What is The Matrix

• Play Trailer.• The Matrix films took the audience into a world that blurred the

lines between reality and illusion. More so, they demanded that the audience pay complete attention. No other film franchise has ever made such demands on its consumer.

• The prerelease advertising for the first film tantalized consumers with the question, “What is the Matrix?” sending them onto the Web in search of answers.

• It’s sequel, The Matrix Reloaded opens without a recap and assumes that the audience has mastered its complex mythology and ever-expanding cast of secondary characters.

• It ends abruptly and with the promise that it will all make sense in the third installment, The Matrix Revolutions.

• That is if the audience does its homework.• The filmmakers plant clues that won’t make sense until we play

the computer game. They reveal back story through a series of animated shorts.

• Fans of the Matrix films get on discussion boards and dissect every scene and every interpretation of their meaning, in an attempt to better understand the films.

The Matrix: Entertainment for the age of media convergence• The Matrix is entertainment for the age of media convergence,

integrating multiple texts to create a narrative so large it cannot be contained within a single medium.

• The Matrix is a bold attempt at transmedia storytelling. • A transmedia story is one that unfolds across multiple media

platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.

Ideal Transmedia Storytelling

• An the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best- so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, comics, games, and even amusement parks.

• Each franchise entry needs to be self contained so you don’t need to see the film to enjoy the game and vise versa.

• Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption.

• Note: what that means is if one section is done right, it motivates the consumer to locate and engage in more of the mythology.

Where it fails

• Redundancy burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fail. • Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the

franchise and sustains consumer loyalty. • Within The Matrix franchise, many critics trashed the later

sequels because they were not sufficiently self-contained and thus bordered on incoherent.

• Many game critics trashed the games because they were too dependent on the film content and did not offer sufficiently new experiences to players.

Where it fails (Cont’d)

• Many fans expressed disappointment because their own theories about the world of The Matrix we much more rich and nuanced than anything they saw on screen.

• Jenkins argues, that we don’t have very good aesthetic criteria for evaluating works that play themselves out across multiple media.

• He declares that The Matrix was a failed experiment, an interesting failure, but that its flaws did not detract from the significance of what it tried to accomplish.

A Good Transmedia Franchise

• Relatively few, franchises achieve the full aesthetic potential of transmedia storytelling. Some notable exceptions are: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and the Chris Nolan Batman films.

• Films and television probably have the most diverse audiences• Comics and games have the narrowest.• A good transmedia franchise works to attract multiple

constituencies by pitching the content somewhat differently in the different media.

• If there is, however, enough to sustain those different constituencies- and if each work offers fresh experiences- then you can count on a crossover market that will expand the potential gross.

Synergistic Storytelling

• The Matrix is a story spread across multiple platforms. • From the films themselves, to a ninety-minute program of short

animated films, set in the world of The Matrix, to a series of comics, Even two video games: Enter The Matrix and the MMO set in the world of the Matrix.

• A consumer who has played the games and watched the animated shorts will get a different experience of the movies than one who has simply watched the films.

• The best way to explain how this new model of transmedia storytelling works is by looking at some of the interconnections between a couple of Matrix texts.

The Kid’s Story

• The character of The Kid is introduced in an animated short, The Kid’s Story, about a high school kid who discovers on his own the truth about the Matrix as Neo tries to rescue him from agents.

• PLAY CLIP• In The Matrix Reloaded, they reencounter the Kid on Zion,

where he begs to be a part of their crew. Neo and The Kid have an exchange which is staged as if everyone in the audience knows what they are talking about and feels like a scene involving a more established character.

• PLAY CLIP

Synergistic Storytelling (Cont’d)

• By the standard of classical Hollywood storytelling, the gaps such as failing to introduce The Kid confuse the audience.

• The old Hollywood system depended on re-dundancy to ensure that viewers could follow the plot at all times, even if they were distracted.

• The new Hollywood demands that we keep are eye on the screen at all times, and that we do our research before arriving at the theater.

• This is where The Matrix fell out of favor with film critics, who were just reviewing the film and not the other relevant material.

• Those who realized there was relevant information in other sources were suspicious of the economic motives of “Synergistic Storytelling.”

Let’s Be Clear

• There are strong economic motives behind transmedia storytelling.

• Media convergence makes the flow of content across multiple media platforms inevitable.

• Everything about the structure of the modern entertainment industry was designed with this idea in mind-the construction and enhancement of entertainment franchises.

• As stated in the previous chapter, there is a strong interest in integrating entertainment and marketing to create strong emotional attachments and use them to make additional sales.

The “Upside” is not just economic

• The Matrix franchise was shaped by a whole new vision of synergy.

• Franchising a TV show, film, or comic book is nothing new.• Cross-promotion is everywhere. However, much of it is boring

and easily forgotten.• This is a result of current licensing, that typically limits what can

be done with the characters or concepts to protect the original property.

• Soon licensing will give way to co-creation.• In co-creation, the companies will collaborate from the

beginning to create content they know plays well in each medium to create new experience for the consumer and expand their franchise.

Most Successful Transmedia Franchises

• So far, the most sucessful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control.

• Lucasfilm has managed and cultivated its Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises. When Indiana Jones went to television, it exploited the medium’s potential for expanded storytelling and character development.

• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles allowed the character’s back-story to take shape against the backdrop of various historical events and locations.

Most Successful Transmedia Franchises(CONT’D)

• When Star Wars moved to print, its novels expanded the timeline to show events not covered in the films trilogy

• When Star Wars went to games they didn’t just recreate film events; they showed what it would be like to be a jedi or bounty hunter.

Collaborative Authorship

• Media conglomeration provided a context for the Wachowski brothers’ experiment.

• Many films have sought to imitate the Matrix model.• Films ranging from Charlies Angels to The Riddick Chronicles,

from Star Wars to Spider-man, have developed cartoons, which were intended to bridge between sequels or foreshadow plot development.

• Of these, only the sucessful Star Wars: Clone Wars shorts worked with a distinguished animator, Gendy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack).

• SHOW CLIP

Collaborative Authorship: Cont’d

• By contrast, the Wachowskis sought animators and comic-book writers who already had a cult following.

• The Wachowski brothers saw co-creation as a vehicle for expanding their global market, bringing in collaboraters who evoked forms of popular culture from other parts of the world.

• The Wachowski brothers didn’t just subcontract, they personally wrote and directed content for the game, drafted scenarios for some of the shorts, and co-wrote a few of the comics.

• It made all the Matrix texts cannon.

Conclusion

• Younger consumers have become informational hunters and gathers, taking pleasure in tracking down character backgrounds and plot points and making connections between different texts within the same franchise like the Matrix

• Soon we may be seeing these same transmedia principles applied to the quality drama that appeal to more mature consumers- such Breaking Bad and The Good Wife.

• The transmedia impulse is at the heart of convergence culture.• The Matrix may be the next step in that process of cultural

evolution- a bridge to a new kind of culture and a new kind of society.

END