Internship Report Submarine Channel - Joshua Jansma COMPLETE

Internship Report

A Research Paper on Transmedia Storytelling

Joshua Jansma

Stundentnumber: 3274292

Course: Internship

Tutor: Sanne Koevoets

University Utrecht

Master: New Media and Digital Culture

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 1

2. INTERNSHIP PROCEEDINGS 3

2.1 Who are the Champions 3

2.2 Bistro in Vitro 4

3. TRANSMEDIA 6

4. ADAPTATION AND REMEDIATION 9

5. WORLD BUILDING 14

6. VIDEOGAMES 17

7. HYPERTEXTUALITY 19

Internship report Joshua Jansma - 3274292

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“After nourishment, shelter and companionship,

stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

Philip Pullman

1. INTRODUCTION

People tell stories. Media tell stories. Things tell stories. Stories tell stories. Stories are as

pervasive as they are at once fleeting and permanent. Stories have been ingrained in mankind

and we excel at the telling of them. From the daily struggle you share with your friends at the

bar, that song you sing along with passionately in your car, the letters on pages which from your

favorite book, the newsreader on TV who tells you about events happening far and close, the

biggest Hollywood blockbusters featuring in cinema’s, to an indie-game that is the latest hype on

the internet. These are all instances of express expression of stories, a story is actively being told,

be that via voice, film, TV, game or whatever other available medium. But what if we told a story

not only via a singular medium, what if we told a story across multiple media? Well that would be

nothing new you might say. And you’d be correct; stories can be adapted to any medium if one is

willing to stretch it far enough. Think of the stories told in the bible, it is featured in a multitude

of formats: book, stained glass, figurines, carvings, paintings, drawings, poems, film, music and

the list goes on and on.

Adaptation is an age-old tradition which has helped shape the media landscape as we know it

today. What however if that media landscape changes along with broader societal changes at

large. Changes that have been encapsulated in theoretical concepts such as ‘network culture’,

the ‘web-age’ or ‘convergence culture’ as Henry Jenkins proposes in his book Convergence

Culture (2008). Although this small sample size of different concepts highlight different theories

or theoretical approaches they are similar in that they focus on the interconnectedness of today’s

modern society where the World Wide Web takes center stage.

We can all imagine the popular idea of technology connecting everything in a network. The idea

that something, someone, or indeed a paradigm is but a node among others interconnected like

now realized and embodied by the computer. In light of a distributed network paradigm we can

recognize that technology is a structuring governing apparatus of control. Where in an all-

incorporating system the technologically motivated drive to capture, record, share, mix and

remix texts has led to the more and more flexible and efficient ordering of resources.

Now what has this got to do with storytelling? It’s that space is distorted, changed in a

fundamental way by technological advances. Space in the distributed network is no longer

separable, the boundaries have blurred, not entirely beyond recognition but beyond practical

affordance. 1Popularized by imagining a travelling through cyberspace, leaving one reality behind

and entering another, being present in both; the armchair traveller. Another way of looking at it

is that reality as such is no longer present. In the famous words of Baudrillard, we already live in a

1 For the sake of academic consistency and continuity I will prefer the use of ‘convergence

culture’ over that of the ‘distributed network’ paradigm. Reason being that firstly this is a paper primarily about storytelling and not networks. Secondly this paper hinges on the employment of theoretical concepts popularized by Jenkins.


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hyperreality. Virtual worlds presented to us are not some kind of representation, they are no less

real, rather they are a reality in their own right. Because we live in a mediated world the

simulacra in these realities constitute signs which can only be exchanged with other signs within

the system. And thus reality becomes hyperreality. (Baudrillard, 1994: 121-127)

The intentional fracturing of the act of storytelling in instances of transmedia storytelling often

creates opportunities for participation, or socialized relations that open up an alternative sphere

of engagement to other creative art forms. The complex ways in which it becomes possible to

experience a story as a result of this are a striking feature of transmedia storytelling, and the

questions it raises, not only about how we engage with a story, but how we conceptualize it and

articulate its distinctive qualities, are of importance in this paper.

In media, narrative, semiotics and to a lesser extent game studies there is an observable

emphasis on interpretation-oriented theories. This means that theories of phenomena are often

centered on the end-user experience. A phenomenon is defined according to the way it is

interpreted as a consumer, audience-member, reader, or player. This is certainly a worthwhile

approach, and one that will also be employed in this research. What might be of value here

though is a practice-oriented approach that captures the peculiar knowledge and skills needed to

create a transmedia project. Projects could be enacted by different people and companies, but it

is their knowledge, skills and processes that is the key distinguishing factor. I will employ this

practice-oriented approach using my knowledge acquired during the internship at Submarine

Channel. Submarine Channel has made more than a few projects with international recognition

receiving multiple awards. It is however not a production company with big blockbuster

franchises or brands. Throughout I will employ examples of big recognizable franchises which

have served as prime texts within the transmedia discourse.

The main research question that will guide my research into the phenomenon of transmedia

storytelling reads as follows:

How are fictional worlds produced and presented in transmedia storytelling?

The methodology that structures this paper is a case-study. Geoffrey Long (2007) and Neil

Perryman (2006) form great examples of case-studies into the practice of creating transmedia

texts. Using my own experience and findings from my time at Submarine Channel I will take the

two projects I was most invested in, Who are the Champions and Bistro in Vitro, as example case-

studies to see how interactive media projects with a transmedial or adaptive character come

about. Talking specifically about theoretical approaches I’ll be using Peirce’s theory on semiotics.

I will investigate in which ways transmediality shapes production and the meaning making

process of semiosis. Using narratological theory I will discuss issues such as canonicity, coherency

and franchising that arise when a story is distributed and extended across multiple media

platforms.

Firstly I will briefly discuss my tasks and responsibilities at the internship together with a

description of the two projects Who are the Champions and Bistro in Vitro. I will then move

towards a better understanding of the theory and definitions surround transmedia. Adaptation

and remediation come into discussion as practices that inform and define transmedia

storytelling. The investment in creating a distinct coherent (virtual) world will be discussed as

being an integral part of creating a brand to develop a franchise. Lastly the role of videogames

and hypertextuality will be examined in the grand scheme of a transmedia narrative.


