It’s 2013, and Second Screen is all around us, touted as the Next Big Thing. All of the major broadcast networks seem to have some sort of second screen sync app now, by which you can get “extra” content on your smartphone or tablet while you’re watching your favorite shows. CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, SyFy, AMC… Sounds pretty cool, right?

But try out one of these apps, and it becomes apparent that they’re a solution in search of a problem. It seems like the main uses seem to be leveraging social media (JOIN THE CONVERSATION!), polls, trivia, links to actors’ IMDB pages, and, puzzlingly, behind-the-scenes videos (am I supposed to pause the main screen while I watch these?)

IntoNow’s Iron Chef Sync App

Who actually uses these apps once they’ve tried them out? Nobody is revealing actual numbers, although the metrics that do leak out aren’t all that great. A recent second screen initiative for The Next Iron Chef: Redemption was only used by a maximum of 3,000 people each week for eight weeks, according to Channing Dawson, a senior advisor of Scripps Networks Interactive.

Could this be because the content is…just not that fun? At present, there’s plenty of awesome syncing and transmedia technology out there, providing fresh, pristine canvases on which to paint, but everybody’s struggling with not only what to paint on them, but how to effectively go about developing the paint itself. According to Sherry Brennan, senior vice president of sales strategy and development for Fox Networks, “We’re all convinced that second screen is here to stay…The question is, what do you do on second screens? What do consumers want there? That’s what’s evolving.”

Whether it’s a sync’d second screen, character twitter accounts, or phone numbers that show up on screen, these transmedia channels and all their narrative opportunities often seem to be squandered on delivering extraneous (boring) content at best, and marketing hooks at worst. If a viewer has taken the extra steps to find this transmedia content, give them something great. They’re in the palm of your hand…don’t lose them.

This is where an Experience Designer can help.

Transmedia Website For The BBC’s Sherlock

What if, instead of trivia or polls or “crummy commercials,” the current digital landscape was used to actually deliver story content? A character on the “main” screen sends a text message…you get that message on your phone. A website or blog is mentioned…you enter the URL and it actually exists. A phone number appears on onscreen caller ID, and you call it…a character actually answers and talks to you. A character makes a phone call…you see and hear the other end of the conversation in sync on your second screen.

Cool? You bet. Gimmicky? Maybe…at first. But the vocabulary of effectively using these transmedia channels for storytelling is still nascent, and it’s up to an Experience Designer working with a writer and/or showrunner (as early in the development process as possible) to take a look at the story and current technology, and then bake in the transmedia elements in an accessible and organic way that builds a truly unique and effective connected experience…

…an experience that draws the audience deeper into the story, as opposed to distracting them out of it.

Granted, it’s a challenging transitional time, in that you can’t count on your audience having an app or finding this additional content. As a result, there’s a reasonable resistance to putting “mission critical” content anywhere but the main screen. But that shouldn’t stop us from using these new channels to provide a richer, deeper, better experience for those that use them.

Sample Experience Design Flow

Additionally, the Experience Designer and a Transmedia Producer can coordinate with all different stakeholder departments (who many times have never even met each other) to make sure it all gets built correctly and effectively.

But, it’s not just TV that can benefit. Films, events, and even live theater can create truly engaging ways to tell stories beyond just the “main” stage. Why can’t the story begin with an email the moment you buy your ticket online? Why can’t the film’s sequel begin with a text message on the drive home from the theater?

My prediction is that soon, a mainstream property is going to get it right in a game-changing way. A story is going to emerge that actually requires the transmedia content, and their audience is going to get used to having the story that way. Once that happens, programming will evolve, and fast.

At that point, those who aren’t working with Experience Designers to utilize these new technologies may find themselves like those who continued to make buggy whips while the Model T Fords were rolling off the assembly lines: Left in the dust.

Because it’s summer and I really miss making ARGs, I thought I’d try something a little different. It’s the world’s FIRST completely open source, crowd sourced, instant ARG. All I’ve done is create a seed that I’ve planted. It’s your job to germinate it, and make it grow in a true viral sense.

Let’s together see how far we can get this to spread, shall we?

