Talks

If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead – HENRY JENKINS

Distribution has historically described a process for spreading media content which is top down, planned, and controlled and which independent filmmakers had trouble entering. Circulation refers to an emerging, hybrid system where the spread of media is partially shaped by the authorized and unauthorized behavior of consumers. What new opportunities does this still evolving world of spreadable content pose for those who create media outside or on the margins of the established industry? How can indie media makers more effectively court online communities who may be invested in their work? And what is the value of sharing content rather than seeking to tightly control its afterlife?

Spiral Worlds: The Art and Craft of Writing and Experience Design – CHRISTY DENA

In the 1950s and 60s, painters, dancers, sculptures, architects and writers played and created together. Now we’re seeing this emergence again, but with coders, designers, writers, musicians, video makers and so on, playing and creating together. In this session, I’ll share a part of my own journey in this space: how I work with both writing and experience design. I’ll draw on playwriting, screenwriting, interactive writing, and prose, along with interaction design, user experience design, and service design to illuminate the approach I use.

Where Games and Stories Meet – JIM BABB

There may be no new stories, but the ways in which we tell stories is constantly changing. Since the advent of the internet, the audiences’ role has changed. The internet as a medium is flexible and allows us to give shape to platforms that echo the emotions of an experience. Jim Babb explores how games mechanics can be applied to cross-platform storytelling, and how to creatively use mechanics to translate the agency of the audience into meaningful choices.

Top down/bottom up – where’s the value? – ALISON NORRINGTON

There’s an increasing amount of noise around transmedia storytelling, multi platform narratives and cross platform partnerships and its easy to become lost in the buzzword bingo. It was in 2006 when Alison was halfway through writing her 4th novel, Staying Single, that she also needed to pull together an idea for her MA Dissertation in Creative Writing & New Media. It made sense that the two came together. Staying Single was a first in cross platform chick lit – a genre that remains fully untapped in the transmedia space and for which Alison is in production of Loving NY.  ’Top Down/Bottom Up’ looks beyond the buzzwords to reveal the value of 2-way narratives, mistakes made and lessons learned within a genre that is heralded as completely lean-back.

Reasoning From The Future: Wicked Storytelling in the Media Mass – JORGEN VAN DER SLOOT

Are we living in a network society and how does that impact media? Is this the end of mass media and are we now confronted by a media mass? The media are embedded in society. As such the future of media is really about the future of our entire world. In the age of participation every organization and every media endeavor is confronted with a future of complex interdependencies that creates a world of wicked problems. Doing business in the future will increasingly be about designing for those wicked problems. FreedomLab Future Studies helps companies to do just that, by developing alternative visions that allow them to become sensitive for the future and adaptable to change. In this talk Jörgen will share FreedomLab’s perspective on the future of media and will elaborate on how wicked storytelling might proof to become a crucial capability for every organization in the future and how you can become part of it.

Leveraging & Procuring Good Data Through Storytelling – GUNTHER SONNENFELD

The inevitability of too much content and too many messages coupled with not enough time and not enough attention has left us, as creators of media and products, in a very precarious position. But fear not, we have a macro solution: good data. What exactly is “good data”? That’s a loaded question in and of itself, but we do know that good data means that audiences are interested, consumers are satisfied, and that there are a plethora of opportunities to make data a catalyst for better storytelling and creating more intelligent media.

We’ll explore what this means by looking at some critical elements:
- Why context matters more than content
- Why business context and creative context are the same thing
- How data can drive the creative development process
- How data can help us build stronger revenue models around the ideas we create
- Where new markets are emerging as a result

Transmedia: the Business of Execution – BLERIME TOPALLI

Many have discussed the definitions of Transmedia, but the realities of execution remain a mystery. For those on the frontier of building their own projects, we will compare several Transmedia models of the past, as well as building treatments and story maps, how to pitch to co-producers and investors, and formulating creative teams and partnerships for execution and distribution.

