This week Ben Mackenzie came into our class and spoke to us about his work in Pop Up Playground. He explained how he creates virtual games, he talked about these ‘immersive reactive situations’ he creates and they sounded so cool, I can imagine how exciting they would be to play, you would feel as though you were in a different place, like you’re a character in a movie.

He talked about the planning that goes into creating these games, there is so much more work than you even think about, the planning is so intricate, with so many variables having to be accounted for.

He also spoke to us in our group about the benefit of real life attributes to our narratives, finding left over pieces of evidence or going to a café our character was at, adds an element of excitement for audiences that they don’t get just by reading online.

One piece of advice he gave was to make the options equally risky and rewarding, he told us about primary school children who would give the options to go investigate the case or go home and go to sleep – the right choice is obvious.

This reminded me of the Sims, sometimes in the game when your sim would be at work, a situation would come up and you would have to choose between a few options that would either end in a promotion, extra cash, or losing their job. In it, you had to choose one of the options or you couldn’t continue the game, that was the incentive to choose. You also put some thought into it so you could benefit. I think in a narrative you want the audience to interact with, you need to have an incentive. If they were really interested in the narrative the incentive would be that they want to find the clues, just like in the The Dark Knight viral marketing campaign. In our story, because it is not a known blockbuster movie with a fan base already made, we might have to work on a better incentive to persuade the audience to interact in the story.

For project three, I’m happy to be in a group with Aidan, Bec and Jeremy. We work cohesively and also get along well. After being put into our groups, we started off talking about each of our skills and weaknesses, so we knew how each other worked and therefore delegate the tasks better. However, bearing this in mind, I also think it’s important to challenge yourself a bit. I would like to venture out of my own skill set, possibly doing some writing, an area I’m not very confident in, so that I can get more out of this project and improve my writing skills.

Part of our collaborative contract was to always be honest with each other, and we agreed to put in equal amounts of effort. I think that for group projects, particularly as a media/communications practitioner, it is really helpful if you get along with your co-workers and have a friendship. This makes it easier to be honest with each other and means you’re more comfortable to share your ideas and able to speak up if you’re not happy with the direction your group going. I think that our group is comfortable working together, which is good as we can produce better content because of it.

I was nervous about the project when first reading over the course guide, I was unsure what was expected of us and what we should produce for the final outcome. But our group has a good plan and we are starting to lay the foundation for the media elements we will release. I really enjoy this task because it is so hands on, it’s easy to analyse cross-media narratives but until you actually have to start from scratch and make your own, you don’t realise the minute details that make it difficult to lose focus on what you’re end goal is. You must keep in mind that every transmedia element you release has to be true to the narrative and the tone and style of the narrative. I found that some of the ideas I had were more along the lines of promotion rather than expanding the story through a different platform.

Our group realised the importance of have a strong narrative instead of adding bits and pieces as we go, we really focused on developing and completing the narrative and then we started to plan the different elements we would release.

I hope that this project helps to open my eyes to how to create successful transmedia narratives. In today’s age, transmedia is such a big element in the media field and because it is such a competitive job field, having this area of expertise can put you ahead of others.

I obviously want our project to become a successful transmedia narrative. Doing the planning for it I’m realising how difficult it may be to make it successful and the audiences receptive. We can do all the right things but if no one views the blog or the Instagram, etc. then our story is going to deaf ears. So hopefully we can plan around this hurdle and direct our narrative so that our audience will receive it.

Teaser trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNMeB4dlkO4

In Julie Keck and Jessica King’s article, Give the people what they want: Niche web series as sustainable filmmaking, they talk about how important audience is in filmmaking. They were producing good content however ‘as we built our stack of projects, we looked around and realized…we were lacking an audience’.

They also talk about trying to accommodate for everyone, to make their show have millions of viewers. ‘You need more if you’re going to have a real go at this job. (…) But how many do you really need for your film life to survive?’ It is difficult to access audiences, ‘though you’re looking for them, they’re not looking for you.’ There is no guarantee your content is going to become popular no matter how much promotion, and transmedia elements you use. Keck and King found success in embracing their niche audience, ‘it may not be the whole million we saw when we first started dreaming of our filmmaking life, but it’s a sizable group’.

