Franchise Building

Rhythma KapoorWeek 5

Plan for Today• Franchise Building• Assignment 2• Group work 2• Mid term paper

o Points of Entryo Trigger Pointso Teaserso Rabbit Holeo Pivot Pointo Distributed Narrativeo CTAso The stop and go effecto The Domino Effecto The Spin-off Effect

Main Features of Transmedia Universes

Transmedia Content Production

Franchise Productions

Short-story Media Constellation

Alternated Reality Publishing

Personalization

Interactive services

Community extensions

Informative

Participative

Informative

Participative

Use daily-used publishing asset to mimic reality

Use snacking-media channels

Major productions + Legacy of cross-media (including official website)

Federate & value the community

Tuning medias + individual story paths

Call2Act & gain the right to access stories

Disney & The History of Franchises

• The most significant shift toward horizontal integration and media franchising came in the 1930s, when

• Walt Disney introduced a new business model that he described as total merchandising.

• Under this model, all Disney products served dual purposes: branded merchandise, television shows, animated movies, and amusement park rides all simultaneously functioned as entertainment and as advertisements for every other Disney product.

• Disney’s characters were the first characters designed to serve as entertainment “brands.”

Problems With Current Franchises• Franchise products are governed too much by

economic logic and not enough by artistic vision.• The current licensing system typically generates

works that are redundant (allowing no new character background or plot development), watered down (asking the new media to slavishly duplicate experiences better achieved through the old), or riddled with sloppy contradictions (failing to respect the core consistency audiences expect within a franchise).

Film, music, video and computer games, Websites, television documentaries,books and product licensing are elaborately cross-referenced in the contemporary entertainment industry through the usual suspects of magazines, newspapers,entertainment news programmes, industry-related consumer and trade magazines and electronic journals. The audience “learns” about a product through its associations in other cultural forms. (P.David Marshall)

Horizontal & Vertical Integration• Retail/Service model of Franchising follows vertical

integration: allowing corporations to have control of product distribution and marketing to farm out their production and/or sales operations.

• Transmedia franchises: Rather than acquire vertical control of a single product, the franchise expands the range of product offerings across markets: from an Iron Man comic to Iron Man television series, toys, and video games, etc..

 • Instead of multiplying the number of outlets that deliver

product to consumers, Transmedia franchises multiply the number of products those outlets deliver.

TM Franchises• The TM franchise is more about expanded

production of content than it is expanded delivery of product.

• As a result, that content is therefore more aptly understood as serially produced than mass produced, in that each franchise outlet works in relation to one another.

Transmedia Models

e.g. The Matrix, Harry Potter e.g. Mad Men, The Office

Digit esDe

quadraatedour rel

Transmedia Experience

Text

Acting

Game Pictures

Voice

Video

Architecture

,Language‘

Low HighLinearNarrative

VirtualWorld

SandboxGame

Branchingtree-likeNarrative

CoCreating

Liveal

vic

Social Plattforms

How do I tella Story within the world?

How much audienceparticipation is allowed?

Level of Audience Participation

Whitch plattformssuit the story best?

How can stories be connected?

How do new plattformsmake new stories possible?

Distribution Technologies &Plattforms

AlternateRealityGame

Consumption Participant

Seven Principles of Franchise-Building

• Spreadability vs. Drillability• Continuity vs. Multiplicity• Immmersion vs. Extractibility• World Building• Seriality• Subjectivity• Performance

Spreadability vs. Drillability• Spreadability: the capacity of the public to engage

actively in the circulation of media content through social networks and in the process expand its economic value and cultural worth.

• Drillabilty: A mode of forensic fandom that encourages viewers to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling. Such programs create magnets for engagement, drawing viewers into the storyworlds and urging them to drill down to discover more...

Spreadability vs. Drillability

• Spreadable media encourages horizontal ripples, accumulating eyeballs without necessarily encouraging more long-term engagement.

• Drillable media typically engage far fewer people, but occupy more of their time and energies in a vertical descent into a text's complexities."

1) Spreadability x Drillabilityhttp://www.uncannyxmen.net/images/article/relationship/relationshipmapv1.htm

Continuity vs. Multiplicity

• Multiplicity allows the possibility of alternative versions of the characters or parallel universe versions of the stories - seeing the characters and events from fresh perspectives, and to sort out not only how the pieces fit together but also which version of the story any given work fits within.

