Sunday, August 30, 2009

Hard and Soft Transmedia

So listening to a couple of cool podcasts from Henry Jenkins blog, most from about 2-3 years ago, I can't help but feel a little out of date. I've been thinking about these things for that long, but haven't put much effort into researching them until now. Still better late then never.

It's funny how all the examples I was thinking of are the ones they are using too - ie Matrix, Star Wars, LOTR, Batman, Spiderman, etc. Listening to this podcast with the creators of Heroes about transmedia and learning just how transmedia the show is has been fascinating. I always liked the program, but felt it fell flat in some places and didn't quite live up to its potential. That's what all these transmedia academics have been saying too! I have much more respect for the show now, and will have to make an effort to watch past season 2.

It seems one of the students in the Q & A session at the end of the podcast is thinking about some of the ideas I mentioned in my last post. The distinction I talked about between a 'disembodied narrative' and 'transmedia narrative' is described by the student as 'hard' and 'soft' transmedia, soft being those transmedia media stories that are just alternate media extensions of a successful property, and hard being what I describe as a disembodied narrative below. I like the scalability of his description which allows for a grey area rather then either/or, though I must admit I'm still partial to my term disembodied narrative. Coming from an interest in the queer community and politics, transmedia just makes me think of movies for transgendered people. (I won't even get into the resulting conotations then of 'hard' and 'soft') :P

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