Five stories connected: Syrian border, Chicago, Soweto, Spain and Norway. It looks like a scene from Minority Report. You view the story. AI in part generates its own narrative against the author’s preference.
The storyteller explains to its audience — human interaction is valued. A book is generated instantaneously. In 2030, against all logic, but just as history has recycled its form since the 1900s, from scale to miniaturisation, society has fallen in love with scale again and there are enough devices for it to be generated any place, anywhere.
Season greetings and here’s looking forward to a fruitful year. In that vein I wanted to share something, my findings on a form of storytelling that’s happening now. One that I’ve advocated from experience and international research across the world.
It’s taken me several years; the origins started in the early 1990s. This form of storytelling caters for news and journalism, branding stories, business narrative and new documentary. In fact it can be used on anything.
It brings together various styles collapsed around two seemingly well known forms, but the sum of them changes when merged. It creates a different experience for audiences.
I’ve tested this in lectures over the years. Seen many practitioners win awards for their work effectively deploying the techniques and style and have taught journalists from The Financial Times, The Press Association and many people internationally, for example in Russia, China, India and Egypt to name a few.
The template of collision or otherwise hybrid of forms has a history in other disciplines. That is the coming together of the classical and nouveau in artistry and creativity. You’ll find this in the history of architecture, music, painting, and writing.
There are reasons why it’s surfacing now as a disruptive necessity because of how attention has become a commodity. As one BAFTA and Oscar nominated filmmaker friend told me, “How in this morass of media do you make your work more distinctive?”
It is in effect a visual verbal esperanto and it takes account of changing cultures and habits, positivity rather than doom mongering, diversity and inclusion, Gen Z -Baby Boomers, and is largely platform agnostic, yet deploys tech in purposeful ways.
In presentations, as I’ve done previously with TV2 in Denmark and Facebook in India, I’ll tell you of previous reformers and pioneers who extolled its schema. Those filmmakers and artists sowed the seeds and their work today is described as cannons.
I’ll deconstruct how, for instance, news forms were by default formed and have stayed that way from the 1950s — a reason for its audience size. However, all other story templates have mutated. I’ll show how it captures attention, and can be used to take on spin and obfuscation from politicians.
And that a new generation of practitioners would serve audiences far better than the previous. It’ll map my journey first through the BBC e.g. Reportage, Newsnight, to Channel 4 News, before I became a creative director in advertising and then dotcoms, and artist in residence at the Southbank centre.
You’ll find feedback on it here, from well known figures, such as the following and inside books.
1. SXSW:
2. Jon Snow
3. Mark Cousins
4. Featured in the Documentary Handbook by Peter Lee Wright
2023 it’s that Masterclass, building on previous work in China, India, Russia and Norway to name a few places. Hope you can join me. Have a great year.
#business #experience #tech #branding #journalism #storytelling #media
