Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling

Creating Immersive Stories Across New Media Platforms

Kelly McErlean

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317268437
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Film & Video

Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling provides media students and industry professionals with strategies for creating innovative new media projects across a variety of platforms. Synthesizing ideas from a range of theorists and practitioners across visual, audio, and interactive media, Kelly McErlean offers a practical reference guide and toolkit to best practices, techniques, key historical and theoretical concepts, and terminology that media storytellers and creatives need to create compelling interactive and transmedia narratives. McErlean takes a broad lens, exploring traditional narrative, virtual reality and augmented reality, audience interpretation, sound design, montage, the business of transmedia storytelling, and much more.

Written for both experienced media practitioners and those looking for a reference to help bolster their creative toolkit or learn how to better craft multiplatform stories, Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling serves as a guide to navigating this evolving world.

1
Introduction

Forms move and are born, and we are forever making new discoveries.

Kasimir Malevich – Suprematist Manifesto (1916)

This book explores contemporary and traditional storytelling concepts and ideas. It encourages theoretical research and experimentation in the development of interactive narratives and transmedia stories. It considers the work of a wide range of practitioners across a multitude of creative fields. These include writing, music, film, photography, theatre, art and new media. It identifies and examines key texts and includes interviews with industry practitioners and academic researchers. Throughout history artistic inspiration has often come from the most unlikely sources. An openness to new ideas always brings about original, exciting and challenging storytelling opportunities.

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

The book is aimed at storytelling creatives who are looking to develop and deliver interactive narratives and transmedia titles using new technologies and distribution platforms. It is a synthesis of storytelling strategies and related theoretical concerns with regard to interactive content creation. It considers many of the current questions regarding interactive storytelling and is intended to guide and inform the reader’s knowledge and to promote ideas generation. A key concern of the text relates to story navigation: how will storytellers resolve the difficulties in creating interactive points within a plot to encourage a natural, rather than forced, story interaction? Who and where is the intended audience for interactive content and what issues are anticipated or currently experienced in targeting and then delivering to particular demographics? Does an interactive content audience need to have access to specific (perhaps the latest) technologies, do they need to have interactive story experience, a history of social media engagement, platform awareness or particular software application experience? What are the most appropriate skillsets and previous experience of an interactive story developer? Which elements of the traditional storytelling experience can be exploited within these new narrative paradigms? Sound design and music are considered within a broad storytelling context to look at their potential to fully realise narrative worlds and to promote audience immersion and engagement. The future of interactive storytelling is explored, and artistic and commercial projects, completed and in development, are considered. Throughout the book I have avoided taking a technocentric approach. The emphasis is on the creation of engaging stories which (through trial and error) take advantage of the most innovative yet appropriate modes of delivery to effectively communicate story ideas across multiple platforms. The book includes the most useful content that I have identified over many years teaching this subject in universities and colleges across Europe. You will note that there are many references to the works of traditional artists. I have made observations on their workflows when I considered them to be relevant to the development of interactive and transmedia stories. I have drawn on existing best practices from traditional media, to identify and give insight into creative works that are both experimental and engaging and to synthesise complex theories to make them accessible to a wide audience.

DEFINING INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES AND TRANSMEDIA STORIES

An interactive narrative offers a pre-specified level of story agency or choice to the audience, allowing them to exert an influence on the plot. The interactive experience is ‘highly context-dependent’ and involves some form of interface such as text input (entered at the command line), a hand-held controller or a gesture-sensing device (Laurel, 1991 p. 21). Each interaction results in various levels of impact on the story depending on the narrative design. Producer Hideo Kojima states that the challenge for interactive narrative developers is to offer increased agency without sacrificing the story emotion developed through ‘cut sequences’ (edited scenes rather than interactive gameplay) (Ashcraft, 2008). Brighton-based artists group Blast Theory released a very interesting interactive narrative titled Karen (2015). Using a phone-based app to facilitate a series of ‘video calls’, the user takes the role of a client and interacts with a life-coach called Karen over several days. The multiple choice responses given to Karen’s often leading questions are used to construct a psychometric profile of each user which can be purchased at the end of the story. The story progresses along a satisfying narrative arc and includes a good level of story conflict, drama and humour. User engagement is designed around well-constructed questions (delivered by Karen) and equally valid answer options for the user. The result is an interactive narrative that feels like you are a performer within a finely tuned theatrical experience.

Transmedia stories are delivered across multiple distribution platforms, in various formats that can include feature films, short films, episodic television, streaming content, social media, games, print media, music and audio clips. Transmedia stories are defined as ‘many franchises developed around a core story and characters’ (Blumenthal & Xu, 2012 p. 190). Transmedia story elements exist within a single story world despite their perceived distance from each other. Blast Theory’s #FindTheGirl transmedia campaign to promote Thirteen (2016) delivered story content within the five-episode online drama itself, but also on social media platforms and across various websites (Puschmann, 2016).

