Saturday, April 19th The Tribeca Film Institute and The Ford Foundation sponsored a one day Forum exploring innovative story telling technology and media in the digital age. The event featured leaders in media, technology, and gaming who discussed new trends in digital story telling. There is a strong and growing movement in the ‘new media’ and technology worlds to expand the functionality of the Internet from a simple static platform for the display of web pages, blogs, information sharing, news, and data to a more dynamic world of interactive storytelling. The TFI Forum showcased some of the leaders and the ideas that point in this direction.
The one day event was divided into two sessions I caught session 1.
The session began with opening remarks by Beth Janson,
Executive Director of the Tribeca Film Institute. The Tribeca Film Institute® is a 501(c)(3) year-round nonprofit arts organization founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in the wake of September 11, 2001. TFI empowers filmmakers through grants and professional development, and is a resource for and supporter of individual artists in the field. The Institute’s educational programming leverages an extensive network of people in the film industry to help New York City students learn filmmaking and gain the media skills necessary to be productive citizens and creative individuals in the 21st century.
Keynote Speaker Tiffany Shlain explained her use of the
fascinating concept of ‘cloud filmmaking’ to make a beautiful documentary film in collaboration with thousands of filmmakers from across the globe, all communicating and submitting content from their respective cultures through the Internet. Tiffany’s company scripted the scenario, edited the work, and produced the film. The resulting film the ‘Declaration of Interdependence’ was then resubmitted to the original content generators who translated the film into dozens of different languages to be shared throughout the world!! The filmmaking style that characterises her ‘cloud film’ can be seen in her award winning autobiographical documentary “Connected” which is now available on ITunes. Tiffany makes use of film, still photos,
graphics, and animation to focus on those things that cultures share as human…things that connect and tie the cultures together rather than divide and drive them apart.
What is your “Wish for the Future”? Encouraging them to think ‘innovation’ Lance Weiler asked this question of audience
members during his talk. Lance Weiler is a storyteller, entrepreneur and thought leader. He is recognized as a pioneer because of the way he mixes storytelling and technology. Lance has designed experiences that have reached millions of people via theaters, mobile devices and online. Lance sits on two World Economic Forum steering committees; one focused on the Future of Content Creation and the other examines the role of Digital Media in Shaping Culture & Governance. Lance teaches at Columbia University on the art, craft and business of storytelling in the 21st Century.
Are Adventure Games the new television?
This was the topic for discussion by a panel moderated by Jamin Warren. Video games are an enormous and engaging part of our culture; but who is engaging the institution of video games? In fact who were the people on this panel and what do they know about gaming?
Jamin Warren is the Founder of Kill Screen, an organization
that asks “What does it mean to play games?” Warren says that video games don’t offer pseudo-experiences, they offer real experiences through detailed narratives. From inside the video game industry, he discusses how we need to view video games as art and build a culture of thought around the video game experience.
Sarah Elmaleh serves in the Game Audio Network Guild Voice
Actor’s Coalition. She curates, writes about, speaks on, and is an avid player of videogames. Her recent projects include Skulls of the Shogun, Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Speckled Band with the live-theater radio drama company Gotham Radio Theatre, and Waiting for the End of the World, an upcoming feature film from Matthew Esolda.
Cinereach is a not-for-profit film production company and
foundation that champions vital stories, artfully told. Created and led by young philanthropists, entrepreneurs and filmmakers, Cinereach has supported fiction and nonfiction filmmakers from all over the world through its Productions, Grants & Awards and Fellowships initiatives, and through partnerships with Sundance Institute’s programs. Cinereach has supported close to 120 films in the US and internationally, including Circumstance, Pariah, The World Before Her, Planet of Snail, Girl Model, Code of the West and many more. Cinereach Production’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was released in the US in 2012 by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Charles J Pratt has been a freelance game designer since he graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Progra
m in 2007. He’s worked on projects for companies as varied as Adult Swim, Footlocker, and the British government. He’s also been involved with a number of independent games such as the early web-based social game Casablanca, the street game Search Brigade, and most recently a tower defense game for the iPhone called Critter Defense.
