I’m currently hard at work as a Teaching Fellow in Digital Media Practice with the University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art). This means that I get to teach and organise all kinds of fabulous activities for our MA students in Global Media Management. The latest of these is has been a ‘transmedia experience’: a self-guided tour of film locations around Oxford, which formed part of the programme’s annual study visit.
The first part of the study visit involved a trip to the Oxford Story Museum. The museum creates immersive, interactive spaces designed to bring books and stories to life and to deepen engagement with the story. During students’ visit to the museum they took part in the Building Narrative Environments workshop. This workshop looks at the principles behind the museum’s approach to transmedia storytelling, and how they go about creating their spaces. Students also learned about the other ways in which the museum provide immersive experiences—for example their story session for toddlers, or their Extreme Reading Adventures project, which provides immersive experiences to re-engage reluctant or struggling readers. The Oxford Story Museum aims to take children into the world of the story, and they look at story in all its forms: oral, written, film, digital.
The second part of the study visit is the transmedia ‘tour’ of Oxford, realised in an interactive Google Map. Students used this to explore of some of Oxford’s most famous filming locations, immersing themselves in the ‘world’ of stories like The Mummy (2017), Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), and the Harry Potter franchise (2001-2011). They were also asked to add something to these storyworlds themselves, by taking photographs and video at each location and tweeting them using the #GMMTransmedia hashtag.
Featured fictional worlds included:
The Mummy (2017)
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Dr Strange (2016)
X-Men: First Class (2011)
The Golden Compass (2007)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)
Inspector Morse (TV; 1987-2000)