So you are a puppet master, or want to be a puppet master. Well now’s your chance. Take this idea and run with it, however you want. Make a tumblr, build a forum, build a website (I didn’t register a specific name on purpose) create a facebook page, Instagram it, Pinterest it, whatever you want. Make a logo, create a blog, a YouTube channel, a Twitter account. TELL YOUR STORY. But whatever you do, it must live in the fictional world of the ARG.

What kind of world is this? It’s a world just like our own, but with one very important difference. We’ve run out of helium.

Yep, it’s the World Without Helium ARG.

So, the ball is yours to run with. Let’s show the world what sort of awesome thing we, as a world-wide community of ARG and Transmedia enthusiasts/practitioners can accomplish.

I want to see how big something can grow from a single seed, so here’s the single, simple rabbithole: http://twitter.com/WWOHelium. Follow it, use the hashtag to spread the word about what you’re up to. Be creative, innovative, virally spreadable, use every trick you know…and most of all, HAVE FUN. I expect tons of awesome. :)

Here’s the only rule: The finale is August 31st, 2012.

Let’s see where we can take this thing.

And here…we…GO!

Note: This an homage/spoof of the excellent World Without Oil ARG, and is in no way meant to disparage it or appear to be affiliated with it. 

First off, stop everything you’re doing and watch this video. I’ll wait…

Pretty amazing and cool, right? So, this inspired me to challenge the internet, and the world, to a plussed version of this:

• Where: On a commercial airliner
• When: The moment the plane starts its takeoff roll at the end of the runway
• What: Passengers break out their hidden (non-electronic) instruments and play the William Tell Overture as the plane ganes speed and finally takes off.

William Tell Overture (mp3)

Somebody, please make this happen! Youth bands, orchestras, etc! You gotta be flying somewhere this summer! Hide those piccolos and trumpets and violins under the seat in front of you and pull them out on cue! Surely it can’t be illegal to play a musical instrument on a plane, can it?

Or at the very least, it’d be just as much fun to somehow stealthily play the mp3 loudly during takeoff. Hmm, I might just try to figure out a way to do this myself and not get arrested for not turning off my electronics…

(Click for the big version)

To further highlight the problem with the term “transmedia” and the increasing chasm between storytellers and franchisers/marketers, I am going to start collecting the amazing amount of sometimes contradictory definitions, which should nicely illustrate the problem. I’ll add to this list as I find stuff, and please, link me to more definitions in the comments section and I’ll edit them in! :)

Oh, and I’ve saved my definition until last…

(Note: all emphases mine)

First, we start with Henry Jenkins:

Stories that unfold across multiple media platforms, with each medium making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the world, a more integrated approach to franchise development than models based on urtexts and ancillary products.

-and-

Transmedia storytelling is storytelling by a number of decentralized authors who share and create content for distribution across multiple forms of media. Transmedia immerses an audience in a story’s universe through a number of dispersed entry points, providing a comprehensive and coordinated experience of a complex story.

From Wikipedia:

Transmedia storytelling is a technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats, recognized for its use by mass media to develop media franchises. [UPDATE: This definition has been updated to reflect a more accurate description]

From Jarrett Sherman:

Transmedia is based around one narrative wherein each component informs the larger world. Interconnected components, such as a TV series, book, mobile app and online game, may serve as off-shoots that give life to one main story. Think Star Wars.

From Seize the Media:

Transmedia is a format of formats; an approach to story delivery that aggregates fragmented audiences by adapting productions to new modes of presentation and social integration. The execution of a transmedia production weaves together diverse storylines, across multiple outlets, as parts of an overarching narrative structure. These elements are distributed through both traditional and new media outlets. The online components exploit the social conventions, and social locations, of the internet.

From Jeff Gomez (although I can’t find the actual source material):

The art of conveying messages, themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well-planned use of multiple platforms.

From the Producers Guild of America:

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.

From Steve Rubel:

Transmedia storytelling is the future of marketing. And those who can span across formats and share their expertise will stand out in an age of Digital Relativity.

From Simon Pulman:

At its simplest, transmedia allows the expansion of a mythology for a story or intellectual property.

From Brian Clark:

Transmedia storytelling is the label for when you’re creating a story as the primary storytellers and intending to tell your story across multiple channels.

