Trans-media storytelling vs. Traditional storytelling

It’s interesting to watch the change in how stories are being told. Traditional story telling tends to be boring while trans-media storytelling tends to be more entertaining. Today we tell stories across multiple means of media because a single for of media is not as entertaining. People enjoy being able to read a book, watch the movie on it as well as play their games.  With technology being so prominent in our society people are going to fish for content all over the Internet. Hoping to find games to match the books and/or movies they’ve read and/or seen.

Here’s a chart of franchise trans-media.  This chart shows you how multiple platforms create a collection of individual experiences:

This is another image of traditional storytelling vs. trans-media storytelling:

This is a very short animation I found on YouTube, I believe it's a student animation from some competition. Anyway, I picked it because it does a very good job of telling a story. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is great, and very unexpected. In just over a minute this animation conveys a sense of tension, whimsy, anxiety, and a plethora of other emotions. I think story really is the most important part of any animation, game, video, website, or whatever you're making. Conveying a feeling or a theme is, in theory, why you're creating whatever it is you're working on. I think the creator/creators of this video did a really good job of conveying a mood, theme, and feeling in this piece. I also think they did a really nice job of leaving some questions in this story. You don't know what this monster is, you don't know why it's chasing this guy or why they're on this train, and I think that's deliberate. There's enough holes in this story for people to make assumptions and fill in the blanks, and that's pretty cool too.