A new chapter in storytelling
My latest guest blog on independent cinema network Support Your Local Cinema considers the latest evolution in storytelling: interactivity.
Here’s a taster:
Stories have been a part of human culture since prehistoric man first drew pictorial representations on cave walls – signs of “the beginnings of the modern human soul”, as Werner Herzog eloquently expressed it in his acclaimed film Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The earliest stories served less as entertainment and more as instructive tales of faith and morality. Through ancient religious texts, we adopted beliefs, rituals, codes of behaviour, laws and ethics. The great philosopher Plato famously set out his theories about the nature of human existence through a series of allegorical tales, and in medieval times fables provided miniature lessons in morality. In those early days of literary development, our storytelling was bound up in the pictorial and the performative, passed down orally through generations.
Superinjunction v Freedom of speech
Ah, in even the busiest week there’s always time for a wee rant about press freedom and the cult of celebrity.
Here’s a taster:
Is it just me, or has the 21st century been a tough old time for journalism?
First, the rise of digital media has in many ways undermined its status as the Great Conveyor of Knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for digital democracy and I tweet with the best of ‘em, but I take a very strong position on one of 38minutes’ oldest and most hotly contested debates: is journalism dying? The answer, to me, is a firm no.
Journalism simply needs to move with the times. Digital media feeds us an exhuasting array of information, not all of it reliable, and any professional journalist will apply their critical eye to the source and act as a filter through which only the truth will out. Well, in theory at least.
And how they report that truth has rightly moved on to new platforms and acquired an interactive edge. Again, a welcome development. But there has certainly been a ‘settling in’ period where the industry had a bit of a wobble: if every Tom, Dick and Harry can self-publish, where does professional journalism fit in?
Read it in full here on 38minutes.
