Transmedia Project: You Decide!
Updated: Mar 31, 2021
For this project I decided to go all in on the user engagement side of transmedia. The project is about a TV show/web-series that is entirely controlled by the audience, from casting, to the genre of the show and even the plot/script. Everything is entirely in the hands of the audience. That's where the name comes in: 'You Decide!'.
I chose three different platforms where this series would be split in. The main round of casting, genre selection and overall direction of the show would take place on Instagram. Using polls on Instagram stories I would be able to gauge audience in a variety of genres and pick one with the most votes. The casting would be done in a similar fashion, with people choosing the role of the actors from a list. After that is done the results would be posted for the followers to see, preparation on the next platform would begin.
I chose Twitter as the medium for the audience to interact with the characters and get a sense of their background and the overall status of this fictional world they reside in. Tweets would be sent out from the show's account through the perspective of the characters. The tweets would range from their thoughts on what's taking place in the fictional world, their relationship with other characters and their opinions on what is happening to them in the show. That isn't to say that the characters are aware they're in a TV show.
This project then culminates in the airing of the episodes which takes place on YouTube, where the audience experiences the final product. The cycle would then continue every week.
I ran a controlled version of this project recently. I hopped on Instagram and had people choose the genre and casting of a show.
My followers decided they wanted the show to be a sci-fi comedy. Then I let them cast my actors.
They arrived at the following cast:
I then created a twitter account from the show and began tweeting from the perspective of the characters. Since the audience picked a sci-fi setting I decided to find an in-universe way to explain how the characters were tweeting from the future. I settled on the idea that the crew were being interviewed by a documentary crew which were transmitting their voice logs as text for people to read.
The final step would've been filming the show but Pakistan is having a major spike in cases so I haven't been able to actually film anything with anyone. That's why I used stand-ins for my actors in these images. I used an A.I had trained to develop fake images of people and I used them as substitutes for my actors for this control experiment.
I'll update this post after I've filmed an episode and have uploaded it to YouTube. As it stands this is my concept for a transmedia property.