There are lots of ways to tell a story these days: websites, comicbooks, videogames, movies are but a few… So if you’ve got a great story to tell, which should you choose? Increasingly, the answer is “as many as make sense”… Welcome to transmedia storytelling.

The Matrix is an example of Transmedia storytelling, as there is no one medium that conveys the entire world in which Neo (the central character) lives. As one professor wrote: “key bits of information are conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games.”.

Michael Moore is a fantastic example of someone who understands the benefits of transmedia storytelling – in the lead up to the 2004 US presidential election, Moore went to town on George W. Bush… he was attacked on Moore’s blog, in his book, Dude, Where’s My Country?, in his film, Fahrenheit 911 and during his Slacker Uprising national speaking tour. By choosing to tell his stories on multiple platforms, Moore reached diverse audiences in a manner that appealed to them, but a complete picture was only possible by experiencing each of the media in turn.

The term was introduced to me by edwardharran via twitter.