Like life itself: blurring the distinction between fiction and reality in the Four Broken Hearts transmedia storyworld

Abstract

Transgressing the boundaries of the real and the virtual, the temporal and the spatial and the personal and the political, Four Broken Hearts (FBH) is a hybrid storyworld encompassing film, live performance, location-based experiences and social media. The project is scheduled for launch early next year and is currently a work-in-progress undergoing initial user testing. The story of FBH is being told by taking each of the classic elements of fiction – character, setting, exposition, climax and denouement – and bringing them ‘to life’ in the medium that conveys them to the highest degree of mimesis: characters are built and explored through social media, setting is experienced through location-based storytelling, the backstory is fleshed out using film and the climax is performed as an immersive drama. By taking advantage of what each medium does best while complementing the other mediums, FBH is presented in the form of a rich transmedia experience that allows audiences to explore the storyworld across many different platforms while still tying it all together within a cohesive narrative. This paper presents an investigation of the project's narrative outputs produced so far and will be followed by two additional articles over the next six months that will cover the results of the project's public launch and focus group analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Muhammad Babar Suleman is a Fulbright scholar from Pakistan currently residing in New York City. He is a director, experienced designer and writer. His diverse work experience and past credits include a NYC Media Lab/Hearst fellowship, design work awarded by Intel and Hyperakt's Re3 StoryHack, design and marketing for Unilever (TONI& GUY, CLEAR), nationally recognized fiction work, design writing (published by California based The Daily Egg), user experience design for educational nonprofit Shaheen (in collaboration with Harvard and MIT alumna), art direction and editorial for the LUMS Business Review and film work that has been screened for audiences in Paris (NUMA) and New York (Parsons). With passion project FBH, he is finally able to combine all of his different interests and skills into a cohesive storytelling experience. MFA Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design. MBA, Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Notes

1. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is a Creative Emmy winning transmedia web-series comprising video diaries and social media (http://www.pemberleydigital.com/the-lizzie-bennet-diaries/).

2. Sleep No More is widely regarded as a landmark immersive theater production (http://sleepnomorenyc.com/).

3. Play/Date was a 2014 immersive theater production by 3LD in New York's Lower East Side (http://playdateshow.com).

4. New York-based Harmony Institute conducted one of the few documented cases of evaluation for a transmedia project (http://harmony-institute.org/blog/2013/07/23/hi-releases-exploratory-case-study-of-a-data-driven-and-immersive-story/).

5. Latitude's 4 I's of Future of Storytelling is based on the results of the company's participants-based research (http://futureofstorytellingproject.com/#iiii).