From Robert Pratten:

‘Transmedia storytelling’ is telling a story across multiple media and preferably, although it doesn’t always happen, with a degree of audience participation, interaction or collaboration. In transmedia storytelling, engagement with each successive media heightens the audience’ understanding, enjoyment and affection for the story. To do this successfully, the embodiment of the story in each media needs to be satisfying in its own right while enjoyment from all the media should be greater than the sum of the parts.

From Brooke Thompson:

• a media project comprised of multiple media formats
• distributed on multiple platforms (and where)
• the platforms interact with each other in a complex relationship

…in order to create a larger and more complete whole.

And finally, from me (I like short and to-the-point):

Transmedia storytelling is telling a single story spread beginning-to-end across multiple platforms.

At this point, I’d like to quote Jenkins again, as he very astutely (as PhD’s are wont to do) quantified the dilemma:

The reality is that our definition of what constitutes transmedia is still very much evolving, as can be witnessed from the various discussions of the concept at the Transmedia Hollywood: S/Telling the Story conference… As we brought together people from across the media industry to discuss these emerging trends, we found some included all forms of franchise entertainment as transmedia and others had much narrower definitions which insisted that the different media platforms be integrated to tell a single story. There was disagreement about the value of various proposed terms, including not only transmedia, cross-media, and “deep media.” There were recurring disagreements about transmedia as a mode of content as opposed to a mode of marketing. And finally, transmedia’s aesthetics was still being defined and with it, the issue of whether this is something really new or an expansion of long-standing practices. Around the edges, you could hear hints that transmedia should be extended from a focus on storytelling to a more expansive understanding which includes notions of performance, play, and spectacle that can not be contained within a more narrative-centric definition.

I take a little umbrage to his saying that people like me have a much narrower definition of things. :) I just want to tighten up the definition so as to be more useful. We need to quantify the differences of Transmedia as a “mode of marketing as opposed to a mode of content.” See, the word Transmedia is a modifier, but most are not including what it’s a modifier of. The franchisers are just calling what they do Transmedia, or worse, Transmedia Storytelling. I mean, come on! I don’t know any storytellers that are calling what they do Transmedia Franchising! This is exacerbated by the (still inaccurate) Producers Guild definition above, which, although it’s a definition for qualification for the PGA, in fact serves as a definition for many of the term itself. As a result, because of this incorrect/incomplete usage, the de facto definition of Transmedia is coming to merely mean Franchising.

I mean, the sky is blue and the ocean is blue. But that doesn’t mean the ocean is the same thing as the sky, right?

So, here’s my call to the marketers and franchisers and brand-builders out there (and you know who you are!):

Start being honest. Start calling your cigar a cigar. Stop referring to what you do as merely Transmedia or Transmedia Storytelling. Call it what it is: Transmedia Franchising (even though I think that term is redundant, but whatever). Or Transmedia Branding, or Transmedia Merchandizing, or Transmedia Marketing. I don’t care.

Just leave the term Transmedia Storytelling (or Transmedia Entertainment) to the actual storytellers!

This means there can be lots of stuff like, oh, Transmedia Art (one art piece that spans platforms), Transmedia Games (one game that spans platforms), and more!

Let’s just all stop using Transmedia as a noun. If you use it at all…

But don’t forget that soon, very soon, this argument will be moot. As something somewhere made by someone one of us probably knows will penetrate the mainstream consciousness and become The Big New Thing that everyone understands and consumes. And that mainstream collective audience will decide what to call it.

And I will cheer. :)

[ETA: And dang, it's now apparent that there was a perfect title for this post: transmedia is the new Transmedia.]

Reclaiming Transmedia Storyteller

By Brian Clark

In any field, practitioners develop a specialized jargon that conveys either the complex nuance or razor specificity necessary for people to talk about what they do with each other. It is good for everyone to be involved in the debates about those kinds of terms of art on at least some level, as the dialog advances new ways of thinking about the work you should also be buried in.

At this phase in my career, I’m less interested in the Platonic ideas of what the labels should be, and far more interested in discussing why we’re suddenly having a hard time having a discussion as a community of practitioners and creators. We need to be able to discuss this without people taking that as a rebuke of their work or, conversely, worrying more about their own promotional positioning than the health of the movement.

