Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling

Kelly McErlean has developed graduate and postgraduate programs in film and new media for local and international delivery and successfully delivered eLearning and onsite contracts for international broadcast organisations on behalf of the European Broadcasting Union. Kelly lectures on new media, film and entrepreneurship at the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. He has won several awards including a Golden Spider Award and a Digital Media Award for his film, new media, and photographic works. Kelly holds a PhD in visual culture from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Introduction



Who is this Book For?
Defining Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Stories
The Author
New Modes of Storytelling
A Summary of the Chapters
Commercial Imperative
The Command to Read
Lateral Thinking
Pitching your Idea
Developing an Ideas Book / Visual Diary

Traditional Narrative Texts



Talking Pictures - Finding Narrative in Photography
Geometry in Photo Composition
Story Sequences in Stills
Pedro Meyer’s The Illusion of Real Space
Navigating Linear Texts
Verisimilitude
Brechtian Realism
Aristotle’s Poetics
Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress
Baudelaire’s l'Art mnemonique
Film Editing - Walter Murch
The Rule of Six
The 3rd Effect
Eisenstein’s Diagrammatic Score
Precipitant Sounds
Embodied Sounds
Narrative Progression
Interpreting the Author’s Intent
Narrative Reality versus Audience Reality
Text on Screen
Constructing a Storyline
Narrative Distance, Depth and Alignment
Bazin’s Invisible Witness
Story Rhythm - the Haiku
Silent Era Techniques
Bonitzer on Hitchcock
The Macguffin
Zizek on Hitchcock

Subjective Interpretation



Narrative Perspectives
Entgrenzung: The Dissolution of Perspectival Boundaries
Linguistic Flexibility: Blending Words into Chords
Narrative Deconstruction
The Loop: IF, THEN, GOTO
Cause and Effect
Relinquishing Authorial Control
Attentional Blink
Confabulation: Emotional Experiences Without Context
Evolving Language
Calvino: the Malleable Relationship between Reader and Narrator
Subjective Responses to Colour and Form
Active and Passive Colours
Emotional Responses to Colour
Digital and Analogue Colour Palette
Instinctual Responses to Geometric Forms
The Will-to-Art
Knowing Your Audience
Controlling the Narrative / Owning the Text
Kandinsky’s Chain of Related Sensations

Sound Design



Primal Responses to Sound
Classifying Harmonics in Terms of Emotional Response
Narrative Soundscapes
Affective Audio
Cueing-In Emotions
Separating Dialogue from Background Noise
Prosody and Syntax
Musical Motifs
Representations of Emotions
Universal ‘Palette’ of Sound
Memories of Feelings - the Limits of the Codification of Musical Forms
Anticipation and Resolution
Rhythmic Organisation and ‘Percussive Barriers’
Psychological and Ontological Time
Musical Notation
Accidental Counterpoint
Communicating Emotion through Music
Syncopation
The Soundtrack
Cinematic Allusionism
Sound Elements of Film
Imitative-Denotative Instrumentation
Limitations of Visual and Dialogue
Leitmotif
Empathetic / Anempathetic Soundtracks

Visual Montage



Montage: Juxtaposing Visual Elements
Affidavit-Exposition
Vertical Montage
Photo Montage: Hockney’s Joiners
Burroughs’s Literary Cut-Ups
The Lettrists
Brueghel’s Micronarratives
Marker’s La Jetée
Spatial Representation of Temporal Sequences
Multiple Narrative Perspectives On-Screen
Vertov’s Kino-Eye

Codifying Story Elements



Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale
Narratology: How Narrative Structures Affect Our Perception
Narratology Terminology: Synecdoche, Contiguous, Metonym
Embedded Narratives: Fabula and Syuzhet
A Perspectival Approach to Narrative

Subjective Retroversion
The Photograph: A Message Without a Code

War Primer: Brecht’s Photo-Epigrams
Talking Pictures: Photographic Stills and Audio Vignettes
Perec’s ‘Infra-Ordinary’
De Quincey’s Record of Regency London

The Photograph: Flat Anthropological Fact
Brecht’s Theory of Distanciation
Primacy of Lexis Over Plot
Visualisation of Large Data Sets
Metadata - Tagging Archived Content
The Photo Archive
Photogrammetry: Cyber-Archaeology
Trend-Identifying Algorithms
Netflix Quantum Theory
Authoring Multiple Narrative Trajectories
The Database
Hypernarrative
Extractive Hypertext and Immersive 3D
Associative Linkage
Genre Classification
The Cinematic Metaphor
Non-Traditional Film: Gordon’s ‘Temporal Deceleration’
Emergent Narratives
Triangulating Content

Interactive Narratives



Textual Interaction
Char Davies - Osmose
Proprioception
Artist and Audience: Atherton’s Interactive Discourse
Non-Linear Texts
Syncretic and Synaesthetic Language
The Disrupting Effect of Latency Within Simulated Stories
Interactive StoryTelling
Immersion in the Textual World
Visual Writing
Temporal Immersion
Backstory
Ergodic Texts
Constant Recontextualisation
Depth-First Exploration
Structures of Interactivity
Spatial and Emotional Immersion
The Greek Chorus
Audience Participation: Living Theatre
The Perspectivist Approach
The Freytag Triangle
Narrative Constraints
Joyce’s Epiphany
The Language of Television
Impositional and Expressive Narratives
The Objective Correlative
Virtual Identities
Flat and Round Characters

VR Storytelling Techniques
Performative Gestures
Gesture Controlled Interfaces
Technology and Art
Hoey’s The Weight of Water: Manufacturing Presence in VR
Mixed Storytelling: Fran Bow
Interactive Poetry: Dear Esther
Location-Based AR
The Narrative Architect
Experimental Narrative Riffs: Grammatron
Remediating Stories
Interactive Design: Twine

The Business of Transmedia Storytelling



#FindTheGirl
Blast Theory - Ivy4EVR
Karen
Content Creation Departments - Going Viral
The Digital Newsroom - Transmedia and VR
Storytelling on Social Media Platforms
Data Analytics
Story Development Tools and Technologies
Augmented Reality

Recreating the Theatre Experience

Conclusion

Appendix 1 - Making The Little Extras



Towards a New Film Paradigm
Storytelling using Spatial Montage
The Spectator’s Gaze
The Primacy of the Author
Abdicating Authorship
Deconstructive Cinema
The Function of Embedded Narratives
Learning New Modes of Interaction
Narrative Immersion
Foveal and Peripheral Vision
Altering Perspective
The Little Extras Sound Design
Interpreting and Re-Interpreting the Textual World
Storyboards and Animatics

Appendix 2 - Digital Data Compression



Spatial and Temporal Compression - Exploiting Redundancy
Quantisation: Threshold Levels and Banding
Coding Compression
Frame Prediction: Keyframes and Checksum Values

Bibliography

Index