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2. INTERNSHIP PROCEEDINGS

During my six month internship period I worked at Submarine Channel, an Amsterdam based

public international production and distribution channel. Submarine Channel was founded in

2003 and is a sister company to Submarine B.V. which was founded in 2000.2 In contrast to the

B.V. Submarine Channel is a foundation meaning it relies on public funds in order to realize their

projects. The B.V. specializes in the production of documentaries and animation. A couple of

examples of successful productions are Last Hijack, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, Kika and Bob and

Picknick with Cake. These are examples of the more traditional types of storytelling such as the

documentary film and animated TV series aimed at children.

Since the inception of the Submarine companies it has been a goal to explore new ways of

storytelling, embodied by the logline of Submarine: “Your periscope in unknown territories”.

Submarine Channel is at the forefront of experimenting with and developing of new ways to

bring a story across to the audience. Most Submarine Channel productions are web-based,

meaning dedicated websites displaying all the content to the public. This signals an increased

effort and focus on new and innovative ways of structuring and giving form to a story. Using a

multidisciplinary team such fields as documentary, animation, motion graphics and gaming have

been brought together to create compelling stories that often ask some form of interactive

participation from the end-user. Examples include among others Refugee Republic, Collapsus,

Last Hijack Interactive, and the as of time of writing in production Who are the Champions and

Bistro in Vitro.

My activities at Submarine Channel were of a diverse nature. Some tasks were time sensitive and

required immediate attention such as a deadline for a fund request. Other tasks were virtually

without deadline such as the research into relevant news outings. There were the more menial

tasks such as setting up lunch, taking out trash and post, help with moving furniture back and

forth, and booking of hotel rooms or flights. Other side-tasks so to say included the making of

presentations, capturing screenshots and research into possible new projects. Submarine works

on a project to project basis which has helped me learn how the production lifespan of a project

takes place from fund request to marketing. Actually having helped shape a couple of fund

requests for new projects has given me great insight into how projects get set up and realized.

Most of the time however was spent with research and production of two particular projects, the

aforementioned Who are the Champions and Bistro in Vitro.3

2 Visit http://www.submarine.nl/ for a more comprehensive look at the projects Submarine B.V

has done as well as http://www.submarinechannel.nl/ for the projects produced by Submarine Channel. 3 Both projects are at the time of writing (6-4-2015) still in development and thus the websites

not open to public yet. When the projects are complete they will be viewable on the following url’s: http://whoarethechampions.submarinechannel.com/ http://bistro-invitro.submarinechannel.com/


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2.1 WHO ARE THE CHAMPIONS

Who are the Champions (WatC) is a geo-mapped web documentary featuring the stories of the

local people of a country hosting a football World Cup. The projects focus is on the experiences

and opinions of people living around a stadium used for a football World Cup. This project was

realized for the 2014 World Cup which took place in Rio de Janeiro and was launched during that

time. Seeing as that a cross-comparison between different World Cups would bring added inside

into the impact such an event has that it was decided to include the World Cups from 2010 and

2006 which were in South-Africa and Germany respectively.

Specifically this project has been shaped into the production of six audio as well as six text stories

for each city, coming to a total of 36 personal stories. The imagery to support these stories comes

from photographs taken on site during or after the interview with the local resident. The stories

have been selected on interest and variety so that the project will feature a mixed bag of opinion,

subject matter, age and sex. The close collaboration with our co-producers in Leipzig and

Johannesburg facilitated a smooth production of the stories. The way these stories are presented

and strung together is via de use of a route displayed on the map of the city in which the stadium

stands. These routes through the city along the various stories feature the use of Google Street

View images so that as a viewer you get a distinct feel of what the city looks like. Choosing the

route and the capturing of the Street View images which were later edited into a video were

some of the things I specifically took up in this project.

With the choice to add South-Africa and Germany to the project it was decided that a redesign of

the website was in order. This was primarily to better feature the stories and improve navigation

as a whole. Navigation wise the user has the option to take a passive position and simply let the

route play out the stories, or the user can actively engage with the website and hop from one

story to another. This includes the hopping over to other cities which is promoted through the

suggestion of stories that bear some similarity to the one you’re watching. One big research task

was the search for news articles that we could suggest to viewers as well. The inclusion of news

articles that speak in some way about the issues surrounding the World Cups brought some

depth and background information to the project that was missing from the personal stories

alone.

2.2 BISTRO IN VITRO

Bistro in Vitro (BiV) is a project which straddles the line between adaptation and transmediation

pertaining an intratextual multimedia website. BiV is based on The in Vitro Meat Cookbook

produced by Next Nature Network and presents a discussion around in vitro meat as well as a

selection of recipes made with in vitro meat which might come to exist when in vitro meat

becomes affordable. The goal of BiV is to confront and inform the visitor in a lightly ironic style

about a possible (r)evolution in our meat production and consumption. The idea around the

website is to play a game of make-believe with the visitor around the idea of visiting a restaurant

presenting exclusively in vitro meat dishes. On the BiV website a visitor can make a selection out

of different starters, mains and desserts to put together their own unique menu. After

completing their own menu they will receive a confirmation and an invitation to the official

opening of the restaurant.

The different components which form the complete project are viewable in figure 1. The menu

items are adapted from the book which are embellished with photography and animation of

models of in vitro meat items. The unique content to the website consists of interviews with


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reputable chefs and food critics; in these videos they will provide their view and opinion on in

vitro meat. Featuring multiple views on the sustainability, possibility, alternatives, future and

morality that constitutes the discourse the visitor to the website will be awarded the chance to

form their own opinion being informed from reputable sources.

The website forms the central combining component of the project; coincidentally adhering to

the convergence culture. Besides the digital space is the physical components of BiV which

consists of the aforementioned cookbook as well as the expo bar. This mobile expo can be

employed on relevant events and festivals on food (culture) and biotechnology. The expo allows

for a more direct user experience ideally featuring haptic engagement with in vitro meat models.

FIGURE 1: BIV PROJECT COMPONENTS


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3. TRANSMEDIA

Like before I said that adaptation is an age-old phenomenon. Due to technological advances new

forms of media production come to light. One such new form is transmedia production, a

concept rooted in practice popularized by Henry Jenkins and first introduced in 2003 in his

Technology Review column. Transmediality is one of the trends active in current media

production. On the one hand there are big media conglomerates that use multiple media

channels to tell a story, franchise their brand, to cover as wide an audience as possible. On the

other hand transmedia promotes and facilitates participation. Non-professionals, or ‘prosumers’

in new media lingo, have increased access to easy to use media production tools and platforms.

