Hank Blumenthal
I am a producer, director, creative director, and academic. I have produced applications, augmented reality apps, iphone and android apps, websites, iTV interfaces, games, commercials, music videos and feature films.
Recent work 12 includes working as a lead designer on a universal threshold object to allow immersive TV stories for Intel at Georgia Tech, an Intelligent Banking System App for creating large scale bank units for Artha Shastra Inc., and the creation of a transmedia storyscape, a term I have published academic papers about. The storyscape encompasses a feature film, two AR games, webisodes, 3 websites and a large social media campaign covering Twitter, Facebook, and more.
I co-taught Interactive Narrative at the Georgia Tech Digital Media program where I a recently received my Ph.D. in transmedia storytelling, Previously I was a lecturer in video production, design, and film history for seven years and a design and user experience creative consultant for Voyage.tv from 2008 – 2016. Previously, I was a Program Manger, Emerging Media at Schematic working on multi-platform projects for Microsoft, Conde Nast, MTV, Comedy Central, Panasonic, Vogue, VH1 and Nickelodeon among others.
Before Schematic I was Director, Post Production IFC Films, Director of Design and Production for NBC/Bravo/IFC Digital Media and while a Producer at R/GA produced sonystyles.com, sothebys.com, among others. I won a Webby Award for Best Music Site for Sputnik7.com in 2001 while I was Director of Production at Palm Pictures. and was responsible for all the company websites.
I also have produced 15 feature films, commercials and directed award-winning music videos, shorts, and interactive drama. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089815/
Specialties: Producing, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality, Transmedia Storytelling, iTV, Creative Direction, UX/HCI, Directing, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Gaming, Movie Production, Cable, Virtual Worlds,
Recent work 12 includes working as a lead designer on a universal threshold object to allow immersive TV stories for Intel at Georgia Tech, an Intelligent Banking System App for creating large scale bank units for Artha Shastra Inc., and the creation of a transmedia storyscape, a term I have published academic papers about. The storyscape encompasses a feature film, two AR games, webisodes, 3 websites and a large social media campaign covering Twitter, Facebook, and more.
I co-taught Interactive Narrative at the Georgia Tech Digital Media program where I a recently received my Ph.D. in transmedia storytelling, Previously I was a lecturer in video production, design, and film history for seven years and a design and user experience creative consultant for Voyage.tv from 2008 – 2016. Previously, I was a Program Manger, Emerging Media at Schematic working on multi-platform projects for Microsoft, Conde Nast, MTV, Comedy Central, Panasonic, Vogue, VH1 and Nickelodeon among others.
Before Schematic I was Director, Post Production IFC Films, Director of Design and Production for NBC/Bravo/IFC Digital Media and while a Producer at R/GA produced sonystyles.com, sothebys.com, among others. I won a Webby Award for Best Music Site for Sputnik7.com in 2001 while I was Director of Production at Palm Pictures. and was responsible for all the company websites.
I also have produced 15 feature films, commercials and directed award-winning music videos, shorts, and interactive drama. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089815/
Specialties: Producing, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality, Transmedia Storytelling, iTV, Creative Direction, UX/HCI, Directing, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Gaming, Movie Production, Cable, Virtual Worlds,
less
InterestsView All (31)
Uploads
Papers by Hank Blumenthal
Thesis Chapters by Hank Blumenthal
Storyscapes, such as The Star Wars franchise or the Marvel Universe, consume the lion’s share of our cultural capital (Johnson 2014). Therefore, the development of a consistent vocabulary, a design approach, and an understanding of how they create meaning and define worldviews is critical to our understanding and practice of a new medium (Dena 2009). This recently ascendant medium (Johnson 2014) evolved from the affordances of digital media and the aggregation and remediation (Bolter and Grusin 2000) of new and old media into a new medium. Starting with the frame of storytelling as a practice and previous aesthetic models such as The Poetics, this research charts the evolution of the storyscape medium across topics of academic transmedia approaches, principles, affordances, and the connecting or conceptualizing principles that act as gestalts.
As a central contribution, this work develops a design vocabulary employed in practice across multiple established media. Henry Jenkins (2006a; 2007b; 2010a) worked to establish and define this new medium as a practice of transmedia storytelling but he did not name it. The field is haunted by the multiplicity of story forms that challenge a consistent approach or terminology. For example, canon was explored and defined by Geoffrey Long (2007) as the unifying principle, and Elizabeth Evans (2008) has investigated character as another central element of the transmedia storyscape. These terms and others are refined and coupled with design affordances then applied to my transmedia research project: The Ghost Club storyscape. I apply and validate the storyscape design method through a methodology of “research through design” using the gestalts and affordances that define the medium.
A storyscape is a new, rich medium that can be authored and created with a common vocabulary. It implements the gestalts that allow us to design or imagine an expanded story medium with the breadth and power of an ecosystem that has the cultural descriptive capacity and meaning-making power of ancient religions and their extensive mythologies. It is an open work (Eco 1989), told across new and old media with their own affordances, that has the potential to be the most descriptive medium for approximating a complex narrative world without Aristotle’s beginning, middle, and end.
Storyscapes, such as The Star Wars franchise or the Marvel Universe, consume the lion’s share of our cultural capital (Johnson 2014). Therefore, the development of a consistent vocabulary, a design approach, and an understanding of how they create meaning and define worldviews is critical to our understanding and practice of a new medium (Dena 2009). This recently ascendant medium (Johnson 2014) evolved from the affordances of digital media and the aggregation and remediation (Bolter and Grusin 2000) of new and old media into a new medium. Starting with the frame of storytelling as a practice and previous aesthetic models such as The Poetics, this research charts the evolution of the storyscape medium across topics of academic transmedia approaches, principles, affordances, and the connecting or conceptualizing principles that act as gestalts.
As a central contribution, this work develops a design vocabulary employed in practice across multiple established media. Henry Jenkins (2006a; 2007b; 2010a) worked to establish and define this new medium as a practice of transmedia storytelling but he did not name it. The field is haunted by the multiplicity of story forms that challenge a consistent approach or terminology. For example, canon was explored and defined by Geoffrey Long (2007) as the unifying principle, and Elizabeth Evans (2008) has investigated character as another central element of the transmedia storyscape. These terms and others are refined and coupled with design affordances then applied to my transmedia research project: The Ghost Club storyscape. I apply and validate the storyscape design method through a methodology of “research through design” using the gestalts and affordances that define the medium.
A storyscape is a new, rich medium that can be authored and created with a common vocabulary. It implements the gestalts that allow us to design or imagine an expanded story medium with the breadth and power of an ecosystem that has the cultural descriptive capacity and meaning-making power of ancient religions and their extensive mythologies. It is an open work (Eco 1989), told across new and old media with their own affordances, that has the potential to be the most descriptive medium for approximating a complex narrative world without Aristotle’s beginning, middle, and end.