Whereas traditional storytelling relies on one particular medium (such as television, film, comics, or prose), Transmedia is designed to span (or TRANScend) multiple forms of media. Transmedia stories take place in the “public space” of the internet, rather than the add-supported environment of cable TV, movie theatres, or book stores. They travel directly from the creators to the audience. Tights And Fights relies on Youtube videos, Twitter accounts, and personal websites to tell the story of six heroes and villains through their own eyes.

The University of Southern California’s Marsha Kinder was the first to describe transmedia, in her book “Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” She credits transmedia as a strategy that empowers consumers (you, the audience) rather than the producers, editors, and advertisers that normally propel media franchises.

The transmedia format is heavily influenced by the interactive narratives of video games, as transmedia maestros Stephen Dinehart and Henry Jenkins assert –indeed, one popular form of transmedia is the Alternate Reality Game, in which audience members are encouraged to make use of websites and information to influence the story’s progress.

As audiences grow ever more net-savvy, filmmakers and writers are relying more and more on crossing media formats, establishing a web-presence both to advertise and to add depth to the fictional worlds they’re creating, often through the voices of the fictional characters themselves. This sort of “360 Experience” is different from “true” transmedia, in that true transmedia doesn’t simply expand or advertise the narrative, but actually tells the story itself.

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