Meaning that the fans of certain media outings can act and influence the same domain of

practice as the professional ‘official’ producers. As predicted by Jenkins’ emphasis on fan

creativity, the current transmedia landscape includes an active two-way channel between the

creators of the fictional world and the viewers

Telling a story is not a one-sided affair brought about top-down upon the audience, it is a

collaborative process which facilitates and promotes an open creative dialogue. The defining

element of canonicity in a transmedia narrative is problematized by the converging of top-down

corporate driven and bottom-up consumer driven processes of content creation. Transmedia and

participation are phenomena that arose from a new paradigm one might call the ‘web-age’, or

‘convergence culture’ as Jenkins (2008) has coined. This new eco-system of values and practices

is facilitated by the technological advances which make possible the collaboration, dialogue,

interaction, creativity, sharing and co-creation of the participatory culture.

Transmedia storytelling is a new storytelling technique in which a story is told across multiple

media platforms that all give a unique and valuable contribution in the unfolding and

understanding of the story world. Since the concept was theorized in 2003 many definitions and

developments have arisen in the years subsequent to this. Jenkins argues that the phenomenon

can be best understood by the expansion of a story across media platforms. I argue that

interpretive and end-point experience criteria are not sufficient methods to capture the

transmedia phenomenon. Despite Jenkins’ success, a structural and dynamic model of

transmedia seems to be missing; a model that explains how transmedia structurally works and

how we motivate audiences to travel across platforms. Jenkins explains the difference between

adaptation and transmedia thusly:

“*A+n adaptation takes the same story from one medium and retells it in another. An extension

seeks to add something to the existing story as it moves from one medium to another. Christy

Dena has challenged making such a cut-and-dried distinction. Adaptations may be highly literal or

deeply transformative. Any adaptation represents an interpretation of the work in question and

not simply a reproduction, so all adaptions to some degree add to the range of meanings

attached to a story. And as Dena notes, the shifts between media mean that we have new

experiences and learn new things.” (Jenkins, 2011)

The key word here for transmedia is extension. Extension however encompasses too wide range

of phenomena and does not indicate any knowledge and skills involved. That is, extensions can

be articulated by fans, marketing departments, isolated production companies and so on.

Furthermore, the interpretive experience of works is not a reliable identifier of the transmedia

phenomenon. Anyone can impose significance on any aspects of a work across media. What is

needed then is a clear and stable definition which will enable the making of significant


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conclusions. One of the goals here then is to wade through the semantic morass that is

transmedia and find stable ground from which to build a grounded discussion.

Practitioners and scholars alike buzz with words like transmedia storytelling, transmedia world

building, transmedial franchises, transmedial experiences, content streaming, 360 degree

productions, crossmedia campaigns, convergence, multi-platform distribution, hyper-serials,

alternate reality games, deep narrative, viral marketing, and the list goes on. To make matters

even more complex these variations on transmedia find themselves besides concepts such as

cross media, hybrid media, intertextuality, multimodality, intermedia, which are floating in the

same semantic domain. Through the lens of transmedia. Suddenly any repurposing, adaptation,

continuation, franchising, storytelling, gaming and marketing becomes transmedia. But

transmedia has to be more than an entry-point, it needs to be clearly distinguished if it is to carve

its own research area.

Let us first be clear on what transmedia means and how it can be used. Henry Jenkins recognizes

himself that the theoretical notion of transmedia has been murky due to the plethora of similar

concepts and definitions which orbit it. Taking the prefix ‘trans’ as the Latin noun meaning

‘across’ or ‘beyond’, transmedia simply means ‘across media’. Semantically as such it seems a

clear enough concept, in theoretical praxis however things get a bit trickier. Transmedia has a

multitude, potentially endless, amount of applications. From branding, performance, ritual, play,

activism, spectacle to the most important one for this paper which is storytelling. Transmedia

storytelling as defined by Jenkins:

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction

get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of

creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium

makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” (Jenkins, 2010:

944)

The usage of the word ‘ideally’ is a bit puzzling for shouldn’t it be more appropriate to say

mandatory, for if a medium doesn’t feature a unique contribution then it essentially doesn’t add

anything new to the narrative; meaning it is likely to be more adaptation than transmediation.

Scolari defines transmedia storytelling from its core concept: “From a semiotic persepctive,

[transmedia storytelling] is a narrative that includes a series of stories expressed through

different media.” (Scolari, 2009: 600) Although an over-simplification is does grant us the base

level of transmedia praxis from which to build off. Also we should keep in mind that there simply

is no definitive transmedia formula; it is an expansive concept with a rich variety of options

available, to make sense of these options we should look towards the choices made to best tell a

particular story using multiple media platforms.

Due to the concentrated ownership of media conglomerates there has been an increase in

production of intellectual property that makes use of as much media platforms as possible to

exploit the synergies between media and maximize audience reach potential. Meaning effectively

big franchises which are marketable across wide demographic. Of some importance to note here

is that not all franchises or brands offer a transmedia entertainment experience. In fact most

franchises don´t start of as being conceptualized from the ground up as a transmedia project but

rather later on down the lifespan include side stories and extra content not featured in the main

storyline on different media platforms. Take for example the Harry Potter franchise: there is a

main storyline from the books which was subsequently adapted to the films, and with those

adaptations came a plethora of other media products such as videogames, comics and lots of


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merchandise. The Harry Potter videogames are a mixed bag in that they overlap with the main

story but also go beyond and explore additional story space. What this makes clear is that many

franchises are a mix of adaptation and transmedia practices. In fact it is in times hard to

distinguish between the two when the lines are blurred.

In both trends, practices of adaptation, remediation, and recycling thrive. This paper is dealing

with the general relations between transmediality and adaptation and, more specifically, with the

‘politics of adaptation’ in the context of transmedial practices, i.e. constellations of texts in at

least two different media. Films or television programs, for example, are linked to books, comics,

posters, websites, videogames, merchandise or live events. Often, their interconnections result

from particular strategies and often, those strategies are economically motivated. The

concentrated ownership of media conglomerates increases the desirability of properties that can

exploit synergies among different parts of the medium system and maximize touchpoints with

different niches of audiences. The result has been a push toward franchise-building in general

and transmedia entertainment in particular.


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4. ADAPTATION AND REMEDIATION

When one wants to make an inquiry into the transmedial narrative of a creative work there

needs to be a medium independent element in that research. For narrative has since the

beginning of stories been present and constant regardless of whether it’s (re)presented by words

on a page or pictures on a screen.

