Canadian indie producers gathered in Toronto Thursday at the Merging + Media Conference to create order out of chaos in an emerging digital age.

And the way to do that could well be transmedia, or cross-platform storytelling, which the Canadian industry hopes will help unlock the potential for traditional film and TV and digital producers to collaborate going forward.

“Value will be created through chaos, because things break down before they grow up again,” Anita Ondine, CEO of Seize the Media, told the two-day conference which kicked off at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this morning.

Ondine said a maturing Canadian industry needed a “common vocabulary” to overcome resistance to adopting a 360-degree approach to commissioning and producing digital content among broadcasters and producers.

“When an industry starts developing, leaders do the innovation, people love the ideas and do it too, but there’s friction because there’s no established definitions,” she explained.

Ondine said entertainment groups work in silos, with production and marketing and other departments not working together, or developing cross-platform content more as bolt-ons for existing properties.

The basis of transmedia, she told the conference, was transcending silos and storytelling as it has come down from traditional film and TV production.

“To me transmedia is about telling a story. At the core of it, it is a story, or many stories, that take place across multiple screens,” Ondine said of content hurdling borders and boundaries.

Transmedia is also about audience participation through interactivity, as opposed to passive consumption of content.

That calls for designing interactivity to allow the audience to enter a door into a story world, and potentially influence the outcome.

“We don’t all of the things that can possibly happen, because when someone enters that story world, they become characters in that story, they enter into the shoes of the protagonists,” Ondine said of transmedia content.

Participants in effect become part of the creative process, distinct from traditional TV where the production team defines how a project turns out and is consumed.

The Merging + Media conference continues Friday in Toronto.