multi-platform: just another way to tell a story?

Gaza Sderot Arte.tv
arte tv's webdocumentary 'Gaza/Sderot: Life in spite of everything' can be found at http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv

I have heard many people say that multi-platform production is ‘just another way to tell a story.’ It sounds simple, clear-cut, reassuring.

But is that it? I think not. There is a huge difference in the way you can communicate content with a multi-platform project.

When you tell a linear story, you are grappling with some time-honoured issues such as dramatic structure, character development, narrative progression, resolution. I have struggled with these for so long, in so many projects, that I feel they have become second nature. Now, when I approach a film idea, I look at it from that angle right away, not just as a subject or a theme or an issue.

But in conceiving a multi-platform project, you are NOT just telling a story, you are conceiving an experience. Not even just a viewer experience, but – due to the interactivity of Web 2.0 – a user or participant experience.

I worked with producer Patricia Bergeron for a couple of months, and learned from her that the user experience is central to any multi-platform experience. (Patricia has many excellent texts about cross-platform production on her Delicious account.) As the winners of the DOC Reboot contest, we had the opportunity to consult with several leading experts in the field, and with Brett Gaylor of Eyesteel films. (See my previous post.)

But one of the best explanations I have heard of multi-platform production was provided at an NFB panel at Hot Docs a few weeks ago, by Hugues Sweeney and Rob McLauglin, respectively from the French and English production branches of the NFB.

Said Sweeney: “In multi-platform, the creator is an architect. Even before shooting, he/she has to edit, to conceive a space into which the user can come to live an experience. The role of the author really is to define that experience. This means a lot of preparation, and you have to think of the audience as being actively involved in the experience.”

For my own work, I certainly hope to continue making feature length documentaries. But I see multi-platform production as a way to actually bring back many of the things I felt I had to sacrifice in making a film: the context and background, information about issues, debates and points of view on the subject. I think actually that films sometimes aren’t as good as they could be because they try to incorporate too much of this kind of material in a linear story.

Now, with the possibility of exploring these kinds of materials on the other platforms, we could feel even freer to focus a film on excellent storytelling.

Provided, of course, that there is continued support and funding for linear docs as well as the new platforms.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

The multi-platform revolution

Prison Valley webdocumentary (screengrab)

This is a still taken from an excellent interactive web documentary, Prison Valley by David Dufresne & Philippe Brault, produced by arte.tv and upian.com, in partnership with FranceInter, Libération.fr and Yahoo.com.

The world of documentary production is in the midst of an upheaval, the likes of which have not been seen since the coming of cinema vérité/direct cinema in the first years of the sixties.

Digital technology and the Web 2.0 has meant that virtually anyone can be a content producer – or filmmaker – and that the user can express opinions and interact with other producers. We are no longer limited to watching programs on TV at predetermined times – and with commercial breaks.

There is no longer “an audience,” there are audiences. What used to be small niche audiences on a given territory can now be a substantial global audience. It is a revolution, and as all revolutions it comes with pain and loss as well as increased freedom.

We are experiencing this transition in quite a radical way in Canada right now, because government agencies such as the National Film Board and the new Canadian Media Fund have decided to invest heavily in multi-platform production.

Some filmmakers are focusing on the negative consequences. I think this is a mistake, because multi-platform production opens the door to new ways of reaching and audience, and new ways of telling stories. I don’t see these as replacing the traditional ‘linear’ stories but rather, complementing them.

But even this means a substantial change in the way we work.

More on this another day, as I will review several of these multi-platform projects and interview their authors.

Thanks to Tobi Elliot for help with this post.