Produsage of Transmedia Storyworlds

Transmedia production follows a film model, with a Director in command of a hierarchy of content creators who develop parts of the story for different platforms. However, transmedia audiences are participatory and actively contribute to the development of the story as well. If this active participation was taken further, could the audience actually produce its own transmedia story? This chapter explores a model of user led production, called produsage, in transmedia storytelling. This exploration is done through teaching-led research projects with more than 100 students in Cross-media Production in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The first project involved the students in an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that extended a graphic novel with websites and interactive emails. Midway through the game the Director invited the students ‘behind the curtain’ to contribute additional backstory for the characters. The trans-media format allowed the students to contribute graphics, animation and soundfiles. In the second experiment, students digitally overlaid stories on a giant walk-though map of Australia in the Garden of Australian Dreams (GOAD) at the National Museum of Australia. The geo-located content was accessed on a mobile device using the Layar Augmented Reality browser. The third experiment situated the storyworld on the University campus, and focussed characters, and interactions between characters, as a vehicle for peer production and collaborative storytelling. These experiments have led to a developing framework for the produsage of transmedia storyworlds.