From The Sydney Morning Herald
Gomez says the transmedia producer can nurture a story world so it can blossom outside the film itself, and become integrated, artistically legitimate additions to the original work.
‘’With transmedia storytelling you are designing the narratives to carry over into all these different platforms. That means you can assert your creative vision over other manifestations of your story world.’’
Crucial to the transmedia success of an enterprise is that, as narrative universes expand across platforms, each iteration should add something new to the story and remain internally consistent with that universe.
“They are gorgeous,” said one Comic-Con attendee, Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a movie production company.
“And movie studios realize this is one way to rebuild equity in a brand name, by bringing out these beautiful packages.”
Quotes: “The secret to quality transmedia is partnership, not licensing.”—Danny Bilson, distilling the philosophy behind the transmedia approach.
The Takeaway: The transmedia approach is going to be a big trend in the coming years as game companies, television studios, book publishers, and more strive to maximize consumer engagement in their products.
Random Fact/Who Knew?: The Producers Guild of America recently ratified their first new recognized position in decades: Transmedia Producer.
One of the best articles ever on what we at Starlight Runner accomplish as transmedia producers….
EXCERPT:
This is not about plonking a character on a shirt, or a doll in a toyshop. To the proselytes like Gomez, the task is to tell important stories related to the original material across the range of material. It is called transmedia storytelling.
On the phone, Jeff cited the webisodes for Battlestar Galactica as an elegant example. “Things were revealed about ancillary characters, or terrestrial creatures or certain concepts that could be viewed independently but gave you new insight into the characters and concepts of the show.” he said. “They made you want to go back to the show, and re-examine their characters and motivations – that’s a great transmedia mutation because it caused you to look at the ancillary and rethink whats going on in the main content.”
This makes sense as a marketing tool. The ancillaries reach far beyond the film, and can be made to point back to it. “Look at District Nine”, he said, “and its marketing. Almost everything in that marketing was canonical. That makes it fascinating, and helped to build the level of interest in the film. You are paying for that if you are a studio. However, you might also accrue a number of licensees for the tee shirts and magazine and comic books and toys, based on your IP. Why not go further and give them bits of canonical content so you are simultaneously licensing the content, and nurturing the storyworld? That is a major rethink for many of our clients to get that.”
To do this, the story elements have to be distributed across the media, and therefore ruthlessly consistent. Indeed, the central property has to be able to bear the strain of all this extra material. This is far more elaborate than ensuring all the properties enhance the brand – it cuts to the heart of the script and the world it creates and inhabits.
This is the bit that creates a model of development which explains just why and how the big tentpole franchises are filling our multiplexes – a process which can be subverted for our more modest purposes.
The San Diego Comic-Con has posted the schedule for Saturday, July 24.
3:30-4:30
Red Faction Armageddon: How to Build a Transmedia Universe
— The biggest event in the mythology of one of the world’s most popular video games is also a flashpoint in the launch of the Red Faction multiplatform universe. Get exclusive information about it and pick up tips on world-building and game concept development, along with info about the partnership with Syfy in this in-depth Q&A with creator Danny Bilson (EVP Core Games, THQ), Lenny Brown (director IP development, THQ), Hollywood’s leading Transmedia producer Jeff Gomez (Avatar, Transformers, Tron Legacy, Men In Black 3D), Alan Seiffert (SVP, Syfy Ventures), and Erika Kennair (director, development, Syfy). Room 9
This is your opportunity to learn from and work with world’s leading transmedia pioneers!
International Speakers/Mentors include:
* Nathan Mayfield – One of the world’s leading transmedia producers: LOST, SPOOKS INTERACTIVE, DAY X EXISTS (Brisbane) * Jeff Gomez – CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, who was behind transmedia strategies for AVATAR, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, TRANSFORMERS & more (New York) * Gavin McGarry – President of Jumpwire Media, former Head of Cross Platform for Endemol, and creator of some of the first cross media TV content with NBC and Discovery (New York) * Suzanne Stefanac – Media and technology strategist, former Director of the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab (Los Angeles) * Dibakar Banerjee – Writer/Director of India’s first digital feature LSD: LOVE SEX AUR DHOKA (Mumbai) * Morgan Jaffit – One of Australia’s leading game developers and designers: PANDEMIC, HAPPY FEET (Brisbane) * Lisa Gray – Head of Content, The Feds: video mashup tool for THE GRUEN TRANSFER (Sydney) * Christy Dena – Transmedia designer and producer: worked on Tim Kring’s CONSPIRACY FOR GOOD (Melbourne)
“It represents a fundamental paradigm shift—one that producers all over Hollywood are scrambling to understand and leverage,” said Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Entertainment, who has consulted on franchises such as “Pirates of the Caribbean.” “They’re going to make their budget back in 24 hours.”