In the workshop, we watched some web series’, Starting from Now, High Maintenance and the Guild. The main differences I noticed between the ‘niche’ transmedia tactics used in these shows compared to high budget shows, are the use of the actors performances, and camera techniques. For example, in Starting from Now, the actors overtly used lingering gazes or quickly diverting eyes and overt expressions to quickly and easily show what is happening and narrative possibilities. All the web series we watched also had simple plots, nothing to extravagant which were easy to follow.

We spoke about using transmedia elements, where it is easy to lose focus on what you’re end goal is – everything should feel true to whatever you’re creating, for example, your choice of platform has to be true to the narrative and the tone and style of the narrative.

In my group we thought of transmedia ideas for High Maintenance. We came up with the idea of an interactive website. This would have clips from before and after each episode, giving the characters more dimension. For example, one before bit could focus on the homeless girl, following her around and seeing her everyday life, and how she finds guys to mooch off. There could be a blog for the weed guy, following his perspective and his opinions on the people he deals to. You could also click on each episode and look more in depth at the things in that episode, such as the cult webpage, or the artwork the guy made in episode two.

‘When introducing a new comic book, why not get fans of your most popular characters to give the issue a look?’ – Kendall Whitehouse

I have always really enjoyed Marvel films, I love the Marvel Universe, and how there are ‘multi-issue story arcs, crossovers, team-ups, reboots, and multiple title tie-ins’ as Whitehouse describes in Media marketing and the evolution of narrative structure.

In Cinematic destiny: Marvel Studios and the trade stories of industrial convergence, Johnson describes how ‘Marvel launched a unique model for cinema production in the age of convergence: an independent company with expertise in a different media industry drove block buster film content’. I think that Marvel lead the way in adaptations, spin-offs, and multi-platform production. Whitehouse states:

‘These maneuvers may seem like typical Hollywood marketing ploys: Team-up the characters from several successful films into one big event movie, build marketing teases into the earlier films, and throw in a crossover character or two. But Hollywood has nothing on the comic book industry, which is a font of marketing techniques based on clever storytelling techniques. Comic books have explored — and exploited — narrative structure like no other medium.’

For example, Agent Carter was simply a character in Captain America, and Marvel managed to create her own franchise, a one-shot short film as well as her own TV series.

I really enjoyed this week’s screening. I have never seen the first Captain America or any of the Agent Carter ABC action adventure series. I think that helped me to view them with an unbiased perspective and take a step back and analyse how well they adapted the character of Agent Carter over these three platforms.

I think that the character does have some disparities across the platforms, and you wouldn’t be able to seamlessly res-insert her into each screen. However I think that is bound to happen in a TV series in order to develop the character effectively.   She is bound to have some discrepancies  between each screen if she is to grow and develop from the start of the series.

The games Dan gave us to play this week were pretty different from any games I’ve played before. The main difference I noticed between them and standard video games was that there wasn’t a clear mission or direction in the games. I sort of wandered around the online games, clicking on different links with no real clue what I was doing. Because of this I felt like I couldn’t connect, my level of agency was pretty low. There was no real room for character development, and there was only a certain point you could go before you became disinterested. I felt like I was going around in circles; there was no ending – this made me restless because I felt like I needed to click on every link, to find every possible outcome despite not being very interested in the content.

The narrative wasn’t as strong in them because you’re too focused on where you’re going; it’s spread too thin through the different links. For some the level of agency could be quite high because you are in control however, I found that it was harder for the character to develop when the character is you.

I think that the way you would plan one of these stories is to plan a typical linear story, the introduction, problem, and conclusion; and then develop it from there. I would probably create a flow chart, putting a new box where there would be a new link.

For my own story, if I were to create an interactive game I would like to format it similarly to the Kiss game however I would make it much more concise, I would use much less links, so the audience didn’t feel overwhelmed and lose interest.