Post 3

Caroline Becker

           

As defined, multimedia is telling a single story in multiple platforms whereas transmedia is telling multiple stories over multiple mediums that overall tell one big general story. As the years go on, products of multimedia has become not as important as they once were due to the fact that mostly everything is becoming more transmedia.

In multimedia, a single story is being told through multiple platforms, which basically means, other formats of text, graphics, and videos. This then becomes theater, television and DVDs. Essentially, these products allow the audience the ability to visually see things, like motion pictures, or hear, like the radio, but it does not give the audience the ability to input their feelings and thoughts. In the Converging Media text book, it states on page 106, “in the early days of broadcasting as we have come to know it, wireless communication, which was initially only radio, provided point-to-point communication where telegraph lines were impractical or unreliable.”

Multimedia is the original form of entertainment, produced by movie productions, writers limiting the involvement from nonprofessionals. An example of a product would be the Twilight or the Harry Potter series that then were made into films after being inspired from the novels. By turning these novels a movie, it allows the product to become visual for the audience but not allowing the audience to participate, which is making it a form of multimedia.

Multimedia limits interactions and communication, however; transmedia allows the audience to indulge in this participatory culture of media and goes way beyond the limits of just visual capabilities. That being said, communication is other is a key trait to transmedia.

An example of a product of transmedia would be a film such as Superman, or any superhero movie essentially because it allows the audience to consume through various different ways. The audience can play this video game of Superman and control he/she own view of good vs. evil through a controller which then is represented on he/she screen. There are even portable games, like apps that have been created for phones. Blogs and webpages are also other examples of transmedia because it always audience from all over the world to discuss, agree, disagree of certain things such as television shows, like Survivor. Social networks engage in transmedia as users on Youtube create their own videos of critical reviews of multimedia productions, like a movie or even a new popular song.

                                                                                                   

What seems to be the key variable in transmedia is storytelling. It offers the audience to product their own stories on a single story, which certainly resulted from one general idea. The transmedia picture below shows how one general idea is then portrayed through various different platforms like television, video games, cell phone, film, computer, etc. Also consumption of money is more then relevant because it allows more companies, businesses and organization to make and retain monetary value, making it easier for the audience, i.e.: businesses and consumers, to enter the market, which is engaging in more participation.

Multimedia, along the years, is becoming more and more outdated due to the fact of the creation of new technology like video game systems, social websites and the Internet. With all of the advances, multimedia has over the time turned more into transmedia, the interactive society communication from a common interest of a multimedia product.