Storytelling Across Worlds
Transmedia is a practical primer on the conceptualization, structuring, writing, execution, management, and marketing of a transmedia property that exists in multiple forms of media and shares a single interwoven story. Thus far, creatives and producers have focused on single areas of production—motion pictures, television, or video games. For those who are going to participate in or supervise the creation of a transmedia property, a minimum understanding of all the important media is required. Transmedia provides readers with the solid foundation they need.
Tom Dowd is a 25-year veteran of paper and video game design and world building. He is the co-creator of the celebrated Shadowrun role-playing game which spawned a series of cross-media computer games, novels, board games, and comic books. He is a working game designer and currently teaches game development and transmedia at Columbia College Chicago.
Michael Fry is an Emmy-nominated writer/producer who has worked on the NBC shows The Cosby Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as well as the WB’s The Parent ‘Hood. He is currently an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches writing for television, the internet, mobile television, as well as transmedia property development.
Michael Niederman is an award-winning film and video maker as well as the chair of the Television Department of Columbia College Chicago. His projects include the dramatic film The Paled Man and the documentary Voices from Northern Ireland. He teaches writing, directing, and transmedia and lectures on television, and emerging narrative forms.
Josef Steiff is a writer and independent filmmaker as well as the Film & Video Senior Associate Chair and professor at Columbia College Chicago, teaching screenwriting and transmedia development. Joe has edited volumes on anime, manga, Battlestar Galactica, and Sherlock Holmes for Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy, and is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Independent Filmmaking.