• TM franchises seek to construct a very strong sense of "continuity" which contributes to our appreciation of the "coherence" and "plausibility" of their fictional worlds.

Continuity vs. Multiplicity• The concept of multiplicity paves the way for us to

think about fan fiction and other forms of grassroots expression as part of the same transmedia logic - unauthorized extensions of the "mother ship" which may nevertheless enhance fan engagement and expand our understanding of the original.

Continuity vs. Multiplicity

Immersion vs. Extractability

In extractability, the fan takes aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life (e.g. items from the gift shop).

In immersion, the consumer enters into the world of the story (e.g. theme parks),

3) Immersion x Extractability

IMAGE CAPTURE

DRIVE MODE

http://vimeo.com/9413061

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWB8hKLa6Pk

3) Immersion x Extractability

SerialityTransmedia storytelling takes the notion of breaking up a narrative arc into multiple discrete chunks or installments within a single medium and instead spreads those disparate ideas or story chunks across multiple media systems.

4) Seriality

SubjectivityTransmedia extensions often explore the central narrative through new eyes; such as secondary characters or third parties. This diversity of perspective often leads fans to more greatly consider who is speaking and who they are speaking for.

5) Subjectivity

WorldbuildingTransmedia extensions, often not central to the core narrative, that give a richer depiction of the world in which the narrative plays out.

Franchises can exploit both real-world and digital experiences.

These extensions often lead to fan behaviors of capturing and cataloging the many disparate elements.

6)Worldbuilding

A story... A character... A world.

PerformanceThe ability of transmedia extensions to lead to fan produced performances that can become part of the transmedia narrative itself.

Some performances are invited by the creator while others are not; fans actively search for sites of potential performance.

7) Performance / participation

http://youtu.be/EBM854BTGL0

Case Study- Heroes 2008’s Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Interactive Media

Programming Websites, MySpace pages, novels, an elaborate text message-based

game, online competitions to create a new hero and an online graphic novel. Heroes 360 Evolution prime time Emmy

Hana Gitelman an exclusive online character - she contacted users via text and email daily

Encouraged them to hack into a website Primatech Paper to find clues Two months from Jan 2007 Heroes 360 experience had more than 48 million page views and 27 million video downloads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_My6prvbQgA

Case Study: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Screen shot from 1987television series Teenage MutantNinja Turtles Image of 1989

computer game released onNintendo for Teenage MutantNinja Turtles

Image of 1990 movieposter for Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles

Conspiracy for Good• Half a million CFG games and apps downloaded from Nokia • Collaboration with Nokia, Pearson Education & Room to Read• Over 4,000 dedicated players joining the global movement. • Real charities woven into the main narrative • “Social Benefit Storytelling”• Result in 50 scholarships being provided for young women in Africa • Five libraries will be stocked with more than 10,000 donated books http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPjBqpP-0Qhttp://www.conspiracyforgood.com/

Group Work-ToolsFind THREE interactive storytelling toolsthat help enhance interactivity and audience building.Some examples:• Nakshart• Cowbird• Storybird• Xtranormal• google search stories• Jovoto• Dipity• Ning• thinglink

Weekly Assignment 2: World building(Pair work)

• Critically analyze THREE interactive projects on the National Film Board of Canada’s website.

•  • Your analysis should include the following:•  • Short description of each project.• What are the elements of world building in the projects?

What are some specific unique aspects/components of each project?What are the strengths & weaknesses of each project?

• What are some narrative elements found in each? (e.g. characterization, collaboration, access, shared mood and atmosphere etc.)

• How do you rate them in terms of success/failure? Why?•  • Minimum 500 words, excl. references. • Refer to lecture & readings in your analysis.

Mid-term Paper• Critically examine a commercially produced (comic,

website, game, mobisode, amusement park attraction, etc.) or a fan-made media extension (fan fiction, fan-movie, video, etc.) of a TM franchise and compare findings.

• The paper will be evaluated on its demonstrated grasp of core concepts from the class, its original research, and its analysis of how the artifact relates to specific trends impacting the entertainment & advertising industry. Where possible, link your analysis to the course materials, including readings or lecture notes etc.

• You must get your TM extensions approved by me beforehand.