Where traditionally stories where created in a single point in time and space the growing trend is

to have an expanded and distributed story. Specifically meaning that a story is distributed across

various, two or more, physically distinct media platforms. With this shift away from the singular

the practice of creating stories comes into a different onto-epistemological nature. Reading a

book out of the Game of Thrones line offers a haptically distinct experience for example from

that of viewing a Game of Thrones (GoT) TV episode. What then does this say about the role of

the affordances that different media platforms bring to the construction process? It calls into

question whether a practitioner designs a creative work across platforms for its haptically distinct

affordances and thus experience or if there is an intentionality to make it a part of the meaning-

making process. This brings to mind the famous saying of Marshall McLuhan that the ‘medium is

the message’. I would not argue with the fact that a medium is not a neutral communication

channel or carrier of information; the carrier has some part to play in the semiotic determination

process. If we are to look at the design and production practice of BiV this much becomes clear.

The online BiV project I have categorized primarily as an adaptation. Although there has been a

significant reconfiguring and alteration of the content present in the book the website still carries

the same premises and semiotic ontology. The act of transposition was very much present

through the reconfiguring of the books content. With transposition comes change, change

invoked by media specificity. This change calls into question the fidelity of adaptations. It’s an old

question that banks on such words as ‘faithful’ and ‘essence’ of a creative work.

We must not lose track of the importance of the actual modes of production that shape end-

product. With a project like BiV or WatC there are multiple distinguishable tracks of mediation

which are combined to form a single project; more commonly known as a multimedia project. In

both projects there is made use of verbal medium, written medium, music and moving

photographic images. When you compare this to the single-track medium such as the Bistro in

Vitro Cookbook the differences are clearly there. The same with the adaption of the GoT books to

TV series. There have been a slew of changes small and big. From the cutting of characters,

reconfiguring of the timeline, addition and subtraction of plot events to a change in aesthetic

appearances. Due to the media specificity and creative decisions in the production process

‘differences’ can be abundant. Does this mean the GoT TV series is an unfaithful adaptation? I

would say it’s an undesirable question. Robert Stam explains that change is inevitable when a

creative work is adapted to a different medium: “the semiotic differences, practical and material

contingencies render fidelity in adaptation virtually impossible” (Stam, 2005: 17). Through a

combination of media affordances and practical constraints adaptations never adhere to literal

fidelity. Again this doesn’t mean adaptations are redundant. Examining the value and difference

between adaptation and transmedia practices Dena writes: “in the context of transmedia

practice, if the original creators are involved or creatively-organized in some way to ensure each

composition is part of the meaning-making process, then adaptation is simply another technique

practicioners may utilize to communicate meaning.” (Dena, 2009: 156)

Adaptation is often seen negatively, as though it degrades the original like a parasitic entity. If a

work stays true to the original it’s seen as uncreative and when it takes creative liberties it’s


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taken as a betrayal. Important to note however is that no work should be considered original,

certainly not in today’s age of digital re-appropriation. Digital media have transformed our way of

thinking about copy and original by making everything ‘copyable’. I would say that a certain

degree of ‘sameness’ is necessary in order for the audience to understand through recognition

and remembrance the intended meaning from the author. It’s where tropes and conventions in

media products delineate our meaning-making process through such paradigms as genrefication.

Fan cultures are built on the repurposing of such tropes. By taking elements of a creative work

out of its coherent world, out of context so to say, it can gain new defining meaning, which is

significant in its own right. Furthermore the semiosis that each creative work triggers will defer

on a personal basis. All media texts are inherently polysemic and thus open to multiple readings.

What then if we view adaptation as simply another ‘point-of-entry’, it would efface the hierarchy

of something being a primary text, instead it would be a node in the intermedia network. “This

resonates with the spirit of transmedia, in which each medium is seen as an equally viable

expression of a fictional world.” (ibid: 158) Of course these different point-of-entries are

economically motivated in that they target different audiences with different art form and media

preferences.

Although logic would dictate that an intermedia network is structured around compatibility this is

not necessarily the case with transmedia narratives. On the semiotic level a transmedia narrative,

as all narratives, is media independent and present in an abstract collective cognitive construct

informed by the discourse surrounding a transmedia text as well as the inherent sign dependence

which is featured in the interpretant in Peirce’s model. This dependence culminates into infinite

semiosis for since any sign must determine an interpretant in order to count as a sign, and

interpretants are themselves signs, infinite chains of signs become conceptually necessary. Ryan

defines narrative in the semiotic tradition of De Saussure thusly: “A narrative is a sign with a

signifier (discourse) and a signified (story, mental image, semantic representation). The signifier

can have many different semiotic manifestations. It can consist for instance of a verbal act of

story-telling (diegetic narration), or of a gesture and dialogue performed by actors (mimetic, or

dramatic narration).” (Ryan, 2001) On the level of transmission it is the physical carrier that

appropriates to a certain degree the semiotic operation of determination. The mode of

interaction afforded by and present in the transmissible process of information within semiosis is

media dependent. That said the physical carriers of a narrative have been converged into the

digitized network which facilitates and promotes an ease of transition from one part of the

transmedia text to the other. It is through the placement of such projects as BiV and WatC on the

digital space of the World Wide Web that embodies the hyperlinked network through which we

as users can hop from one part of a narrative to another be that intra- or intercompositionally

mediated.

There is an argument to be made that a project such as BiV straddles the line between forms of

media production. For the BiV project is not solely definable by reconfiguration since there is also

significant addition. The addition of video interviews, animation and photography gives the

project a different intracompositional nature. The website forms another point-of-entry into the

in vitro meat discussion besides the Bistro in Vitro cookbook. Both BiV and WatC are online

projects with a webpage as their home base featuring a multimedial configuration. It is the

bringing together of the audio, video, photography, text, icons and symbols that make up the

semiotic construct of these projects; a converging of complimentary media channels which

provide additive comprehension through their unique blend. “Media convergence requires the

concomitant use of a variety of media environments, governed by dissonant and

communicational, although complimentary, logics.” (Alzamora & Gambarato, 2014: 8)


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There needs to be a differentiation between intra- and intercompositional works in transmedia

theory. For I would argue an intracompositional creative work can still be classed as a

transmedial phenomenon. Such a creative body is simply another effect or byproduct of the

convergence culture. Through digitization haptically distinct media forms such as books, music,

photograph and film come together on the same haptic plane of existence; the computer screen.

Is to say that the heteromedial semiotic entities become less heterogeneous through the act of

digitization? If we read the digitized In Vitro Meat Cookbook instead of the paperbound one does

this constitute a difference in the experience, the meaning-making process? In order to answer

this question we need to ask whether the transformative act of one distribution technology to

another warrants a new semiotic definition of said work. I will briefly turn towards Bolter and

Grusin’s theory on remediation here to more adequately move forward.

