Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a production standpoint, transmedia storytelling involves creating content that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. In order to achieve this engagement, a transmedia production will develop stories across multiple forms of media in order to deliver unique pieces of content in each channel. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together (overtly or subtly), but are in narrative synchronization with each other. Transmedia storytelling can be related to the concepts of semiotics and narratology. Semiotics is the "science of signs" and a discipline concerned with sense production and interpretation processes. Narratology looks at how structure and function factor into narrative with regards to its themes and symbols. Scolari goes on to show how semiotics and narratology are ways to analyze transmedia. Often the same text may create different kinds of implicit consumers. Transmedia storytelling is a narrative structure that breaks through both language (semiotics) and media (narratology). Some effective strategies in transmedia storytelling include producing a fresh perspective on the original material and its original context across a new form of media. Transmedia storytelling is how well a story is comprehended across media. An effective strategy of transmedia storytelling does not take a passive approach, instead engages with popular culture making a story its own and providing new context. When it comes to strict adaptation in transmedia storytelling which is translating one medium to another: a book becomes a film, a comic becomes a video game. There is also a history describing pure transmedia: the book is an exact prequel to the film, ending at the exact moment prior to the films beginning. The earliest example of this would be the Bible.