Rose, Frank
2011
The Art of Immersion: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories
1
“Anthropologists tell us that storytelling is central to human existence. That it’s common to every known culture. That it involves a symbiotic exchange between teller and listener – an exchange we learn to negotiate in infancy. Just as the brain detects patterns in the visual forms of nature – a face, a figure, a flower – and in sound, so too it detects patterns in information. Stories are recognizable patterns, and in those patterns we find meaning. We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. They are the signal within the noise.”
2
“Every new medium has given rise to a new form of narrative.”
3
Definition deep media:
“Under its [the Net's] influence, a new type of narrative is emerging – one that’s told through many media at once in a way that’s nonlinear, that’s participatory and often gamelike, and that’s designed above all to be immersive. This is “deep media”: stories that are not just entertaining, but immersive, taking you deeper than an hour-long TV drama or a two-hour movie or a 30-second spot will permit. This new mode of storytelling is transforming not just entertainment (the stories that are offered to us for enjoyment) but also advertising (the stories marketers tell us about their products) and autobiography (the stories we tell about ourselves).”
8
“We can see the outlines of a new art form, but its grammar is as tenuous and elusive as the grammar of cinema a century ago.”
21
“At the end of the meeting [with Jordan Weisman], [Kathleen] Kennedy called the head of marketing at Warner Bros., which was making the picture [A.I.]. As Weisman recalls it, she made an announcement: ‘I’m sending Jordan over. I want you to write him a very big check. And don’t ask what it’s for.’
‘It’s good to be kind,’ Weisman remarked when the call was over.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is.’”
27
Trent Reznor’s Year Zero entarch was “‘the world’s most elaborate album cover,’ he said, ‘using the media of today.’”
32
“Where earlier forms of literature had been expected to hew to history, myth, or legend, novels were judged by their ‘truth to individual experience,’ as the critic Ian Watt put it.” (Watt, Ian; 1957; The Rise of the Novel)
43
“At expos like Comic Ichi and Super Comic City, thousands of amateurs sell slickly produced, self-published manga in which well-known characters express forbidden desires and otherwise behave in clear violation of intellectual property laws. Yet commercial publishers show no inclination to send out their copyright attorneys and shut the markets down. Instead they’ve learned to look the other way, because thy know that the fervor these fan-created manga generate can only lead to increased sales for everyone.”
67
“McDonald’s, Coca-Cola – these were the deals the people at Fox could understand. The Ubisoft game was not.”
68-75
He describes the difference between Star Wars set up as a franchise and entarch – and how it became more entarch-like in the late eighties (72-73). Essentially, in the beginning everybody who owned a piece of the franchise did whatever they wanted – novel ghost written by somebody in the name of Lucas; Marvel created Jaxxon, a giant rabbit as an homage to Bugs Bunny (68); Luke Skywalker getting affectionate with twin sister Princess Leia (71) – while later Lucas took control and a bible was created.
-> It’s still not entarch (weak glue), but getting closer.
69
Star Wars movies generated USD 4 bn box office income. The franchise as a whole USD 15 bn.
73
“In addition to not contradicting the movies or each other, the new stories had to adhere to the core precepts of Star Wars: the struggle between good and evil, the role of mysticism and spirituality, the focus on family relationships, mythic depth beneath an apparently simple story. Working with a team of in-house editors, [Howard] Roffman set the story arcs and decided, in consultation with Lucas, whether major characters would live or die.”
-> Two EAs!
74
“In Star Wars, a Holocron is a repository of mystical Jedi knowledge. In real life, it’s a FileMaker database that [Leland] Chee maintains as Lucasfilm’s ultimate internal reference. Chee’s Holocron contains more than 30,000 entries coded for levels of canonicity, with the highest level – “G” for George – standing as the word of God.”
-> Entarch Bible with George as EA!
75
“Somewhere along the way, Lucas himself has been left behind. In December 2008, when Del Rey published The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia – a three-volume, 1,224-page boxed set – Roffman gave it to him and joked that he probably didn’t know 60 percent of what was in there. Lucas may have created Star Wars, but even he had to admit to Roffman that the fans own it now [figuratively].
87
“there’s nothing inherent in humans that makes them want to be passive consumers of entertainment, or of the advertising that pays for it.”
90
“Inevitably, serialization changed the structure of stories. Dickens fashioned tales with cliff-hanger endings to keep readers coming back [...]. More significant, however, was the way he improvised in response to his readers’ reactions.”
98
“The entire motion picture industry was essentially a real estate operation, with mass-produced entertainment the come-on.” So cinemas were where the money was. Nonetheless the majors sold them off after Paramount.
111
“When people say the Internet is wreaking havoc on existing media businesses, they’re really pointing to two things: this ever-growing cascade of information, and the emergence of hyperlinks as a means of dealing with it. On a planet that even in 2002 produced a new Library of Congress print collection every 57 seconds, most information is never going to command the premium it once did. But links to the right information can be extremely valuable – especially to companies tht know how to use those links to their advantage.”
-> ‘glue’ !!!
112f
“This is why, when books [NEXT PAGE] threatened to make us stupid 2,400 years ago [Socrates "complained that books encourage forgetfulness" 112], we responded not by abandoning books but by redefining “stupid.” I suspect we’ll do the same with Google.”
127
“‘Characters were becoming something companies would place great value in, because they knew people would follow. It was a precursor to the story arc.’” Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Game Studios.
137
“I think of traditional linear storytelling as a roller coaster and games as a dirt bike.” Will Wright.
141
“The best stories lead to the widest variety of play, and the best play leads to the most story. I think they’re two sides of the same coin.” Will Wright.
142
“This suggests, the authors wrote, ‘that readers understand a story by simulating the events in the story world and updating their simulation when features of that world change.’” Speer, Nicole K. et al; 2009; Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Visual and Motor Experiences.
-> Consumers literally live in/experience a story – a bit like the mirror neuron.
177
“‘NBC is paying people fake money to do real work,’ he marveled, ‘and MasterCard paid NBC real money to give away fake money.’” Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball.
233
“as individuals we’re more connected than ever, and yet as a market we’re atomized. As goes the mass market, so go mass media, spelling chaos for the media industry itself and for the advertisers that rely on it to reach consumers.”
237
“And when consumers are enlisted to tell the story, it’s seen less as advertising than as peer recommendation.”
250
“[...] people don’t want to watch toilet paper give them a 30-second narrative – not when they could be watching real entertainment from real entertainment producers.”
-> He says advertising does not have to be storytelling at all.
274
“Any narrative that has gamelike aspects – which is to say, any story that invites you into its world – can make an appeal to your foraging instincts.”
-> If you conceive an entertainment world, play has to be part of it.
277
“[Japanese players] have no problem playing the bad guy, because they’re used to the idea that fantasy can be divorced from reality. (Hence such otaku fixations as lolicon and tentacle porn.) Others, Americans in particular, take a more moralistic approach.”
318
“‘It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it.’” Quotes Philip K. Dick ~ How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.