From the Bible to Harry Potter, University searches for one great storyteller

Perhaps one reason why the life of the Christ is the 'greatest story ever told' is the way it's been the subject of countless movies, great works of art and architecture, and of course the written word itself.

It may well be the perfect example of 'transmedia' - and Malta is getting ready to catch up with this increasingly popular approach to storytelling.

A competition currently being organised at the University of Malta is urging writers, artists and other creative individuals to tell a story across various media - be they online or offline - through the Transmedia Storytelling Competition.

Competitors are being asked to tell a story that could flow from one medium to another, to create a holistic and inclusive experience. The prize: a month-long 'mentorship' to develop their project professionally, and even take it to the international market.

And though it may sound like a newfangled concept, at its core the transmedia experience has been with us for quite some time.

In fact, Jean Pierre Magro - a transmedia producer and Phd researcher who organised a seminar that inspired the competiton in February - uses a particularly ancient artefact as an example of a transmedia narrative.

"The Bible is, in fact, the perfect example of a well-oiled transmedia narrative. The Judeo-Christian book is told in literature, theatre, music, art and even architecture..."

But one reason why transmedia is making its way into the spotlight right now is due to the prevalence of online social media... and by extension, industry's realisation that there is real money to be made from the cross-over potential of various media.

Because they require no real technical know-how, blogs and social media platforms have opened up opportunities for writers and artists to create and disseminate their work cheaply and quickly.

"The audience has been transformed into a produser," Magro said, highlighting how the increased interactivity of the internet has changed the idea of the audience as simply being a passive receiver, and made it into an active participant.

"If the media people learn to harness their fan base, then they can create an army of evangelists who will push your product. Have a look at what happened with Doctor Who. The fans kept it alive long after its demise... then BBC realised this and their rebooted the series," Magro said.

It is a potentially important development for Malta. Because the internet is a free platform, even someone from a small country like Malta would practically be given the same opportunities as any international artist or creator.

"Malta can never become Hollywood and its film output will remain small because of budgets. Nonetheless, it can play a fundamental role in building certain transmedia components such as a web series, tablet and mobile phone applications, interactive graphic novels and games," Magro, whose company The Factory Media Group is mentoring the competition's organising committee, said. 

"Since transmedia is relatively new, it doesn't have a solid financing model, which is an opening for innovative Maltese to spearhead a new approach. Malta has a strong history of doing a lot with very little," competiton co-organiser Edward Duca added.

Cleaning up our act

While Magro believes transmedia can be "an exciting vehicle to push our products,  our stories" he added that "before we can do that we need to clean up our act. We need to create the proper infrastructures. We talk a lot about the importance of creating a creative economy. How can this be done if story is not a central subject?"

Magro's primary concern is that in Malta, the audiovisual industry is still treated as "some sort of hobby".

"It is in this field that the university of Malta is letting its students down," he said, adding that "we need to give our students the best education possible. At the moment we are not. The University of Malta has no real impact on society. In fact, one can look at what is done on TV, and see that it's just plain rubbish."

As a solution, Magro proposes that University should become "more pro active".

"We should be able to discuss popular culture, create a magazine that analyses media events, trends and programmes... and refrain from publishing arbitrarily chosen poems and random articles."

According to Creative Economy Advisor Toni Attard, government's recent cultural funding programmes - of which the Transmedia Competition itself is a benefactor - cater to transmedia by proxy because they do not discriminate between media or artistic genres.

"None of the current funding programmes specifically say: 'this is just for visual arts'... any creative work is eligible, and multi-disciplinary work is encouraged," Attard said.

Asked to comment on whether they're aware of the transmedia phenomenon and its implications, Minister for Culture Mario de Marco pointed out that the ministry has been supportive of transmedia.

"Opening up to this media trend encourages creators to think outside the confines of the traditional boxes.

"It is an absolute must for the Maltese creative sector to establish a networking culture and to position itself on the international creative industries map.

"In order to achieve this, we also need to keep investing in training and in the development of our indigenous sector as it becomes increasingly difficult to distribute works in a fragmented market," de Marco added.

The competition will be accepting submissions until July 16, noon.

WHAT IS TRANSMEDIA?

A few examples of transmedia - from religion to pop culture.

The Bible

A transmedia project that has stood the test of time, the Bible remains the most impressive cross-genre project of the lot. Encompassing every form of media imaginable - from the written word to paintings, from sculpture to architecture - the religious narrative is told in myriad ways every day.

Pottermore

As if a stratospherically popular book and film series were not enough, last July Harry Potter creator JK Rowling launched an interactive website where fans can 'explore' the Harry Potter books for snippets and features that weren't featured in the original books, while related web games are also featured on the site, along with access to e- and audio book versions of the boy wizard saga. Though it's the first official online platform expanding on Rowling's fantasy universe, Pottemore is preceded by Heather Lawver's The Daily Prophet. Created when Lawver was just 13 years old, the interactive site brought to life the wizarding world's daily newspaper.

Betty Draper's Twitter account

She's known to fans of TV series Mad Men as the long-suffering wife to serial philanderer and advertising guru Don Draper, but thanks to advertiser Helen Klein Ross, Betty Draper was also given a chance to air her side of the story on Twitter.  The micro-blogging website gives 'Betty' the opportunity to berate her children (who also have Twitter accounts), dish out domestic advice and present her take on events in the series. Far from taking umbrage at the fact that Ross decided to play digital puppet mistress with one of his characters, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner commended Ross's effort... perhaps shrewdly acknowledging that such online tampering is the way of the future.

Star Wars Expanded Universe

Probably one of the most lucrative transmedia projects ever, the still-growing Star Wars 'Expanded Universe', started developing in and around George Lucas's space-fantasy saga pretty much right after the its first film trilogy (1977-1983) clocked out with Return of the Jedi. Since then, Lucas has not only released a second prequel trilogy (starting with Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace in 1999); he has also shrewdly outsourced elements of his box office-breaking series to novelists, comic book companies, animation studios and video game developers, which have built on minor characters and created storylines set before, after and sometimes even during the timeline of the 'canonical' films, creating a sub-industry in their own right.