Key Influences / Market Research

A story has five basic important elements. These five components are the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the theme. (Weaver, 2013)These are the important elements to keep the story running smoothly. The main character for our storyline is Kylie, she is an ordinary girl who has many ambitions. The other character includes H'ana (personified essential oil brand), Kylie’s mother, and Jessica. The setting for this story took place in Kylie’s home. The plot is that H’ana had launched a campaign called “Define Yourself”. This campaign is to encourage people to find their dreams and Kylie joined the campaign five years ago. Today she received a parcel delivered by H’ana, and inside the box is about her story. This parcel reminds her to not give up on things she likes to do even when no one supports her. So, she decided to share her story with others and encourage others in finding their dreams.

The conflict took place when Kylie is being doubted and judged by her friends and family for being ambitious. Because of judgements from friends and family, she began to question herself on what she is doing, is it right or wrong? This is a story in conflict of man vs self and individual vs society themes. The idea of doing this theme is because there are always people judging others for no reason, but the biggest challenge of all is how we overcome ourselves. This story is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) and it is a motion animation. ARG is combining real life activities with digital game play elements, which are tracked online. (www.td.org, n.d.)

One of the transmedia case studies that we found that is interesting is “Why so serious?” It is a viral campaign that interacts with the audience and the campaign had been created before the releasing date of the movie “The Dark Knight”. The campaign named “Why so serious?” is the word that Joker uses the most. Instead of putting batman as the topic for the campaign, they decided to use Joker and Harvey Dent as the main character in the campaign. The audience can participate in this Augmented Reality Game by completing the mission prompt in the campaign website. There were given clues in each phase as the game proceeds. An example of given clues to the audience, some of the DC books at the comic store were slotted with the joker's cards that can be scanned to reveal the hidden clue. Another interesting part is where they created a website where audiences from all over the world can participate in the game to solve the mission. The transmedia experience for the movie “The Dark Night“ was a success because it reached a million participants all over the countries played across hundreds of web pages, interactive games, mobile phones, print, email, real-world events, video, and unique collectibles. (Pennsylvania State University, 2014)

It is interesting to see how they apply clues to the participants and how they keep the participants active and motivated in joining the campaign.

Another one of the transmedia case studies we found is Cathy’s book. It was exciting as the audience got to interact with the book throughout the story. The transmedia platform that is involved in Cathy’s book is the website, online apps journal, and tapes (Andersen, 2010). We got inspired by how Cathy uses the audio to interact with the audience. Then, from this platform, we were inspired to use tapes as a clue for the audience to listen to what is happening at that time.

The case study that we found had made us become more understanding of the transmedia platform used in the market industry. The parts of ARG interactivity is where we got inspired by the case study to apply it in our transmedia project.



References
Andersen, M., 2010. Interview With Cathy’S Book Co-Author Sean Stewart. [online] ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network. Available at: <https://www.argn.com/2010/02/interview_with_cathys_book_co-author_sean_stewart/> [Accessed 24 May 2020].

Weaver, T., 2013. Comics For Film, Games, And Animation. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.

Pennsylvania State University, 2014. The Dark Knight Viral Campaign Case Study. [online] Sites.psu.edu. Available at: <https://sites.psu.edu/goldieleap/2014/07/23/the-dark-knight-viral-campaign-case-study/> [Accessed 25 May 2020].

Phillips, A. (2012). A creator's guide to transmedia storytelling. New York: McGraw

www.td.org. (n.d.). ARG and ARG --What are they? What does it mean? Should you care? [online] Available at: https://www.td.org/insights/arg-and-arg-what-are-they-what-does-it-mean-should-you-care [Accessed 26 May 2020].