That’s also why I decided to publish this on Facebook of all places: to remind us that we’re friends and peers who know each other: that’s why the discussion is worth having and why we should be capable of having it. Tag the people you talk about and reference to remind yourself of that: discover some new people in your community you didn’t know from those tags. Embrace that we’re not faceless board handles, we’re flesh and blood and full of passion and complex ideas and clumsy words.

Because not everyone is entering the conversation with the same personal experiences, I feel the need to set the stage and explain how I think this tension has emerged over the last few years

JENKINS AND THE UNFINISHED DEFINITION

The seeds of this gulf were sown by Henry Jenkins, who was largely responsible for the current popularity of the term “transmedia”: many of us have been friendly critics of the term since the beginning, but as an academian Henry has always encouraged that debate and been clear that the definition was an emerging thing. At Futures of Entertainment 4 at M.I.T. I was on a panel right after Henry where they asked us to react to his presentation, and I remember saying that it seemed like I was interested in optimizing exactly the opposite factors as Henry. The tensions of ideas advanced discussions.

My community of creative peers and I found something fascinating about the discourse around the term (a discourse we were dragged into by having our work labeled posthumously as transmedia). Transmedia instead of multimedia implied a distinction of creation that we also tried to highlight, and Henry’s focus on “it isn’t just adaptation” and “it is an adjective that describes something else” were appealing new distinctions that added to the conversation.

PGA CREDIT

The tone of that conversation began to sour after Jeff Gomez worked to establish a “transmedia producers credit” at the Producer’s Guild of America, which cemented a definition of qualifying work that is confusing at best and exclusionary at worst. One of its core flaws (IMHO) is that it abandons Jenkin’s distinction of “it isn’t just adaptation” – in fact, the credit definition talks about “3 or more storylines” because in the Hollywood system, the transmedia is almost always a bolt-on adaptation of a primary IP that the producers don’t get to influence. I understand why it is what it is, and in general don’t find it massively relevant (it’s the requirements to get into PGA, not to be a transmedia producer), but it has sparked passions.

More worrisome to me is that the proponents of the PGA credit haven’t reacted to the criticism the way Henry did: they have intertwined their professional ambitions with the PGA definitions in a way that treats that discourse as inappropriate criticism, which turns friendly criticism into something less friendly. After mentioning the growing issue on this in passing in the comedic setup of my presentation at Power to Pixel, I was shocked by how defensive the tone of PGA credit defenders were – I was literally asked, “So, do you not want transmedia producers to have health insurance?”

#ANTITRANSMEDIA

Of course, that doesn’t stop the community of discourse. Steve Peters started the trend of mocking the label on Twitter with the #antitransmedia hashtag and the simple reminders like “bacon is the new transmedia.” It became a template for criticism of speeches and blog posts about the topic that gained steam. As that dialog broadened, though, I began to realize that many of us were using that meme for totally different reasons.

Steve wanted to kill the label transmedia, in part because he feels that PGA credit definition is too restrictive. I, on the other hand, was really attacking the self-proclaimed gurus to point out how the phrase might have already become the new “viral” (and if you asked my personal opinion on the PGA credit I’d either describe it as irrelevant or not restrictive enough.) Others were probably just in it for the lulz. It was perceived, though, as a “backlash from veteran transmedia creators”.

It eventually became just that when Brooke Thompson published a series of blog posts that sharpened the knife to the conversation provoked by the PGA credit definition. Comments became emails, emails became phone calls and the cross-fertilizing of ideas that always emerges from a good community of discourse started to happen.

EAST COAST / WEST COAST TRANSMEDIA

At the same time, I’d been spending a lot of time thinking about this division through the lens of my long relationship with the independent film community and saw many similarities. In conversations, I started calling it East Coast and West Coast and pointing out that maybe transmedia was salvageable if it was a big enough bucket to include two radically different visions of what it was about instead of all agreeing to do it just one way.

The West Coast transmedia tradition is largely what Jenkins was studying, and that style might be best personified by people like Elan Lee, Jordan Weisman and Jeff Gomez. It thinks more in terms of franchises, it has struggles with the relationships with the owners of the industry, and starts from the perspective that creators won’t own the IP they are creating. They want to fix the studio system, or recreate a new kind of studio.

