Having grown up on horror movies, the first thing that came to mind when I read “Searching for the Origami Unicorn” was The Blair Witch Project. For those who don’t know, The Blair Witch Project is the story about three college-age filmmakers investigating the legend of the Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland. They interview some of the locals…
While I was reading Jenkins’s essay “Searching for the Origami Unicorn”, one of my favorite franchises came to mind: the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, also known (to me) as The Only Thing That Looks Good in Papyrus. It was originally a television series, aired on Nickelodeon in 2005, running for three seasons to end in 2008. The…
Resident Evil is a media franchise that started in 1996 with the release of the first video game of the same title. Resident Evil’s platform of origin was the original PlayStation gaming console created by Sony. The game was both published and developed by the Japanese video game company Capcom, and falls under the genres…
One thing that immediately stood out to me in the reading was the mention of theme park rides being an example of lending to transmedia storytelling. “The media mix strategy disperses content across broadcast media, portable technologies such as game boys or cell phones, collectibles, and location-based entertainment centers from amusement parks to game arcades” (Jenkins 110). Entire theme parks…
The My Little Pony franchise is one of Hasbro’s biggest moneymakers next to Transformers. Primarily a toy company, Hasbro started using TV shows to market its toys in the 80’s, with great results. The shows brought the toys to the attention of the children, who wanted to continue the adventures after the show ended. The…
One franchise that I believe takes transmedia storytelling and uses it to its advantage is Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) ranges from many feature films to television series to comic books and web series. The universe was created with 2008’s Iron Man and has been growing consistently ever since. In “Searching for the Origami Unicorn,…
Much like Vivian, YouTube is home to one of my favorite examples of remix. Screen Junkies is an online magazine and YouTube Channel that focuses on the world of film and television, and is also home to their most popular series, Honest Trailers. The trailers are just like average movie trailers, but instead of showcasing…
Concerning the definition of genre, most of us have turned to one or another class reading for a quote. For my own part, I really like Dirk’s simple explanation of genre conventions—before writing his essay, he says that he found other examples of essays written for students and “looked for common features” (250). He also…