Producers Guild adds transmedia producer as credit

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) has added the title “transmedia producer” to its code of credits, in recognition of the shift towards new media platforms.

The new credit will apply to someone who is “responsible for a significant portion of a project’s long-term planning, development, production, and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and the creation of original storylines for new platforms,” the Guild said.

The PGA described a transmedia project as one that has “three or more narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: film, television, short film, broadband, publishing, comics, animation, mobile, special venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, narrative commercial and marketing rollouts and other technologies that may or may not currently exist.”

It added that “the narrative extensions are not the same as repurposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.”

The new role will be discussed at the PGA’s second annual “Produced By” conference, which runs from June 4-6 at 20th Century Fox studios, where attendees will be able to participate in a session entitled “The New Paradigm: Transmedia Storytelling.”

PGA President Marhsall Herskovitz said: “The Guild’s decision to expand the code of credits to recognize the transmedia producer underscores the changing media landscape and the critical role of the producer within new creative mediums.”