Interactive Storytelling is a form of digital entertainment in which users create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, either by issuing commands to the story’s protagonist, or acting as a general director of events in the narrative. Interactive
storytelling is a medium where the narrative, and its evolution, can be influenced in real-time by a user. For a given plot there are many potential outcomes depending upon decisions made by the players during the game. Sound Familiar? In interactive fiction adventure games players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Literary works that are read in a nonlinear fashion are sometimes used as game books. The reader is given opportunities to make decisions at different points in the text. These decisions determine the flow and outcome of the story. These games contrast considerably with the Action Game genre although the two genre are sometimes combined. Great writing combined with the technological skills to develop and work on a digital platform in the cloud could produce some completely new entertainment vehicles as the field evolves.
Loc Dao
Loc Dao is one of the most important people working in the digital, transmedia, interactive story teller world. He has the talent, the platform, the resources, and the reputation for
producing excellent work to support this status. His work has been awarded dozens of major international and national honours including one 2012 Webby Award for Gods Lake, two 2011 Webby Awards for Welcome to Pinepoint, the 2010 Webby Award for Best Online Documentary programme for Waterlife and Best Cross Platform program for The Test Tube at the 2009 Canadian New Media Awards. In 2012 Dao led a team at the National Film Bank in producing “Bear 71”. This film may well turn out to be a seminal work in the digital transmedia interactive story telling genre. The film has been a huge hit. “Bear 71” is an excellent example of the power and potential of interactive digital media in story telling.
“The film is about a grizzly bear in Banff National Park. Bear 71 is an interactive story told from the point of view of a female grizzly, dubbed ‘Bear 71’. Park rangers collared her when she was three-years old and tracked her through trail cameras. The viewer is dropped into an interactive map of the Park, where they encounter other wired creatures that live in Bear 71′s home range: golden eagles, Big Horn sheep, wolves, and deer mice, all similarly tagged and under surveillance. The story (narrated by Mia Kirshner) continues from Bear 71′s point of view as she describes life for herself, her cubs, and the other resident animals. The bear’s world is revealed through a script and the project features hundreds of ‘trail cam’ images of wildlife in the Rocky Mountains captured over the last ten years. Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison’s poignant interactive documentary about a bear in the Canadian Rockies illuminates the way humans engage with wildlife in the age of networks, satellites, and digital surveillance. Audiences from around the world can use their smartphones to become part of an interactive forest environment rich with bears, cougars, sheep, deer, and people as they follow an emotional story of a grizzly bear tagged and monitored by Banff National Park rangers. Produced by Loc Dao, Dana Dansereau, Bonnie Thompson and Rob McLaughlin at the National Film Board of Canada. Voice Actor: Mia Kirshner Writer: JB Mackinnon Executive Producers: Loc Dao, Rob McLaughlin and David Christensen Installation and Live Event: NFB and Lance Weiler Interactive Designer and Developer: Jam3 Designer: Aubyn Freybe-Smith”
At the Tribeca Film Institute Interactive Forum Loc Dao provided a sneak peak of ‘Circa 1948’ by Stan Douglas, a 3D historical augmented reality app that captures the stories and architecture of a transitional post-war era Canada.
Jason Silva recently launched a series of non-commercial micro-documentaries exploring the co-evolution of humans and technology, the latest of which was called “stunning” by TED Conference owner and curator, Chris Anderson. Jason has recently spoken at The Singularity Summit in NYC, the DLD Conference in Munich and the TED Active conference. His work was featured at The Economist World in 2012 Ideas Festival.
Localore, an independent producer-driven public media production from AIR, Inc. has sponsored, funded, and developed a group of inspiring transmedia projects that open our imaginations to the new possibilities of “full spectrum storytelling.” Some of the most meaningful and powerful projects happen all around us on a daily basis.
AUSTIN MUSIC MAP: Uncovering Austin’s surprisingly diverse sonic subculture in tandem with fans and performers reveals a
world of performing artists who have hidden in plain sight. Beyond the known map of the city’s famous music scene are the vibrant musical margins, the front porches, backyards, dive bars, churches and community centers where people make music.
REINVENTION STORIES: Have you ever had to reinvent yourself, because of the big changes in our local economy or in
your personal life? Did you lose a job, go back to school, do things you never thought you’d be doing? What is that like? Reinvention offers residents of Dayton, Ohio a chance to reflect on how they’re remaking their lives and community. Reinvention Stories is a collaborative transmedia project in which the producer team walked the neighborhoods all summer to meet and talk to the people on their porches, in driveways, with their families throughout the Miami Valley. There are great, funny, surprising and inspiring stories of adversity, resilience and reinvention out there.
