Non-Linear Storytelling - Week 5A
During this week's session, we talked about non-linear storytelling, something that we mentioned a bit in our first workshop. More specifically, in order to be able to understand what we are going to deal with, later on, we were first introduced to what mediums are through Egyptian Monumental Temples.
Mediums = architecture, hieroglyphs, painting, sculptures and symbols.
Source: here
Hypertext fiction is a way of connecting text assets to tell a story. In other words, it is electronic literature which engages with the readers. This relies on the digitization of the text which is achieved by using HyperText Markup Language. HTML allows users to navigate between documents through a range of hyperlinks, which, basically is, surfing the web.
In the past, I've made some websites using HTML but I had never imagined that it could be used in such a creative way. When Bandersnatch first came out, I was astonished by how brilliantly they had designed it. I was even more surprised with the interactive video that I chose to watch for the first task.
i) What is the story of the example?
The story is about an American Prisoner, Herman Wallace, who spent 30 years in solidarity confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola, as it is also known. He was convicted of armed robbery for 25 years and later on accused of the murder of a prison guard, which moved him to solidarity confinement. However, that didn’t stop him as he became part of the Black Panthers and one of the members of Angola Three (with Robert King and Albert Woodfox), which fought for the rights of prisoners. The video is a phone interview, which includes all parts of Herman’s life, in a non-linear way.
ii) How does the non-linear structure work?
The 20-minute interactive video is a combination of animation, collages, voiceovers, texts, sound effects and a bit of music. The viewer doesn’t have the ability to choose the story, you can only choose which part of the story you are going to hear first: is it going to be how Herman got in prison? Is it about Herman’s childhood? After you listen to the first two choices, more choices start to appear. It was also really interesting that there was a 20-minute timer, which helped the audience trace in what part of the story they are. However, after the timer ends, the call stops and you are directed to another short film, that describes the final years of the, now, free man and it shows a male figure going towards the sea on sunset. After you finish all the different parts of the story, which also include small interviews from experts about the case, at some point (the lawyer of Herman talks about his case) we are redirected to the final page which has all the information mentioned and more from what we just experienced.
iii)How do they use interactivity?
The creator uses interactivity by giving you the option to choose which part of the story you want to hear first. After choosing that, you are redirected to another “area”, which again you has different objects highlighted with “white pencil” and you have to choose which one you want to hear about first.
iv) What do you like and what needs improvement?
Overall, it was a really interesting work of art and also topic, which I had no information about. It was a sensitive subject which was treated in a really careful way. I wasn’t expecting to listen to the whole story: all the good and the bad things that Herman did in his life. Usually, I find documentaries informational but also at the same time really dull but given that it is actually an interactive documentary it made it far more interesting and I managed to absorb what I heard. I liked how minimal it was and it was also really easy to follow. I don’t know if it was my computer or not, but I found the animation really slow at some points and it tired my eyes. Also, the sound effects and the audio needed to have more smooth transitions, because it was clearly cropped from a whole conversation. Generally, it needed smoother transitions and more organized way to go from one part of the story to the other. Even if there were some flaws, it was a really nice story and they definitely fulfilled the purpose of non-linear storytelling and it can certainly be labelled as an interactive documentary.
Out of curiosity, I watched the interactive film Possibillia which left me speechless. The way the story unravels in front of the viewer's eyes and how they are connected at the end was brilliant. Aside from the technical part, there were so many arguments between the couple but all of them seemed so reasonable and made this film even more interactive because you could understand the pain of the characters.
Mediums = architecture, hieroglyphs, painting, sculptures and symbols.
However, mediums represent different parts of a story and each viewer receives a different order of narrative and story. The latter is something that we have mentioned multiple times in many other terms: that fact that each person interprets what they experience in a unique way because of their background (cultural, educational etc.)
From looking up this term, a synonym that I found for the word "mediums" is means but I'm not sure if it can be used in exactly the same way. Do they have the same denotation but a different connotation? That is something worth a little bit more research because I am also still trying to comprehend the difference between denotation and connotation.
In order to get to what non-linear storytelling is, our tutor analyzed the movie Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarantino, which has many events going on at the same time but they are not presented in order. What I got from talking about films that feature this narrative is that, in theory, non-linear storytelling sounds more difficult than it actually is and it is not as confusing as it seems. For example, looking at the Pulp Fiction visualization of the story, one believes that it is a story that actually won't make any sense in practice when in reality is so carefully structured that it is more understandable than actual a movie that features linear narration.
