Transmedia–the new holy grail of filmmaking?

If I were to say “trans­me­dia” to you, what would you think:

  1. Trans­me­dia is the next big thing–anyscreen, everyscreen, baby!
  2. Trans­me­dia has been around for a while, but we’re only now begin­ning to har­vest the ben­e­fits of the 2.0 trans­me­dia model.
  3. What? I have no idea what you’re talk­ing about.
For those of you who answered with the third response, let me give you an example:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7G63CDPOoI
Vale­mont Uni­ver­sity, the prod­uct of a com­pany called Elec­tric Farm, is where media is head­ing. EF part­nered with Ver­i­zon and MTV, and the “series” is not just video. Vale­mont had a web­site that was straight (i.e., not a fan site, but a great emu­la­tion of a real uni­ver­sity site), where stu­dents could get infor­ma­tion about the insti­tu­tion. Ver­i­zon had spe­cial con­tent for those ‘admit­ted’ to the uni­ver­sity, where they could receive extra clues and text the char­ac­ters in the vir­tual world. Fans even reviewed the school on “Rate My Pro­fes­sors.”
This is not the addi­tion of a sim­ple spin-off or after­thought appgame. Vale­mont was crafted this way: an inter­ac­tive media expe­ri­ence that is enhanced, and even com­pleted, by what used to be con­sid­ered sec­ondary, and even ter­tiary, media.
Vari­ety says it could be a “text­book case” of how to cre­ate con­tent prop­er­ties that cross plat­forms seamlessly.
I think it is brilliant.
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2 Comments

  1. I’m a big fan of Trans­me­dia too and just took a class last quar­ter. It’s pretty awe­some! Another impor­tant per­son in Trans­me­dia is Elan Lee. If you haven’t done so, you can check out his TEDX talk and inter­view here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyyrW8bIk6M

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDIIGeW2Arw

    • Those are soooo groovy–thanks for the links!

      I (pretty obvi­ously) am one of those who believe that trans­me­dia is the way things are head­ing, at least in gen­eral. I see a time when some­thing that only is one media type is con­sid­ered “retro,” in a way that we see b/w film now.

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