Bolter and Grusin in their iconic text from 2000 redefine McLuhan’s remarks on the content of

any medium always being another medium through the double logic of remediation. Simply put

remediation is the representation of one medium in another. In the new design ecology of

combining creative works are elegantly constructed assemblages of ‘borrowed’ story content.

This logic is resonated in the sense that “all mediation is remediation because each act of

mediation depends upon other acts of mediation” (Bolter & Grusin, 2000: 346). What follows

then is a matter of whether the creative mosaic scrapbook of a mediated mediation is produced

according to the hypermediacy or immediacy logic.

Both BiV and WatC are online projects featuring multimedia websites meaning that the

hypermediacy and immediacy logic are recognizable there as well. In WatC there is the

immediacy of having the programmed desire to transport a viewer to for example Rio de Janeiro.

The usage of footage from the streets using Google Street View and the interviews using onsite

photography and diegetic audio adds to the sense of imagining to be transported to that distant

space and getting a feel for what it looks like, sounds like, and perhaps even smells like. As a sort

of overlay there is the hypermediacy typical for computer applications. Featuring menu’s,

buttons, icons, symbols and other navigation tools it reminds us of the mediated nature. This

dialogical relation is often reciprocal in that one enables the other. Rooted in praxis it is the

choice to either go for navigational clarity or for unmediated access that often comes to define

the design of such projects.

Let’s take for example the digitized GoT narrative. The reciprocal nature of immediacy and

hypermediacy is evident in the digitally (re)mediated texts. Reading a book on an e-reader signals

the desire for immediacy; its visual style often takes that of an analog book. There is even the

haptic connection due to the swiping across the screen to ‘turn’ a page. Although there is a desire

for the ‘unmediated’ to be found here it is a false one since it is a (re)mediation of the mediated

analog book. Bolter and Grusin explain that “the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension

between regarding a visual space as mediated and regarding it as a “real” space that lies beyond

mediation.” (Bolter & Grusin, 2000: 333) Hypermediacy is evident in the breaking of the apparent

transparency of the digital image. The buttons and menus that provide user interaction create a

system in which iconic and arbitrary signs of representation interact. The e-book example might

be best thought of as ‘horizontal’ remediation. There is a continuity and desire for emulation of

the previous media carrier. The ‘vertical’ would emphasize refashioning media, a breaking with

convention, change. Of course all remediation is as mentioned based on ‘old’ media, something

McLuhan dubbed the rear-view mirror effect. It is only by looking backwards that we can move

forward.


12

Simply changing the analog words into digital ones doesn’t change their inherent denotative

meaning. The polysemic signs that construe a work are re-represented without reconfiguration or

repurposing. Moving a work into digital space constitutes a shift in the sign’s locutionary praxis

not in its immediate interpretant. This is probably most appropriate for linguistic signs for they

are symbolic and thus the process of semiosis is habitual based on pragmatic convention.

Analogue signs such as smell, taste and visual images can signify subtleties that the digital cannot.

It is curious then that we often attribute some sense of ‘reality’ to digital images, reality as in

having a indexical relation to our perceived reality. Manovich in an often cited statement says:

“*T+he reason we may think that computer graphics has succeeded in faking reality is that, over

the course of the last hundred and fifty years, we have come to accept the image of photography

and film as reality.” (Manovich, 2001: 200). Important to note is that the reality a computer

image generates, reality as a human construct, is synthetic. Manovich coins the term synthetic

realism since digital images are synthetic in the sense that they are constructed from the ground

up using binary code (ibid: 192).

Unlike a TV series adaptation where the reconfiguring of the semiotic construction is clear

through the difference in expressive channels, from written word to a complex combination of

spoken word, diegetic audio, musical audio, synthetic and actual photographic images. The

reading of a book on paper or screen doesn’t directly change the meaning of the words but it

does constitute a shift in the experiential qualities of the medium. On the one hand his can be

attributed to the physical properties of the medium which influence the haptic engagement. On

the other hand is the emotional argument such as the nostalgic feeling of paper.

Thus the repurposing of semiotic material reveals the inseparability of the economic from the

social and material. Meaning that the construction of a creative work defines budgetary decisions

and social positions of the producers. Interesting to note here is that within an innovative

production company such as Submarine Channel the social positions for an interactive

production are not as clearly defined as say for a documentary movie which has its production

structure crystalized. In the bringing together of different disciplines such as web design,

photography, writing, interviewing, and production there is much coordination to be done to

make sure each role complements one another to adequately bring the content to a whole.

Because transmedia storytelling requires a high degree of coordination across the different

media sectors, it has so far worked best either in independent projects where the same artist

shapes the story across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or co-

creation) is encouraged across the different divisions of the same company. Most media

franchises, however, are governed not by co-creation (which involves conceiving the property in

transmedia terms from the outset) but rather licensing (where the story originates in one media

and subsequent media remain subordinate to the original master text.) In Game of Thrones and

Lord of the Rings, licensing seems to be the case. The author of the series owns the rights to all

reproductions and characters in the series, so he has control of video games, TV series, etc.

Traditionally it has been mass media which took over the semiotic operation of determination,

the idea of a one-way channel of communication. As discussed within the transmedia space

collaboration and co-creation is enabled and compelled meaning the generating of

“signs/interpretants according to the interests and goals of the parties involved” (Alzamora &

Gambarato, 2014: 9). The pragmatic improvement of intermedia dynamics is perhaps most

evident in the wide-spread usage of social media. It seems to have become almost mandatory to

include sharing tools so as to promote the spreading of your text. Unfortunately this type of user

interactivity severely limits user creativity and is more guided by promotional and thus economic


13

interest. Of course it is unfair to judge any project on the usage of such sharing tools since it

holds true that on average only 1% will actively contribute and take the role of prosumer, 90%

are so called lurkers and 9% will feel compelled enough to click that share button or contribute in

some other minor fashion.

