Birds (1 of 4 short films)
Stunning video for Anouk’s new song ‘Birds’ (singing in the Eurovision Song Contest final this Saturday).
Directed by one of our favorite Dutch directors: Dana Nechushtan. Watch the entire series of beautiful, sad, lovely films here: Four short films by Anouk - Sad Singalong Songs
Great use of storytelling in this music video miniseries, intermingling and connecting characters, locations and situations, to create a story of larger scale.
Happy Digital Holidays!
Christmas is coming and we couldn’t help ourselves from sharing with you the digital story of Nativity. Although an oldie, it is definitely a goodie! Check out Joseph constantly updating his Facebook and Twitter profiles and the three Magi ordering gifts for Baby Jesus on Amazon!
In the spirit of Christmas 2.0, we wish you Happy Digital Holidays and may your gift-unwrapping be at least as jolly and as ‘close’ to your family and friends as it is in the video below!
Very informative column from Lisa Ostrikoff of BizBOXTV on (digital) storytelling. Excerpt:
Business more than ever is about people: People connecting and sharing with people. And those people are either talking about your business, or they’re not. If they are, what they saying?
“A brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has said.
“Telling your story means how your brand is translated through the experiences of your community using social media told in their own words,” Ms. Richards adds.
Powerful, when you realize you can’t control the messaging or the distribution of this part of your story. The things you can control are: the story or stories you share, the story you maintain or experience that determines the stories of others, and how you react when people share their versions.
When others share your story, positively or negatively, you need to be there to respond to help define that plot line and determine where that story ends up. As one of the leading minds in social media, Gary Vaynerchuck, has said: “Tell your story, tell it every day, tell it from the heart, make it authentic, care, and you have a business.”
How can we create meaningful digital stories?
This is Project Re:Brief, an amazing initiative from Google, showing a behind-the-scenes of the creative process in the age of technology. The project was launched in March this year and it brings back to life four of the most loved campaigns in the ‘60s and ‘70s (for CocaCola, Advil, Volvo and Alka Seltzer). The art directors and copywriters of the original ads were invited to Re:Brief their classic campaigns and recreate them with all the technological possibilities of today. Check out the one-hour long documentary of the project to see the challenges they encountered in adapting a story to the requirements of the digital audiences.
We found it an incredible source of inspiration! What about you?
Transmedia Storytelling Cookbook: From Digital to a Multiplatform Approach
Marketers and designers are finally moving into a new era – the era of transmedia. The previous era, which was characterized by a huge platform obsession approach, is over. But what does it all mean?
Sara Bozanic explains:
Transmedia is a storytelling technique, which happens across multiple media platforms, but in a platform appropriate way.
Content is spread across several media simultaneously. It’s not just about digital media, but also a combination of several traditional channels or a combination of both, such as the environment, radio, TV, web, mobile, etc.
But what does this mean in practice? We can divide transmedia development process in 3 main phases: concept development, distribution and growth. Each phase is characterized by emotional investment, social mechanics, participation and care.
Click on the image to read the full story.
(via futureoffilm)
The Silent History is a novel, written and designed specially for iPad and iPhone, that uses serialization, exploration, and collaboration to tell the story of a generation of unusual children.
Wired calls it “Entirely Revolutionary”. An immersive digital storytelling experience by a group of acclaimed storytellers indeed: Eli Horowitz (former managing editor and publisher of McSweeney’s), Kevin Moffett (author of Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events and Permanent Visitors), Matthew Derby (author of Super Flat Times), Russell Quinn (co-founder of digital studio Spoiled Milk), and contributors on five continents.
“As we move into the future, which is clearly going to be dominated by technology, it’s important that we bring culture along with us.”
If Aaron Koblin wasn’t already your hero, his insights on the future of storytelling will change that – a fascinating look at some of his most acclaimed projects.
Other thinkers’ thoughts on the evolution of storytelling, from the same series, here and here.
(via explore-blog)
Six Reasons To Embrace The Power of Stories:
Unemployee Of The Year
Excellent campaign from United Colors of Benetton, focusing on the rising unemployment numbers among young people. The campaign is centered around a website, Unhate Foundation, asking young unemployed people for their stories, and their dream projects. The best 100 projects receive $ 5000 each!
Again, Benetton manages to highlight the underdog and seek social and societal relevance with their ads. We’re fans!
Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon
Great article by ‘The Storytelling Animal’ author Jonathan Gottschall. Insightful excerpt:
Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence.
What is going on here? Why are we putty in a storyteller’s hands? The psychologists Melanie Green and Tim Brock argue that entering fictional worlds “radically alters the way information is processed.” Green and Brock’s studies shows that the more absorbed readers are in a story, the more the story changes them. Highly absorbed readers also detected significantly fewer “false notes” in stories—inaccuracies, missteps—than less transported readers. Importantly, it is not just that highly absorbed readers detected the false notes and didn’t care about them (as when we watch a pleasurably idiotic action film). They were unable to detect the false notes in the first place.
And, in this, there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless.
And of course: substitute readers for viewers, and the same applies.
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