And of course, from the way I see it, this does not apply only for Pulp Fiction, but most of the films that are included in the same category: Watchmen, Vanilla Sky, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and more. What I noted down from the lecture is that we should be careful when we create our own non-linear story because we might lose track of all the different things that are going on at the same time or in other alternatives.
Moreover, I was surprised to see that there are also non-linear books with the same. From each page you read, you get a fragment of the story. Even if it sounds really nice and makes the reader interact actively with the story, I still don't know if it will be easy for anyone to read something that "complicated" because usually, people don't read books in one sit. It takes some time for one to finish a book. I'm wondering whether the reader might get confused and get lost with this kind of interaction. I would like to try to read a book like this because it has honestly piqued my interest.
Hypertext Fiction
Hypertext refers to texts that are produced and read on computers and which require the reader to click on hyperlinks in order to read through the text. (Trimarco, 2016)Source: here
Hypertext fiction is a way of connecting text assets to tell a story. In other words, it is electronic literature which engages with the readers. This relies on the digitization of the text which is achieved by using HyperText Markup Language. HTML allows users to navigate between documents through a range of hyperlinks, which, basically is, surfing the web.
In the past, I've made some websites using HTML but I had never imagined that it could be used in such a creative way. When Bandersnatch first came out, I was astonished by how brilliantly they had designed it. I was even more surprised with the interactive video that I chose to watch for the first task.
Task 1
For this task I chose the interactive video called, The Deeper They Bury Me, created by Angad Singh Bhalla and Ted Biggs.
i) What is the story of the example?
The story is about an American Prisoner, Herman Wallace, who spent 30 years in solidarity confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola, as it is also known. He was convicted of armed robbery for 25 years and later on accused of the murder of a prison guard, which moved him to solidarity confinement. However, that didn’t stop him as he became part of the Black Panthers and one of the members of Angola Three (with Robert King and Albert Woodfox), which fought for the rights of prisoners. The video is a phone interview, which includes all parts of Herman’s life, in a non-linear way.
ii) How does the non-linear structure work?
The 20-minute interactive video is a combination of animation, collages, voiceovers, texts, sound effects and a bit of music. The viewer doesn’t have the ability to choose the story, you can only choose which part of the story you are going to hear first: is it going to be how Herman got in prison? Is it about Herman’s childhood? After you listen to the first two choices, more choices start to appear. It was also really interesting that there was a 20-minute timer, which helped the audience trace in what part of the story they are. However, after the timer ends, the call stops and you are directed to another short film, that describes the final years of the, now, free man and it shows a male figure going towards the sea on sunset. After you finish all the different parts of the story, which also include small interviews from experts about the case, at some point (the lawyer of Herman talks about his case) we are redirected to the final page which has all the information mentioned and more from what we just experienced.
iii)How do they use interactivity?
The creator uses interactivity by giving you the option to choose which part of the story you want to hear first. After choosing that, you are redirected to another “area”, which again you has different objects highlighted with “white pencil” and you have to choose which one you want to hear about first.
iv) What do you like and what needs improvement?
Overall, it was a really interesting work of art and also topic, which I had no information about. It was a sensitive subject which was treated in a really careful way. I wasn’t expecting to listen to the whole story: all the good and the bad things that Herman did in his life. Usually, I find documentaries informational but also at the same time really dull but given that it is actually an interactive documentary it made it far more interesting and I managed to absorb what I heard. I liked how minimal it was and it was also really easy to follow. I don’t know if it was my computer or not, but I found the animation really slow at some points and it tired my eyes. Also, the sound effects and the audio needed to have more smooth transitions, because it was clearly cropped from a whole conversation. Generally, it needed smoother transitions and more organized way to go from one part of the story to the other. Even if there were some flaws, it was a really nice story and they definitely fulfilled the purpose of non-linear storytelling and it can certainly be labelled as an interactive documentary.
Thus, Ι took the BuzzFeed quiz Create a Red Carpet Look and Find out What You'd be Famous for. I don't think the topic matters a lot on this activity but it was nice to see how Eko works and also how you create something so active for the audience, because from I saw it had a lot of layers. The clothes, the makeup and the rest of the options. I would love to make a quiz and see what kind of response it will have and also I want to learn more about how they are made (the criteria, how to publish it and how to distribute it).
Reflection
From today's lecture, I feel like I learned quite a lot of things: new terms and theories which will come handy for the next assignment. Now that it is Week 5, I have realized that a successful lecture is one that motivates me to research more and go deeper into the subjects that we discussed (technically discussed). This was one of them and I want to focus on understanding more how interactive films work and what I can do for Assignment 2 by using all these techniques.
In the next post, I'm going to talk a bit more interactive films and I will explain how I created my interactive non-linear story.
Thank you for reading:)
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