On the intramedial level a project like WatC exemplifies the enabling and promoting of sign

association; establishing connections between similar ideas so as to create new meaning, a

guiding towards a new path of semiosis. Specifically WatC accomplishes this through the

‘suggesting’ of watching/reading a different story or news article somehow related to the one

you are currently seeing. Alzamora and Gambarato inform us that the best method upon which

to base the association of ideas is by similarity, not contiguity. Contiguity would impoverish

originality and creative production because it’s based on daily experience and familiar

knowledge. Similarity constitutes a more elaborate conscious process formed by analogy, some

base of equality. Looking at WatC informed by the promoting of the productive incompleteness

of interpretants through similarity we can see that it is not about resemblance between ideas but

the act of association that produces resemblance. Producing WatC we strived for a presentation

of a wide range of opinions ranging from positive to skeptical to negative. Often these opinions

would contradict each other; it is through the juxtaposition of ideas that the end-user will

associate in a dynamic process of sign/interpretant generation. Ultimately then “the design of

transmedia outlets would have the purpose of associating signs and generating new

interpretants.” (Alzamora & Gambarato, 2014: 10, emphasis added)


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5. WORLD BUILDING

Often the story of a transmedia franchise is not about a single character but about the created

world itself. For example the Matrix films follow Neo through his adventure to save the world,

but when we take into consideration the entire franchise the focus shifts from that of Neo to the

wider conflict present in the world. The Matrix franchise was envisioned and produced a priori as

a transmedia narrative featuring the ‘main’ film trilogy, animation film and videogame. Long uses

the terminology of ‘hard transmedia’ to represent transmedia narratives designed as such from

the outset, ‘soft’ being narratives only created after some original media component proved

successful. In a similar vein the Lord of the Rings franchise could be said to be about Frodo’s

quest to destroy the one ring. On a more meta-textual level, especially including the myriad of

media texts that are extensions to the main narrative, it is an elaborate rendition of the age-old

struggle of good versus evil which is narrativized through the world of Middle-earth.

I started of this paper by saying that stories are a fundamental part of being human. You might

say that we live stories. Lily Alexander in her book Fictional Worlds (2013) provides an interesting

approach as to why humankind is driven by and even to some degree dependent on storytelling.

In an interview with Henry Jenkins (2014: part 2) she says that “Stories serve as the symbolic

construction of community and facilitate the optimization of society by implicitly deliberating on

matters of “ideal” partnerships and social problem-solving.” Storytelling is a way of exploring

possibilities, to deliberate on social hypotheses and find a balance through the modeling and

examining of ‘possible futures’. This investment in ‘different realities’ can be seen in the creating

of fictional world; the act of ‘world-building’.

Another way to define transmedia is that the act of transmedia storytelling is about the art of

world making. Jenkins in his 2003 Transmedia Storytelling text already mentions that “A good

character can sustain multiple narratives and thus lead to a successful movie franchise. A good

“world” can sustain multiple characters (and their stories) and thus successfully launch a

transmedia franchise.” In order to attach an audience to a created fictional world it has to be

imbued with meaning. Creating symbolic universes endowed with meaning leads to the creation

of brands. “brand is a device that can produce a discourse, give it meaning, and communicate this

to audiences.”(Scolari, 2009: 599) Successful brands such as LotR and GoT present us with a

narrative world which expresses its own values through dominant narrative myths, meaning that

the narrative worlds are the brands.

Although such narrative worlds are medium independent they are often represented or adapted

to visual media because: “In a predominantly visual medium, the element of narrative that offers

the richest potential for variation is the setting.” (Ryan, 2001) the setting forms the playground in

which to explore and navigate one’s way through the narrative. As narrative is influenced by

setting so is setting influenced by genre. Genre forms the framework by which to structure and

define a story. It forms a recognizable baseline for the audience which addresses a certain

discourse in our society. The idealized representations of a genre are formed by ‘narrative

myths’. One such example of a dominant (classic) myth in contemporary culture is that of the

hero’s journey. Alexander defines the journey’s trajectory as such: “On the outward trajectory,

the Hero explores the Unknown, encounters a boundless diversity of species and types of

consciousness, and must grow rapidly in order to survive the journey-ordeal. On the Journey’s

inward path, as the “reborn” and enlightened Hero makes his way back home, to unite with

family, s/he must process these new experiences, extract vital information and evaluate how this

new knowledge will impact the Homeworld.” (Jenkins, 2014: part 3). The experience for the end-


15

user is hypothetical through the expression of symbolism and imagination as well as real in that

audience lives through the embedded narrative actualized as a subjective mental construct.

The story of Frodo’s journey to destroy the one ring in the LotR trilogy serves as a process of

symbolic community construction. Its fantasy genre provides us with a distant struggle, but one

which is familiarized through the employment of myths and values which are mirrored in

contemporary society. This is evident in the struggle between good and evil, order and chaos.

“Human drama is unfolding in time and space. In the narratives of the journey, the rules of

storytelling, and perhaps the author, who mount barriers and obstacles for the heroes, are

preventing them from completing their goal - that of passing the test of symbolic ritual journey

and achieving spiritual transformation” (Alexander, 2007: 28) Frodo undertakes his journey to

(re)balance the world, to save his world. Presented with the recognizable tropes and conventions

following the fantasy genre it provides a relatable alternative reality with which to measure our

own reality. The ritual of telling a story has been hidden behind a screen following the previously

discussed immediacy logic. Instead of sitting around a campfire the audience is distanced by the

embedding and symbolically encoding of a narrative in a mediated text. Symbols are not merely

some static entity, but form active processes in the act of storytelling, being polysemantic

renderings of some parallel reality. In Peircean tradition signs gain meaning through the dynamic

interpretant signaling the importance of interpretation to signification. Build from personal

experience and knowledge, informed by societal structures and mythic-symbolic processes,

interpretants connected with signs exist in a state of constant flux ever subject to change, thus

allowing progress. (Alzamora & Gambarato, 2014: 6)

“Mythological symbols are a database, while ritual is like hitting the “enter” button and activating

the system. Whether through performance, dance or storytelling, it was ritual action that had the

capacity to set mythological images in motion” (Jenkins, 2014: part 3). Although present in all

media forms it is games that bring the ritual to the fore once more. In ludology there is a ritual ‘at

play’ when we play; a (sub)conscious effort to take in certain positions, roles, hierarchy, etc.

Videogames in ritualized actio realize their embedded narrative through the activation of the

mythological image construct. Space then gains meaning through the ritualized undertaking of

creating a narrative. Alexander conceptualizes narrative texts as a system of ritual-symbolic

processes. This signals the close interplay between the ritual and symbol and places it in an active

discourse through ‘processes’. A fictional world without a narrative, born out of un-balance, is

just an empty world with potential. Whereas narrative has a beginning and end (transmedia

effaces this to some degree) worlds are spaces of ‘forever interaction’. World and story exist on

the same spatial plane, but differ on the temporal one because of the linear cause-and-effect

principle to which most stories adhere. Worlds then are always present in potentio, stories

however are a subjective mental construct only present in actio.

