Once I had established I wanted to produce a transmedia feature for my context of practice practical with an accompanying transmedia bible, I began thinking of narratives to build up the story world I would be creating. I know what kind of stories I enjoy and they're usually dark in nature. Complex stories also appeal to me more in general because there appears to be more substance to them - in other words I enjoy elaborate characters with motives, secrets and complex worlds with layers of history, development and interesting narratives. I'm also interested in the mystery or crime genre, and thought that it would be fun and a little challenging to use this as a basis for my transmedia story world, a complex story built on a mystery. As I started to attempt to develop this idea further however it became apparent quite quickly that creating a story with this much depth would require a lot of time and effort. I don't think I'm naturally a good writer and that writing stories come easily to me, in fact throughout this project so far I've realised I'm in a constant state of writers block and I have to invest a lot of time into the writing itself in order to improve it and make progress.
To counter this issue I decided to take a step back and simplify my idea. From my research and looking at some contextual references that I was familiar with I decided to adopt a different genre as the basis for my transmedia project. This time with the focus on a post-apocalyptic story. The advantage of writing a story of this nature is that any suitable media platform can be used as an entry point into the lives of different characters. Along with this, the natural timeline of events that presents itself in the post-apocalyptic genre [pre-apocalypse / apocalypse / post-apocalypse] is easy to work along. This includes the potential for character back stories, details on the event or a story taking place at any point in time after the event whether that is a day or 50 years. The market for this type of story is evident, and can be seen successfully executed across novels [The Road], film [28 Days Later, World War Z], television [The Walking Dead], graphic novels [Sweet Tooth], video games [Fallout series] and various other media. Once I had established the genre I wanted to pursue and the type of story I was writing, I thought more about the way different media could fuel this type of story world. With several factors in mind including, the time scale of the project, the resources I have available to me and the way in which different media could be used to both further the story and enhance the user experience I decided that appropriate media platforms included:
- Graphic novel series, presented in individual issue format. [22-26 pages each]
- Web comic, using motion.
- Short stories. [1000 - 20,000 words]
- Illustrated biological / anatomical books or research pages.
- Written journals or diary entries from characters.
- Video diaries or live action footage.
- Video logs made by people referenced in the different story arcs.
- Illustrations & artwork depicting the landscape and key scenes.
- Social Media.
- Audio of different aspects such as phone calls made, people at the time of the event, internalised thoughts etc.
- Photography.
I also thought about the different ways in which the world could be given some context to the audience by using the different media at entry points along a broad timeline. For example, a short story could take place 50 years after the apocalyptic event, whereas the graphic novel follows a group of people at the the time the event has happened, before and after. This gives a broader context to the type of event that occurred and what has happened to the world over the course of 50 years. I've noticed throughout a lot of contextual examples I've been looking at to inform the techniques used in this particular type of storytelling that the nature of the event is frequently unspecified and in many cases left to the audiences imagination. I have seen this most notably in
The Walking Dead, Sweet Tooth and
The Road. The effects of the event are very well documented and visualised in these stories but as the audience we are never told exactly what the causes were. This has several advantages in my opinion, firstly it puts the audience in a similar position to the characters being followed in that there isn't necessarily a way in which the characters would find out about the cause of such an event, especially if communication was lost and the world was in a state of panic. Another advantage is that there is no requirement to be scientifically or theoretically accurate in the representation of effects caused by the event if it is not specified to the audience. This prevents the risk of an inaccurate representation of the world after the event, and it is simply presented to the audience the way it is, which they have to accept. Finally it means that the audience can use their own imagination around what could have possibly have caused the events that happen within a story, and creates a sense of mystery for the audience.
Moving forward from this I intend to develop my story as much as possible and begin writing my transmedia bible so I can inform and of the media I make for the transmedia project. This will also help to make sure the stories work together rather than not being consistent.
