20 june 2016

Transmedia products are more present every day in competitions and festivals of the audiovisual field, where there has been a wide spread of sections dedicated to this kind of digital narrative. This article describes five different profiles of transmedia products to raise interest on this format.

1. ‘Pregoneros de Medellín’ Town criers from Medellin

“The interactive documentary website of singing vendors from Medellin”. Behind this slogan, we find the Carbalí Grupo Creativo and Thibault Durand, two movie producers which propose a journey through Medellin’s loud landscape. Through a similar interface to that of Google Street View, we walk through the streets of the Colombian city and get to know the reality of its charismatic street vendors.

This cross-disciplinary project is completed with documentary capsules for television, photography travelling exhibitions and documentary features. The objective: for the spectator to become co-author of the story.

2. ‘Quijote 360’ (360 Don Quixote)

Spanish project which uses our history’s most famous literary character as a claim to promote creative writing and transmedia contents among digitally-native children.  The project can be divided into three steps:

• A school which holds creative writing workshops and which promotes transmedia creations.
• An editorial which will spread the content created by the children under free licenses.
• The funds collected in terms of copyright and the benefits of the sales will be invested in NGOs and solidary entities.

In ‘Pregoneros de Medellín’ we get to know the reality of its charismatic vendors

3. Iron Sky

Iron Sky is a clear example of the importance transmedia projects give to the participation of the fan community in the creation and dissemination of the content.  This science-fiction comedy co-produced by Germany, Finland and Australia, talks about a group of Nazis who, after coming back from the Moon’s hidden face, claim that the Earth is theirs. Out of the €7.5 millions of budget, a seventh part was collected by its followers thanks to the crowdfunding platform Wreckamovie.

But Iron Sky is not only a movie. Its creators have developed a complete universe including three comics, a graphic novel, a PC video game and an app. And so it goes on, as the second part of the saga is already in full swing. In this second part, the moon base is the last possible refugee for humanity, which is completely devastated due to a nuclear holocaust.

In its YouTube account, you can access a great variety of videos which serve as a kind of shooting diary. Here you have a making of their special effects:

4. Collider World

“What would you do if you could go back in time?” That’s the question a six-people group ask themselves when they appear at a post-pocalyptic world where they will have to survive and discover how to go back to the present.  This is the starting point of Collider, a multiplatform project which uses different digital devices to creat a science fiction story.

This initiative, which was nominated to the 2014 Emmy awards, is divided into several sub-products such as a web-series, comics, a video game and a movie. Collider comics narrate the unforeeen incidents of the main characters, fact which develops its transmedia possibilities: several stories fragmented into different supports which are in accord with the same story’s timeline. Each comic volume has been drawn by six different artists and they can be acquired through iTunes and Google Play.

5. Mironins

The 3D Wire Festival recognised the value of Mironins by bestowing it the award for the best national transmedia project in the festival’s last edition. Something born as a book soon became an anmiation series, an app for smartphones and tablets, a website and an Augmented Reality Application. Through all these platforms and thanks to some colourful characters, its creators wish to bring Miró’s work closer to our children’s reality.