THE AUTHOR

At 18 years old I took full advantage of the UK’s education grant system and left Ballymoney, Northern Ireland to study computer programming at Birmingham Polytechnic, UK. I graduated in 1989 and soon began my career as a computer programmer working for Marconi Command and Control Systems at a UK Ministry of Defence site in Leicester. I designed and coded software in Ada (the defence sector’s traditional language of choice) to perform phonetic searches on London Fire Brigade’s database of geographical locations. The system allowed emergency telephone call operators to enter street names as they heard them phonetically without the need to check spelling. However, I found working at the ‘command line’ lacked the creativity I sought so I returned to education to study photography at Bournville Art College under the inspirational guidance of my tutor John Hodgett. With a small child in tow, my then girlfriend Esther and I returned to Dublin in the mid-1990s where I was able to combine my software engineering, film and photography skills. I was hired by the influential sculptor and academic Aileen McKeogh to work in Arthouse, a trailblazing multimedia arts organisation in a newly refurbished, purpose-built premises in Temple Bar. As Head of Training and Production I project-managed European-funded projects and designed and delivered new media education contracts on behalf of the Irish government. In 2000 I raised €250,000 private funding to set up a new media training college in Dublin city centre. I travelled extensively throughout Eastern Europe and North Africa helping international broadcast organisations to establish digital strategies and to develop new media training programmes for their personnel. In each country I would work on a photo-essay to pass the extended time between meetings. I almost got arrested in Pakistan on the road to Rawalpindi for photographing an enormous toll booth in the middle of nowhere. In Egypt, my now wife Esther and I interviewed prospective course participants and she was happy to receive numerous confidence-building proposals of marriage. On a visit to Media Production City, near Giza, a simple linguistic error left uncorrected led to me being mistakenly identified as the Director General of Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE). In too deep, we spent the day being whisked around the impressive film studio complex introduced to movie stars and forcing a fully attended water park to wait for our arrival beifre starting a show.

During my travels I always noted the international language of storytelling and the potential of new technologies to create new narrative paradigms. I continued to research the subject and was extremely fortunate to be supervised by Dr. Kevin Atherton and Dr. Paul O’Brien when successfully completing a PhD in visual culture at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. By 2012 our award-winning college was fully accredited and delivering graduate and postgraduate programmes in film, theatre, games design, photography and animation, welcoming students from 22 countries. We produced the animated logo for the Eurovision Song Contest, which aired before and after commercial breaks and was watched by over 120 million people each year. Our students won national and international awards and were highly sought after by audiovisual production companies. In 2014 the Irish immigration service’s heavy-handed approach to international students forced the closure of dozens of private education facilities in Ireland, including ours. In the years since, I have worked in the public education sector and I am now researching and lecturing in the highly innovative Creative Arts, Media and Music Department, Dundalk Institute of Technology.

I have always been interested in experimental narrative projects and generally prefer arthouse films to traditional commercial fare. I take inspiration from my children’s engagement and interaction with games and social-media platforms and I continue to develop my own projects – interactive stories, films and photo books. My most recent film work Singularitas was conceived as a multilingual short, with languages intermixed throughout and no subtitles. The intention was to create a concept piece, an audiovisual spectacle which would be currently incomprehensible, yet in a few years, be viewed via commonplace language translating devices. The translation would ‘free-up’ the text and remove the linguistic barriers of language, dialect, intonation and prosody, making it accessible to anyone, in any country, speaking any language. In short, the film was really for the future.

NEW MODES OF STORYTELLING

In this book I also consider how evolving technologies will impact storytelling media and modes of delivery. Narrative interpretation depends on our understanding of the technologies used to create and deliver stories (Wood, 2007 p. 42). Audiences are increasingly knowledgeable about production tools, workflows and distribution platforms. If the spectacle focuses our attention on technology itself, then it creates in the audience a desire to learn more about the process of production. Individual digital elements compete for audience attention while driving the narrative and helping to create an immersive environment (Wood, 2007 p. 45). The effect may work with real elements or act as a counterpoint, expanding and developing their meaning. There may be an over-emphasis on visual spectacle through attempts to recreate that which no longer exists or does not yet exist. In this sense new media technologies are no different than the special effects of early cinema. If the audience knows how an effect is produced then the impact is reduced and immersion in the story may be lost. The fluidity of perception leads to the creation of narrative perspective. The world is constantly changing and the author’s narrative is altered during its creation, and again when it is observed by the reader:

the shift of an object or area out of the center of vision even to the inner edge of the periphery transforms it … perceptual constancy is a phantom, and the world thus seen is no longer identical to itself.

