From Max Giovagnoli, TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: Imagery, Shapes and Techniques

"Cross-media and transmedia, both used to identify narratives that simultaneously develop on multiple media. As always, the difference lies in the nature of stories and in the way we choose to tell them. In this sense, there are:

- narrative forms that don’t change when they are diffused on multiple platforms (for instance, a short film released in the same version at the cinema and, at the same time, on the web or during a TV show);
- narrative forms that share the same elements (plots, characters, atmospheres...) but that change depending on the publishing platform through which they are released (for instance, the same short film might be developed as a series or as a movie for the theater; its protagonist for a comic book series, etc...).

... There are some countries (but it is just a small minority) in
which a difference even exists between the term ‘cross-media’ (which is used for the stories that are exactly the same but on different media) and the term ‘transmedia’ (the stories that change depending on the distributive platform)." [12-13]

...

The four cardinal points of “doing transmedia” are:
1. Doing transmedia means to involve multiple media in a publishing project, keeping the features and the language of each one, even if they are part of a single system of integrated communication;
2. Doing transmedia means to make the project’s contents available on different technological platforms, without causing any overlaps or interferences, while managing the story experienced by different audiences;
3. Doing transmedia means to allow the multiple media to tell different stories but all exploring a common theme, even if it is experienced through multiple narrative perspectives;
4. Doing transmedia means to agree to give a part of the authorship and responsibility of the tale to the audience and other storytellers in order to create a participatory and synergistic story in the experiences of the different audiences of the tale.
Thus, exploring the narrative universe of a story by using transmedia is even more like a question of experience than use, and it makes compromises and challenges necessary for both the authors and the audiences. [17]

...

To enable the participation of the audience and the sharing of a tale’s imagery distributed on multiple media, it is necessary to guide the different audiences of each medium involved in the project towards an independent use of the story, expressing clearly:

- short parts of the plot and the rules of the “game” you are going to play, clarifying the roles and contents you need to create in the multiple media involved;- associations that link the multiple media in those areas of the tale that could work as easily shared points of entry for the audience;- the basic features of the narrative contract that links the authors to the users, that is: the action space of audiences, both for the character’s development in the story and for the solution of a problem, the reversal or confirmation of a point of view, etc.

An example for this case? Picking up in the “prehistory” of transmedia, the mixing of stories and tales of the first Disneyland, created in Anaheim, California in 1955, led to the theme park: the first huge world location that would host a promotional system, movies and cartoon launches through multiple media. At the same time, Disneyland in Anaheim was the prototype for the amusement park and a transmedia framework, the fruits of a Disney and ABC TV broadcast partnership aimed at the shows and events planned for the occasions of new movie releases (yearly) or the broadcast of old successful movies (every seven years). [22]


...

In the West, the term transmedia was first coined by the American researcher Marsha Kinder, who wrote in her 1991 book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles about “commercial transmedia supersystems.” She was referring to the publishing projects of some globally important franchises distributed on multiple media.

Five years later, Paul Zazzera, CEO at Time Inc., was the first to use the similar term cross-media that was soon seen all over the world through the start of Big Brother (a reality show presented as a cross-media format by its creator John De Mol in 1997) and the unexpected global success of The Blair Witch Project (1999), as well as the creation of Second Life, which according to statements by Linden Lab (2003) included and “crossed” all the media within its virtual world.

The transmedia definition was drawn on during the same year (2003) by Henry Jenkins in an article in MIT Technology Review that was entitled "Transmedia Storytelling" and highlighted the basic differences between the experiences that were unexpectedly and randomly being diffused across the world.  [23-2four]

...

"For this reason, “thinking transmedia” means: to face the remediation of our contemporary industry of information, entertainment and communications, getting ready for a “new creation each time”; for a redistribution of the imagination; and for a new artistic and scientific opportunity to communicate information and feelings that help the audience to continue developing." [23]

...

"f the creators of large global franchises are even more engaged in the development of a transmedia universe of their projects, then there is also an increase of spaces in which the audiences can reinterpret the imagery of the story. Above all, these “new narratives” are interpreted by the audiences as a semantic basin, which is open to continuous crossbreeding, and as a cultural activator11 that is able to incorporate different narratives and other kinds of constructions, even if things don’t always go in the same way." [27]

...

"in new transmedia culture narratives, the social development and emancipation of the audience’s role is strongly oriented towards the opportunity to use different forms of a tale by highlighting:

• - your own emotional experience in spaces that are gratifying and can be directly and explicitly emphasized through the audience’s involvement in multiple media;

- a deeper sense of personification in the tale, also through the tale’s transposition on a performative level (for example, through “urban” actions or experiential marketing);

• - a greater tendency to an emotional economy in opposition to the audience of traditional broadcasters. More active, attached and socially connected to the “heart” of the brand.

Following this way of understanding, in the book E- Tribalized Marketing by Robert V. Kozinetz, the author divides the participants of today's transmedia communities into the following categories by their active involvement and their proactiveness: tourists, minglers, insiders and devotees (from the least involved users to the ones that are most involved in the communication and in the brand content).

...

Fandoms can be found all over the planet and are continuously bolstered by the perseverance and constructive aspect of every member. They use open source publishing platforms for their tales and social networks in order to best keep their relationships alive. It's a daily experience of the foundational narrative19 as defined by Brenda Laurel, which is based on legends, narrative cycles and plots written in order to explain the roles and hierarchies of each group. Keeping this perspective in mind, the basic elements of fandoms are:

• - narrative voluntarism;
• - strict internal rules (narrative ones, but also referring to the imagery of the brand of the group);
• - testing (in two ways: anonymously and explicitly);
• - opposition to external aggregation (for example, the aggregation that exists among the different groups who favor the same brand). [31]

 ...


From Max Giovagnoli, TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING:  Imagery, Shapes and Techniques
Trans. Feny Montesano and Piero Vaglioni. Translation edited by Dani Belko and Brandon Perdue
Copyright By Max Giovagnoli & ETC Press 2011
ISBN: 978-1-105-06258-2