Skip to main content

Transmedia and larp



Transmedia and larp was the presentation given yesterday in SRP by +Irena Krčelić. It was quite interesting - it basically showcased some things from the Croatian movie industry. I'm the person who's very skeptical of our movies, however what was shown surprized me as being very promising - and all of it were movie projects I've never heard of.

In that light, larp was seen as the potential transmedia tie-in product - and we explored those possibilities. As movies fund the other tie-in products - board games, computer games, online games, miniatures, TV shows, cartoons, comics, books etc. - why not their own custom-made larps?

It will have a limited audience compared to most other products, but compared to those products and their associated manufacturing and distribution costs, a larp can be produced at a fraction of the price. In a wider context - enriching the movie or other media product and its world is something that could be very powerful.

Part of the challenge would certainly be selecting a movie which could work well with the tie-in larp. A Belgian burlesque movie Tournée by Mathieu Amalric also had accompanying larps during its first screenings in Paris and Berlin, however it didn't attract many players - for most, burlesque is not a comfortable subject to take part in...


However, since this is a rather new direction, larpers can probably afford to pick and choose which movie they'd want to do a larp about... And when that movie gets funded, simply jump on the bandwagon to make it possible (and in process, benefit from various paid courses, out-of-country seminars etc.). Such larps would certainly be viewed as commercial and conforming to a certain storyline, but they'd have funding and they would also benefit from other tie-in products.

If someone asked me whether this was possible at the time I started this blog, I'd say - no way. That's not how larp works. Nowadays? We've never done this before but yes, it's certainly possible...

Or have we? This year we had Tragači zore. It was not a planned-and-funded transmedia project, but it WAS a tie-in to the Zmije Nikonimora book series by Sanja Lovrenčić. And this Tuesday, we had several of our larpers dressed up in their kit at the screening of The Hobbit. A stretch to the more planned and professional tie-ins is not at all that large.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 15 rules of larp

The following 15 rules (warning: strong language) were written some years ago in Great Britain, and have been pretty much generally accepted on the British larp scene. Especially popular is rule 7 - widely known by its number and commonly considered to be the most imortant rule of all (and I agree). Even the biggest British larp forum has taken Rule7 as its name. The rules have been originally created by the Drunken Monkeys and edited by Rick Wynne who added some extra stuff in the explanations to make them more understandable to international audience (it still contains some British larp lingo though), more work-safe and to throw in his two cents. (copy of the original wording is available here ) 1. Don’t play a mighty warrior; play a warrior and be mighty. Don’t label your character. As soon as you say that you are the best swordsman in the land someone will come along and kick your ass. Just get into the mindset of the person and role-play it out. 2. No one cares about you...
6 comments
Read more

It's been way too long without any updates

  I'm just back from PoRtaL XII, which was back in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 6 years after PoRtaL VI , which is - incidentally - only 3 posts below this one on my blog, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And this means I failed to review the past two year's PoRtaLs, also excellent. Here's some representation for them. Back during PoRtaL 10 in Krakow, I did a presentation called  Designing larps with intent . It was streamed, and can be found on Youtube. For PoRtaL 10, I also wrote and ran a larp Journey to Tau Ceti - an expanded version of the Arrival at Tau Ceti. I was a mess at documenting it, and it still remains in an unpublishable state. Both of these were run on Friday, which means I haven't really see much else on the convention that day, but I did on Saturday, when I was also able to play Ties that Bind larp by Alexandros Alexiou. I skipped Sunday, as we had to go early to drive home. For documentation purposes, full program listing is here . At next year...
1 comment
Read more

TESC IV: Ebonheart review

TESC is a Croatian Elder Scrolls-inspired larp, started by Marko Zadro and ran by him and his team for more than 4 years so far. During its first two years of existence, four larps were ran (the second was the one actually counted as first, as first larp was counted as playtest) which were well-received, well-visited and raised the visual level of Croatian fantasy larps. Yet TESC IV: Ebonheart was a whole different beast altogether. General ideas were formed by organizers far before the logistics to do them became available, and 2.5 years elapsed between the previous larp of the series and this one. Also, this is the first larp so far directly inspired by the organizer's (and mine) favorite game of the series, Morrowind. Inspired by the European blockbuster castle larps, TESC IV became the first Croatian blockbuster castle larp - although at the far lower entrance price (€85 as opposed to €500+ price typical of those). While this means production values weren't exact...
Post a Comment
Read more