‘The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers’ is ready to battle with flips, spins and dance steps
But perhaps the closest cousin is the Fox series “Glee,” which invited the LXD to be the opening act in its recent concert tour. Both take classic media — show choir and dance — and recontextualize them for a contemporary audience. Both focus on misfits who eschew more popular high school pursuits such as football and drinking Coors Light while upside down. “There definitely are a lot of correlations,” says Harry Shum Jr., who plays Mike Chang in “Glee” and performs in and co-choreographs for the LXD. “It’s rooting for the underdogs.”
“The LXD would have a much tougher time without ‘Glee,’ ” adds Jeff Gomez, a transmedia producer who has helped build the universes for “Avatar” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” among others. “Spiritually, symbolically and basically in reality, there is a direct connection between the two that opens a mass audience to the possibilities presented to the story worlds of the LXD.”
Jeff Gomez doesn’t seem like a salesman in the traditional sense. As CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, his job is to turn a movie plot (or a toy or any product with narrative potential) into a bigger, more lucrative franchise that will pay off long after the blockbuster has left theaters. He’ll turn the story into mobile phone games, comic books, toys – sometimes all of the above – and in the process, turn audience members into brand super fans. In short, Gomez knows how to sell a story — something that every good salesman must do. And he has become the go-to person for big brands like Disney, Hasbro, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola. Most recently, he helped James Cameron and 20th Century Fox extend “Avatar” into games, Websites, books, and more.
Power to the Pixel is delighted to announce its groundbreaking Pixel Market which will take place on 13 and 14 October 2010 in London.
Applications are now open to find 20 of the world’s best cross-media projects.
Each project will be based on stories that can span any combination of film, TV, online, mobile, interactive, publishing, live events and gaming.
Jeff Gomez talks about the powerful effect that transmedai strategies have on licensing in this feature for Kidscreen
“The entertainment industry at large has come to recognize that young adults and kids are consuming content voraciously, in ways not dreamt of even 10 years ago – they’re looking to follow the story surrounding a given property on as many mediums as possible, be it traditional TV, films, fan sites or related products. But to make a property truly work across the various platforms out there, the entertainment concept has to be conceived as bigger than any one medium and constructed with a sense of how each grand story arc will play out across each media touchpoint. Transmedia storytelling, as it’s become known, is really the art that’s driving this approach.”
TEDxTransmedia, reschedued because of Eyjafjallajokull, is now on
September 30, 2010 in Geneva, Switzerland
Transmedia Bootcamp reviewed by Tubefilter.
“People had traveled from as far as Italy, Mexico, and Canada to attend and participate in this rare opportunity to gain valuable insight into Gomez’s process when creating a Transmedia property: from mapping out every aspect of your franchise to production of materials across platforms to whether to keep your I.P. ownership or allow fans to extend your universes—Gomez always leaned towards giving fans as much creative ownership as possible in order to extend the chances of longevity.”
If you missed Transmedia Bootcamp today, try to attend The New Paradigm: Transmedia Storytelling, Sponsored by Variety at Produced by 2010!
This Saturday, June 5 at 20th Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, CA.
Incumbents John Hadity, Dana Kuznetzkoff and Mark Marabella have been re-elected as top officers of the Producers Guild of America East.
All three—chair Hadity and vice-chairs Kuznetzkoff and Marabella—ran unopposed in the org’s 2010 elections. The results were announced Wednesday night at a Gotham event. Each will serve another two-year term.
Filling out PGA East’s exec committee, the trade group tapped David Fox as financial officer and Kit Golden, Jeff Gomez, Nelle Nugent, Amy Robinson and Peter Saraf as members at large.
The event, the fifth in a series called “Night of the Producer,” included a conversation between helmer Jonathan Demme and performer Denis Leary, moderated by Golden.
Twitter invites direct response by the audience in a way that other media do not. Twitter breaks the fourth wall by inviting the audience to reply, simply by using the platform.
Twitter is not just a journaling of events; Twitter is theatre.
Jeff Gomez and Steele Filipek discuss the importance of the opening hook in video games, and the Art of Fun on Game Design Aspect of the Month
“One of Shigeru Miyamoto’s more famous quips is, “Find the fun.” That is, first find what is fun about a game and then build around that. It can be narrative, gameplay, action, mystery, whatever. Find the fun, the essence of what makes your game uniquely enjoyable and what will keep a gamer coming back for more. In that briefest of statements, the creator of Mario, Link, and a host of other iconic characters has captured the essence of creating a game: make the player WANT to play the game.”
