doxa.comunicación | nº 29, pp. 97-111 | 107
July-December of 2019
Víctor Álvarez Rodríguez
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
from his or her own point of view in the events of the series. It is the most complete experience that the fan of Lost has available to participate within the original narrative. In other words, we recognise this game as an experiential marketing exercise within Lost’s narrative universe. Hence, it is a phenomenon based on projects that “sell experiences and sensations linked to these products” (Martí, 2008: 115). The transmedia identity of Lost: Via Domus transports the player to a fictional universe in which the player becomes a narrative complement. Thanks to this virtual recreation of the drama, the viewer has the opportunity of being a castaway and understanding in a more personal way the situations and experiences lived by his favourite characters.
4. Conclusion
Transmedia narratives are communicative and brand-building phenomena that have experienced a great upswing during the last decade. The analysis carried out in this paper recognises Lost as a point of reference for this new television model. It is a pioneering work in the development of these techniques. In fact, this series deals with fantasy and science fiction plots and has become an example of transmedia narrative construction for the current audio-visual context. Many other series and cinematographic productions such as Game of Thrones (2011-2019), or Marvel’s Cinematographic Universe, have continued this communicative pattern by constructing semantics of an intertextual narrative using different media. Lost is also one of the first series to promote the unique conception of storytelling in accordance with the digital world. In consequence, many of the transmedia creations studied in this research were developed to take advantage of the growing virtual communication environment and the changing consumption of the viewer. This audience is increasingly interested in these types of products and more accessibility to them thanks to the Internet. We have to accept that these narratives do not focus exclusively on composing a continuing discourse from an original narrative. As we have seen with Lost, the story is disseminated in different media, communicating the same message adapted to each of them.
According to the main objective of this study, we can observe how the resulting narrative repercussion of these creations enlarges the main story. Therefore, they compose a construction through different media that builds a narrative network. Thus, these digital transmedia actions work as narrative complements to the plot. They help to understand the fictional framework of the original work. Simultaneously, they extend and adapt the plot to new communication channels. This is the reason why the series began to deepen and expand its mythology from the third season onward in parallel with the launch of the transmedia initiative. There were more options for development. The creators took risks and structured many plots and subplots relying on the narrative of these works. For example, we find broad development of fictional endeavours and entities such as the Dharma Initiative, Widmore Corporation or the Hanso Foundation. Each of them has been treated in different transmedia proposals. This creative decision undoubtedly determined the future of the series. From then on, the audience was more active in the multimedia channels than in the traditional television format. Hence, we consider Lost to be a revolutionary series that decided to position itself as a new model of television.
With this idea in mind, special care can be seen in the design of the digital projects carried out and studied for the narrative of Lost. Looking at the dates, we also recognise an innovation in the development strategy of the story. Clearly,