(Crary, 2001 p. 298)

The observer’s engagement with the technological invention manipulates the optical display. This is an alternative to the theatrical tradition of perception (Crary, 2001 p. 191). I will use as an example an interactive film I made called The Little Extras (see Appendix 1) which was created to extend the relationship between author and observer. In this film, viewer interaction alters their perspective of the story and creates a flexible or plastic narrative experience.

In interactive film the process of interaction may be considered a representational vehicle for the development and presentation of the characters. Navigation through the narrative leads to changes in our interpretation of the representation. The belief system that makes the representation possible is an acceptance of what is real both within the context of the story and the viewer’s world (Mitchell, 1995 p. 356). The representation of characters within the interactive narrative text is distanced from the reality of the actors who are playing the roles and the mode of interaction itself. We can consider representation as a process or mode of interaction as well as relating to a ‘particular kind of object’ (Mitchell, 1995 p.?420). The immersive nature of the story allows the distance to be traversed and a multiplicity of character perspectives to cohabitate the metanarrative. The mode of interaction is blended to the narrative to function as a natural method of ‘reading’ the story, ‘all representations are conventional in the sense that they depend upon symbol systems that might, in principle, be replaced by some other system’ (Mitchell, 1995 p. 351). The mode of interaction in The Little Extras is rooted in simple hyperlinking. If the viewer has been properly encouraged and stimulated to ‘read’ the text and look for interactive opportunities, they will seize upon a symbol system that allows them to navigate more freely. The Little Extras creates a temporal reality within the interactive text. The temporal period is known to the audience in that it deals with historically familiar concepts including the emotions of jealousy and anger (Mitchell, 1995 p. 353).

Filmic representations of reality can be considered uncinematic (Carroll, 2008 p. 203). Narrative disclosure is unrealistic in that it does not replicate the reality we experience in everyday life where most issues remain unresolved and facts stay hidden. Theorists who favour the Italian Neorealist recording of experiences emphasise the value of photography in creating cinematic works where the camera simply photographs the reality in front of it. An alternative theoretical position is to emphasise the creation of narrative structure through editing. Pacing and juxtaposition of narrative elements create the relationships between shots and scenes for the audience and drive the narrative according to the author’s vision. Mitchell notes the difference in time between the writing of the story and its reading, ‘narrative seems to be a mode of knowing and showing which constructs a region of the unknown, a shadow text or image that accompanies our reading, moves in time with it’ (Mitchell, 1995 p. 190). The author of the non-linear story creates an organic text that lives and grows through interactivity. As the story develops, the relevance of its own past and future is in state of flux. Dialogue in the text offers the characters a voice as an alternative to the absolutism of diegesis. This mimesis can be flexibly interpreted by the audience as they develop a greater understanding of the characters and their situations (Mitchell, 1995 p. 191). Most film-makers create work that their target audience will understand and cognise (Carroll, 2008 p. 212). This includes incorporating known features specific to their genre such as high-key lighting in film noir thrillers and the lone gunman in westerns. A film that is ‘truly, ontologically incomparable with any other would be … an incomprehensible artifact. Faith in the consummately singular motion picture derives from a romantic-modernist fantasy of the genius’ (Carroll, 2008 p. 216).

Jerome Bruner explored the transference of knowledge and the assimilation of narrative. He points out that knowledge always represents someone’s perspective, so that the ‘normativeness of narrative, in a word, is not historically or culturally terminal. Its form changes with the preoccupations of the age and the circumstances surrounding its production’ (Bruner, 1991 p. 16). Bruner is stating that a perspective on a story is therefore influenced by one’s consideration of the author’s intent. It depends on what we know about both the author as a person and the subject under discussion. He refutes the concept of knowledge as a fixed entity. It is instead highly flexible and changing, mediated and remediated by successive readers, who have been influenced in turn by their background, friends, books, cultural experience and conventions. The reality created by a narrative is an interpretation of the facts presented to us.

Different cultures will adopt and exploit digital interactive media developments in different ways (Jenkins & Thorburn, 2003 p. 5). Political, cultural and economic forces will shape the interactions between the people and emerging technologies. The book includes an analysis of the communication and processing technologies that will be used to develop and distribute new media formats including interactive films. The relationship between author and observer is explored. Digital media allow the reader to alter original texts through interactivity including the use of inserts and links (Landow, 2006 p.126). The role of the author is changing. The reader is empowered to actively construct meaning by adding layers of interpretation. However, readers have always ‘read’ texts from particular perspectives and in doing so altered their interpretation of meaning to suit themselves. In this way, the act of adding content to the published text is simply another step in the information reception process. This process leads to an interpretation and position taken by the reader in relation to the content.

A SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTERS

Chapter 2, ‘Traditional Narrative Texts’, explores the works of various creative artists including photographers, playwrights, authors, film-makers and academic theorists. It considers the extent to which non-linear narrative developers can exploit traditional storytelling structures, techniques and literary devices to produce ...