Henry Jenkins with NYFF Convergence programmer Matt Bolish. Photo by Brian Brooks.
[Listen to the full speech above.]
Not even a beautiful afternoon could keep crowds away from hearing Henry Jenkins speak at NYFF Convergence on the festival's first full weekend. Audiences packed the Francesca Beale Theater at the Film Center to hear a keynote talk by the author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Focusing on the intersection of technology and storytelling, NYFF Convergence returned to the festival offering audiences and creators a curated selection of exciting immersive storytelling projects that are pushing the boundaries of entertainment. Jenkins's address, "A Brief History of Transmedia Worlds," focused on "world-building" described as "the process of designing a fictional universe that will sustain franchise development, [and is] sufficiently detailed to enable many different stories to emerge but coherent enough so that each story feels like it fits with the others."
"We couldn't be more excited to have Henry Jenkins as our keynote speaker this year," NYFF Convergence Programmer Matt Bolish told FilmLinc this past summer. "Through his work as an educator at MIT and USC, as a media theorist, and as an author his contribution to the contemporary media landscape—to understanding how we tell and consume stories can't be understated."
"Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience," explained Jenkins. "Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story."
