OUAN601 - The Utilisation of Aspects of The Walking Dead's Transmedia Model to Illustrate a Small-Scale Transmedia Project

The inspiration and basis for this project aside from the notion of transmedia storytelling was The Walking Dead. This franchise to me seemed to embody the vast majority of the research and work that I was reading and learning about. Due to this, I have used it as a point of reference during the creation process of my own, small-scale transmedia project. I believe the world is so successful in this respect because it has taken an already ideal genre for world building and blown it up to the size that only can only be achieved through success and the encouragement and consumption of their audience. From here I began to break down the franchise to its most basic parts and then dissect them further to really try to understand the level to which even the smallest narrative threads added to the building of the world in some way, thus enriching the perceived scale of The Walking Dead universe. I've also looked at some characters in particular, especially the characters that appear in multiple media outlets such as Hershel Greene and the majority of the main characters from both the graphic novel and television series.

The use of the graphic novel format to bring the world into existence encouraged me to consider that as a starting point as well. This way I could focus on the development of story and characters through both a visual and paper based medium. The advantages of this for my own project was that it was affordable and familiar, so by using this as a platform to build the foundation of the fictional world and the characters within it I could then experiment, pick and choose which other types of media to go with the graphic novel which would be projecting the main arc - similar to The Walking Dead.



I have spent some time re-reading the earlier volumes of The Walking Dead graphic novel and the second volume in particular struck me because it opens with a scene set outside of the main timeline that is usually shown to the audience in a linear way. This opening scene showed a time period before the graphic novel 'starts', and without going into the specifics gives a lot of information to the audience about a particular subplot. Furthermore, it provides context for characters and develops characters that up until this still early time in the lifespan of the graphic novels, hadn't really been developed. I found this technique so effective not just in terms of what it convey to the audience but also the way it manipulates the story and creates an incredibly interesting and immersive tangent - keeping the storytelling interesting. This is infact, how I decided to open my own narrative within the graphic novel medium, and chose to use a monologue to give the audience information about the current state of the world before moving backwards in time. So, although the same method, essentially the reverse of the way it was used in The Walking Dead.

Several episodes and segments within the various media supporting The Walking Dead has used the idea of a 'backstory' to develop characters and demonstrate the expansive world in a narrative driven way. Some characters that have had their stories explored further within The Walking Dead are; Morgan Jones, Carol Peletier, Philip Blake/The Governor, Lilly, and main characters such as Glenn, Maggie, Rick, Daryl, etc have all had their backstories or lives remarked on throughout the show. Again, the potential avenue that can be explored through a characters back story is an immersive and exciting way to direct the narrative. My reasoning for this is that it adds a very authentic and somewhat human characteristic to the otherwise fictional beings. Within the transmedia production bible I made, I documented several characters that can have their back stories explored and the way this would be done - using a table of information on the characters I was creating as a point of reference and cohesion.

One of the more obvious parallels between The Walking Dead universe and the one I created in Polar was the utilisation of the post-apocalyptic genre and the narratives that are driven by the characters and how they adapt in the 'new world', perhaps leaving behind who they once were. From this I would like to remark on one of the most successful attributes of The Walking Dead franchise and that is that its longevity gives way (due to the nature of the story world) to a level of development somewhat unparalleled in the realms of television and comic books. From here, a devoted audience member finds them self free to absorb hundreds upon hundred of hours of content all the while developing the immersion and connection to the fictional universe - one of the reasons I believe it to be one of the most successful comic book and television titles in recent times.