When I first heard of transmedia storytelling, I was attending a University Lecture at the University of Wollongong, whereby, I was told that Bernie Su, the showrunner who won 3 Emmy awards, will be telling us all about his experience and spilling out the secrets of his success. I had imagined his work to look a lot like the hour-long, ensemble-based, serialized drama that I have always known as the epitome of the best and most sophisticated form of storytelling.
But when he began discussing his 3 Emmy wins, I realized I was woefully behind my time. He demonstrated some fresh engaging techniques for conveying stories through interaction with the audience by relying on as many media platforms as possible. I had zero interest because I had always been a passive viewer who preferred classic, drawn-out TV serials. But the idea of interactive storytelling started rubbing off on me as I thought about how attached I get to certain characters and how frustrated I get because I can't interact with them as a limited viewer behind the screen. The trend these days appears to be giving the audience some sort of control over the experience for maximum enjoyment. That is to say, in today's world, the audience can have a greater say in the direction the story takes because of the distributed nature of agency and production. The aim is to expand the viewers’ experience as they navigate through different social destinations to get them more invested in the story, and to attract a greater audience since different media attracts different audience niches.
Cross-media content has not only become a demand from production companies attempting to lower costs but has also created an army of consumers eager to engage with the content across many media platforms (Jenkins, 2003). Jenkins believes that the most successful transmedia franchises are those in which a single creator or creative unit is in charge of all franchises. In his attempt to explain what is meant by transmedia storytelling, he suggests that the best transmedia storytelling is where a film introduces a story, television, novels, and comics expand it, and games open space for exploration.
Redundancy between media burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fail (Jenkins,2003)
An important aspect to multi-platform storytelling is a multi-layered approach which allows commercial entertainment to produce a more complex, sophisticated, and rewarding narrative. A good transmedia franchise pitches content differently in different media to reach more people. Hollywood says a good pitch starts with a compelling character or an intriguing world; this character can carry multiple stories on multiple platforms.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
I would say that a perfect example of Multimedia storytelling is Bernie Su’s first award-winning web series, “The Lizzie Bennet Diares” (as well as his other award-winning works Emma Approved and Artificial ). It is a web series adapted from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" which won YouTube’s first primetime Emmy.
“Pride and Prejudice is a fantastic tried and true story”, and the co-creators of Lizzie Bennet, Hank Green and Bernie Su, noticed that from the start (Veria.ca, 2013). So, the good storyline and compelling characters that Jenkins was talking about are already there! Since its publication on January 28, 1813, the book's story has been retold and re-imagined in numerous other forms of art, including plays, films, and television shows. What Bernie Su and his production team did is bring the rich story into the present day with excellent rewriting and spot-on casting, as well as offer new perspectives of the story on each platform to refresh the franchise and maintain consumer loyalty.
Measuring Success
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries exceeded its goal of $60,000 profit by 771% (Veria.ca, 2013).
The image below was used by Su to demonstrate the success of his adaptation in quantitative evidence during another university presentation, which is the same one he had presented to the Jury at the Emmys, as he claims.
The “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” is one of the most successful multi-platform shows of all time, with over 40 million views on YouTube and awards for interactivity for its use of 35 different social media sites including Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest to spread new content and major plot points and to build a connection between the characters and the audience (Su, 2014).
The Secret to Success: Giving the Characters Life
Bernie Su presents himself as an open book, claiming to reveal every secret to his phenomenal success. He explains that "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" is mainly told through YouTube along with different other social network sites. It is a series of short, vlog-based episodes where Lizzie, the main character, faces the camera to speak to the viewers. A creative way to appeal to the YouTube generation!
Yet, what makes it particularly unique is the usage of social media accounts to create a vast connected space for the audience to engage with the characters on a near-daily basis and the incorporation of multiple platforms into the creation of the characters and events. The fictional universe expands to the characters' individual Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, where the story develops as these characters have "real-time" conversations and share pictures which were not revealed in the web series. So the show's writers created accounts for each character, where they can chat with viewers and other cast members. This way we do not only have access to Lizzie’s opinionated POV.
Lizzie Bennet stays in character on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and YouTube. Her younger sister, Lydia, who has her own story plot, also uses Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. while her fashionista older sister, Jane, mostly uses Pinterest and Lookbook (@looksbyJane) to share her daily ensembles and sources of creative inspiration with her followers.
Fun fact! There were several fan inquiries about how Jane styles her hair. Victory rolls and milk maid braids were in trend after the pins and videos shared on Pinterest and YouTube by the character.
Viewers are invited to engage with the characters on the media sites. They could participate in 3 ways: sharing, in which they engaged with and shared the narrative through digital social tools; interactivity, in which they interacted with the narrative's characters to immerse themselves in the story; and fan creations, in which they created and circulated their own media as members of the fan community (Dabek, 2017).
In the YouTube comments, viewers often offer Lydia advise and express what they desire to watch to the writers directly. Tumblr is also loaded with looping and moving picture sets generated by fans to share their favorite Lizzie moments, as well as dozens of similar postings, each with thousands of likes and reblogs (Dabek, 2017).
Such GIF sets open up space for creatively participating in the storytelling.
The interactivity of the experience makes it more authentic. You get to see more content, dive deeper into the lives of various characters, interact with them in a way that's impossible in a traditional story, and explore the story from different POVs as it gets unfolded. In fact, many recurring characters are the focus of their own ongoing web series, in which they present their own unique take on the story. Viewers of Lydia's web series can see a clear picture of the manipulative abusive relationship that Lizzie’s sister is in.
Transmedia, multiplatform, and enhanced storytelling are the future of entertainment (Jenkins, 2003).
A recreated classic attracted the interest of young people through a series of 3-5 minute short episodes on YouTube, and was further complemented on various social destinations where writers took the concept of “giving life” to characters to a whole new level. “The Lizzie Bennett Diaries” is proof that when transmedia storytelling is used to its full potential, it creates a narrative that is incredibly rich and complex. In a world with an eager audience that craves opportunities for participation, transmedia storytelling is the way of the future for storytellers.
The Emmy-Winning Presentation