PLANET TAKEOUT: Val Wang is a writer and multimedia
documentarian who has lived in Beijing, Baltimore and Brooklyn. She now lives in Boston, where she is the Producer of Planet Takeout, a participatory documentary project on the role of Chinese takeouts as vital cultural crossroads in diverse Boston neighborhoods. Planet Takeout solicits perspectives from both sides of the counter on how Chinese carryouts have become an unlikely crossroads of community. Localore producer Val Wang teamed up with local ‘powerbroker’ in the Chinese community Helen Chin Schlicte to tap into a network of restaurant owners and produce suppliers and create a fascinating picture of the relationship between the Chinese take-out business and the local community.
HEAR HERE: Hear Here seeks residents’ most resonant place-
based stories enabled in art by a custom-built booth ‘the story tunnel’ inspiring mobile listening and contributions. Erica Mu and Audrey Dilling look for place related stories surrounding one of six themes – Work, Food, Play, Love, Worship and Create. As a pop-up radio project the ‘story tunnel’ gets around. Participants can make appointments or just show up and join in.
BLACK GOLD BOOM: Black Gold Boom traverses the oil rigs,
man camps, and crossroads of North Dakota’s oil rush through a series of lively multimedia pieces. Nathina St. Pierre had to take a gun to fight off the unwanted male advances. Stan Reep has to fight to keep the rights for the oil under his property. This is just two of the stories found by Black Gold Boom reporter Todd Melby in his exploration of the oil boom in western North Dakota.
A WEB-DOCUMENTARY MANIFESTO Jesse Shapins,
CEO/co-founder of Zeega has quickly enabled film makers across the world to create non-linear, online stories without the need for a degree in computer programming. In this 10-minute presentation, Jesse Shapins lay out a collaborative manifesto for web-documentary. Zeega is very active in multiplatform collaborations that have produced important work at the interface of technology, media, and the internet.
TFI NEW MEDIA FUND PRESENTS THE 2013 GRANT RECIPIENTS Elaine Mcmillion – Hank Willis Thomas-Theo Rigby
The TFI New Media Fund provides funding and support to non-fiction, social issue media projects which go beyond traditional screens—integrating film with content across media platforms, from video games and mobile apps to social networks and interactive websites. Project Status: For non-fiction projects, based anywhere, in advanced development or beyond. Grants range from $50,000 to $100,000.
HOLLOW – Elaine Mcmillion: Hollow: An Interactive
Documentary represents a universal struggle shared by rural communities across the United States by focusing on one of the hardest hit areas: Southern West Virginia. Intimate documentary portraits reveal the faces behind the statistics of McDowell County an area plagued with deep stereotypes, poverty, youth exodus, loss of population and high unemployment as they continue to live, work and enjoy life in their community. Like many post-industrial communities across the country, McDowell County, W. Va., is struggling to survive. Through Hollow, the Appalachian community represents themselves and their challenges as they see fit. Hollow combines video portraits, interactive data visualizations, social media and user-generated content delivered on an HTML5 website to support engagement and inspire change.
QUESTION BRIDGE: BLACK MALES – Hank Willis Thomas: A transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine black
male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange facilitated through strategic digital channels, diverse members of this “demographic” bridges economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions. Question Bridge provides a safe setting for necessary, honest expression and healing dialogue on themes that divide, unite and puzzle black males in the United States. Artist Chris Johnson originated Question
Bridge in 1996 when he was looking for a way to use media art to generate a conversation around class and generational divisions within San Diego’s African American community. Question Bridge: Black Males was created by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayete Ross-Smith, and Kamal Sinclair. The exhibition opened in 2011 at Sundance and has continues it’s tour of the United States opening in a new venue virtually every month or two since then.
IMMIGRANT NATION – Theo Rigby:
Nearly every person in the U.S. has an immigration journey — be
it their own or the voyage of a relative in the past. As the topic of immigration divides communities across the country, our shared history can create commonality between recent immigrants and those whose families have lived in the U.S. for generations. Immigrant Nation will use documentary film, user-generated storytelling, and data visualization to provide a social space for communities to share and connect with their immigrant histories.
