The concept of storytelling as a static medium – bound by a spine or a frame or a print – is a relatively new notion. But storytelling as a fluid, moving, changing force is a concept that extends back thousands of years. Stories were not something to be boxed in, but rather passed along --- and in the passing, reinforced. The pre-historic Celts believed that the arts, including storytelling, flowed from a well beneath the sea; a medieval Tuscan proverb said that tales are not beautiful if nothing is added to them as they are passed along; novelist Salman Rushdie wrote of an ocean of stories whose currents comprised a liquid tapestry.
The fluidity of stories is reflected in the similarities in folk tales, fairy tales and mythology among far flung cultures across multiple centuries: The Greek myth, Cupid and Psyche is the same story as the 12th century French Aucassin and Nicolette, which in turn is similar to the 17th century Belle et Bete, the 18th century Irish tale, the Brown Bear of Norway and the 19th century Norwegian, East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Little Red Riding Hood, though associated with the Grimm Brothers, was originally an Italian tale. Depending on where you read the story – Germany, France or Italy - Little Red Riding Hood is either eaten by the wolf, betrayed by her grandmother, saved by a woodsman or saved by herself. The basic narrative remains the same: a young girl wanders off the pre-ordained path and gets involved with a dangerous stranger. But the settings, supporting characters and endings have changed as the story has been passed along. As Victorian folklorist Andrew Lang pointed out, fairy tales are essentially composed of "[a] certain number of incidents" that can then be shaken "into many various combinations of incidents, like the fragments of colored glass in a kaleidoscope." Each culture, each generation, adds a new piece of colored glass to the kaleidoscope, resulting in a new version of the story. The constant retelling, by so many different tellers, has kept the tales alive and made them, as per the Tuscan proverb, more beautiful.
Lately, however, the stream of stories has been drying up because of the predominance of the Hollywood moviemaking machine and the vertical integration of mass media all over the world. Film, unarguably the language of storytelling in the 20th century, has been consolidated in the hands of the very few. As a result not only are there fewer voices, there are less stories. Where there used to be over eight hundred versions of Cinderella, today most kids know only the Disney version. That consolidation is the opposite of fluid. It creates a static, even moribund, environment in which individual stories have no chance to flourish – and when a society loses its ability to tell its own stories, it loses its own voice.
New Story Forms
The American director John Sayles once wrote that for him, stories arrive in a pre-destined form, in the form best suited for their telling. One can also argue that where a suitable story form does not exist, someone will create it. Society will inevitable give rise to the technology that carries the story forward. Pre-literate societies used cave paintings to tell their tales; the “Dark Ages” were illuminated with hand painted manuscripts. Troubadours were replaced by the printing press; oil paintings by photography and the Magic Lantern. Each new form gave rise to a new kind of story telling. Likewise, cinema and television quickly nationalized – and then globalized – a storytelling form in which one story is presented in a linear format, to a passive audience . But cinema and television are 20th century formats. The newest story form, and the one best suited for our century, is the web. The interactive architecture of the web creates a new platform for storytelling. It is like a network of pipes, all filled with flowing water carrying streams of stories. Everyone has the ability to turn on the tap to access the stories, or to add their own story to the pipeline (in a neat twist, the technology which enables video to be viewed on the web is call streaming video). The fluid environment of the web gives us the ability to freely send and receive thousands of stories, by thousands of storytellers. It is the opposite of moribund – it is fecund.
It was these narrative and technological possibilities that inspired the project, Story Streams, produced in February, 2003. Story Streams is a networked digital film, created in real-time by collaborating filmmakers in different cities around the world: Pierre Wayser in Paris; Jeannette Lambert in Montreal; Fran Ilich in Mexico City, and Carlos Gomez De Llarena in Philadelphia. One narrative was used to create three different story streams, which were then uploaded to the fourth filmmaker. He mixed the films (the streams) before a live and online audience, to create one composite film. The idea behind the project was to use the web to re-enact the path taken by many folktales and fairytales as they were passed around the world; to watch how one simple narrative could be retold several different ways, and then to have someone weave those variations together to create yet another version of the story.
The narrative we chose to work with was the mythological story of the hero’s journey: a person sets out along a road and encounters several obstacles that prevent him or her from reaching the destination. Help comes in the form of a magic person or friend who helps the hero learn the lessons he needs to get back on the path. This is a common story motif found everywhere from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood.
Three very different stories in three different countries were spun from the one tale. Fran Ilich, working in Mexico City, created a literal and contemporary fairy tale about a hungry young woman who pan handles for money on the streets of Mexico City, so she can get enough to eat. A hip looking fairy godmother shows up and gives her an ATM card – but throws an obstacle in the girl’s path when she refuses to let the girl spend her money at an American fast food restaurant. Pierre Wayser, filming in Paris, created an existential black and white film more along the lines of Ulysses: a man wakes up, as if from a dream, and wanders the streets of Paris, unable to find his way home. His help arrives in the shape of various clues he picks up along the way, as well as from a group of people who literally help him map a path. Jeannette Lambert, in Montreal, also created a story about a woman unable to get home. It is freezing cold, her gloves are stolen, her car breaks down. She cannot get anywhere. In the end, she finds her way with the aid of a kind of internal fairy godmother.
Each film was shot over a two to three week period, then uploaded to the central server. De Llarena, the filmmaker in Philadelphia, knew the storyline but had never seen any of the films before. He simultaneously screened and mixed the composite film in real time, online and in front of a live audience. Rather than choosing one of the characters as the protagonist for the new mix, De Llarena wove all three of the characters in and out of each other’s journey. Each one is wandering, looking for something, and they come across each others’ paths. That effect is achieved through a montage, a layering of the images. From a narrative perspective, it was an interesting choice. Historically, most written narratives remain focused on one hero and it is the details of his or her journey that get remixed. De Llarena, working in a visual medium, chose instead to send all three characters on one, similar journey and mixed, instead, the characters. As a result, it becomes the story of a single journey with multiple characters, as opposed to the story of a protagonist(s) on a journey.
This was the first mix of the stories, and subsequent ones are planned. Another filmmaker might choose to mix the journeys from only one central character’s point of view. Someone else might choose to engage the audience by creating an interactive mix, enabling the audience to choose which person or which path to take. There are endless permutations, endless streams.
Conclusion
The marvel of the web is that it has given us a worldwide, almost instantaneous way to spread stories through email, online news and web films. But, while everyone accepts the web-based forms of mail and news, there has been some mainstream resistance to the use of web films as a cinematic storytelling format. Even during its heyday in 2000 and 2001, web films were simply seen as placeholders for the eventual distribution of theatrical films in a broadband environment…as opposed to email, which is a widely accepted web version of postal mail, and online news sites, which have grown to compete effectively with newspaper readership. To bypass the web film as a storytelling format is the equivalent of a 1950’s television executive dismissing the sitcom as a placeholder for TV movies. Sitcoms took their cue from radio plays and evolved to meet the needs of the new television medium. Eventually, many formats sprung up to join it. But perhaps none are more popular, nor more native to the medium, than sitcoms.
Likewise, the web will eventually serve many narrative masters. The arrival of Internet 2 +and technologies such as Microsoft’s New Media Center means the dawn of feature film VOD is approaching. But no matter how quickly they download, feature films will never be native to the web. Web cinema, however, is.
Storytelling forms change every few generations, in response to society and technology. Each step is part of the evolution to the next phase: cinema could not have existed without Magic Lanterns, nor television without radio. DV would not have evolved without web films. Future Cinema is being hatched from digital video.
To label web cinema as an interim technology is beside the point: the technology is always interim. It is the only way that the story can be kept fresh.