Transmedia Talk Podcast - Jeff Gomez - Story GURU

Mark Harris

Mark Harris

Pain in the ass
I am putting this in screenwriting because Jeff's philosophy is that Transmedia is all about story and characters and nothing about gadgets. And in this podcast, he shares a ton of info about story bibles, and their process of putting together a world.

His company is one of the most sought after companies you've never heard of right now.

Very important stuff to writers right now, as this is sweeping through the industry like wild fire. I hear from more than one source who knows that every single studio is getting into this.

http://workbookproject.com/culturehacker/2010/12/16/transmedia-talk-podcast-episode-13/
 
This sounds very informative. Transmedia is something I'm vaguely aware of, but need to learn more about.

Thanks for the link.
 
I think this stuff is interesting. I don't think it's for everything. But it's basically about the writer focusing on creation of the world of a film/book/etc. Or having a company like Jeff's come in, break down the script, and flesh out the world from there. Then perhaps making some suggestions on how the script can be altered to more readily allow elements to play out in the larger storyworld.

Jeff's company proves though that there is already a place for people who just make the worlds.

And profitable. I dunno where it is now, but I remember reading their billing page once. It just said: "Prices start in the seven figures." :)

The thing I like about this stuff too, is that it opens up storytelling to a lot more skillsets. StarlightRunner uses a proprietary software package for managing stories across platforms. I've been using my software skills to work on something like that myself. And I know of at least one other out there.

But like I said, a major aspect of writing that screenwriters need to start getting aware of...
 
It's how blockbusters are planned now. But not really in the past. Even something like Star Wars universe was built ad-hoc out of random snippets mentioned in the films. It's why in the past, there were many stories that turned out to be odd offshoots of a brand, and later embarrassing step-children they wanted to forget. This happened in comics a lot.
 
Actually, I take that back. Not even blockbusters are all planned this way now. The storyworld extensions for Avatar largely did not exist until Gomez' company came in and created them.
 
yeah, they basically help you figure out ways to maximize your script's potential to spread into other products. As I said, I don't think it's for everything.

But I think there are lessons here for writers from the get-go. You can start thinking about this stuff from the beginning as you're making choices about your story. And I thinks it's going to be beneficial for writers to think about this stuff from the beginning.

Here's an interview with a guy I'm working with now, who I think has some good things to say about Transmedia, though from a slightly different angle.

http://transmediavictoria.net.au/meet-transmedia-artist-lance-weiler/

I like some of the stuff he says about the early days of film, when they figured out that films don't have to just be filmed plays. I think that's very very in line with what's happening now. The technology itself defined the art. Now, we hold to a lot of movie conventions for no other reason than that's the way it's done. But just like with the movie camera itself, I think new access to technologies is opening up new roads for telling stories. The thing I'm working on now involves me writing software to tell a story. That's something I've been interested in doing for some time. It will involve images and video, etc. But it's a new way of using that stuff in a story.
 
I will write more about it once it launches. But it's a web-based tool, using a basic LAMP stack. It communicates with all major social services, as well as some location-based services, communicates with mobile phones, and QR codes. It takes in data from all of those and helps tell a real story from the data.

And of course, Del Toro is jumping in feet first...

http://www.deepmediaonline.com/deepmedia/2010/12/the-imaginarium-of-guillermo-del-toro.html

M
 
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