Mixed Media
One of my students has been working on a short film on video. I call it that because though the technology used is video, it is very much in a motion picture style. He knew he could only do a couple of scenes lasting about twenty minutes on basically one set. In order to tell his whole story, he is planning on using a web site and possibly some other media. A hero of his is Josh Whedon, maker of the television show “Firefly” and the movie “Serenity.” I haven’t had the chance to see any of these yet, but I’m told that you really need to see the TV show to understand the movie. Unlike the way we have often seen in the past of similar content getting repackaged from one medium to another, this is a matter of one story being spread among different media. It seems to me that this kind of thing is a paradigm shift in the way stories are told.
As a culture we have been pushed into the realm of non-linear story telling by big media events such as the Star Wars series which were presented to us over the years out of order. Even though each of the films can stand alone, one has to get one’s mind around the prequel idea when taking them all together. In smaller ways films like “Groundhog Day,” “Memento” and others have bounced us around in non-sequential ways. And then there are the films with alternate endings. Linking such as we find all over the web got us bouncing around through content non-linearly as a normal part of everyday life. So the concept of non-linear presentation has been growing and becoming more and more the norm. But taking one story and spreading pieces of it around on different media (film, TV, web, books, magazines, comic books, audio, still pictures, etc.) which all have to be consumed in order to experience the whole is something that seems rather new to me. This technique could be very linear or completely non-linear. It really isn’t a matter of linearity, but seems to be related in that it is segmented.
I’ve been pondering the question of how much linearity must there be in non-linear segments in order for good story telling to happen? Classic story telling involves building and releasing tension. The protagonist must be put into peril and then rescued from the danger. There must be ebb and flow, pacing and contrast. This is generally well served by linear presentation. If the pieces are cut up too small then these macro features are lost. My son has some adventure style video games he likes to play. He is in complete control of the story at all times. But because this is true, the emotional graph is quite flat. The pieces are just too small to develop a story smoothly. The attraction is in the control, but to just watch someone else play the game is soon tiring. Without the element of control in one’s hands, the storytelling is just weak. So stories can be made up of modules that can be combined non-linearly, but each module must have some linearity within itself to tell a strong story.
Okay, maybe I’ll have more to say about this. Or maybe this is really obvious old hat. In any case, I’m getting very sleepy, so I think I’ll stop now.
posted by wingman at 3:51 AM
3 Comments:
recently, I was browsing itunes and found a bunch of Uncle Shelby books on there. I've always enjoyed hearing him goof off with his poems, but I thought about how in the books, the poems don't actually "mean" without his silly drawings that explain them.
I was playing a crowder song for convocation class a couple weeks ago, and was pointing out all the little extras in there that enhance the meaning or actually give it meaning that the lyric has left off. This led to a discussion about multimedia even in the telling of a song. We are seeing songs conceived simultaneously with video, with the two integrated in the whole, rather than one playing mistress of the other as in the early MTV days when I was in high school, where videos were after-thought stagings of songs; and the more recent trend when music is just written to play the background for a bunch of choreography on a music video.
I think this is a wonderful thing, because more can be told without degraded the artistic quality of any of the elements. Lyrics can be less cheesy, because they don't have to tell the whole story because the task is shared by multiple elements. Art may be more easily understood without a blatant "explaining" that reduces it to gebracht entertainment.
I saw this with the video and animation at the Rush r30 concert, Delirious worship set in the same month, and the U2 concerts in Dallas and Charlotte. Integration of elements that previously have only existed simultaneously.
On a related note, I felt that the only thing missing in the "end of the spear" was songs. There were several spots in the film that I heard songs, but alas, I was given only film score music. This is hard to do, but so very effective. I was deeply pleased to hear Alanis Morrisette at the end of the Narnia movie. Her song, written from the perspective of Lucy, was so much stronger than some CCM singer trying to make the allegory more clear. I walked away thinking, "the Spirit will use who he will."
The student I mentioned in this post told me about how he planned to present the various pieces, which he was coming up with in anything but a linear fashion, as if this was just as normal and everyday as anything could be. For him this "new" technique seemed to be a native skill already - practically a convention. I don't think there is any going back now.
" I don't know that I'd consider it normal. I can't think of any intentional efforts like it in the industry."
EXACTLY! This is a new way of communication that has not penetrated the industry, as you say, but is something your generation is bringing to the table. There indeed are and will be unforseen dynamics to the switching process and you are keen to to be studying this. You go guy!
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