Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/663385
40 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 was an app, and they had a TV ad, and then they had a website experience," he says. "All of them lived in the same world – they made a 3D animated world, not that dissimilar to the LloydsTSB campaign on TV here [in the UK]. That world they built lived on three different media, so that's technically transmedia." In transmedia, as in games, "immersive" is a key word. The audience wants to be immersed in the story world being presented. One studio created Twitter accounts for all the characters of a film – long before people knew who they were. It piqued interest and elicited social media responses and questions. In another somewhat darker example, indie artist and VR news pioneer Nonny de la Pena, senior research fellow at the USC, made a version of Guanta- namo Bay in Second Life, where avatars could experience life as a prisoner there. "It was a very powerful way of using a tool that wasn't designed for that purpose, to give you a message about something you might have read in the news. It's an article in a newspaper, but it's an experience in Second Life," says Bregman. In a mothership transmedia campaign, there is a quasi- entertainment connection with audience participation, but it is essentially a marketing exercise seeking ways to engage with potential consumers of the product. All of it is an extension, rather than a mere reflection, of the central product. There is a particularly good and renowned example of this, though it was something of a miscarriage inasmuch as the transmedia experience far outshone the mothership: the Ridley Scott movie Prometheus and its transmedia campaign in 2012. It involved the website (www.weylandindustries.com) of an invented corporation called Weyland Industries, a company that dominates the economy and social life of the film's story world. Here, you can read about what the company is doing as it makes its way through the year 2094. You can apply for jobs or look at images of fantastic machines, planned or in pro- duction; you can read company news about its many off-world projects or about the recent ap- pearances of Sir Peter Weyland, the ruthless, ambitious, brilliant founder and CEO. It's very detailed. You can even watch Sir Peter Weyland give a TED Talk in 2023 (www.weylandindustries. com/tedtalk). Unfortunately, the film was not received well by the critics. No matter. The transmedia expe- rience was brilliant, a milestone, and remarkably successful, while the film did well at the box office. And there have been millions of followers and visitors to the web- site and other media outlets. R U N N I N G W I T H T H E S T A R S Jeff Gomez, CEO/founder of the New York transmedia compa- ny Starlight Runner, has oen worked with the mothership model. The company has been responsible for the transmedia campaigns of several major Hollywood movies as well as many other branding and mar- keting campaigns over the years. Gomez has his own phrase for what Starlight Runner does: "in- tegrated transmedia production" (ITP), a practical methodology for integrating multi-platform planning, development, and pro- duction into the motion-picture production process. "There are specific tech- niques to world design, so it is in service of the core scripting and core character arcs," explains Gomez. He says that to succeed in the field he occupies, you need more than filmmak- ing skills; you need to have an understanding of history, traditions of narrative, myth and legend, and literature – though it doesn't have to be on the level of Tolkien or George R R Martin. At Starlight Runner, "the goal is to derive the essence of the story world, its funda- mental messages, and then we innovate," says Gomez. The facility generates a project bible, guidelines and definitions, char- acter profiles, world history, all the details required to create a convincing and immersive story world. "Then we [determine] how the narrative can operate in different media, in a concerted fashion," he adds. Early on, the company took a consultative role in working with the project producers, but lately this has developed into a co-producer role, a result of their transmedia expertise. A C A S E S T U D Y – D O W N T O N A B B E Y Transmedia is the production pattern for the future. Essentially, it is commercially impossible to bring any product to the public without a mothership model transmedia campaign to struc- ture, strategize, and market it. In the best-planned launch cam- paigns, a transmedia company would be present at the very earliest production meetings. This is not yet industry practice, and according to Gomez, "they [still] put it together piecemeal." The transmedia presence of the television series Downton Abbey is an example of a trans- media campaign that began somewhat fragmented but soon was organized into a full- fledged transmedia campaign when the production company realized the series' potential. Before the series was re- leased in the US, NBCU, which owns the series' production company Carnival Films, began putting in place a broad and sophisticated media marketing campaign that has become a true transmedia event. Prior to its last season, the show was broadcast in more than 220 territories, reaching a combined audience of about 330 million. Charlotte Fay of Carnival Films says initially no one at Carnival foresaw Downton Ab- bey's huge success. As a result, the marketing strategy grew alongside the series, enlarging its reach as the audience in- S E C O N D SCREENS HAVE BECOME COMMONPLACE IN HOMES, AND AS FANS WATCHED D OW N TO N A B B E Y, THEY WANTED TO TALK ABOUT THE SHOW WITH OTHERS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.