Storytelling Across Worlds: Transmedia for Creatives and Producers by Dowd, Tom; Niederman, Michael; Fry, Michael;

Short description:

Don’t restrict your creative property to one media channel. Make the essential leap to transmedia!

From film to television to games and beyond, Storytelling Across Worlds gives you the tools to weave a narrative universe across multiple platforms and meet the insatiable demand of today’s audience for its favorite creative property.

This, the first primer in the field for both producers and writers, teaches you how to:

* Employ film, television, games, novels, comics, and the web to build rich and immersive transmedia narratives

* Create writing and production bibles for transmedia property

* Monetize your stories across separate media channels

* Manage transmedia brands, marketing, and rights

* Work effectively with writers and producers in different areas of production

* Engage audiences with transmedia storytelling

Up-to-date examples of current transmedia and cross-media properties accompany each chapter and highlight this hot but sure-to-be enduring topic in modern media.

Long description:

Transmedia is a practical primer on the conceptualization, structuring, writing, execution, management, and marketing of a transmedia property that exists in multiple forms of media and shares a single interwoven story. Thus far, creatives and producers have focused on single areas of production—motion pictures, television, or video games. For those who are going to participate in or supervise the creation of a transmedia property, a minimum understanding of all the important media is required. Transmedia provides readers with the solid foundation they need.

For anyone interested in transmedia storytelling this book is a fantastic starting point -- stimulating, observant, and insightful. 　It's a panoramic view of this fascinating new arena of storytelling. - Carlton Cuse, Writer/Executive Producer/Showrunner LOST, BATES MOTEL

"Storytelling Across Worlds" acknowledges that, increasingly, all media is transmedia. As part of working in television, I've found myself creating webisodes, podcasts, games, comic books, motion comics, short stories, fictionalized twitter feeds and web sites set within the parent shows' fictional worlds. 　This book draws on contemporary examples to provide perspective on this huge, and somehow still growing, creative world. Any book would be challenged to get its arms around a topic that is defined by its unconstrained scope. This one grabs transmedia in a mighty hug and doesn't let go. - Jane Espenson, Television writer/producer: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon A Time, Husbands

How often in life have you been warned that "there are rules"?　Storytelling Across Worlds　delightfully dispenses with antiquated narrative limitations by throwing open the endless possibilities of sophisticated narrative through transmedia storytelling as the actual, practical bedrock of modern entertainment. With this book, the authors have crafted an elegant and masterful dissection of narrative’s new world order. - Vlad Woylnetz, President of Production, Cineflix, Executive Producer Torchwood, Executive in Charge of Production Mad Men, Breaking Bad & Walking Dead

Table of Contents:

Preface Part 1 One Story Chapter 1 Understanding Transmedia Storytelling Chapter 2 Worldbuilding and Key Story Chapter 3 Storytelling and Narrative Continuity Part 2 Many Media Chapter 4 Motion Pictures and Visual Storytelling Chapter 5 Television and Serialized Storytelling Chapter 6 Video Games and Interactive Storytelling Chapter 7 Other Forms of Storytelling Chapter 8 Choosing Properties and Forms Part 3 Managing the Story Chapter 9 Managing the Transmedia Property Chapter 10 The Transmedia Intellectual Property Bible Part 4 End Matters Chapter 11 Wrap Up APPENDIX A Motion Picture Platform Bible APPENDIX B Television Platform Bible APPENDIX C Video Game Platform Bible APPENDIX D Platform Bibles for Other Forms of Storytelling APPENDIX E Sample Trademark Licensing Agreement APPENDIX F – The Producer’s Guild of America Code of Credits Definition of Transmedia Producer APPENDIX G – Suggested Readings