Transmedia involves taking a certain piece of media such as a book, for example, and turning it into something different; whether it be a film, game, animation, etc. When thinking about how I would turn my Responsive brief media into transmedia is very difficult, as the subject is an unusual one where you wouldn't see it really flaunted around much.
The obvious choice would to turn this into a book. An account of someone's life, like a journal, which is were we got our information from anyway. A book would be the obvious choice and especially to write it in the first person as you are able to describe exactly what you are thinking at that time without just hinting about it in a film. The piece of film that we produced, both the 2 minute version and the longer 13 minute version and tells an accurate story but almost hints at events to let the audience take what they want from it, creating more of there own story around it even though they are already watching the scenes play out in front of them. This is definitely more apparent in the 2 minute version though as we do not see the ending, only the events that occur.
Another way of introducing transmedia in quite an obvious but effective way is to use comic books or graphic novels. Using the same technique as books, the audience can still use there imagination to figure out the events of what is going on in the characters mind but also gets some visual representation of what the character looks like and also the small details about his life and where he lives. Graphic novels are probably more effective in the sense that due to the fact that the reader knows more about them and doesn't create an imaginary character instead. It's an effective technique but still might not work as well as a film, especially ours due to the amount of flashbacks and the fact that we didn't have dialog; only powerfully emotional music to accompany the pieces of film. When thinking about how you would produce flashback scenes in a graphic novel just doesn't seem to have the same effect as the reader would just get confused.
After looking at film, books and graphic novels as a form of transmedia there doesn't appear to be much more that you could do with this film to turn it into some other form apart from creating mini episodes and breaking the film down further.
In this current time, the internet is the central hub of the world, creating links between nations and friendships across different countries, so it seems only right to use it as a form of transmedia to show webisodes (web episodes). As our film, particularly the longer version, spanned across 2 years of our characters life it seems viable to be able to break it down into episodes. The idea behind the episodes would be to make them a couple of minutes long and show the characters life from the beginning of that period to the end, showing every detail and leaving each episode in a place which would make the audience yearn for more and want to tune in to the next one, despite the darkness of the subject.
This way of putting mini episodes online, maybe once a week or so, is an excellent way to raise awareness as well about the whole subject. There can be many different things that contribute to the start of self harm and depression and our story is just one of them but this could also act as a sort of campaign or awareness towards the difficult subject. By helping to promote and raise awareness on the subject help could be given not only to these suffering but to the friends and families who it also effects badly as they do not know how to help.
Along with our story being posted this could influence others to do the same, offering them some comfort in knowing that they are not alone and can seek help with others here. By using our video via this method it could help people to do the same through different ways. They could post up their own videos, books, graphics novels, monologues or even just share their thoughts. This is not only one of the best ways to turn this into a piece of transmedia but also a way that influence others to produce more themselves and at the same time offer help and support to those who need it.
So, when looking at all of the different methods that could be used as a way of presenting transmedia the last option does appear to be the better option that produces the better results and the more interesting outcome. It can be widely associated with and can be shared amoungst many people on the internet and be then produced in a lot of different ways. By using the transmedia of web episodes and awareness on the internet we can help to produce a multitude of other transmedia pieces by getting a response from the public sharing their own stories and therefore helping other people.
No comments:
Post a Comment