digital storytelling » geniwate.com

The lessons of Caine’s Arcade

Transient Spaces, web Comments Off

Aug 262012

Why does this act of storytelling work so well? According to Brad Phillips in The 6 traits of great storytelling—in one adorable video, it meets Dan and Chip Heath’s six critical traits that make stories memorable:

Simple. A boy. An idea. Some boxes. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Unexpected. This video had at least four unexpected things: An unusually creative boy; a video maker who accidentally stumbled upon the boy’s arcade; a flash mob; and Caine’s surprise at the flash mob. Even though the video’s title (“9-year-old’s DIY cardboard arcade gets flashmobbed”) gave away a lot of the premise, it didn’t matter. We wanted to see how the unexpected played out.
Concrete. There’s one moment that stuck with me more than any other: Caine manually feeding prize tickets through a hole in the box. If there’s a second moment I remember, it’s the claw machine. If there’s a third, it’s the calculator he used to track legitimate “Fun Pass” users. All three of those details are concrete, and the story was more effective for its total absence of abstractions.
Credible. Totally. Not a single false note.
Emotional. Before my wife showed me the video, she sheepishly admitted that it had made her cry. I mildly teased her. Then I watched it and teared up, as well. It felt deeply satisfying to see the boy’s industriousness rewarded. And the father’s pride in his son’s achievement? How wonderful to see a struggling businessman in East L.A. enjoy such rich satisfaction.
Stories. Back to the first “S:” a boy, an idea, some boxes. Stories can’t get stripped down much further, proving that good stories don’t require complexities to work.

Maybe this is the same as (5), but we respond more to stories in which we can identify with the characters, put ourselves in their shoes. No, I’m not saying this rules out fantasy [Heaven forfend], but the most fantastic situations have to be met with a recognisably human response, or they’ll leave us cold. I recently read a piece about Breaking Bad , The author didn’t know why he was interested since all the characters left him cold. It came down to the plot — each plot is an intricate puzzle, an intellectual exercise. His motivation for watching was to see how it could be resolved. That’s unusual. We want, I think, our humanity.

Another thing we want is a happy ending.

So live long and prosper, bye for now.

transmedia storyworlds

Networked Media, web Comments Off

Aug 052012

I’m making a storyworld, of sorts, for my course Networked Media. It’s called Mip and Mop Get Lost, and it stars Mip. And Mop. And a cast of thousands. It’s based on The Pilgrim’s Progress by Joh Bunyan, which none of my students, or even my tutors, has ever heard of. Anyway, it’s meant to be horribly allegorical just the way Pilgrim’s Progress was, and hopefully, the gang does get that. I’m bogged down with creating the pics, however. Most of the episodes are just text.

Here are a few principles for transmedia storytelling from Robert Pratter

Transmedia Storyteller Ltd founder and CEO, Robert Pratten, from his presentation at the European Broadcast Union (EBU) TV Summit in Copenhagen:

PERVASIVE – Available on any device, anywhere and at any time. Blurs real world and fictional world.

PERSISTENT – Story evolves even if you’re not engaging with it. Aggregate audience activity and real-world environmental factors shape story development in real time.

PARTICIPATORY – Allows audience to interact with story characters, locations, things and each other.

PERSONALIZED – Audience members have personalized experience based on past activity and permissions granted to storyworld.

CONNECTED – The audience journey across touchpoints is intelligently managed to create a seamless, integrated experience.

INCLUSIVE – The experience accommodates a range of devices and audience engagement styles such that it’s not only users of expensive smart phones and tablets that get all the fun.

CLOUD-BASED – Network intelligence communicates with peripheral devices to deliver the other six tenets

(7 Tenets of Future Storyworlds – Transmedia Storyteller.)

Lance Weiler, doyen of transmedia storytelling, suggest these principles:

Take time to evaluate the story you want to tell
Ask yourself the hard questions – why will anyone care? Is this the best way to tell the story?
Let go of a single POV
consider how you can show not tell
Make it easy for your audience to become collaborators
Don’t let the world get in the way of the story

I’m not going to claim my little effort meets all, or even many, of these principles. But I do think presenting information using narrative encased in a ‘world’ structure gets your audience more involved.

[Image from Mip and Mop Get Lost c. geniwate]

TS2012, week 8

Transient Spaces Comments Off

Apr 222012

Ts2012, week8

View more presentations from Jenny Weight.

