Transmedia: Storytelling for the Digital Age

Nayomi Chibana:  "The best interactive stories, animated infographics and data visualizations now circling the Web and the storytelling techniques you can learn from them."

Alastair Reid  :"Interactive media lecturer Sandra Gaudenzi shared her theory of balancing audience agency with authorship at the CIJ Summer Conference today, and gave examples of stories across the spectrum" ...

Melanie Goodfellow:  '“I broke all the Holy Grails of interactive. I have no film, I have no App and I don’t have a website” – former Pixel Market participant Ram Devineni talks about the intricacies of developing and financing augmented reality comic book Priya’s Shakti.'

CMF Trends:  "Interactive storytelling has entered a phase of negative perception, but transmedia author Michel Reilhac believes that this is just a temporary lull. New media is being perfected in the wings."

Melody Kramer:  "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) has been producing interactive stories for many years, but it wasn’t until February of 2014 that Australia’s public broadcasting company formalized the process and created a team to focus exclusively on interactive storytelling."

DRC:  This article contains a great list of software tools and insights into the process of interactive storytelling that are useful beyond the newsroom.

Jess Linington:  "If, like me, you didn’t get the chance to attend the 2014 Power to the Pixel Cross Media Forum, you can now catch up with the presentations online!"

Chris Suellentrop:  "Dragon Age: Inquisition shows that sophisticated storytelling in video games has become commonplace even as it remains the most experimental and contentious aspect of the medium."

September was a busy month for professional development in New Zealand with events on interactive storytelling, finding 'voice' in film & television, and transmedia ... Fiona Milburn reports back from this year's DOC Edge Lab, The Big Screen Symposium and NZGDC's Hollywood & Interactive IP event.

Image: Ingrid Kopp of the Tribeca Film Institute

Owen Andrew:  "Ever since visual storytelling burst onto the scene, vision-keepers have dabbled with ways of putting an element of “openness” into their craft" ...

Phil Harris:  "In games themselves there is often more than one medium that the author has to consider. This is no longer just the written word but how this integrates with the rest of the function of gameplay; such as sound, visual style, art, design, direction and programming; not withstanding budget constraints."

Leah Gonzalez:  "Car brand Infiniti has just launched DejaView, a groundbreaking choose-your-own-adventure film that creates a unique storyline based on the viewer’s spoken interaction with the characters onscreen."

Adi Robertson:  "The scene is a snowy apartment building out of the 1950s, rendered in a bright, slightly retro palette. A janitor trudges across the courtyard, then stops, wary. Someone is out there. Someone large, nimble, and wearing a floppy red hat. Then you turn your phone."

Sam Haysom:  "A film company has created a first person shooter using actors as the characters and random strangers on the Internet as the players."

Kyle Orland:  "Complex, gripping crime drama proves FMV games don't have to be awful."

Aleszu Bajak:  'The story is the foundation to interactive storytelling. There are strict rules to the reporting and news gathering for the story. Distribution, the launch and the publicity that follows, has its own strict set of rules, too. What’s flexible, says [Konstantinos Antonopoulos, senior interactive designer], is the narrative: “This is a space to infuse technology, use good visuals, and transform the story into an experience.”'

Michael Epstein and Mike Knowlton:  "Transmedia writer and director Lance Weiler predicts that a “more social, more connected, more personalized wave of media” is coming, in stride with the platforms and practices of the new generation. But, like any new media form, there will probably be a lot of borrowing from older forms and audiences will take a while to warm up."

Simon Staffans:  "An interview with Ingrid Kopp, the director of digital initiatives at Tribeca."

[Image: Priya's Shakti Trailer]

Catalina Albeanu:  "Knight Foundation has today published a guide intended to help media outlets produce their own interactive storytelling projects."

i-docs:  "During the summer Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at the Tribeca Film Institute, came to the Watershed, Bristol to give a talk on interactive storytelling. For members of the i-Docs community who weren’t able to attend, we’re pleased to be able to offer the full transcript, full of brilliant examples and analysis of these new forms of storytelling. Enjoy."

Vanessa Thorpe:  "Theme parks and heritage attractions join the booming new market for immersive theatre"

Krishna Stott:  "Choose Your Own Documentary is a live performance of a documentary where the audience choose which way to take the story at numerous decision points – there are 1500 different outcomes…"

Andrew Pipes:  "Interactive guides take a different approach to presenting content compared to traditional web articles or TV and radio programmes online. They organise video and audio, rich infographics, written summaries, and activities into stories that make the most of our interactive medium."