Teacher Seeks to Reinvent Storytelling with Transmedia Project

Jonathan Belisle, a Montreal teacher, script writer and web entrepreneur, has a storytelling system that combines old and new, traditional mythology and modern technology, and fantasy and reality.

Wuxia the Fox is a transmedia project that comes as an illustrated book paired with an iPad app.

Using the iPad app to read the symbolic blocks placed on one of the maps in the book. (PRNewsFoto/Wuxia the Fox )
Using the iPad app to read the symbolic blocks placed on one of the maps in the book. (PRNewsFoto/Wuxia the Fox )

“The app reacts to what it hears and sees,” explains Belisle. “As you read the story, the app adds the music and sound effects, based on where you are in the story and the tone of your voice. It’s the future of children’s books.”

The iPad app triggers new scenes of content using image recognition, and transforms into a musical instrument when interacting with small wooden blocks provided with the book.

It’s a revolutionary way to tell stories – for young and old. The messages in this kids’ book deal with the climate changes, earth and dreams. “This can be a tool for young people to increase their awareness of the technological and ecological changes currently underway,” said Belisle. “In addition to weaving a great tale, it can inspire people to be more environmentally responsible.”

Jonathan Belisle presenting Wuxia's Book & App interactions. (PRNewsFoto/Wuxia the Fox )
Jonathan Belisle presenting Wuxia’s Book & App interactions. (PRNewsFoto/Wuxia the Fox )

The story in this augmented book revolves around Oremia, an 8-year-old girl who has vivid recurring dreams of great whales. Convinced she is actually a hologram, she meets Wuxia, a young fox with telepathic powers. Wuxia agrees to join Oremia to search for a legendary humpback whale named Nioma.

The combination of highly sophisticated electronics and lush illustrations has placed a significant price tag on this groundbreaking transmedia project. Belisle needs about $64,000 for book graphics, audiovisual content for the iPad app, development of the sound and symbol recognition algorithm, and copy editing. From now until May 2, 2014, he is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the project.

He plans to make the system available in French and English.

Depending on their donation levels, contributors can receive PDF versions of the book, soft and hardcover editions of the book in various sizes and wooden amulets.

“Our goal is to reinvent storytelling,” Belisle said. “It will inspire adults and children to connect with nature, developing new ways to share bedtime stories and explore their dreams.”

LINKS

Kickstarter Campaign for Wuxia

Wuxia

Digital Book World Webcast to Discuss Multi-Platform Storytelling

DBWLogoWRITERS. Digital Book World is a year-round platform for consumer publishing professionals and their partners, including agents, booksellers, and technology vendors. Digital Book World offers a range of educational resources and networking opportunities — online and in person.

On Tuesday, August 13, Digital Book World is hosting a webcast entitled, “Think Outside the Book: Multi-Platform Storytelling and Digital Publishing.” Scheduled for 12 pm ET (9 am PT and 5 pm GMT), the webcast will explain why digital publishing is the perfect format for transmedia storytelling.

The content is designed to appeal to:

  • book publishers (large and small)
  • book app developers
  • authors
  • booksellers
  • artists
  • people who embrace technology
  • people who hate technology

Transmedia experts Connie Watts and Jen Olson will discuss how book enhancements such as video, music, narration, pop-ups, games, interactive maps, and 3D objects can be strategically used to give readers more context or provide multiple entry points into a story, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. For examples, enhancements can be use to add more context around a fictional Elizabethan kingdom or liven up a golf book with local news clips from a golf tournament from the 1970s. 

Watts and Olson will explain how to use transmedia as a marketing tool, highlight strategies for collaborating with authors, and suggest techniques for connecting with children and other readers with short attention spans. They will point out that whether we like it not, digital book enhancements are here to stay.

Connie Watts and Jen Olson are the principals of WiredBallyWho, a transmedia publishing company that helps authors, business leaders, and non-profit organizations rethink their approach to traditional book publishing. They also work with artists, photographers, and musicians who want to share their talents through transmedia projects.

Tuition for the webcast is $27 for Digital Book World members and $45 for non-members.

An individual membership to DBW costs $99. Along with discounts on webcasts, online courses, and books, members get on-demand access to all webcast archives and featured audio and video and downloadable resources such an e-book formatting checklist and SEO best practices guide.

Future webcasts and courses include:

  • Webcast: Print to Digital, Digital First, Simultaneous First: What’s Your Strategy? (August 22)
  • 4-Week Course: Metadata Best Practices and Industry Certification (Begins August 19)
  • 4-Week Course: Metadata and the Future of Publishing (Begins September 16)

LINKS

Webcast: Think Outside the Book: Multi-Platform Storytelling and Digital Publishing

About Digital Book World

About WiredBallyWho

 

What’s The Difference Between Cross-Media Marketing and Transmedia Storytelling?