Introduction to digital storytelling

documentary, Issues in education, Transient Spaces Comments Off

Mar 062012

Intro to Digital Storytelling

View more PowerPoint from Amy Goodloe

Lots of pedagogical insights here, thanks for making it public.

a few interesting web narrative projects

resources, Transient Spaces Comments Off

Feb 202012

Still from Take this Lollipop

Take This Lollipop

If you’ve ever had any concerns about online privacy, this is brilliant, short and will confirm all your worst fears (needs a Facebook account). 5 stars!

Bear 71

“It’s hard to know what people are capable of. They can start a revolution on a smart phone but forget to close the lid on a bear-proof garbage can.”

Blurring the line between the wired world and the wild world, the National Film Board of Canada’s Bear 71 is a multi-user interactive social narrative that observes and records the intersection of humans, nature and technology.

Launched with a live, interactive art installation at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Program, the storyworld of Bear 71 is a fully immersive, multi-platform experience. Participants explore and engage with the world of a female grizzly bear via animal role play, augmented reality, webcams, geolocation tracking, motion sensors, a microsite, social media channels and a real bear trap in Park City. This project is the most recent example of how the NFB is changing the face of cinema.

My verdict: A moving documentary with OK footage and fantastic interactive map. 4 stars.

Pandemic

Director Lance Weiler’s storytelling project Pandemic 1.0 is part film, part interactive game, part sociological experiment, and was one of the most talked-about experiences at Sundance 2011’s New Frontier program.

The experience imagines that a mysterious virus has begun to afflict adults in a rural town. The town’s young people soon find themselves cut off from civilization, fighting for their lives. People online work with people in the real world to unlock a variety of hidden clues.

This transmedia storytelling experience unites film, mobile and online technologies, props, social gaming and data visualization, enabling audiences to step into the shoes of the pandemic protagonists.

My verdict: is not a standalone website but rather was linked to an event, so too difficult to understand. An artefact rather than a complete project. 2 stars.

Welcome to Pine Point

Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge, formerly of Adbusters, recreated a town that doesn’t exist anymore. Part book, part film, part family photo album of a place that’s been lost in time, the National Film Board of Canada’s Welcome to Pine Point website explores the memories of residents from the former mining community of Pine Point, Northwest Territories. Overall, it’s an interactive media exploration of how we remember the past.

A multiple-award winner (including two Webby Awards), the online experience combines photographs, sound and video clips, interviews, music and narration by Simons to personally immerse the viewer in a multimedia world of memory and loss.

My verdict: moving and nostalgic excursion to a place that no longer exists, lots of grainy vids and imagery, structurally a little boring. 3 stars

Rome

Originally a concept album for a film that does not (yet) exist, Rome is a multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi (featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and renowned composer Ennio Morricone’s original 40-piece orchestra from Italy).

Director Chris Milk, an artist focused on technology-generated emotional resonance through interactive video, created this project. The result culminated into a feature film produced by Likely Story and Annapurna Pictures, which was adapted from the novel The Reapers are the Angels. The project integrated the use of webGL within the Chrome browser, creating a rich graphical interactive experience complete with elements of game play.

My verdict: spacey 3D animation not wholly rendered. You get to build your own lego-like 3D structure and save it to a gallery. I personally, needed a stronger point to all this to emerge. 2 stars.

Go Bzrk

They take the names of madmen because madness is their fate.
They descend into the tiny places, down where the mites leap and the lymphocytes ooze and the spark of human reason fires like lightning from sizzling neurons. Down in the meat. One by one they join the fight. In the macro, in the nano, in both at once, they fight for life, liberty and the inalienable right to be crazy.
BZRK is their method.
BZRK is their battle cry.
BZRK is their doom.

Verdict: A transmedia thriller which seems to revolve around a book and an app, both of which are for sale. Can’t comment on how good it is. Can’t be rated.

the Hyp replacement

The Hyp Replacement takes place over the course of 2010 and follows the daily lives of four Brooklynites – Yaya, Sandy, Eloise and Sol. They are in search of love, employment and happiness. They share the same Fort Greene brownstone. Eventually, they start an underground marijuana coffeeshop. That’s when things start to get interesting.

How does it all work?

Short chapters are published on an almost daily basis.
Told through a 3rd person narrative, but characters express 1st person narratives through Twitter, Tumblr, Blogspot and YouTube.

Verdict: A complex textual experience, set over various media. Although the writing seems strong, I’m feeling a little short-changed. I want my transmedia to revel sensually in audio and visuals as well. However if you’re happy with just text, this might do the job. 3.5 stars.

Read the interview with author E.A Marciano by Megan O’Neill.