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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

the future of storytelling

P

paulherrin

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAQmzMwhhzY

a free, introductory course on the basics of storytelling with a focus towards emerging forms, run by iversity.

some of you may know that i've spent the last year doing postgraduate studies in storytelling - i've been looking and listening to everything from spoken mythologies to scribed legends and of course theatrical productions that we here should all be familiar with. but most of the time i've been thinking about where our stories are taking us. i'm still putting together a comprehensive multimedia essay (so stay tuned), but here are a few things to think about which became strikingly clear to me across genres, formats, and cultures:

the experiencing (through a medium) of sight and sound is essential to the narrative act.

the aborigine's painted rocks and rhythms are ceremoniously tied to their dreamtime mythologies, just as the greeks made sculptures and paintings (oh, and theatre), traditions that formed into cinema. even when hearing or reading a story, it is always referential to sounded images.

art and technology are endlessly entwined in storytelling experience.

tools, pigments, instruments, alphabets, codices, printing presses, microphones, film, video, web 2.0 - all these are technological achievements (note the movement from esoteric training towards open standards) brought on by the necessity of record-keeping... the bottling of ephemerality.

story crafting is consciousness in human form.

from science to spirituality and all that's in between - everything we know, everything we believe is ultimately based, at least partially, on our narrative of the world around us. inasmuch as the earth evolves... wise, knowing man stories his self and society into existence.

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anyways, i'll be participating in this free course and sharing my perspective and research along the way. i hope some of you guys will enroll and engage these ideas and the many others that are still to come.

it's an eight week course with a 30-45 minute video lecture each week... here's the topics:

- storytelling basics
- serial formats (on the TV, web and beyond)
- storytelling in role-playing games
- interactive storytelling in video games
- transmedia storytelling
- alternate-reality gaming
- augmented reality and location-based storytelling
- the role of tools, interfaces and information architectures in current storytelling

find out more and take the course free right here :)

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

+video lectures
film as mythmaking (irving singer, mit)
how motion pictures became the movies (david bordwell, wisc)
persistence of vision: reading the language of cinema (martin scorsese, neh)
teaching visual literacy (george lucas, edutopia)

-oral stories
+personal stories
the three l's (kathryn windham, personal history)
dark night of the soul, pennies and q-tips (paul herrin/brandon hinman, personal histories/poems)

+comedy
smoking the tree of knowledge (paul herrin - mythological comedy)
a coon huntin' story (jerry clower - traditional southern comedy)
moose turd pie (utah phillips - traditional western comedy)
which way to millinocket (marshall dodge & bob bryan - traditional northern comedy)
zanzibar (bill harley - comedy)

+scary stories
on ghost stories (kathryn windham - documentary)
face in the courthouse window (kathryn windham - ghost legend)
hervor and tyrfing (paul herrin - norse legend)
haunted maize (paul herrin - true story)


-suggestions/contributions welcome (check back for regular updates)
 
sweeeet! pass it around guys, i have no idea what kind of numbers we're looking at, but it's going to be awesome. if anybody is interested around the southeast, i'd be happy to host some events. in fact, i already host storytelling campfires and cinema projection in my backyard, so if you're around hollar at me :)
 
We're about to begin something similar at the Adam Beach Film Institute up here in Canada for Aboriginal storytellers. It's a major focus of mine since oral tradition has always been around and sustained our culture for millennia -whether around a campfire, or a sacred location somewhere within Turtle Island (his is also a part of my narrative for Path Of Souls). Regardless, Adam believes it is time we start developing in earnest the next generation of Aboriginal filmmakers.

Interesting concept!
 
dude that's really cool, let me know if i can do anything to help! i'm in the beginning stages of a cherokee documentary and i'll probably have a little bit of the language spoken/written in the feature i'm developing as well. my great grandmother was cherokee and i just have a huge respect for the cultures that came before us here... i'm an advocate of anything that promotes peace and prosperity in the tribes, and they are already wealthy with stories - would love to see more filmmakers and artists discovering and expressing indigenous identities. seriously let me know if you need anything and good luck!
 
holy cow... 45,000 people across the world are geared up for this. craziness.

i talked about a lot of my own personal philosophies about storytelling even though this course is going through some slightly different topics, but if you talk with me along the way i'll probably be relating it to what i've already learned and making some recommendations to augment this experience with some traditional material.

