Marcus Swanson, Filmmaker/LA Film School Student: As we’ve been talking about transmedia and
this idea about how to pull a bunch of stories from our story world, were do you look to
to try and craft that many stories out of one story world?
What kind of techniques do you use to pull good stories out for all different platforms
across your story world?
Houston Howard, Transmedia Author and Instructor: So people can get the theory and excited about
the model but practically what are the strategies used to identify jumping off points in story
that maximizes the transmedia model.
There are a couple ways that I think are very easy to identify and one of them is unanswered
questions.
And so I think this is the easiest way to create transmedia opportunities.
Identify unanswered questions in your script and, in a movie, in a TV show (whatever it
is) and then answer them somewhere else on a different platform.
Take the classic example of PULP FICTION “What’s in the briefcase?”
And if they didn’t answer it in the film which I think was right for the film, it created
a mystique around the film, but if today Tarantino launched a web series, or a comic book series,
or a novel that was all about the briefcase and the guys who go to get the briefcase and
actually reveals what’s in the briefcase, all of the sudden that is a tremendous incentive
of me as a fan of PULP FICTION to go check that out.
In INCEPTION where you don’t know in the end where he is stuck in the dream or not
stuck in the dream because he spins the top and they cut the film (it’s an unanswered
film).
And so if they answered that somewhere else in an app or song or something else, that’s
a transmedia opportunity.
I like to think back to Sophia Coppola’s first film LOST IN TRANSLATION and at the
end Bill Murray whispers something into her ear and you don’t know what he says.
That’s an unanswered question.
And if 20 years or 10 years later (however long that film has been out) if they reengage
the audience by whether it’s a love song that reveals the line.
Maybe it’s an email that Bill Murray’s character sends Scarlett Johansson’s character
that the audience is CC’d on that “Remember that time I whispered this into your ear in
Tokyo?”
That all the sudden is valuable for the audience.
So if you go through a script, you can readily identify transmedia opportunities that you
maybe didn’t know from the beginning of where did that character go when she went
off screen?
Why does he have a black eye?
What’s behind that door?
Where does that car go?
What are these guys talking about?
Like unanswered questions, you can probably find 15 in an existing script or pilot already
that is then a transmedia opportunity that you can split off and answer somewhere else.
Or if you’re creating or writing a script from square one with this knowledge you will
naturally build in questions that you know you’re not going to answer until you release
this other thing in a different platform.
And so a great example of that is when in THE FORCE AWAKENS in STAR WARS C3p0 has a
red arm.
And no one knows why C3p0 has a red arm, it’s an unanswered question.
Well then Lucas Film released a one-shot comic book about C3p0 and how he got the red arm.
It’s such a simple, stupid thing that is not rocket science.
It’s like literally play on the curiosity of people, pose a question, don’t answer
it, answer it somewhere else.
It’s like ready-made transmedia in a box.
J.j.
Abrahams called it Mystery Box, right?
He sort of coined this term Mystery Box of the human mind will always want answers to
questions.
And if you just build in intentionally questions that don’t answer in your script, answer
them somewhere else, maybe not immediately, maybe wait ten years and wait until your feel
like your audience is starting to wane and die out and this is a way to reengage them
in a great way.
In music you have Michael Jackson “Billie Jean is not my lover.
She’s just a girl who says that I am the one.
The kid is not my son.”
The unanswered question is, is Michael the dad of this kid or isn’t he?
He says he’s not but we don’t know, it’s an unanswered question.
So today if they answered something that revealed whether Michael was the father of that kid,
I would absolutely check that out (for sure).
I like to use the example of my early college days when the Baja Men had the song “Who
let the dogs out?”
Right?
If today the Baja Men Tweeted out “Come check out my new album.”
I would never check that link.
I don’t listen to the Baja Men.
But if they said “Hey, click this link and actually find out who let the dogs out.”
I would do that, of course I would do that.
And then if they pay it off by going to the website and finding out the Snoop Dog let
the dogs out and now there is a new collaboration on the new album or whatever all the sudden
they got to me to their website but they got me by playing on the curiosity of I always
wondered what the answer to that question is.
That’s a great opportunity for transmedia.
I think character backstory is a great opportunity for transmedia.
You know, screenwriters deal with this all the time, how much backstory of the characters
can we put in the script?
The more you explore backwards, the less you’re going forward.
And it’s always this push and pull in a script because you only have a 110 pages in
a feature, etc., etc.
If you understand the transmedia model, this is a tremendous tool for writers to say I
can still tell my backstory without overburdening or encumbering my feature script for my TV
pilot, I’m just going to tell the backstory somewhere else in a different platform.
So maybe I have my feature script, maybe I have a short story that is a character backstory,
maybe I have a song, maybe I have a song, maybe I have an animated short film that works
as the backstory.
Maybe I have a feature script and maybe I have a short story.
AMC does this all the time, for all the characters all the time on the AMC website they will
launch digital comics that has more of the backstory of all their characters which is
extended content for the fans but for creators it’s great because we get the things that
we love.
We get the backstory that we love but at the same time we get a tight, efficient script
or TV show or movie that isn’t encumbered.
So that’s another really super, easy way.
Different parts of the story world that you can explore of you never show what’s in
the basement of the house, then all of the sudden a short story or a poem or a piece
of art that shows what’s in the basement (viable comprehension), things like that which
are practical ways to approach transmedia strategy that aren’t hard, that aren’t
rocket scientist things to figure out.
Deleted scenes, I’m always a big fan of deleted scenes of them not just dying on a
DVD special feature.
Or there are always scenes that are always scenes that we screenwriters have to cut out
that we can’t use because we’re trying to come in at page-length.
So I’m always an advocate of not deleting but cutting and pasting.
And you can take the scenes that you cut from a script or cut from a book or a chapter that
you remove from a book or a verse that you remove from a song and just figuring out how
to repurpose that into a different media or a different platform, then it’s a ready-made
transmedia opportunity that is already written.
Then maybe you figure out how to turn that into an illustrated thing, maybe communicated
through a digital platform and make it a VR opportunity or communicated through augmented
reality, something like that would be interesting.
Just imagine if you had scenes that were cut out of RESERVOIR DOGS or PULP FICTION or something
like this and then there was a mug that you could buy that was a PULP FICTION mug or a
RESERVOIR DOGS mug that you had an augmented reality app that you could hold up to the
mug and you can read or experience the scene that was cut out of the film 20 years earlier.
That’s awesome!
I would love that.
As a fan I would love that.
And then if you know that fans would love that, then why don’t you do that.
You’re wasting those scenes anyway.
So identifying that narrative excess, unanswered questions, further story world exploration,
character backstories.
All great ways to have ready-made, in-the-box, transmedia strategy.