Do you know the difference between cross-media marketing and transmedia storytelling? What about interactive advertising?

I hadn’t given any of these buzzwords much thought until I started compiling a list of technology-related trends that creative professionals probably need to think about as they try to anticipate where their next opportunities might come from.  The more I learn about these trends, the brighter the future looks for creative professionals with a natural gift for conceptual thinking.

Cross-media marketing is defined by InfoTrends as “the use of two or more media types (print, e-mail, Web, mobile, and/or social) in an orchestrated campaign targeting a specific demographic and/or psychographic segment…A cross-media campaign delivers relevant content and a call to action through multiple media simultaneously as an integrated campaign.”

JWT Transmedia Rising CoverTransmedia storytelling, as explained by JWTIntelligence, “involves narrative threads tailored for different channels (from mobile to big screens, from social to traditional media) and audiences (gamers, readers, Tweeters, etc.)…For brand marketers, this means that rather than striving for consistency across multiple touchpoints, the goal is for different channels to communicate different things (within the overarching strategy), with an emphasis on putting the brand community at the center.”

JWT’s Dean Baker explains it this way: “What we need to do is figure out the story behind the brand, the place it wants to occupy in the consumer’s mind, deconstruct it, make it relevant and reassemble it for the relevant audiences on the appropriate channels. Then, through social media, let the experience and associations grow organically.”

Interactive advertising, as described in the excellent documentation on The Barbarian Group website, is “any advertising that a potential customer can interact with.” While most interactive advertising takes place on the Internet, it could also be advertising on a mobile phone, a kiosk on a salesroom floor, or a billboard on Times Square. Interactive advertising is not human, it is not e-commerce, and it is more than banners and websites. Most importantly, says The Barbarian Group, “It is the one form of advertising that the customer initiates.”

I learned about The Barbarian Group when I read a news item about a billboard they had created that uses facial-recognition technology to interpret the characteristics and movements of viewers and adjust the advertising content accordingly.

Is your mind boggled yet? Mine certainly is.

But the reason I feel optimistic for creatives is because success in all three of these areas will require higher levels of both analytical and conceptual thinking.

For marketing execs (analytical thinkers), these trends add new layers of complexity to planning and measuring integrated marketing strategies.

Marketing-service providers will have to innovate in order to help their clients execute all of the elements of cross-media, transmedia, and interactive campaigns in the most cost-effective, efficient, and timely manner.

Then, it will be left up to conceptual thinkers (the creatives) to come up with the novel ideas and fresh approaches to storytelling that will effectively engage targeted consumers at every point in the process.

This could present some refreshing opportunities for creatives, because so much of the work formerly trusted to creative professionals has been boiled down into “formulas,” then automated in the form of templates and artificial intelligence embedded in graphic-design and image-editing software.

Perhaps because of the sheer volume of fresh content that must be continually fed to the Internet, creative professionals often find themselves regarded more as assembly-line production laborers than as potential contributors of innovative strategies.  In my opinion, creative talent is sometimes under-utilized.

Hopefully, creative professionals will find new ways to contribute as marketing (and entertainment) becomes more dependent on finding new ways to construct and deliver coherent and emotionally powerful stories across multiple platforms.

Resources

The Barbarian Group defines themselves as “a digital services and creation company that delivers the best possible experience for the consumer through the integrated and disciplined use of the best possible practices, good ideas, people and technology.” The portfolio portion of their website features examples of interactive advertising, including a trade-show backdrop projection wall in which blades of grass sway in a virtual breeze created as visitors walk past.  Their Barbaripedia includes a wealth of information about how interactive production differs from traditional advertising and broadcast production. They recommend way to avoid potential pitfalls.

InfoTrends is a worldwide market-research and strategic consulting firm serving the digital-imaging and document solutions industries. Their recent study, entitled “The Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity,” explains how marketing executives are using print, online, mobile, and social media in their businesses.

JWTIntelligence, part of the JWT marketing-communications agency, is described as “a center for provocative thinking.” They describe their mission as follows: “We make sense of the chaos in a world of hyper-abundant information and constant innovation—finding quality amid the quantity.”  Their trendletter entitled “Transmedia Rising,” explains why “The days of broadcasting to consumers are over, a new era of entertaining, engaging, and empowering consumers is upon us.” The report highlights examples of transmedia projects such as Mattel’s Ken and Barbie campaign and The Old Spice campaign featuring The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.