it's an eight week course with a 30-45 minute video lecture each week... here's the topics:

- storytelling basics
- serial formats (on the TV, web and beyond)
- storytelling in role-playing games
- interactive storytelling in video games
- transmedia storytelling
- alternate-reality gaming
- augmented reality and location-based storytelling
- the role of tools, interfaces and information architectures in current storytelling

soo, if you're interested in any of those things on any level, join us - i'd really love to see a bunch of redusers involved so i can watch your work evolve (yep, i'm selfish :)

starts in 3 days... you can jump in anytime... fo' free
https://iversity.org/c/6?r=353b8
 
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awesome! i've tried to keep up with your stuff for awhile alex :) i'll read through some more stuff so we can discuss... i'm sure you can teach me a thing or two - lookin forward to it
 
This is awesome Paul, thank you for sharing! I graduated from film school about 12 years ago now and for the past few years I've been looking for something like this to re-immerse myself in the study of story and narrative. Awesome!
 
so we're a couple days away and it appears all systems are go. thought i'd share this traditional telling for your enjoyment so you guys can start to get mentally prepared to look forward and reach back to become better storytellers. i love this story (which is why i shared it of course :)

do note that quite a few have explicitly or obviously taken inspiration from this source, everywhere from tolkien's middle earth to rowling's elder wand to disney's brave.

Hervor and Tyrfing (12 minutes of live audio in an extemporaneous style, my first time telling on stage)

A Norse Legend... part of the Tyrfing Cycle about the magical sword that - once unsheathed - must spill blood.
Hervor travels across the sea to seek it from her father's grave...

[hint... it goes well with beer]

i was under a strict time constraint for this telling, so there's a lot of cool details i couldn't get in there... if you're interested in digging a little deeper to this specific saga or into her character, here's a few online sources that cover this legend and the others that are connected to it.

wikipedia

the saga of hervor and heithrek (1921 translation)
the saga of hervor and king heidrek the wise (2005 translation)
^these are from the same spot for easy comparison^

the saga of hervor and king heidrek the wise (2005 translation, including additional resources and info - i recommend this one)
 
okay, we're getting really close. i hope each of you will keep coming back here once we get started so we can have a special place to focus on our particular interests in a small group setting, plus some of us sorta know each other already and i hope we'll forge some new relationships through the process. this is a good place to introduce other filmmakers you may meet to join this forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7tCdhvhIKU

now... you're next assignment (should you choose to accept it) - start looking into this (film as mythmaking, lecture series from mit)

and if you like, listen to this ("smoking the tree of knowledge", 7 minute humorous performance by yours truly)

enjoy :)

would love to hear some responses from you guys, even if you're just starting to think about storytelling, it'll be good to get a feel for each other's point of view. thanks!
 
Looks like a project with great potential, Paul.
Congrats and best wishes.
 
Thanks for bringing it to our attention Paul, though your opening post should really give clear credit to Potsdam University who are running this free online course. People might be confused, I know I was...

Anyway, I signed up and watched the first module. It's a very well thought out course and a great resource for newbies and old hacks alike. Some of the other courses look interesting too.
 
sure, i added a little intro explanation, probably helpful anyways - i figured the video kinda explains everything but it's better now. luckily i'm not in charge of anything, just trying to do my best to help!

hoping to have a place to facilitate discussion of more advanced concepts. as you can easily tell, there's a whole mess of comments to dig through on the site - kinda overwhelming. i figured a small-ish group would be manageable. lots to expand on.
 
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/27/240824786/the-truth-that-creeps-beneath-our-spooky-ghost-stories

in my opinion kathryn windham is absolutely the best american ghost storyteller ever. we're not talking about cheap gags and finger waving, we're talking oral histories passed down for generations and gut-wrenching, soul-moving stories of real, relatable spiritual strife haunting and lingering in every corner of the south.

i cannot recommend these enough...

she tells the story of henry wells - "i'm innocent, and if you kill me here i will haunt you forever"

then she talks about ghost storytelling - "the good ghost stories do not require that you believe in ghosts"

then she talks about storytelling altogether... "it's not the three r's (reading, writing, & arithmetic) that are most important...
it's the three l's - listening, learning, and laughing. but the most important l is love."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EebG_tf1U7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j2Omlyu00E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQEI6j9DS3Q
 
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