When we look at the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin we can see the creation of a

complete coherent environment situated as a system of ritual-symbolic processes. The worlds of

Middle-earth and Westeros form terrific examples of diegetic spaces that adhere to a semiotic

cohesion and continuity which promote expansion and re-appropriation by author and fan both.

In the transmedia context, there is not only a concern about visual continuity but also world

continuity. This means that videogames such as Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor function as an

extension of the Middle-earth narrative as a whole. Through the repurposing of Middle-earth’s

semiotic construct an entirely new intellectual property gets created in the same semantic

domain. Even though this game is entirely distinct and contains very little explicit reference to

the main trilogy it fits as another puzzle piece into the coherent whole. Mind you that these

puzzle are often without (clearly defined) borders. Past and future are there through the present


16

state of conflict, often more or less subliminally hinted at. It gives a world a sense of credibility if

it has a rich history on which to base its narrative. Jenkins says that “the world is bigger than the

film, bigger even than the franchise”. (2008: 116) Beyond the borders of the screen or the cover

of a book the world continues.

Important to recognize is that these grand creative works with all their elaborate world-building

make clear, perhaps more explicit than ever, that these are realities onto their own. The

evocation of a separate reality through the act of world building with its own spatio-temporal

dimension makes it more ‘real’. Real as though it’s a ‘lived’ reality which continues on living. The

actualization of a world’s narrative through our consumption constitutes this lived experience.

Being one of many actualizations it forms an imaginary ‘gestalt’ with gaps and open ends to be

imagined now and filled in later. Geoffrey Long uses the terminology of ‘negative capability to

describe this as an economic and cultural fuelled narrative strategy: “negative capability is the art

of building strategic gaps into a narrative to evoke a delicious sense of ‘uncertainty, Mystery, or

doubt’ in the audience.” (Long, 2007: 53) It forms the premises of a ‘healthy’ world where there

is yet much to be explored, through canon and fan culture alike. It empowers the audience to fill

in the gaps using their own imagination; it is less about suspension of disbelief and more about

‘create belief’, an active engagement with world of the creative work. It’s not about the fidelity of

the represented orc in Shadow of Mordor, It would assume some essentialist argument on what

an orc constitutes. I would instead propose it’s about being true, coherent and consistent to our

imaginary construct. Basically “fidelity to the imagination” (Hutcheon, 2004: 110).


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6. VIDEOGAMES

Interesting point on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is that the space construed in the game

plays rather smartly with the idea of a lived (personal) experience. Shadow of Mordor consists of

a series of mission which offer the player a classic linear path to follow the narrative to its end. At

the same time there is what’s named the ‘nemesis-system’ which comprises of an orc leader

hierarchy which shifts in a ‘seemingly’ organic way. The shifting of positions happens due to you

as a player character killing one of those orcs or independently due to the ‘natural orc way of

things’. Of course this is neither organic nor natural because the game simply follows its own

internal protocols and mechanisms, but it does create a living world, another reality, for those

who actively create belief.

Let us briefly turn to the role of videogames in the grand scheme of a transmedia narrative.

Videogames have been often employed in big franchises such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings

to reach out to that part of the market that doesn’t get covered by film or book or whatever

other medium. It is a way to realize the fictional world on a different platform which offers its

own unique affordances. It is perhaps due to its inherent interactive nature that videogames lend

themselves less well to adaptation and more to extension. Although ‘pure’ narrative techniques

such as cut-scenes are often employed to further the story in a game its primary mode of being is

still simulation through ludic events and not narration. What does the mode of simulation mean

for the world building of a transmedia narrative?

It is a problematic question on that it hinges on the position we theorize the player to be.

Although difficult it is possible to imagine the player to focus purely on the gameplay mechanics

and ignore the narrative story. Progression in a videogame isn’t equal to narrative progression

and as such doesn’t necessitate the construction of a complex fictional world through mental

representation. In a generalized sense most modern media texts “are built around psychological

tensions between characters and movement in psychological space, *…+ computer games return

us to ancient forms of narrative in which the plot is driven by the spatial movement of the main

hero”(Manovich, 2001: 246). Often computer games, as other media, take the myth of the hero’s

journey as the organizing narrative principle. It is a strong genre spanning narrative in

videogames because of the direct haptic engagement with the ‘hero’, the hero often takes the

form of a recognizable and often relatable avatar. Spatial advancement occurs through the

creation of environments which in order to become actualized require user input which in turn

generates a meaningful response within the digital space. Rule-based interactions form the core

modus operandi for semiosis in computer games. This is because “the primary representational

property of the computer is the codified rendering of responsive behaviors.” (Bogost, 2007: 42)

Bogost takes procedural rhetoric as his concept to explain the unique persuasive power of

videogames. Suffice to say that the procedural is tied to the core affordances of computers, that

of code, and is thus based on hardware which in turn facilitates, structures and governs user

interaction.

Presentation of fictional worlds is always incomplete, open-ended, for it allows expansion and

extension. Juul posits in his influential work Half-Real that fictional worlds in videogames are not

only incomplete but also ‘incoherent’: “In addition to incomplete worlds, some games, and many

videogames, present game worlds that are incoherent worlds, where the game contradicts itself

or prevents the player from imagining a complete fictional world” (Juul, 2005: 123). Incoherency

is often visible through the game mechanics that constitute a game. Having three lives in a game


18

doesn’t make any sense from a narrative standpoint. Most often though these mechanics are

based on generally accepted tropes and convention of videogame design and as such players are

familiar with the working of them and don’t question the arbitrary nature. Acceptance of the

game mechanics comes through increased familiarity with them, in other words; by playing you

get better at a game and thus have less reason to question the apparent ambiguity. In contrast to

the quest for immediacy through artificial photographic imagery Bogost states that “meaning in

videogames is constructed not through a re-creation of the world but through selectively

modeling appropriate elements of the world.” (Bogost, 2007: 46) A tight symbolic coupling

between user action and the virtual representation then would lead to a more emphatic and

dialectical engagement.

