The overarching question I'm asking in my dissertation is 'to what extent does transmedia storytelling make for better immersion?' The reason I've chosen this for my topic of research is that I'm interested in different ways of storytelling and the way in which storytelling has evolved and is constantly evolving. To me, transmedia storytelling appears to be a contemporary method of storytelling that encourages the audience to seek different types of media in collaboration with each other to enrich the storytelling experience overall. There is a broad range of reading material specifically covering transmedia storytelling but also the areas close to it, such as communication theory, convergence culture and genre theory. In terms of the question 'does transmedia storytelling make for better immersion?' there are different theories surrounding it.
Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture suggests that 'In immersion, then, the consumer enters into the world of the story, while in extractability, the fan takes aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life.' (Jenkins, 2016a) Here, Jenkins is comparing the differences between immersion and extractability. Jenkins defines the way a consumer would be come immersed by entering into the world of the story, this could be through attending theme parks or through the use of social media that brings the story world to an interactive and social setting. Extractability, however is the consumer taking aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life, for example items from a gift shop. (Jenkins, 2011) Through the use of immersive storytelling, the audience enters and becomes submerged in the world, even for just a short period it can mean that they are suspending disbelief of the fictional elements and setting aside their real-world circumstances. At the time of release, James Cameron’s Avatar pushed the technical capabilities of cinema with motion-capture animation techniques and seamless 3-D technology. According to Frank Rose from an interview he conducted with Cameron in 2006, his goal was to draw the viewer deeper into the world he had created, eliminating the artificial frame created by the movie screen. Cameron's partner Jon Landau explained to Rose, '3-D is about immersing the audience in your story, and the screen plane has always been this subconscious barrier.' (Rose, 2011) 'The casual viewer can enjoy it without having to drill down to secondary or tertiary levels of detail..but for a real fan, you go in an order of magnitude and boom! There’s a whole new set of patterns.' (Rose, 2011) In contrast to this, (Dalby, 2016) argues that the idea of immersing the audience through the use of transmedia storytelling experiences is a misleading concept, one that is in need of interrogation and a more certain classification. (Dalby, 2016) This idea is based on the definition of immersion by François Dominic Laramée; 'All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the […] mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality.' (Salen, Zimmerman, and Tekinba, 2003) However, is this the only true definition of immersion? Fans of a particular franchise that become immersed in it, aim to create their own extensions to the story that become transmedia them self. This is an example of what Jenkins calls the 'logic of performance'. An example in practice is when fans of Lost managed to create a map of the island on which the series is set, but the map itself is never shown in the series. Finally, fans of Star Wars have made 'Star Wars Uncut', a series of fan made videos created using different mediums stitched together to recreate the entire film. (Gallarino, 2012)
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