Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment Immersion

Overview for Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment Immersion

In the 21st century, narratives transcend traditional boundaries and come to life across various platforms. Transmedia storytelling is an innovative approach that has gained significant prominence in the digital age, extending a narrative universe beyond a single medium, allowing the story to exist and evolve through various channels such as film, television, books, graphic novels, video games, social media, augmented reality, and more. This immersion introduces students to the concept of transmedia storytelling and teaches the application of the concept to a range of media, including film, creative writing, screenplays, theater, and more. Students will take ITDL/DHSS-500 first (or synchronously with other immersion courses) and then choose from the remaining optional electives. This immersion will appeal to students from the colleges of Liberal Arts, Art and Design, Computing and Information Sciences (including game design), as well as other colleges. The immersion can be completed either at RIT's main campus, off-site in Los Angeles (as part of the Study Away: LA program), or at one of RIT's global campuses.

Notes about this immersion:

Immersions are a series of three related general education courses and are intended to provide opportunities for learning outside of a student’s major area. Immersions may be in areas that will complement a student’s program but may not overlap with program requirements.
Students are required to complete at least one course at the 300-level or above as part of the immersion.

The plan code for Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment Immersion is TRSMDIA-IM.

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Curriculum for 2024-2025 for Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment Immersion

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View Printable Curriculum

Course
Required Course
Choose one of the following:
DHSS-500	Transmedia Storytelling In the 21st century, narratives transcend traditional boundaries and come to life across various platforms. Transmedia storytelling is an innovative approach that has gained significant prominence in the digital age being deployed today in the commercial/entertainment industry, extending a narrative universe beyond a single medium, allowing the story to exist and evolve through various channels such as film, television, books, graphic novels, video games, social media, augmented reality, and interactive exhibitions. In this project-based class, you will delve into the theory, practice and ethics of commercial transmedia storytelling in the entertainment industry, gaining insights into the mechanics that drive this exciting phenomenon. Students will create their own transmedia story by analyzing iconic transmedia narratives and their aesthetic treatments, exploring cutting-edge technology, increasing audience participation and engagement, and considering ethical and legal considerations, including those involving copyright issues and responsible use of technology. Finally, students will connect with guest speakers and industry professionals who have successfully navigated the world of transmedia storytelling. Seminar 3 (Annual).
ITDL-500	Transmedia Storytelling In the 21st century, narratives transcend traditional boundaries and come to life across various platforms. Transmedia storytelling is an innovative approach that has gained significant prominence in the digital age being deployed today in the commercial/entertainment industry, extending a narrative universe beyond a single medium, allowing the story to exist and evolve through various channels such as film, television, books, graphic novels, video games, social media, augmented reality, and interactive exhibitions. In this project-based class, you will delve into the theory, practice and ethics of commercial transmedia storytelling in the entertainment industry, gaining insights into the mechanics that drive this exciting phenomenon. Students will create their own transmedia story by analyzing iconic transmedia narratives and their aesthetic treatments, exploring cutting-edge technology, increasing audience participation and engagement, and considering ethical and legal considerations, including those involving copyright issues and responsible use of technology. Finally, students will connect with guest speakers and industry professionals who have successfully navigated the world of transmedia storytelling. Seminar 3 (Annual).
Electives
Choose two of the following:
ANTH-328	Heritage and Tourism Tourism is a global industry and an important part of the human experience. There are many forces within tourism that act upon people’s lives, and in particular their environments, economies, cultural heritage, and identity. This course will explore tourism and its many dimensions. Beginning with an examination of kinds of tourism, this course unpacks tourism’s ancient trade and pilgrimage roots as well as its class dynamics of post-industrialization. Other aspects of tourism to be explored include strategies and effects of tourism development and production, nationalism and cultural identity, commoditization and marketing of culture and the ethics of development, labor and infrastructural changes, social inequalities, ecological impact, sustainable tourism, the experience of tourists, ritual and authenticity, and the relationship between tourists and tourism workers. This course provides opportunities for cross-cultural analysis of tourism sites, for participant-observation of the tourist experience, and for evaluation and recommendation of tourism site development in and around Rochester. Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).
ANTH-410	Global Cities This course examines the impact of global dynamics on cities from the early 20th century to the present. By tracing urban formations from metropolis to global city, emphasis will be placed on the making of identities, communities, and citizens in the architectural spaces, cultural places, ethnic zones, and media traces of urban life in the context of globalization. Lecture 3 (Fall or Spring).
DHSS-377	Media Narrative The contemporary understanding of communication and narrative is quickly shifting in a world where media is ubiquitous. The "language of new media" is the thematic used in this course to discuss contemporary and historic forms of non-linear narrative. Students will explore the properties of non-linear, multi-linear, and interactive forms of narratives. This course will survey some of the possibilities, examining both traditional and new media such as oral storytelling, literature, poetry, visual arts, museum exhibits, architecture, hypertext fiction, Net Art, and computer games. Writers on communication culture, gaming, television, digital aesthetics, contemporary art and film, as well as synchronic narrative will be addressed. The focus is to develop critical tools to analyze contemporary media as well as a minimal level of practical implementation. Students will produce a final media project. Lecture 3 (Spring).
