Classic Literature and Transmedia
02:33
Each of us has a story to tell.
As you scroll through my blog, you could easily head over to my Facebook profile or twitter and find more content, more photos and information about me. Each part on its own doesn’t amount to much, but put them all together and you get a more complete image of me and my story.
This idea of telling a single story across multiple platforms is called transmedia and the average person of today shares their story with the world through this method all the time. From movie stars and singers to youtubers and bloggers, many of us are no longer confined to one medium to tell our story but use many.
Traditional storytelling has often been restricted to one medium. Even when we’re creating movie adaptations of popular literature such as Harry Potter, this isn’t using multiple media to tell the one story, just telling the same story in a different way.
If the world has changed the way we communicate our lives, how come the way we tell stories hasn’t also changed?
While its true that we haven’t witnessed a storytelling revolution, the way we tell stories is changing - slowly.
Over the past few years via social media, innovative story tellers have been adapting classic literature for a new age.
The pioneer of this movement and the most successful of these adaptations to date has been Hank Green and Bernie Su’s series ‘The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’, a modern retelling of the classic Austen novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’.
The story takes place largely in vlog format on youtube as Lizzie tells the audience about her life. These videos are complemented by blog posts, tweets, Q & A videos and videos by other characters in the series, the culmination of which results in a 3D character and story that is so convincing and immersive, you might even think it was real.
Since the success of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, several more adaptations have arisen, from Shakespeare’s plays to Frankenstein, more and more are jumping on board this new method of story telling.
Here are some of my favourites:
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (Adaptation of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’)
Nothing Much To Do (Adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’)
Emma Approved ( Adaptation of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’)
What do you think? Is transmedia the story telling method of the future?
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