Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins has been head of comparative media at MIT for many years. George Lucas and the heavily endowed USC film school snatched Henry away from the Eastern shores a few years ago. By all accounts, Henry Jenkins is having a great time, soaking up the sun and fun in the media capital of the world.
We recently found this treasure on storytelling in transmedia which was filmed at MIT right before Henry hit the road to sunny Cailfornia. Here you can see him at MIT before he got the tan and the shades.
Henry Jenkins is the foremost authority in transmedia and convergence culture. He should be. He created both of those phrases.
Trannsmedia
In case you are wondering, Transmedia is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms using current technologies. In transmedia, stories can be told through music, games, movies, television and books.
Convergence Culture
Convergence Culture is a phrase bandied about and often misconstrued. Firstly, it is the name of Henry Jenkin’ 2006 book, Convergence Culture , (where old and new media collide). But on Henry Jenkins’ own blog, he refers to it, in part as “getting defined top-down by decisions being made in corporate boardrooms and bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms. It is shaped by the desires of media conglomerates to expand their empires across multiple platforms and by the desires of consumers to have the media they want where they want it, when they want it, and in the format they want….”
The Turtle and The Shell/ The Blind Oral Poet
Henry speaks eloquently about Culture. In this 24 minutes interview, admittedly long for the internet, Henry talks about social media and inter-active storytelling . He has such a cool, erudite manner of speaking. I wish I were able to take his classes as he is always refining his thinking as the world continues to change.
Henry looks at the world of storytelling and media in a completely fresh way. In this interview, he also talks about Star Wars, Twin Peaks, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and LOST.
