Every platform tells a story. School Library Journal, 58(6), 32–34. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=76490473&site=ehost-live

Herr-Stephenson, B., Alper, M., Reilly, E., & Jenkins, H. (2013). T is for transmedia: Learning through transmedia play. Los Angeles, CA: USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://www.annenberglab.com/viewresearch/46

Hovious, A. (2014). Inanimate Alice. Teacher Librarian, 42(2), 42–46. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=100092131&site=ehost-live

Jenkins, H. (2003, January 15). Transmedia storytelling. MIT Technology Review online. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-storytelling/

Jenkins, H. (2006). Searching for the origami unicorn: The Matrix and transmedia storytelling. In Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide (pp. 93–130). New York, NY: New York University Press.

Lessing, L. (2007, November). Laws that choke creativity. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://www.ted.com/talks/larry%5Flessig%5Fsays%5Fthe%5Flaw%5Fis%5Fstrangling%5Fcreativity/transcript?language=en

Mcdonald, R., & Parker, J. (2013). When a story is more than a paper. Young Adult Library Services 11(4), 27–32. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from EBSCOhost Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=89132686&site=ehost-live

Ramasubramanian, S. (2016). Racial/ethnic identity, community-oriented media initiatives, and transmedia storytelling. Information Society, 32(5), 333–342. Retrieved December 8, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=117898406&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Rodrigues, P., & Bidarra, J. (2014). Transmedia storytelling and the creation of a converging space of educational practices. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning 9(6), 42–48. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from EBSCOhost Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=100074146&site=ehost-live

Rose, F. (2011, March 9). The art of immersion: The Star Wars generation. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://www.wired.com/2011/03/star-wars-generation/all/

Zerne, L. H. (2013). Ideology in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal On-Line, 34(1). Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol34no1/zerne.html

Suggested Readings

Evans, E. (2011). Transmedia television: Audiences, new media, and daily life. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hovious, A. S. (2016). Transmedia storytelling: The librarian's guide. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Jenkins, H. (2007, March 22). Transmedia storytelling 101: Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia%5Fstorytelling%5F101.html

Jenkins, H. (2009, December 12). The revenge of the origami unicorn: Seven principles of transmedia storytelling. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Retrieved January 7, 2014 from http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the%5Frevenge%5Fof%5Fthe%5Forigami%5Funi.html

Jenkins, H. (2011, August 1). Transmedia storytelling 202: Further reflections. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Retrieved January 7, 2015 from http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining%5Ftransmedia%5Ffurther%5Fre.html

Jenkins, H. (2014). The reign of the "Mothership": Transmedia's past, present, and possible future. In Denise Mann (Ed.), Wired TV: Laboring over an Interactive Future (pp. 244–268). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kalogeras, S. (2014). Transmedia storytelling and the new era of media convergence in higher education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rose, F. (2011). The art of immersion: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.