Promotion: Sony’s Creative Center has published the English version of its Signals Creative Research report, which explores the growing trend of transmedia entertainment, explains Sony design researcher Fumitaka Ozaki in this interview.
Creative entertainment company Sony’s design team, named Creative Center, carried out extensive field research and interviewed numerous creatives for the Signals Creative Research No.1 trend report.
“Advancements in digital technology are breaking new ground in the world of entertainment,” Ozaki told Dezeen.
“For this project, international Sony designers and researchers travelled to six regions – North America, Europe, the Middle East, southeast Asia, China and Japan – to research what the latest entertainment trends are,” he continued.
“Readers can learn the global trend of entertainment compiled from the perspectives of the designers of the creative entertainment company Sony. In addition, the readers may get a hint of what you need to do for transmedia entertainment to be successful.”
Highlights of the report include interviews with film director, screenwriter, and visual effects producer Takashi Yamazaki and with speculative architect and world-building expert Liam Young.
“As touchpoints with entertainment become increasingly diversified, creators are devising an increasing number of approaches to deliver a single intellectual property (IP) from various perspectives and via multiple forms of media,” explained Ozaki.
“This report discusses such trends in ‘transmedia entertainment’ including an interview with Takashi Yamazaki, a film director, screenwriter, and visual effects producer known for his work on Godzilla Minus One, which won Best Visual Effects at the 96th Academy Awards, along with a wide range of storytelling approaches seen around the world.”
The report found that “transmedia storytelling” (TMS) – a term popularised by American scholar Henry Jenkins – was a hot topic in the entertainment world, especially in Europe and North America.
“Looking back over the research we conducted across the world, it is clear that there has been an increase in entertainment that tries to expand on the world of an IP, even if it is not narratively consistent enough to be considered TMS,” said Ozaki.
“Take the many film and TV adaptations of video games in recent years,” he continued. “These do not necessarily recreate the original story, but are made by game-savvy directors and scriptwriters who interpret the story in their own way, creating bold new adaptations that expand the story’s setting and draw in new fans.”
Single intellectual properties are now regularly being adapted to multiple types of media including video games and location-based entertainment including theme parks.
These different types of media can inform each other in unexpected ways. Yamazaki explained how creating Godzilla the Ride at Seibuen Amusement Park influenced his thinking for Godzilla Minus One.
“Meanwhile, interactive and experience-based forms of storytelling, including tabletop games and location-based entertainment, such as theme parks, are common examples of media that do not necessarily adhere to every detail in the main story, but still manage to expand the IP’s universe by harnessing qualities that are unique to that medium,” Ozaki explained.
“This cross-media approach to communicating and deepening a world to both capture the imaginations of audiences and inspire creators in different fields is what we refer to as ‘transmedia entertainment’ and is the focus of this publication.”
Another concept explored in the report is world-building, which according to Young is a storytelling approach that starts with creating a world as a “container” for a story, rather than beginning with a script.
“In the process, we realised that for transmedia entertainment to be successful, creators must construct a coherent world to serve as the foundation for different stories across different media in the practice known as world-building,” said Ozaki.
“Moreover, this practice has the potential to be applied beyond the realm of entertainment and to various businesses. This is why we decided to feature it in this edition of Signals.”
According to Ozaki, the Creative Center produced the trend report as it believes that creative and entertainment businesses rely on collaboration.
“In the past, the Creative Centre has used its design knowledge within the company,” said Ozaki. “As Sony’s design team, the Creative Center is expanding our scope beyond products to cover entertainment, finance, mobility, and more. To provide sources of inspiration for these activities, every year, the Creative Center researches the latest societal trends to develop insights and forecast future trends from a creative perspective, and distilling key insights.”
“However, as our business has expanded into areas such as entertainment, we have come to recognise the need for a more open approach – entertainment business, in particular, cannot develop without co-creation with external creators,” he continued.
“Many creators, such as film directors, game developers and singers, are outside the company. By presenting the results and insights from our latest research by publishing them as a book, we hope to spur conversations on new values with all sorts of creative people while inspiring collaborative storytelling that brings us closer to a brighter future.”
For more information about Signals Creative Research No.1 trend report, visit Sony’s Creative Center website.
Partnership content
This article was written for Sony’s Creative Center by Dezeen as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
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