I was attending a day-long workshop here in Houston today when I realized I was in the wrong place. The workshop was billed as "Multimedia Storytelling" and I signed up enthusiastically. It was a mistake. You see, the term "multimedia," I guess, means different things to different people. Who knew?
The fellow leading the workshop was Brian Storm of MediaStorm.org, a very competent fellow. The problem for me was that all of his products are not what I would call "multimedia" — they are good, old-fashioned videos, period. All his examples were QuickTime Movies with only a passing glance at a couple of websites that included design elements that were not video based. More than that, he was advocating video as the best (if not one-and-only) form of storytelling in the new media. During the question and answer period just before lunch, I specifically asked him what were his thoughts on viewer-timed media as opposed to author-timed media. His answer was an unequivocal dismissal of what he termed "interactive media." He said, "I've built probably 1,000 interactive applications in my career. What I've found is that they don't work. They're sexy as hell, but people don't use them. Ninety percent of the people just click 'play' and want to watch it all the way through."
Yikes. I had a moment of panic. Then he continued with, "Now, granted this was the late-1990s and interactives have come a long way." Thud. I could have told him that. We tried interactive PDFs in 1998 with the original LensWork Multimedia Edition products and we simply couldn't sell them. Not enough people knew what a PDF was or didn't have computers with enough horse-power to play audio and video. But, this is 2010. We have subscribers for LensWork Extended in over 70 countries and I can tell you that "interactives" are an exciting and very interesting medium for still photographers. The even more decisive point is that video and multimedia are different. They each have different strengths and weaknesses. They are as different from each other as books are from videos. Far too many people are far too confused by this because they keep trying to understand new paradigms in terms of old knowledge.
He added, "People just want a story. Hollywood storytelling works."
People may just want a story, but to spoon feed it to them via video is not pushing today's technology. Movie making has been around since, what, the 1920s? Hollywood and television have been pumping us full of video content for over half a century. That we now have a new method of delivering video via the Internet is new, but video production and content is certainly not.
"The linear experience is money in the bank. My content [video] can play on an iPhone; try that with an interactive app."
I can only hope that my artwork is never viewed on an iPhone. Sort of like reproductions of the Mona Lisa on a T-shirt. I may, someday, produce artwork specifically targeted for the iPhone, just as Leonardo may have been thrilled to do artwork for a T-shirt. Perhaps, but don't hold your breath.
"Interactives can be powerful, but for me they're not the leading, most powerful thing. We don't need to reinvent some storytelling format. We need to get really good at what we should be doing which is linear stories that make sense of information."
Spoken like a true videographer, and well said. From the point of view of video, I agree with all of this. But to say that "interactives don't work" goes too far for agreement.
Elsewhere in the presentation he claimed that 9,000,000 people watched one of his videos from the home page of MSNBC during just a few hours. That's a lot of folks. Good for him. We don't have 9 million LensWork Extended viewers, so I tip my hat to his volume. There is, however, more to the story than mere volume. In fact, this is one of the interesting things about "media" in the traditional world — its association with volumetric measurement. Should we be anticipating the equivalent of Nielsen ratings for art exhibits?
He then announced that people had donated $12,000 after watching this video and then popping for a $5 donation to help the cause that was the subject of the video. Impressive — $12,000 is nothing to sneeze at. Not to diminish the results but being the curious mind that I am, I did the math. That means that 2,400 people out of the 9 million made donations. That's 0.03%. I was less than enthused. By any measure that I know of, this is an embarrassing rate of return.
Raw numbers are not in my favor. I don't care. In art making, I've always felt the depth of connection is far more important than the volume. Ten people who really appreciate what I've done is more meaningful to me than 1,000 who glance at it with only passing interest. If I was interested in volume, why would still photography be my medium? Isn't it obvious that the audience for still photography is smaller than the audience for video? Or for that matter, rodeo? Still photography is and always has been a fringe art form not able to compete with the so-called "mass media" when it comes to sheer volume of its audience.
I can be impressed by big numbers like anyone, but this actually points out one of my problems with author-timed media — it tends to create a passive, "entertain me" dynamic that I think actually discourages critical engagement and true immersion into a project. Video, by its very nature, fosters an inactive, sponge-like response in the viewer. I've always found critical thinking to be better encouraged when the viewer is involved in moving the content along rather than just receiving it.
For example, in his videos I found several statements (specifics not important for this discussion) that simply breezed by in the video without time to question them. Again, critical thinking is discouraged. If I had found this content in a book or a true multimedia presentation, I would have stopped, thought about the assertions more carefully, perhaps even made notes or paused for some research that might illuminate the statements under consideration. Not so in a video; the assertion stands because the video moves on unabated. Propagandists have understood this aspect of video since the invention of moving pictures which is why they make films and burn books.
Moving video — the kind produced by Ken Burns or Brian Storm — is a fabulous way to pull at the heartstrings and move emotions. For one-sided storytelling, it may be the very best medium ever invented. As monologue it excels, but as dialog it is far too didactic for my tastes. Books and even graphic art forms like still photography or painting are much better at inviting dialog. When we look at a painting or a photograph, we think about it; we ask questions; we place it in context both in history and contemporarily; we can disagree and even argue with the artists without missing the next moments in the unreeling of the film; we can pause at our will, on our time, and think. To me, this is such a crucial part of the art viewing experience that when I am robbed of it —as I am when viewing a video — that I start to get antsy. I may be an odd duck in this regard, but it's precisely why I don't think of "video" as "multimedia."
To me, the term multimedia means, well, "more than one media." A PDF with audio is multimedia; a PowerPoint slide presentation with voice over is multimedia; a Flash presentation that includes video, audio, stills, and/or drawn graphics is multimedia; a book with an accompanying CD of audio is multimedia. Video is (or can be) a part of a multimedia, and an important part at that. But a video that is only a video, even if it contains still images and audio, is just a video. I would never think to call Brian Storm's or Kens Burns' work multimedia — and I think doing so dilutes the term to a degree that makes it almost meaningless.
I do wonder if calling a video that includes still images "multimedia" somehow makes it more hip, more cutting edge, more marketable. Calling a video a "video" is simply not as sexy as calling it "multimedia." But using such expanded definitions for marketing purposes to sex-up our products seems disingenuous and confusing. Are we allowed to rename books that include sequences of images "videos" because they create the illusion of movement? If I speak to you while I show you my slides of my summer vacation can I refer to myself as "cinema"? Why not just call it what it is and let it stand on its own merit?
Well, just to wrap up the story of my day, I begged off the rest of the workshop and left at lunch. I had hoped I was going to gain some perspective on this new thing, whatever it's called, that combines still photography with other forms of media, and hear some ideas about various formats, how to use them for maximum effect, when one kind of presentation might be better than another, the strengths and weaknesses of combining various media into a unified presentation, how still photographers might start to think about expanding beyond the book and the mat board with their images, see examples of success and even some that were less-than-successful along with a discussion of why, where the concept of combined media is heading in light of the rapidly changing technology, etc.
Nope. Instead, I got "Videography is King and long live the King." I like videos. I've even produced some. I enjoy the virtues of video. But, it's not multimedia and I still think that multimedia is one of the truly interesting opportunities in technology where we still photographers have the potential to present our work without becoming television-on-the-Internet.
