This year, White River Indie Films is going trans — transmedia, that is.
In addition to film screenings, this weekend’s three-day fest will feature iWRIF, a series of panels and workshops devoted to “Transmedia: The Future of Storytelling Across Platforms.”
“People kept asking me if it was a transgender festival — which would be cool, too!” says festival coordinator Emma Mullen.
But transmedia — as opposed to trans media — is simply storytelling across media, such as a documentary film supplemented by a “website with an audience-participation video” and a social-media component, Mullen explains. The term “transmedia,” she adds, is gaining favor in academic and professional circles now that the so-called “new media” are “not that new.”
Transmedia, Mullen says, is “about expanding your engagement.” “How do you tell a story through the use of new formats, and using it to your best advantage?”
That story could be an online archive like the one New York artist Melanie Crean is building to help Americans and Iraqis exchange their views on “home.” (WRIF participants can become part of it at the “Shape of Change” workshop.)
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