Jeff Gomez and Hot Wheels are profiled on Pongr Mobile Social Marketing
“No matter what you are selling, the transmedia approach makes sense. TV, Web banners and print ads are all a waste of time if they don’t engage the viewer with a compelling storyline or motivation to participate. The approach works with ANY product. When was the last time you saw your friends get excited over their napkins or paper towels?”
“So there I am, standing alone at Mattel HQ, pitching to Amy and the Internet team. They think they’re going to hear about a web site that maybe has a Flash game or two to accompany a comic strip narrative that profiled each of the big anniversary’s 35 cars. But after I realized that they were going along with some of these ideas, I asked them if I could dream out loud for a few minutes ”
“I’ve been so busy dealing with end of term matters that I have not yet had a chance to publicly acknowledge here the extraordinary news that the Producers Guild of America has officially recognized the title of Transmedia Producer. ”
For our Italian friends we’ve got a Gomez quote from Cartoons on the Bay on the transmediality of Star Wars.
“Tubefilter had a chance to talk via e-mail with CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Jeff Gomez. Gomez was instrumental in getting the Transmedia Producer credit sanctioned and is an extremely vocal supporter and advocate for the transmedia community…”
DAREtoCANCEL
I am sad to say that UNFORTUNATELY we lost the battle with the volcano and decided to postpone TEDxTransmedia to the fall.
Many of the speakers are stock in airports around Europe. I don’t give up easily and I will organize a stronger event in the fall (you know I will) It was a fantastic journey for me up to now… and I really would like to keep it to destination! Thank you and please come back for more updated information on the next TEDxTransmedia. (Nicoletta Iacobacci)
Jeff Gomez will still be speaking in Lucerne today. Please check back for details on when TEDxTransmedia will be rescheduled.
C21 Media’s Jonathan Webdale reports:
“Starlight Runner president and CEO Jeff Gomez told MipTV delegates this week that the skills needed to tell stories across multiple media are now worthy of special designation. Jonathan Webdale reports.
Transsexual. Transatlantic. Transmigration. Transmedia. Transmedia? The spell-checker turns red. Something must be wrong. It’s not in the dictionary. It’s not a proper word. Remove your tiles from the Scrabble board. No score.
This situation will change if Jeff Gomez (left) has his way. The president and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment has more than 20 years’ experience developing video games and digital extensions for franchises including Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia, Tron, Halo and Avatar. He’s helped created ‘online universes’ for brands such as Hasbro, Mattel and Coca-Cola.
He feels it is now time for a new moniker to describe what he, Starlight, and a small but growing band of producers are doing. Transmedia is its name…”
—Full text after the jump—
“Over the past couple of weeks, some friends and colleagues have emailed to ask me whether I’ve gone out of my mind. It’s one thing, they said, to prattle on for 40 minutes about what I do for a living at a seminar. That’s good business; keeps a high profile. But then they surf over to KidScreen last week and this giant page pops up telling them that at some kind of crazy Bootcamp in Santa Monica, Gomez is going to spill the beans about how to “do” transmedia. That is, he’s gonna go into detail, step by step, from idea to rollout… ”
”...A significant All-Boards meeting for the Producers Guild of America took place tonight. Sources tell me that the members voted on a series of amendments that qualify individuals as professional producers. More importantly, for the first time in the guild’s history, they voted on and ratified a new credit—that of the Transmedia Producer—which had been shepherded by such Hollywood names as Mark Gordon, Gael Anne Hurd, Jeff Gomez, Alison Savage, and Chris Pfaff. ”
An Interview with Jeff Gomez by Rafael Cabral (in Portuguese) at Yahoo! News Brazil
Have you ever followed a local band that wound its way through the bar circuit? They were your band, you learned the lyrics to their songs, loved them even when they had an off night, and cheered when they announced they got a record contract and were headed for the big time. But then you had to share them with everyone! It felt a bit odd: were they going to “sell out” and become something they weren’t, or would they maintain their integrity despite new temptations and the spotlight of popular culture? In a way, that’s how I feel about transmedia storytelling, and what a strange and exciting time it is!
“Looking to cut out that long wait between childhood phenomenon and big-screen blockbuster, El Segundo-based toymaker Mattel has begun developing toys that have Hollywood storylines and direct-to-film pedigree built in.