The East Coast transmedia tradition is quite different and emerges far more from the independent traditions of media through people like Lance Weiler, Michael Monello, and I. It thinks in terms of one story told across platforms, it has struggles with monetizing and financing, and starts from the perspective that creators own the IP they are creating. They want to extend an existing community into transmedia, or recreate a new kind of community.

Neither is wrong. Few practitioners or creators work exclusively in one sphere or the other. One is not more noble or pure or profitable than the other. But we’re all guilty of conflating the two together in ways that lead to moments where it might sound like the community is, for example, telling documentary filmmakers that they need to think more like franchisers if they want to get on the transmedia bandwagon and not be left behind as “storytelling changes forever.”

As much as I would have loved to be the Biggie to someone else’s Tupac, conversations with Monello in the wake of Brooke’s blog posts put a finer knife on our argument if we didn’t want to just recreate the indie / Hollywood divide all over again. So the two of us hatched a potentially meaningful new way to talk about these issues … a way that also leads to some really controversial debates we hope to spark.

THE TENSION BETWEEN CREATING AND OWNING

The indie / Hollywood and divisions are just two potential configurations of the relationship between creating something and owning something – there are dozens others for just a handful of industries off the top of my head. When we as practitioners assume that everyone else is caught in or aspires to that same model of creation/owning we hit dangerous soggy ground that creates divisions.

Mike and I talked about all the different configurations suggested just by our own two resumes of work. As creators and entrepreneurs, we understand that there’s a difference in our entire approach when  we’re one of the primary storytellers of the IP like “Blair Witch” or “Nothing So Strange” — we’re shaping our own stories to live through multiple ways of interacting with them. When we’re not the primary storytellers, when we’re given a smaller bucket that we’re allowed to work in and charged with some other goal like marketing, we might use the same production strategies but definitely not the same storytelling strategies.

It is a re-emphasis on what many of us thought the “trans” in transmedia was trying to convey, based upon the dialogs that Henry Jenkins had sparked – that the act of telling a story through multiple media (especially with the addition of interactive media) was inherently different than the old models of thinking about storytelling like adaptation and extension.

TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING VERSUS ITS METHODS

Mike and I found it useful to start talking about “transmedia storytelling” as the label for when you’re creating a story as the primary storytellers and intending to tell your story across multiple channels. In the same way people might come to Mike or I because we have experience in some particular discipline (like publishing or filmmaking), they might also come to us to tap our experience as transmedia storytellers. When they do, but we’re not among the primary storytellers, then we’re showing them how to utilize the methods of transmedia storytelling (in the same way we might show them the methods of filmmaking or the methods of publishing.)

Here’s what gets me excited about this distinction: it illuminates what we have in common by looking at the different ways we work by separating the issue of creative control from the issue of ownership. Mike didn’t cease to be the transmedia storyteller of “Blair Witch” when the sold the rights to Artisan, because he was still among the primary storytellers with creative control. Conversely, Gregg Hale and David Goyer were definitely transmedia storytellers of “Freakylinks” even though it was a Fox Television production … up until the moment they lost control of the television show (then they were just using the methods.)

Sometimes that knife also cuts in surprising ways that we think raise interesting debates that we haven’t fully explored yet. For example: if you’re working for an entertainment IP you’ll tend to have less creative control than if you work for a non-IP brand. Mike and I think, for example, that “The Art of the Heist” represents transmedia storytelling and not just its methods, even though it was a work-for-hire creation at an ad agency’s request. Audi didn’t have an existing IP that it was asking to have adapted or extended, it was asking for a new story utilizing multiple channels and we were among the central group of storytellers creating that.

We aren’t just inventing this from whole cloth, either: those of you that have had any art theory will recognize the same distinction as “art versus craft,” which has been deeply useful for creators in every other form for discussing the act of creation.

THE CONTROVERSAL PILEMAKING

Mike and I realized that this debate got even more interesting if we started it by pointing at our own work that we could say, “this is not transmedia storytelling,” because you could then say, “and by extension it means all these other things I didn’t make also aren’t transmedia storytelling”. Mike and I can both point to huge chunks of our resumes that are “marketing utilizing transmedia methods” (as an example) that we’re quite proud of even though we weren’t “transmedia storytellers”, so we don’t propose these labels as value judgments, just as an important distinction that can be added to the debate.

