When I was a little kid, my best friend and I had some imaginary friends. Their names were Ferdinand and Isabella (hers and mine, respectively) and they were tiny dragons, just up to our knees. I don’t remember what hers looked like, but mine was lime green and hot pink, and I have a vivid sense-memory of imagining how it would be to cuddle a dragon.

We’d play with Ferdy and Izzy, as we called them, constantly. Whenever we built forts out of our parents’ furniture, they were dragon caverns. We’d tell each other stories about them. We drew elaborate maps of where they lived, and if we’d had access to video cameras, I’m sure we would have tried to make home movies about them. When we went to school and were asked to do writing assignments, we wrote about Ferdy and Izzy. There was no part of our lives that they didn’t touch.

When my best friend and I sat down and told each other stories about our imaginary dragons, we were just doing what came naturally - imagining, dreaming, hoping. It was just as natural for us to get up from the couch and go do something to extend that story into the real world: “Okay, you build a couch fort. I’ll draw the map. Then we’ll record a song that Ferdy and Izzy like to sing on the tape-recorder. And then let’s watch a movie about dragons!”

In the end, that’s basically what transmedia storytelling is about. It’s about letting a story get its tendrils into every part of your life, and it’s about suspension of disbelief. My best friend and I didn’t really believe that we had invisible dragons named Ferdinand and Isabella. We knew that they were just made-up imaginary friends. But we wanted so badly to believe! It was such a cool idea! And when we drew a map, or when we pretended we were feeding part of our lunches to our dragons, or when we watched a movie with special-effects dragons that looked photorealistic - the story-world drew a little closer to our world. We could suspend our disbelief a little more. We could almost feel the warmth of the dragons’ bodies next to our own, could almost feel the puff of their smoky breath against our hands.

It’s hard to recapture that feeling as an adult. It’s really difficult for me - for anyone, I’d imagine - to drop my inhibitions and really believe in a story-world. But when I begin to see pieces of the world everywhere - then I begin to believe. When I watch a television show, and read a comic about it, and then discover that the characters are actually carrying on a conversation on a social network - that they’ll respond to my comments! - I begin to believe. When I see ads that belong to the story-world, ads for True Blood or for Oceanic Airlines, I do a double-take. I think, is there really an Oceanic Airlines? When I receive a business card from Stark Enterprises, and I fill out a job application to work with Iron Man, and I actually get a call back - then I’m hooked. Then I’m in deep.

And that’s not just true for me, either. After all - you played make-believe, too, didn’t you? So you’ve already had the prototypical transmedia experience. You already know that once you believe in something with all your heart, you’ll remember it forever.

Lately I keep getting into arguments in which I defend larpers.

To understand why one would get into such an argument, you have to understand what a larper is. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. Larpers, then, are grown adults who get dressed up in elaborate costumes, arm themselves with boffers and Nerf guns and tennis balls, and go running around pretending to be someone else for a day, play-fighting and play-acting and generally making asses of themselves as far as “normal” people are concerned. In the Geek Hierarchy, larpers are pretty close to the bottom.

So I keep getting into these arguments. People make a joke about larpers (“I cast Magic Missile into the darkness!”) and I feel compelled to respond. My point is simple. Don’t you wish that, just for one moment, you could enjoy something as earnestly as larpers do? Don’t you remember what it was like, when you were a little child, to play cops & robbers, or to sit down to a tea party with your friends and stuffed animals, and to really completely give yourself over to that sense of play?

Isn’t that how you feel when you watch a really great movie? Aren’t you suddenly transported back in time, to when your mother or father told you stories, and you just wanted to live forever in that story world? When you stopped critiquing, stopped thinking like a grown-up, and just took it all in?

That’s alchemy. That’s the moment when lead turns into gold.

Next time: telling stories & making believe - childhood play as the prototypical transmedia experience.

Here we are at FOE4, and Henry Jenkins has just gave his keynote about Transmedia Storytelling Principles. Amazing.