“It’s actually a great idea, with the caveat that they need to coordinate the story and have it all make sense well beforehand,” Jeff Gomez, CEO of the New York-based Starlight Runner Entertainment… ”
“Don’t get me wrong; I’m not waxing nostalgic for a time of political incorrectness in children’s programming. All I’m asking is for us to consider adding just a touch of darkness into the tales we’re telling, even for little kids. They’re stronger than we imagine. ”
As her new video Telephone’s success suggests- over 7 million views in 3 days. A week later, a Google search for telephone shows the 375+ articles about the video before even a description of the communications device. Whether one loves her or hates her, they have to admit, she gets attention. If there is someone out there who shows the potential of the union of social media and celebrity, it is Lady Gaga. For the Full Article, Click Here…
IPTV Evangelist interviews Jeff Gomez on transmedia and the fact that the Internet is NOT television
Jeff Gomez will be participating in the Principles of Transmedia Storytelling session on Tuesday, April 13, at 3:30 p.m. as part of the Producers’ Forum, together with Nathan Mayfield, the chief creative officer and co-founder of Hoodlum. The executives will be hosting a creative boot camp, drawing on their extensive experience with transmedia projects—Gomez’s credits include James Cameron’s mega-hit Avatar, while Mayfield’s work includes Lost and Flash Forward.
from the interview Le Fabuleaux Business du Transmedia Storytelling
Globo’s Multishow: the future of music, social media, fans and transmedia. Extended interview with Jeff Gomez in Portuguese, Video in English
Jeff Gomez weighs in in February’s issue of Kidscreen magazine on Spider-man, transmedia, and the future of kids entertainment
Jeff talks about transmedia present and future in a compelling interview with Transmedia Tracker.
The Green Goblin couldn’t kill Spider-Man. Nor could the Sandman, Dr. Octopus, or even that anticlimactic black goo from Spider-Man 3. So how was Tobey Maguire’s webslinger finally squashed? Oddly enough, insiders say it was Avatar.
Read more: Vulture Exclusive: What Really Killed Spider-Man 4? Avatar!
Caitlin Burns reviews and analyzes online experiance 221B and the marketing campaign for Sherlock Holmes on The Social Robot
These days programming for the tube is a multi-platform endeavour, encompassing online, gaming, music, DVDs, toys and tours in a bid to keep budgets in the black and eyeballs glued to the small screen.
In interviews with four pioneers – Kate Pullinger, Lisa Holton, Jeff Gomez, and Peter Collingridge – in the world of transmedia storytelling, the motivations of the storytellers are as diverse as the execution of the stories themselves.
Author Jon Frater reviews James Cameron’s Avatar and Jeff Gomez weighs in in the comments.
The entertainment industries are no stranger to buzzwords. “Engagement”, “enhancement” and “immersion” have been bandied about over-zealously for years, but “transmedia” is one that’s sticking across a variety of mediums, especially publishing, and with good reason.
Canada’s innovative New Media laws are forcing traditional media outfits to reconsider how stories are told. In this article, Jeff Gomez helps make sense of it all.
Television dives into digital, musical offshoots to secure viewers – 570News
Caitlin Burns profiles some Narrative Experiments in Social Media: Valemont and Circle of 8
Check out this fantastic interview with Starlight Runner’s CEO, Jeff Gomez, at Jawbone.tv: The Transmedia Equation, Part 1: Top-Down Development with Jeff Gomez
Starlight Runner Staffers, Caitlin Burns and Steele Filipek, have an article in this week’s Multichannel News profiling two interactive online experiences Circle of 8 and Valemont and discussing how they different platforms and drive additional revenue streams while driving viewers along traditional platforms. The Next Wave of Branded Entertainment
Starlight Runner’s Editorial Lead, Caitlin Burns outlines the relationship between fans and social networks for The Social Robot
Starlight Runner’s Editorial Lead, Caitlin Burns, describes Transmedia Storytelling in a guest post for the Social Media and Internet Marketing Blog The Social Robot
SLR president & CEO Jeff Gomez and SLR editorial lead Caitlin Burns discuss Pirates of The Caribbean, Halo, and other high-profile transmedia projects. Read part one here and part two here.
NEW-GEN interviews Jeff Gomez, President and Chief Executive Officer of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Jeff explains the term transmedia, how transmedia storytelling is powerful in building franchises, and why NEW-GEN sought his expertise.
There has been quite a bit of talk in recent years around the concept of transmedia storytelling. Few of these narratives have actually been implemented, but a select number of companies have chosen to satisfy consumer affinities, put great ideas on a pedestal, and think of creative ways to proliferate those ideas through carefully chosen channels.
Read the article on Welcome To Now
In a lengthy interview published yesterday, The Narrative Design Exploratorium talks to Starlight Runner’s CEO about his work and thoughts on the craft of interactive narrative design for transmedia experiences.
The new television show “Flash Forward” is cited as an example of how transmedia storytelling can work.
Listen online here or subscribe for free on iTunes.
The Future of Story is Transmedia Narrative
Starlight Runner Entertainment is featured in the May 18, 2009 issue of BUSINESSWEEK, in an article by noted journalist Ron Grover. Read it here.
Starlight Runner CEO Jeff Gomez was featured on FORBES CMO in a profile you can read here.
Learn how the savviest producers and companies are building concepts that attract huge-and loyal-audiences.