One example from Mike: Campfire’s campaign for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is not transmedia storytelling, it is marketing utilizing transmedia methods. The original storyteller of the book that HBO is adapting has strict limits on what that adaptation can do: the IP restrictions mean you can’t just tell new stories set in that universe, because you’re not part of the primary storytelling team (or if you can, the stories are “non-canon” in the context of the main story.) Not your story, you’re not the storyteller. So by extension, “Why So Serious?” is also not transmedia storytelling, it is marketing utilizing transmedia methods for a film adaptation of the original storyteller’s IP (a comic book). Similarly, you can argue that “Star Wars” is not transmedia storytelling; it is franchising utilizing transmedia methods (since the “canon” of the six films cannot be violated by the extended universe, but the extended universe might conflict with each other or be rewritten by future canon.)

The construct is also useful for asking, “Who was the storyteller, and were they a transmedia storyteller?” From the above examples, could you call David Goyer and Chris Nolan the transmedia storytellers of “The Dark Knight” that “Why So Serious?” is one part of? Did George Lucas become a transmedia storyteller with “Star Wars” or is a better label something like “transmedia franchiser”? Is Steve Coulson a transmedia storyteller on “Game of Thrones,” or is he a “transmedia marketer”?

CREATIVE CONTROL IS THE ISSUE

Whether you’re practicing East Coast or West Coast transmedia, the issue is about creative control: if you don’t have control over the design of the story and its distribution channels, you’re simply not able to reach that higher bar of telling that one story across numerous channels and you’re back to extending or adapting. You’re not a transmedia storyteller, you’re doing something else while utilizing the methods of transmedia. This is a common dilemma for creative professionals, and there’s all kinds of strategies for maximizing creative control in different industries that are adopting parts of the palate that was created by transmedia storytellers. Both the spread of adoption and the innovation of multiple valid paths for cultivating creative control are desired outcomes for everyone involved in this debate.

If creative control is the unifying goal, then we should reserve the phrases “transmedia story” and “transmedia storyteller” to when it passes some tipping point towards having an important creative voice in the core story rather than just when someone has helped adapt or extend someone else’s story onto a new platform. And I say that as someone who frequently is adapting or extending someone else’s story … or whispering in the ear of the primary storytellers about the things they could do as storytellers beyond just extending and adapting.

THE NEED FOR DEBATE

This piece is already too long, but I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of the conversations I’ve been a part of recently and would like to have more broadly. So Mike and I have made the commitment to push this debate forward, not just informally and in the digital space, but as the thrust of a crystalizing debate in our conference presentations. It provokes the right questions that lurk beneath the surface of the divide growing among us, re-hinges it against Henry Jenkin’s original provocations, and (frankly) makes the usefulness of transmedia methods much easier to understand for our friends and collaborators focused on the beautiful expressions of some other medium with a long tradition behind it.

What we don’t need, though, is the navel gazing of inventing some new label or abstract definition. We should test our debate against the goal of, “Does this enable new ways for us to talk to each other about our work?” Transmedia might still be an imperfect term, but my mischievous tweets of #antitransmedia don’t fix that or improve the way we use it, and neither does the definition of the PGA credit. Instead we could provoke a debate about something we actually all care about: creative control. If we’re actually a sustainable community, that means we’ll get to have that debate together forever … but it will get richer and more nuanced with time, and split off into multiple different camps of interpretation, and all the other wonderful things that go with a vibrant art form.

That’s what I’d really like, wouldn’t you?

So it seems that my recent trip to SXSW in Austin and my subsequent outburst of frustration on Twitter about the misuse of the term Transmedia has caused a little bit of a stir.

I came back and, well, vented on Twitter about how everyone there seemed to bandy about the term when they were talking about not storytelling, but some form of franchising or media extension of an existing or new property, or narrative world, whatever the heck that means.

“Franchising isn’t transmedia, it’s FRANCHISING!!” I screamed. And it turns out I wasn’t the only one having trouble with the term and how it’s being used. Plenty of folks have been seeming to jump onto the anti-transmedia bandwagon (and I’m fine with that).

Even Felicia Day got into the fray during one of her SXSW panels, and in a way, she nailed what many of us in Transmedia Storytelling have been struggling to express for years. Here’s what she had to say about the term (emphases mine):

It’s just a really stupid word, and people use it because they don’t know…they just want to like…I just hate it! Because what does it mean? It means nothing!!