For our clients and those of you who have seen our speeches/workshops, this we are about to show is not new. But after seeing Henry's principles we wanted to share one of our Patron Saints, the most important: Scheherazade (in the US) or Sherazade (in Brazil), from the Arabian Nights.

For us, she was one of the first storytellers to make a hyperlinked story that really got all the transmedia principles (above). And she is one of the reasons of why our motto is "Transmedia Storytelling since 3000 B.C.":

• Drillability
  Every story Scheherazade went deeper and deeper. She created an entire universe around the rabbit holes she created in her text. For example, in Aladdin's story - she dug into the story of the magic carpet, explaining why it was magic.
• Continuity vs. Multiplicity
  The great majority of the Arabian Nights had stories that had continuity between each other... and 1001 nights, 1001 stories, certainly provides multiplicity!
• Immersion/Extractability
  The sheer immersiveness of Scheherazade's stories were what made the Sultan fall in love with her (and give up on killing her). Many of the stories became extracts and parallel plots.
• World Building
  By breathing life into Arabian mythology & legends, Scheherazade built that immersive world, that world where you can drill down deeply and explore broadly. And she references specific historical people - building the world out further and connecting it up to reality.
• Seriality
  Come on. There's 1001 nights. If that isn't serial, I don't know what is!
• Subjectivity
  Look at the titles of the stories in the 1001 nights: they're all referring to specific people. All these characters, all these perspectives - all these different understandings of a shared story-world!
• Performance
  Scheherezade's storytelling isn't written. It's a complete performance - and it saves her life and thousands of others...
  

Vídeo-entrevista para o jornal Propaganda e Marketing sobre nossa empresa e a aliança que montamos com a AgênciaClick. Muito bom dividir a tela com o Abel Reis!

Our video interview for the Lions Daily website. Lions Daily is the official news source of the Festival. The questions were great. We talked about Shakespeare, Borges, buckets, mothership etc...

On June 27th we were at Cannes giving a seminar about Transmedia Storytelling and doing a homage to C3 and Henry Jenkins. Although it was the last day, we had a very attentive audience :).
During the seminar we launched the Alchemists Network, a ThinkDO Tank focused on delivering strategies and developing transmedia content and projects.

Many people from Brazil and abroad are asking for this video, so we decided to put it here while the new layout is not set. Hope you like it!

Além de uma mudança drástica no site, todos poderão ver agora um aumento considerável na quantidade e qualidade de Alquimistas. Aguarde.

Caros 19 leitores e leitoras. A atualização do Blog não está como deveria, mas no Twitter está indo melhor. Lá eu tenho colocado as citações mais importantes das palestras... Mas como já disse antes, o , da Regina Augusto, tá muito, muito completo.

Quantas vezes, quanta gente já usou a frase/citação "Nada se cria, tudo se copia"? Muitas. Só que em muitas das vezes em que eu a ouvi, a pessoa do outro lado estava dizendo num tom ruim, ou para justificar pressa para não aprofundar ou como desculpa para simplesmente pegar o outros fizeram. Por viver de contar histórias por muitos anos da minha vida profissional, aprendi que as histórias são as mesmas, o que muda é o enredo. Essa citação abaixo, vai no alvo.

Ela está no Blog do Faris que já tem um título que traz essa provocação (Talents Imitates, Genius Steals).

Pessoal, durante a semana eu farei vários posts a respeito do evento do MIT. Enquanto isso não ocorre, queria compartilhar com você que a palestra foi um sucesso e que o vídeo abaixo - feito por Ricardo Justus e eu para o painel - botou o MIT a baixo. Quebrou tudo. Henry Jenkins, Mark Warshaw, Faris Yakob e outros grandes nomes que estavam lá piraram. O auditório veio a baixo. Um exemplo perfeito de storytelling e colocação do conceito de spreadable media.

Ricardo, parabéns!!!! Bem-vindo aos Alquimistas. Touchdown!!!!