I went to the ever-growing CaseCamp. Without a doubt it is one of the most significant digital culture and marketing events in the country - and free.
The presentation - or is it unpresentation - that most impressed me was by Jill Golick, Executive Producer of Story2Oh.com.
A Canadian filmmaker and television writer, she was critical of storytelling on the Web. I completely agree with her critique that too much of what was happening on the Web was taking TV-type shots and chopping them down to 4-5 minute clips and posting them on the Internet. Entertaining but not a good use of the medium. Golick equated the period we are in as when movies first came out, the first response was to film plays. (This is still done today and is why the movie I love to cite "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" is a bad movie" - it's probably a great play, but bad movie).
Golick set out to experiment with the online medium and create a story using the unique qualities and feature of the Internet. I wasn't part of the original storyline, but here's a recap: Golick and team, created characters, wrote scripts, and made various media products (eg. videos). They created fictional Facebook and del.icio.us accounts, blogs and vlogs, Twitters, etc. To get the full story one could friend the characters, ask them questions, post comments, and follow their various online exploits.
While there was concerns that the story was so convincing that some fell for it, despite the various notices on the sites that these were fictional characters, I believe these concerns show how compelling and effective the story was.
I'm so excited to see someone breaking ground with this and making such innovative use of the medium. I've friended her characters now and can't wait for the next storyline to begin.
7 comments:
Glen
Thanks so much for the kind words. Unfortunately not everyone shared your sentiments. My characters were deleted from Facebook this afternoon.
It's unfortunate but there are lots of other places to play on the web. I hope to have a longer story up by the fall.
Glen
Thanks so much for the kind words. Unfortunately not everyone shared your sentiments. My characters were deleted from Facebook this afternoon.
It's unfortunate but there are lots of other places to play on the web. I hope to have a longer story up by the fall.
Too bad for you you won't be able to follow it on Facebook anymore. Somebody got their knickers in a twist and managed to have the FB component of the story deleted.
It's a shame that people can't read or think independently. One person in particular, who was sitting 2 rows in front of me, was quite shocked to find out that Ali was fictional. Apparently, stating that Ali is fictional can be confused with a real person ironically claiming their fictional. And having a website, Flickr, other facebook friends, blogs, etc. all saying the same thing must be even more ironic.
Sadly, Facebook decided that they've got enough on their plate without trying to find another way to evolve entertainment as we move from push-video to pull-immersive.
Frankly, I don't feel that sympathetic to people who friend others without some idea of who they are - ie. checking out their profile and seeing they're fictional.
I can't believe Facebook deleted the accounts!
Good to see you there, Glen.
I applaud her creativity and challenging our ideas of these spaces. But, I'm not surprised the FB accounts were deleted. She was in a room with representatives from lots of different companies, and quite possibly FB. Probably not a good idea to tell an audience about your breaking the terms of service of an online service if you don't know who is in the audience.
I did find the story entertaining when I was following it a month or two ago. I hope she looks at this as part of the learning curve and carries on.
Cheers,
Connie
You can never know who's real and who's fictional, but so what? Being fictional doesn't make you any less of a human being. Who knows, I might be fictional too!!!
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