Brand Integrated Storyworlds – ROBERT PRATTEN

Rather than develop a creative project in isolation from its advertising and marketing, think of the process as a continuum from discovery through experience to exploration – an ongoing storyworld with which audiences & consumers want to engage. This is the opportunity offered by transmedia storytelling. Robert draws on his recent brand integration work to describe how participative, open storyworlds can be designed as cohesive marketing & entertainment vehicles that combine product packaging, in store displays, location-based events, video series, print and social media. Thought-provoking and practical ideas for seasoned marketers and indie creatives alike.

Robot <3 Stories - adventures in participatory storytelling - LANCE WEILER

What happens when 50 collaborators working in 8 countries are guided through a participatory storytelling experiment that’s lead by 5th graders? Robot Hearts Stories is an experiential learning project that uses collaboration and creative problem solving to put education directly in the hands of students. Over 10 days, two classrooms, a continent apart, worked together to get a lost robot home. The experience begins when a robot crash lands in Montreal and must make her way to LA in order to find her space craft and return home. Two class rooms in underprivileged neighborhoods, one in Montreal (French speaking) and the other in LA (English speaking), use math, science, history, geography and creative writing to help the robot make her way across North America. At the same time, Robot Hearts Stories extends beyond the classroom, as the project welcomes involvement from a global audience. Join Lance as he shares insight from the project and what it takes to co-create a storyworld.

Can Transmedia Storytelling Save the World? – NEDRA KLINE WEINREICH

Stories can be powerful forces in how we understand the world and how we should live our lives. We can tap into that potential to create positive health and social change by designing stories to educate and engage people on an issue, and ultimately persuading them to take action. By combining the proven behavior change principles from public health’s entertainment education approach with the immersive and participatory nature of transmedia storytelling, we can create world-changing experiences.

Collaborative Fiction – JAY BUSCHMAN

After many years of writing and producing for stage and screen, one day Jay Bushman suddenly realized that somebody had left a perfectly good, totally free, worldwide broadcast network lying around just waiting to be used for storytelling. Since then, Jay has used Twitter as the basis for a series of social media story events, including an annual mashup of Star Wars and the South By Southwest Interactive conference known as #SXStarWars, and the Halloween events #Cthalloween (based on H.P. Lovecraft) and #TheTalkingDead. Come behind the curtain to learn about how these experiences are made, how Twitter is the best thing to ever happen to DIY interactive fiction, and get a sneak preview of this year’s Halloween event.

Ownership vs. Access in Edutainment – DAVID SHORTER

UCLA professor David Shorter maps the uneven terrain of Open Access in the academic and filmmaking environments.  Discussing his previous work with developers, programmers, directors and screenplay writers, Shorter will offer some models of effective collaboration while discussing some common pitfalls of doing it yourself.  This case study presentation will encompass both the digitization of scholarship as well as the production of intelligent entertainment. As academics look to engage new technologies, they find themselves having to discern the “sharing” from the “possessing” of their knowledge.  And as directors and writers look to engage scholarly knowledge, they begin to recognize that the seminal moment of storytelling begins with the ideas and creativity of scholars and artists who have a right to profit from their labor. 

Project Searching: Can transmedia help to eradicate honor crimes – ADIPAT VIRDI

With over 17,000 cases of Honour-based crimes reported in the UK alone last year – SEARCHING is a project that focuses on engaging audiences around the concept of ‘Honour’ on a personal and socio-cultural scale. If Transmedia is defined as a way of engaging audiences, through narrative, across multiple platforms – the central question for this project is whether this mechanism can help to ‘activate’ a response and engender change. The central methodology has been to build from the core and work outwards so as to create experiences that are immersive but also look at the curative goal of how to eradicate Honour Crimes rather than just shining a light on its victims.

The key questions:

1. How do you build a project to create awareness?

2. What is the power of information in creating a storyworld?

3. Can ‘edutainment’ really provide a forum for real world social change?