Examples Of Transmedia Storytelling In The Harry Potter Saga By J. K. Rowling

One word-to-screen translation that I found particularly frustrating was the Harry Potter series. I blew a gasket when the Durmstrang and Beauxbaton schools were simplified to purely male and purely female students, I had my head in my hands when the Weasley house caught on fire, and the forced chemistry between Harry and Hermione made me want to gag. These elements that are completely irrelevant to the content of the series were added simply for the fact that they are entertaining. Movie audiences love dramatic entrances, destruction scenes, and love triangles. Meanwhile, elements that added depth to the written series, such as Peeves the Poltergeist, Winky the house elf, and Hermione’s advocation of S.P.E.W, were all left out, for they were not deemed important, or entertaining, enough. The part of this that is the most frustrating is the way that the themes of the series are interpreted by movie fans. I cannot tell you how many times I have talked to people that believe Harry Potter is about whether Hermione ends up with Harry or Ron, or that it’s about ‘wands shooting cool colours.’ The metaphor by which the Harry Potter series and other information is identified is defined by the medium through which people view it. Furthermore, the mediums through which individuals view entertainment shape the way they view the

Lisa Nakamura argues in her article, “Words with Friends”: Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads, that Goodreads is a successful Web 2.0 business, worth studying by literary scholars. By applying the argument Carolyn Miller makes for a successful genre, in her text, Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later (2014), one can examine why Goodreads is successful in terms of fulfilling its requirements to its public. Miller defines genre as being “a multidimensional construct”, that is a “typified rhetorical response to” an uptake of a situation, “a ‘macro’ speech act”, “a mediation between private intentions (purpose) and socially objectified needs (exigence)”, and above all she emphasizes that genre must create social action,

In 2007, Netflix, an online video rental service founded in the late 1990s, changed courses and began to offer a video on demand streaming service that, though not the first of its kind, profoundly altered the way in which viewers watch and categorize televisual texts in the Post-Network Era of streaming and individualization of television viewing. This influence warrants a reconfiguration of Raymond Williams’ classic theory of flow as well as of Ethan Thompson’s more recent theory, which makes necessary advances by correctly accounting for a shift toward catering to audience tastes, but fails to address the particularities of the streaming platform. This essay argues that what I call “streaming flow”, still encourages continual viewing, but

Textual form is an issue which divide many critiques and audiences. Some view texts as a form being superior and more expressive, whereas others may view film as to be losing its credibility of expression. Never the less it is adamant that through a comparative study of two differing forms exploring similar ideas it becomes clear that one form isn’t always superior over another. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) mirror this thesis. Whilst being

Whenever books are adapted for film, changes inevitably have to be made. The medium of film offers several advantages and disadvantages over the book: it is not as adept at exploring the inner workings of people - it cannot explore their minds so easily; however, the added visual and audio capabilities of film open whole new areas of the imagination which, in the hands of a competent writer-director, can more than compensate.

“The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience 's eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker, I know, is speaking clearly to the audience 'right now. '” This quote by English playwright and screenwriter, Lee Hall, from an essay he published in the Times of London, is central to the connection between theatre and motion picture technology. Since the rise of film in the early twentieth century, these elements have been influencing each other, and working together, to elevate the storytelling and experience of each medium and, in turn, better connecting them to the modern audience. The collaboration of these two mediums has resulted in a new form of theatre, known as digital theatre, that shows “theatrical entertainment does not have to be either purist (involving only ‘live’ actors on stage), or be consumed by the dominant televisual mass media, but can gain from the strengths of both types of communication.”(Masura). Throughout this paper, the intersection of theatre and motion picture technology will be explored through their effect on each other, in storytelling and experience, and the product of their collaboration—digital theatre.

Clive Thompson and Neil Postman are authors who discuss specific mediums through writing. Postman writes about the television and newspaper and Thompson writes about the internet age. Both of these authors use the same approach on their respected mediums. In comparison they both have the same piece of writing. Comparing side by side, it reveals a bigger idea that the communication medium always outweigh the cons.

In our world of advanced technology, we love to watch movies more than we love to read. Sitting in front of a flat-screen TV while eating popcorn and drinking soda would sound much more appealing than reading a book by the fire at night while drinking a frappucino from Starbucks. Now, producers and directors would take successful and famous stories and adapt it into a movie. Sometimes, they would succeed, with examples being the Harry Potter series, which received mainly positive reviews from both critics and the audience. However, most of the time these people would unknowingly butcher the book based movie by taking out many important characters and events, with good examples being The Lightning Thief and Eragon. Then another example of a

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

The discussion of wether film adaptations are better than their novels is ongoing. Khaled Hosseni’s “The Kite Runner” was a New York Times bestseller that was better than the film made for it. Films have time constraints as a long novels must be fit within a 1-2 hour time frame. They have production issues as some scenes from the book are inappropriate for all viewers. Movies also need to target a range of audiences to become blockbuster hits, whereas, novels do not. Although directors strive to make novel-based films as closely related to the books as possible, inevitable distinctions continue to exist.

In the world of modern technology there are many ways to keep one entertained and informed. Two of the best ways are through the reading of books, and the watching of movies: both are eternal works of art designed for those who would wish to momentarily leave the existent of reality and dive into a world unknown or to question the known world through stories of factual relevance. Both take the entertained on a journey that has been created in the minds of a genius, but, it is the way they take the entertained into their imagery worlds that are different. Books, for example require the reader to use there imagination to mentally visualize the image the author is trying to perceive. Movies, on the other hand, will have the audience mesmerized as the picture comes to life right before their eyes. Both books and movies are great evening actives

The success of both epidemics proves to be as a result of intertwining the story-world as a whole through “multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium” (Jenkins, 2016). Transmedia story-telling ultimately relies on horizontal integration to achieve success. As Jenkins (2011) states, elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. In other words, contemporary franchises need to break the boundaries of traditionally telling a story within a set media outlet; instead, branching out this story-world into different medias to achieve a maximum fan-base through areas of consumer interest. For example, Disney holds ownership of the Star Wars

Transmedia can only profound and deepen the narrative that the universe wants to show the audience (Menard,2014). Marvel Studios have used Transmedia to further intensify the stakes of the universe, because through the examples that are provided can show that events can span throughout any movies that the narrative requires to.

With the constant streaming of new movies and television shows available, moviegoers tend to watch them for fun. They see an entertaining movie about conflict that sparks the sense of adventure in them. But do they really grasp what the movie can teach the viewers? With today’s society, the themes are lost in the entertainment purposes. However, books have developed to do what a movie does and so much more. In this way books give life to all people that read them.

The novel is a modern, ever changing, and important tool that is utilized by different societies. Storytelling did/does the same thing, however, and by finding the similarities between the two, it appears to me that the novel is storytelling reborn. Theorist Walter Benjamin argues that novels have done the opposite and have eradicated storytelling. He states that, “…the storyteller in his living immediacy is by no means a present force. He has already become something remote from us and something that is getting even more distant,” which makes it seem as if the novel has destroyed the sacred art of storytelling (Benjamin 77). Per contra, the novel has benefitted society just as much if not more than storytelling. I have found that novels have taken the same tools that storytelling once used/ still use, such as open endings, re-readability, community building, and more and have molded these tools so that they are able to accomplish the same effects that storytelling can on a new scale. This new scale simply means that the novel has taken the tools listed above and have utilized them in a way that storytelling was unable to. The new technology that the printed novel brings not only attempts to replicate storytelling technology but manages to do so. Thus we need to determine, first, if my suspicions are correct and the novel has replaced or is at least vastly similar to storytelling. From there, we can determine what it means to be a novel and what the novel can do with the