I Am User Generated

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

(Watch the above video before reading on or at least the first few seconds.)
This topic of remix culture and storytelling has been dear to my heart since I wrote my masters on the subject but what concerns me now that I’ve been working in between film and interactive is that us internet kids don’t have the respect we should for the work that has come before us in our field. We’ll bite technology thanks to open-source software but technology is only half of the story, we still need the story, the narrative, the emotional connection.

In early days of cinema we had the same issue. When the moving picture camera was invented early filmmakers simply shot things that were moving. An oncoming train was super exciting because we hadn’t seen a moving image before projected on the screen. This was a crazy new technology but there was no story there. The auteurs that really moved filmmaking forward are the ones that understood the technology and the storytelling. Or should I say they borrowed both technology and story. Star Wars is such a simple classic story that was borrowed from hundreds of works before it but it applied new technology with a universal story and the rest is cinema history. Godard borrowed all his story from Hollywood but shot in a totally different style given the technology that he had access to. This made him the genius auteur that he is, among other things.

So as internet kids now making stories, for the web, for the mobile, for media projections, how can we stand on the shoulder of these giants? We can tell simple universal stories with our new technology. We can’t keep just experimenting with the technology. Technology is moving so quickly that we could spend our whole life experimenting, testing, optimizing. We have to jump in and use what we have or invent the technology to tell our story.

But again the story has to be simple and well told. My beef with “transmedia” storytelling is that the story and the technology are both so deep and complicated. There are multiple characters, over multiple universes, over multiple platforms, spanning four generations and 18 countries using five different types of media. I’m lost before I even begin. Remember Star Wars. Simple story, ground breaking technology.

When I watch Everything is a Remix I see how our modern filmmakers were students of cinema and were humble enough to know that they needed to borrow from the filmmakers before them. In our wild west interactive technology landscape I see too much arrogance that we are pioneers inventing everything from scratch. This arrogance will only slow down our gestation. Let’s learn from previous storytellers who use technology to tell our stories with our technology.

“There’s not such thing as old media and new media, just new tools for storytelling.”

When I first heard this, I loved it. Finally an expression that I could relay to clients when they got super nervous about new media and new tools. We can’t get all worked up about the changing media landscape or about all the new tools that pop-up everyday. We can’t throw out everything we know about media every time a new tool comes around because these tools are at our service to help us improve our storytelling not to intimidate us.

But the more I think about it the more I realize that the best case scenario is that you understand where media has come from, and where it’s going, along with the new tools. These triple threat people who are grounded in media history, with an eye on the future, who embrace new tools are much sought after in our media industry.

Having an understanding of media without knowledge of the tools to bring it to life makes for a pretty unoriginal form of media that lacks innovation. Understanding newer forms of media and new tools can sometimes make for an opportunistic and ungrounded form of media that will not stand the test of time. But a mind that can pay heed to old forms of media while always pushing for new ways to bring stories to life will come out on top. Ultimately, we all want to connect with a great story, but how we make that connection as media makers is really where the challenge lies for a contemporary storyteller.

It’s great to see that Transmedia made it on to the list. The more I talk with people about what I do, the more I see the audience appetite to “read” stories over multiple platforms. I’m glad to see I’m not drinking my own kool-aid too much.
Also pretty excited about the TinTin movie coming out this year.

Well the time has come for me to sorrowfully say goodbye to the DDB family. I will greatly miss the debates and creative stimulus that flowed through the walls and permeated through some amazing and often award winning work.

It all started, oddly enough, over three and half years ago when I was showing some weird media installation work at a small art gallery. As the show was wrapping up an acquaintance of mine, Blaine, approached me and said, “I like it but I don’t get.” After waxing poetic on every influence from McLuhan to Richard Serra to Banksy, Blaine who shared my interest in graffiti and public and private space, invited me to meet her boss. The boss, Yvonne, was also interested in this emerging, more social media landscape. After a few chats and debates, I was brought on by DDB to help form Radar DDB, with the sole goal of figuring out how advertising works in social media.

Since that time, thanks to some great clients and heaven sent hires we’ve been able to build a talented and endlessly dedicated team of experts. Now that we’ve franchised the model out to the other global DDB offices and operational merged with Tribal DDB I feel okay about leaving and tackling a new challenge. But just okay. I don’t feel great about it because of the amazing people and potential to keep doing even more great work in the future.

But alas, I have the unique opportunity to continue my number one life passion of storytelling with some amazing new collaborators. As anyone who reads this blog will know, I gave up a career as a narrative filmmaker once the media landscape began to change in 2004. Since then I’ve become obsessed with finding new ways to tell visual stories. I wrote my masters on oral storytelling and remix culture but that simply scratched the itch. My time at DDB has given me a wealth of experience and technical knowledge that now needs to be combined with my academic theories. This is why I feel very fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with the National Film Board of Canada to help tell stories in the most innovative way I can. This is my passion and their mandate.

I will continue to work with some of my other clients to help them push the boundaries of how we tell stories in this ever evolving media landscape. There’s so many talented content publishers in film, TV and gaming that just need a little love from a creative Internet kid like me to fully reach an audience that is hungry to interact with their media in less of a monolithic and linear way.

I’m just as stoked on where media and communications are going now as I was in 2004 when I first left film, as I was in 2007 when I first joined DDB, and as I was when I finished my masters in 2008. I have been remiss in not blogging more but I will endeavor to share some more thoughts with you, the occasional reader, because I feel it’s important to air out some ideas in order to innovate. If you’re at all interested in #storytelling, #transmedia, or #innovation, then don’t hesitate to drop me an email (jameschutter at gmail) so we can keep the dialogue going. I can’t wait to start sharing some new work that will hopefully keep storytelling evolving.

I’m biking across Vietnam to raise money for eduction in the poorest regions of the world. I’m hoping to raise a $1 for every kilometer I ride. I’ll match donations up to $500.

If you’re interested in donating to my chosen charity of Concern Worldwide then you can donate through Facebook Causes or though Twestival Vancouver.

Thanks a lot. See you when I get back.