Ryan (2001) on narrative in digital media distinguishes between four strategic forms of

interactivity based on two binary pairs; internal/external and exploratory/ontological. I will limit

my discussion to that of the external/exploratory and external/ontological interactivity. Internal

would mostly pertain to such media texts as videogames where the user projects him/herself as a

member of the fictional world. Both BiV and WatC remain external in that we as a user remain on

the outside of the virtual world (re)presented. Question is then whether our activity within the

narrative engagement constitutes a change or shift. Since all narratives are a cognitive construct

based in some part on subjective knowledge this leads us to a more essentialist question of

whether we as a user can change the spatio-temporal progression of a narrative, and by

extension a virtual world, to make history so to say. In praxis this ontological interactivity usually

comes in the form of illusionary choice; specific branching choices are semiotically determined

and don’t change the narrative embedded within. For BiV and WatC we have the flexibility of

interactivity combined with the coherence of a pre-authored narrative. It is the temporal

ordering of different items that the user can alter leading to a different assemblage in the active

process of narrative comprehension.

Jenkins on narrative architecture in videogames states that “Environmental storytelling creates

the preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of four ways: spatial

stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground where

narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene;

or they provide resources for emergent narratives” (Jenkins, 2004, 3). Although environmental

storytelling specifically discusses videogame logic featuring a coupling of spatial progression with

that of narrative progression we can broaden this concept to include the afore discussed praxis of

world-building. Designing a virtual world might be best thought of as narrative architecture.

Moving from one text to another within an intermedial (or in the case of BiV and WatC

intramedial) transmedia narrative we unlock the embedded narrative within. The associative

semiosis allowing for emergent narrative connections built upon evocative spaces with room for

infinite expansion and re-appropriation.


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7. HYPERTEXTUALITY

When talking about the active engagement with a text we can draw a connection with the theory

of Barthes on textual analysis. Barthes’ Book S/Z from 1970 is perhaps best known for making the

distinction between ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts. Simply put a readerly text positions the

audience as a passive consumer of a pre-existing meaning, whereas the writerly text positions

the audience as an active contributor to the text’s meaning. We can see that through the

application of transmedial production logic we are perhaps one step closer to that utopian goal

of achieving true writerly texts. With the advent of the hypertext, the digital text connected by

hyperlink in a network, the concept of the writerly found new ground. Hypertext “allows the

reader to interact with the text, to follow any of the numerous networks and links, and construct

his or her own pathway through the information, unconstrained by the readerly text’s strict

linearity and predetermined meaning.” (Elsaesser & Buckland, 2002: 162) It is problematic

though to keep up this distinction based on the writerly being of a higher ideological order than

that of the readerly especially in the extremely heterogeneous digital media landscape of today.

In the same vain as adaptations being second-rate it should prove to be more practical and

realistic to do away with such hierarchies.

Ryan writes about the hypertext environment in which narratives in convergence culture

circulate. (Ryan, 2001) Hypertextuality presents us with a change in how narratives are

experienced. Because of the distributed nature of a narrative in a hypertext network there is a

distinct lack of linearity. The classic narrative presents us with a linear path from beginning to

middle to end; the syuzhet in terminology of Propp’s Russian formalist theory. Hypertext

reconfigures narrative, splinters it up, and dynamically unfolds it. As always it is through the

reading of the text(s) that the narrative becomes, becomes real in so far as ‘another’ reality that

is construed from its own distinct semiotic construct. A lack of linearity doesn’t destroy the

narrative though; rather it gives unprecedented potential for multiple readings. Since narrative is

one of the key defining mechanisms of our society it’s engrained within people to recognize story

and construct meaning, resulting in little difficulty to make ‘sense’ of a narrative fragmented

across different texts, and in the case of transmedia across media a swell.

Although the hypertext is not a unique quality to transmedia practices it does constitute a similar

user experience in that transmedial constructs are network unto themselves inwardly by

combining different media texts into one narrative and outwardly by the culture based semiosis.

One way to promote ‘movement’ from the reader through the open-ended perpetually

unfinished textuality is through the deployment of hermeneutic codes. Long recognizes this by

writing that in transmedia narratives “the key is to leave a number of the hermeneutic codes

unresolved to serve as potential migratory cues, relying upon the audience’s capacity for negative

capability to fill in the gaps” (Long, 2007: 67). Hermeneutic codes are one of the five codes that

Barthes describes. The hermeneutic code structures a text’s order and it names the units whose

function it is to articulate a question, its response and the delay of response. It’s about giving the

audience questions which create suspense and expectation. When captivated the audience will

want to read on to find out the answers.

In a transmedia narrative this might mean leaving questions to be addressed later on in a text on

a different media platform. Barthes focuses on the hermeneutic codes in a single text which are

often fairly explicitly expressed. A transmedia franchise has the difficulty of wanting to produce

autonomous texts which can be read regardless of prior knowledge and wanting their audience


20

to migrate across to other creative works in the franchise. In transmedia storytelling “Each

franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the

games, and vice-versa. Any given product is a point of entry into the franchise as a whole.”

(Jenkins, 2008: 98) It results in a conflict of interests because leaving big questions unanswered

results in a disappointing text. Often what happens then is that certain texts (usually on a

different medium considered secondary texts) function as an extension that in some way

broadens or deepens the narrative world as it stands.

The videogame Enter the Matrix and the animation The Animatrix fit into the whole Matrix

narrative rather neatly and shine some light on certain events unfolding in the Matrix trilogy.

Ideally each entry into a franchise is capable of “Offering new levels of insight and experience

refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty.” (Jenkins, 2008: 98) Even though Enter the

Matrix and The Animatrix answer questions, they are questions I didn’t have. Because the

unresolved hermeneutic codes in the Matrix trilogy don’t disturb the coherent narrative in those

three films there is no explicit reason or migratory cue present. The same logic can be applied to

the Game of Thrones franchise where the books or TV series can be seen as the primary text

which misses a presence of migratory cues out of hermeutic codes to ‘other’ texts. Reasoning for

the emission of migratory cues can be varied but a want of the ‘original’ author for complete

control over the narrative in order to produce a coherent conclusive whole within the primary

medium seems a logical one. It is I’ll concede a balancing act between potential migratory cues

and the audience’s capacity for negative capability. Also adhering to having exclusive content for

each text is at odds with adaptation logic which thrives of copying content. The pleasure of

‘reading’ a text can lie in the act of recognition and remembrance, at the same time it can satisfy

(or disappoint) the audience their curiosity. For example you will have a certain image in mind of

what a character looks like after reading the GoT or LotR books. Will this align with the audio-

visual depiction in the TV or movie series; most likely not. It offers a re-reading of the character in

a narrative reality adjacent to that of the books which is valuable in its own right. Comparisons

like these offer some insight into the ideological apparatus at play within narrative

representation.


21

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