PROVO — The 2009 Web series "Book of Jer3miah" was a groundbreaking enterprise.
It appeared relatively early in the Web series landscape, made Brigham Young University a pioneer in using transmedia storytelling in a film project and demonstrated that viewers don't have to be Mormon to enjoy a Mormon thriller.
"What makes 'Jer3miah' worth watching even for those of us who have to stop frequently and Google stuff like 'Iron Rod' is not just that it’s a well-crafted mystery, but that it’s a religious thriller that doesn’t take itself seriously all the time," read a review in the New York Times.
By 2008, the concepts of Web series and transmedia storytelling, or the technique of telling a story across multiple platforms that add depth to the fictional world and provide opportunities for viewers to explore other aspects of the world or even affect what happens in the story, were not new. But a university course utilizing these concepts was.
BYU associate professor of theatre and media arts Jeff Parkin and adjunct professor Jared Cardon worked together to create a new media class to educate students on making media for the Internet.
"We were looking at the film market in general, especially the indie market. The Internet was changing it," Cardon said. "We thought, 'We need to start learning and practicing making media for this new form because it's going to change things fast. … Students need to know how to tell stories online.'"
The first class, created and taught by Parkin and Cardon in the fall of 2008, had 11 students, only about half of which were film students, Parkin said. The others came from a variety of programs, including engineering, English and communications. All were interested in storytelling, online stories or gaming.
Parkin had an idea to produce a Web series and worked with Cardon to develop the story about LDS college freshman Jeremiah Whitney, who accepts the call to protect a mysterious Mesoamerican box and is immediately targeted by an unknown conspiracy.
The professors pitched the idea to the students, who at first had mixed feelings about its overtly Mormon aspects (at several points in the series, it's vital to the story arc that Whitney listen to divine inspiration from God).
"It was maybe one of the bigger hurdles we had to get over: Can you tell a story about a Mormon character that's compelling to Mormons and non-Mormons?" Parkin said.