ITDL-151H	Explorations of Place and Space This honors seminar is a foundational course that examines how our social worlds are linked to our natural and built worlds. The corresponding emphasis on inquiry, analysis, and interpretation facilitates student-engaged learning. In exploring pertinent place and space related issues/topics through an experiential, active, and site-specific curricular focused learning, various aspects of the human condition are discovered. The theme or topic of this honors seminar, as chosen by the instructor, is announced in the subtitle as well as course notes and is developed in the syllabus. The honors seminar integrates the required Year One curriculum. (This class is restricted to students in the Honors program.) Lecture 3 (Fall).
VISL-320	Contemporary Cinema: Fact and Fiction We will study cinema in the United States and abroad from the mid-20th century to contemporary screen cultures. We will consider shorts, war documentaries, biographical and autobiographical films, animation, mockumentaries, video diaries, and immersive installations. Questions we will ask include: How does cinema represent or transform social and historical events in local and global contexts? Which ethical and aesthetic responsibilities does a filmmaker have to their audience and filmed subjects? What ethical questions do the films raise for us as spectators? How do we understand the role of media technologies in the making of these films? We will investigate the structures, techniques, and ideologies that identify cinematic practices as fiction or non-fiction and consider films that challenge these representational systems, helping us examine the line between fact and fiction. Students will complete a film critique as a class assignment. Lecture 3 (Fall or Spring).
VISL-372	American Film of the Studio Era This course examines the history and aesthetics of the motion picture in the United States between the 1890s and the early 1960s; emphasis will be placed on the analysis of both the work of major American filmmakers and the development of major American film genres during the Classical Hollywood Studio period. Among the filmmakers to be studied are Griffith, Chaplin, Hawks, Ford, Capra, Welles, Curtiz, Wilder, Donen, Sirk, Ray, Hitchcock, and Kubrick. Genres to be covered include the melodrama, silent comedy, screwball comedy, western, thriller, film noir, newspaper film, and the gangster film. The films will be studied within the context of contemporary cultural and political events, and will be discussed from several viewpoints, including aesthetic, technical, social, and economic. The ways in which gender and class are constructed through the movies will also be a major focus of study. Lecture 3 (Annual).
VISL-373	American Film Since the Sixties This course examines the history and aesthetics of the motion picture in the United States since the late 1960s, when the classical studio era ended. Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of both the work of major American filmmakers and the evolution of major American film genres between 1967 and 2001. Among the filmmakers to be studied are Kazan, Cassavetes, Penn, Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Allen, Seidelman, Lee, Burton, Altman, Tarantino, Coen, and Lynch. The course will consider the evolution of such traditional Hollywood genres as the gangster film, the romantic comedy, and the Hollywood movie, study the development of new, blended genres, investigate the rise of the blockbuster, explore the rise of the Independents, and follow the aesthetic changes that occurred since the 1967. The films will be studied within the context of contemporary cultural and political events, and will be discussed from several viewpoints, including aesthetic, technical, social, and economic. The ways in which gender, race, and class are constructed through the movies will also be a major focus of study. Lecture 3 (Spring).
VISL-376	Visual Culture Theory Visual Culture studies recognize the predominance of visual forms of media, communication, and information in the contemporary world, investigating both “high" cultural forms such as fine art, design, and architecture and popular "low" cultural forms associated with mass media and communications. Visual Culture studies represents a turn in the discourse of the visual, which had focused on content-based, critical readings of images, and has since broadened its approach to additionally question the ways in which our consumption and production of images and image based technologies are structured. Analyzing images from a social-historical perspective, visual culture asks: what are the effects of images? Can the visual be properly investigated with traditional methodologies, which have been based on language, not imagery? How do images visualize social difference? How are images viewed by varied audiences? How are images embedded in a wider culture and how do they circulate? Lecture 3 (Fall).
VISL-387	Imag(in)ing the City This course examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interact in the production of the visual experience. We will approach the city and its various urban spatial forms as image experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. We will wander the well-traveled and the unbeaten paths, participating in and interrogating a wide range of the city’s treasures and embarrassments, secrets and norms. In addition to these field trips, we will be reading from literature and cultural studies, as well as viewing films, assessing advertisements and websites, and attending select events such as theatrical or music performances, sporting events and festivals. Seminar 3 (Annual).
VISL-388	Gender and Contemporary Art This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement. Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).
VISL-390	Visual Activism This course is a history of visual activism from the 20th century to now. The course asks: how is activism represented and disseminated to engage audiences? How is the public sphere in the United States and abroad shaped by visual activist practices? What visual languages are used as forms of documentation, communication, persuasion, and creative expression in the service of social change? We examine a range of examples in their local and global contexts, including counter-culture photography and film, poster graphics, graffiti art, comics and political cartoons, social media, performance, urban interventions, installations, and new media. Lecture 3 (Fall or Spring).