I mean, listen: “Transmedia” is any comic book that ever became a movie, before the internet. I mean it’s just (any novelization of a movie), yes! That’s “Transmedia!” I mean, it doesn’t mean anything, I don’t think that….they’re just throwing it around ’cause it’s a catch-phrase, and it’s like “yes, let’s create a webseries that could potentially be a TV show that could potentially become a movie.” That’s not Transmedia.

I mean, I think what people are aspiring to, and what people are maybe, you know, could use better words or just articulate better, is that there is an opportunity to reinvent storytelling. So that, if I sat down and I created an app, let’s just say, and every day I would tell the story in a different way.

So I would release a comic panel, then I’d release a piece of video, and then I would release a set of pictures, and then I would tell a story in so many different ways that would accumulate in a way that essentially would be like a movie from beginning to end.

And you could use a different media device, because we are in a world where all of that is amalgamated in a way that is unique to what we’re living in and the tools we’re using.

So maybe that’s what we might do? But sometimes people just use it like “We’re just gonna do a TV show that’s gonna be a webseries and then a TV show.”

So look, it seems like things have reached a boiling point. I mean, c’mon, if Felicia Day herself rolls her eyes at the term, it’s time to do something about it. Well, or try to figure out if anything can be done.

And so here’s what I think. Some of you aren’t going to like this. Ready?

There’s nothing to be done.

Pandora’s Box is open, the cat’s out of the bag, the horses have been stolen, (insert cliché here). The term is pretty useless (as are clichés), as it’s popularly being used to describe something that’s been around for a long, long time. It reminds me of the prank that Penn & Teller pulled on folks asking them to sign a petition against the use of dihydrogen monoxide in all our food. It’s just a new buzz-term for something there are already plenty of perfectly good  words for (none of which I’ll list here, thank you).

Now, let me be clear: I’m not bashing anyone or their work. It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, and there are only so many words to go around to describe new things. I just think it’s time I abandon the use of transmedia to describe the work that I do. This doesn’t mean that I forsake or forbid its use, I just won’t be describing my own stuff as such, even though others may continue to for a while.

So……what will I call what I do? Well, I’m not sure what will stick, but I’m going to go with what we’re calling it around the office: Alternate Reality Entertainment.

I’m not suggesting we change the term. All I know is that “Transmedia” no longer describes what I do, so everyone else can have it. :)

So, please excuse me as I prepare my submission for next year’s SXSW: Can Dihydrogen Monoxide Save Hollywood?

————————–

ETA: Revised some wording for clarity and to fix the emphasis of the post.

In the meantime, the might be an easier temporary solution.

Go to http://unidentifiedenemy.com, which is one of the viral sites for the upcoming Sony Pictures film Battle: Los Angeles. Now, check out the address bar, and what do you see (depending on your browser)? It’s a favicon for Sony Pictures. Before the site even finishes loading, this favicon appears, letting me know that this site is related to Sony Pictures.

So yeah, this made me go “hmmmm.” What if ARG and transmedia producers simply put some sort of standardized Fiction favicon on their in-universe sites? Something simple, a stylized F or something. It still wouldn’t have the functionality of a rollover or something that explains what it is, but it would be a start.

Or, I dunno. Maybe I’m becoming a little obsessed. :P Anyway, something to ponder.

I have a proposal for a simple solution to this problem. It’s actually pretty basic…

When you go into a bookstore or library, there are basically two sections: fiction and non-fiction. It seems reasonable to inform people whether the book that they’re going to read is real or fictional. Films take a similar tack, although they usually handle it a little differently. Documentary vs. Feature film (although some blur the lines to be sure).

So, what’s my proposal? Easy. The Fiction Tag.

Set up a new HTML standard. Put a little tag in the source code of a web site (voluntarily, of course). Your browser reads it and puts a small visual indicator somewhere letting you know if the site is real or a part of a fictional universe. Sort of the way secure (https://) sites put the little key in the address bar and/or changes the color to let you know the info you’re entering is encrypted and safe from prying eyes.

To me, this is a much better solution than a huge disclaimer link. Whaddya think? Who do we talk to about getting this implemented?