Questions to be considered in Seer Project

When thinking about the Seer Project 3 questions need to be considered:

1. What am I trying to comunicate
2. What am I trying to get the audience to do
3. How am I trying to make the audience feel

These are questions which are suggested by Patrick Curry in Cross Media Communications p.12. The question that occurs to me is when dealing with a transmedial project does each element have a different set of answers to these questsions? Right now the anwser to that question seems to be yes! I need to look deeper into this as SEER develops and perheps answer each of these questions each time I undertake the development of a particular medium arm.

The second stratagey discussed within this section is that of understanding your core audience. In the case of the SEER the core audience is the inner city urban teen. I intend to create a character rooted in a recognizable reality. In part this will be achieved using location , vocablery , and appropariate media resources.

Interactivity

There is always a conversation between creator/narrative and consumer/audience, what makes interactive media different is the impact that the audience can have on the narrative. It is this audience impact / participation that is key to the interactive narrative. Within transmedial story telling does not simply request audience response she/he must demand it. From the consumer/audience prospective that demand must appear as an invitation that simply cannot be refused. one of the constant questions for the transmedia story teller must then be how to create an invitation to participate which the consumer feels completed to take up.

Interactivity can be thought of as a conversation between creator and consumer , during which the creator invites the consumer to become involved. Individuals such as Greg Roach (www.gregroachonline.com) CEO of HyperBole Studio, and creators of successful games like the x-file game and Quantum Gate compeared this interactive conversation to the act of writing a sentence in a language like English which uses grammatical structure of a subject object and verb. As an example he used a simple interactive scene in which you give a character a gun . the interactive "sentence" would be : He ( the subject) can shoot (the verb) another Character ( the object). Digital Story Telling .Part 2 Page 54.

Although I agree that interactivity is a conversation between creator and consumer , I feel that the model put forward by Greg Roach is aimed at the Interactive Game designer and not the transmedial story teller. I would suggest that the conversation between the transmedial story teller and consumer is far more suttle. It seems to me that I want to follow the route taken by the Wachowski Brothers and Matrix, a trail of bread crumbs throughout the narrative drawing the consumer in and inviting them to explore other elements of the adventure in other meida.

Agency

What is Interactivity?

Understanding what is meant by Interactivity is key to understanding transmedia story telling. Without interactivity the new media revolution and digitalization of media would mean no more that consumer receiving better quality pictures!,

For the meaning of interactivity Carolyn Handler Miller in her book Digital Story Telling " A creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment" invites use to explore the meaning of the word interactive . She suggests that we consider the 2 parts to the word - inter, a prefix which means between - or a two way exchange and active which means doing something being involved! " when dealing with the narrative context Carolyn Handler Miller suggests that it describes a relationship where audience and material respond to each other.

Within an interactive narrative the audience becomes a participant in the action. In some way or other the audience directly impact the way that the story unfolds. This is the element of interactivity that I want to inject into my narrative the SEER.

One way forward is by way of conversation between the user and content, a concept articulated by Greg Roach. Is this the way forward for the SEER?

Day 1

This blog records my journey into Transmedia story telling . From passive consumer to proactive creator.

LOts of ideas and a lot more about how and why later , but my though for this morning is how do I start my transmedial journey. Up until now it has been based on getting my character the SEER out there , I decided to use a film , followed by a comic and then possible twitter , but following reading Cross-Media Communications (An introduction to Creating Integrated Media Experiences) Section 1. page 9 INCEPTION I recognised another possibility. This is a pro-active project - it is transmedial from the start and although the tent pole as it is called will be the SEER web-comic , there is no need for me to start with a film. What about a pod cast. A foe pirate radio station playing funky house , grim etc. with a news caster commenting on the activities of the SEER. Real Transmedia. The bread crumb trail begins.