Square 3 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

Sq2 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

Sq1 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

Rnd3 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

Rnd2 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

Rnd1 from Simon Toppin on Vimeo.

The push towards transmediaesque interaction in everything is interesting to me. It’s as if audiences, without 360 degrees of constant stimuli, will just drift away like the leaves of an online shopping catalogue, if that metaphor works, which it doesn’t. In any case, I wonder if all this focus on audience participation is devaluing the storytelling process. Simon Staffans, glibly referred to transmedia as “the buzzword that alienates creators, producers and buyers alike”. At the present time I feel inclined to agree. Steinbeck says in ‘East of Eden’, “nothing good ever came from a partnership”. In this case, we could see the audience as partner. I’ve written along these lines before and believe, still, that good storytelling with good characters will be an infinitely enduring form that does not by necessity, require an inventory of a Hobbit’s bowels. Documentary included.

People that we can relate to, empathise with, hate, will do all the work that needs to be done from a marketing and audience retention perspective – if we feel the need to break entertainment down into its most base and cynical components. I fear that transmedia has the potential to dilute characters through its insistence on a multitude of forms that may or may not be entirely appropriate. I feel this in the sense that interaction will disrupt continuity – linear or non-linear narrative notwithstanding. Are we playing a game? Listening to a radio play or watching a movie where we decide who dies?

Perhaps I’m just being curmudgeonly in the sense that television was said to be a passing fad, only later to take over the world, but I think there is something inherently human and relatable in linear narrative. Cause and effect is something we understand and is a primary element of the storytelling process. Actions and consequence reflect the way we have learned to think, though I certainly will not say it is the only way.

Transmedia does hold the potential of producing works which may be outstanding, things which define or redefine the genre. Perhaps it is up to the producers of today to think about how to make something that is a genuine work of art and not just the logical outcome of a high-budget PR campaign.

As an aside, to possibly contradict a lot of what has been said, I enjoyed the ‘making of’ documentary about the Hobbit films, far more than the first installment. Does that count as transmedia because it was in the same medium and had no interactive element? A documentary abutted to a film? Did it tell more of the story or did it tell different stories altogether because we don’t see the creators as being part of the world itself?