Scriptwriting and the Transformation of Realities

: A Critical Discussion of Story Creation, Transformation and Transmedia Storytelling in Animation, Comics and Computer Games

Abstract

Transmediation utilises a variety of media platforms to disperse or unfurl interconnecting content from the same storyworld, which utilises the appropriateness and potential of each medium and which invites further audience engagement across the transmediated experience.

Rather than seeking to reveal from the post of production in the study of transmedia this thesis focusses on what the activity of writing creatively for a variety of media may reveal of a medium from the stages of pre-production.

The Fallow Narratives (developed at the University of South Wales) was created to explore the specificities of a medium, transmedia storytelling and the relationships found between these through creative writing and scriptwriting.
In order to examine the properties of a medium the same story was adapted across a variety of media. By exploring the re-articulation of the content, and creatively engaging with the idea that the process of adaptation creates a new story (Hayward 2006). Then as each new story was created from this adaptation this next story then could be connected across the medium to the originating medium. Iterating this content through each adaptation, then dispersing this across the various media formed the basis of the interconnectedness of the content.

To investigate this type of scrutiny of a medium a writing practice as research model was utilised to engage at a fundamental level with the initiating textual development process of a medium. What was revealed from this exploration was specifically a way of creating for and thus thinking of a medium from an understanding of the motion or lack of, of its state (static or kinetic); the particular combination of the medium’s modalities; and the activity of engagement on the part of the various audiences (e.g., viewer, reader, or player).

Further research from these conclusions will:
1. Explore further the other transmedial components of the project.
2. Examine other ways of enhancing the story experience for the reader/viewer/player, for example augmented reality.
3. Consider the understandings of a medium from the workings of its inherent genre.
4. Engage with different types of script format to utilise the different technologies available in the creation of a film.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2016
Original language	English
Supervisor	Richard Hand (Supervisor) & Steve Blandford (Supervisor)