This is something I have always wondered – are the favorited tweets on each twitter account ‘in character’? Is the character favoriting them, or are they chosen simply to reflect the kinds of conversations happening in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom?
That’s the character favoriting them as a marker of her state of mind. And I love seeing the conversations about what a character marking a post as a favorite means. There a term that’s used in transmedia that has its roots in alternate reality games called “story archeology.” It’s the idea that the audience picks up these little bits of information about what’s going on and from those clues they assemble a picture of what is happening to the characters.
Scott McCloud writes a lot about the theory of how comics work. One of his most famous observations is that in a comic, one panel shows static action and next to it is another panel that also shows static action. Meaning the story is created by the reader when he actively imagines what happens between those two panels. This is my belief on how transmedia works.
I think that goes a long way towards explaining how transmedia can help make a show more compelling.
What has been your favourite transmedia moment on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries so far?
I think it’s the first big one. Early on, we revealed the existence of the Darcy, Bing and Caroline twitter accounts, and that they’d been tweeting with each other for weeks. There was a collective sudden realization from our audience that the world of this show is much bigger than it first appeared to be.
I also love the entire thread of Gigi’s songs on This Is My Jam. It’s a lesser known service, but I was really interested to see if we could tell a story using just a character’s musical choices.
The show is clearly approaching the end of the novel, what will happen to the twitter and tumblr accounts when the series ends?
We’re talking about options. One thing we’re looking at are ways to archive the experience so that if somebody wants to watch from the beginning, there’s an easier way to get all of the important transmedia bits without having to hunt through the histories of multiple accounts. Most of these platforms are set up for real-time communication and don’t do a great job of giving you access to older content.
One thing I wouldn’t expect to see happen is a lot of continual posting from character accounts. One of the great things about stories is that they end. The curtain comes down, the lights come up, and we move on to the next tale. Also, it takes a lot of time and energy to maintain these accounts, so they can’t go on indefinitely.
What’s next for you after The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? Have you been working on any other projects?
I did some work on a project for HBO’s Game of Thrones, which you can see here. And I’ve got a number of projects in the works right now – including some other adaptations. I can’t talk a lot about these new projects yet, but I hope to be able to share news on them soon.
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