Is Transmedia Storytelling grown popularity?

According to Jenkins, Transmedia storytelling has grown an importance as Hollywood strategy because it is designed to share, and collaborate in a cohesive story experience across multimedia platforms. This will help the audiences to engage in the larger storytelling world. By integrating entertainment and marketing, it makes strong emotional attachments and use them to generate additional sales.  Also, Jenkin’s argument in the clip video regarding transmedia project is that by using the web to create transmedia exposure around their product, the amateurs and fans are able attaching themselves by adding fan fiction, fan video to expand their story with the use of convergence media of storytelling.

Some example of transmedia storytelling from Jenkin’s book was the original movie, The Matrix, which took us into a world where the line between reality and illusion is blurred. The Matrix phenomenon when originally viewed left many people perplexed, confused and some loved the movie. The movie created a huge fan base where people are voicing their opinion and interpretation of the movie. The Wachowski brothers played the transmedia game by first put the original film to stimulate interest, offering web comics, second film sequel, releasing computer game and followed by the last film sequel which later turn into a massive multiplayer online game. This is truly how transmedia work by building what has come before, while offering new points of entry.  

Star Wars is another example that moved from film into novels, it expanded the timeline to show events that were not contained in the film trilogies. Also, Star Wars transmedia went into games, those games did not just enact film events, they ventured into other stories such as the Jedi trainee, bounty hunter and many more for the fans and to generate revenue.  Other examples of transmedia storytelling he discussed in the book included Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings.

Another example is from the short clip video of how transmedia storytelling worked. In “2012 movie”, there was a whole website created that explained the destruction of the world which the scenario that played out in the movie and all the box stories were available in the web that the fan could drill much deeper into story than ever before. He explained it was about dispersing the information and created multi points of contact for the listeners to the story that have been told. It’s like one big jigsaw puzzle where audiences are comparing, sharing notes and collectively put together to form a meaningful hole...