The following was updated January 2022
Welcome part 2 of Emerging Trends & Market Opportunities in Storytelling. Below you’ll find a look at Branded Storytelling, VR, Narrative Gaming, Digital Influencers and Multi-channel Networks. If you haven’t already make sure to checkout part 1.
The following is a collection of interesting trends and market opportunities that I referenced during my lecture. Feel free to share anything that we may have missed. One of the goals for the semester is to help build a series of open resources that focus on new forms and functions of storytelling.
In 2017 Brands embrace experiential, agencies double down on digital advertising spends. Immersive experiences and experiments continue to emerge as Brands struggle to find meaningful ways to engage.
Get dropped into the center of a thriller with Absolute
Land Rover utilizes social platforms in unique ways
thevanishinggame.wellstoried.com
The New York Times acquires Fake Love
Museum of Ice Cream
VR makes a multi-billion dollar come back. Can it move from tech to a full blown medium? Sundance doubled down on VR this past January.
Illustrative filmmaking in real-time with Oculus
Step into the Page
Evolving Beyond VR
“Enter The Collider, a machine built to decipher the mysteries of human relationships. This is the story of the space between people — and the electric, magnetic and caustic materials that pass between us. There’s the air temperature and humidity levels in a room in which two people fight, or the exact distance between peaceful lovers. In every exchange, there’s flesh and bone — human matter — and there are other sorts of matter.” — IDFA doc lab
“For the first time ever, a choreographer combines dance with immersive virtual reality in a work that provides viewers with a unique sensory experience. Blending art with technology, VR_I resulted from the encounter between Gilles Jobin and the founders of Artanim, Caecilia Charbonnier and Sylvain Chagué, motion capture technology experts and virtual reality pioneers in Switzerland and abroad. In association with them, Gilles Jobin developed VR_I, a work in which the creator questions our perception of reality and enters new unexplored and unchartered territories for contemporary dance. Thanks to the virtual reality technology developed by Artanim, VR_I viewers equipped with virtual reality heads”
“The Great C,” which is based on a Philip K. Dick short story of the same name, clocks in at just above 30 minutes, and spans 20 unique environments. Luke Van Osch, who produced the animated film for the Toronto- and Los Angeles-based VR startup Secret Location, told Variety during a recent interview that many of the existing VR experiences out there still felt like a demo for the technology itself.
The goal with “The Great C” was to create something that felt “substantial,” he said. “We wanted to make something that feels like a rich and rewarding piece on its own.” — Variety
VR is expected to be a top $70 billion by 2020 source re/code
Wevr raises $25 million in its quest to become the YouTube of virtual reality content
HTC Starts a 10 million fund for purpose driven VR
https://storystudio.oculus.com/en-us
Development to enhance and extend the VR experience beyond the headset is growing with a variety of established players, universities and startups experimenting in the space.
Projection mapping
Facebook Live hosts a interactive mystery
Social VR in your feed
Yarn raises $13 million for its subscription storytelling app
Yarn App
From Techcrunch: “Mammoth also created Yarn, one of the apps delivering fiction in a text message format. The company says that the average Yarn subscriber (pricing starts at $2.99 per week) spends 50 minutes reading in the first week. According to App Annie, Yarn has been the number one books app in a number of countries, including the United States.
The app recently launched Hack’d, a horror series featuring Musical.ly star Kristen Hancher. Vatere said we can expect to see more series starring social media influencers — after spotting reaction videos to Yarn content, his team thought, “Why not, instead of having them react to the story, have them in the story itself?”
What do you call something that is too narrative to be a game but too interactive to be a narrative?
GRIS a game that leaves the story open for interpretation
Firewatch
Firewatch is a mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio.
The year is 1989.
You are a man named Henry who has retreated from your messy life to work as a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness. Perched atop a mountain, it’s your job to find smoke and keep the wilderness safe.
An especially hot, dry summer has everyone on edge. Your supervisor, a woman named Delilah, is available to you at all times over a small, handheld radio — and is your only contact with the world you’ve left behind.
But when something strange draws you out of your lookout tower and into the world below, you’ll explore a wild and unknown environment, facing questions and making interpersonal choices that can build or destroy the only meaningful relationship you have.
Gone Home
“You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something’s not right. Where is everyone? And what’s happened here?
Gone home is an interactive exploration simulator. Interrogate every detail of a seemingly normal house to discover the story of the people who live there. Open any drawer and door. Pick up objects and examine them to discover clues. Uncover the events of one family’s lives by investigating what they’ve left behind.
Go home again.”
Her Story
“Her Story grants players access to a police database of archived video footage that covers seven interviews from 1994 in which a British woman is interviewed by detectives about her missing husband. Players take on the role of the person sat before a police computer terminal, their own computer or device playing the part of the fictional computer. They type search queries and the database returns clips of the answers where the woman speaks those words.”
Plug & Play
“PLUG & PLAY is an award winning Short Film and Game for your digital device. Explore the feelings of anthropoid creatures that go beyond sexuality and reproduction: love. PLUG & PLAY is a surreal play with plugs.”
PLUG & PLAY is an award winning Short Film and Game for your digital device
The establishment just opens their gates a bit wider. While it’s easier than ever to reach audiences directly, creators still equate success with traditional management and representation.
Kung Fury
40 Days of Dating
Digital Influencers continue to land brand, series, book and film deals. A new tier of $1 to $3 million dollar features emerge as star vehicles for those wishing to crossover.
Content looks to get social by adopting studio models such as talent bundling, exclusive contracts and aggregating audiences.
TikToc Content Collectives
The rise of the political meme
Welcome to an experiment. I’m teaching a New Media Producing Class at Columbia University and I’ve decided to open the teaching process. Over the course of the semester myself, the class, and a number of guest speakers will be sharing thoughts, projects, tech, and ideas that explore storytelling in the 21st Century. You can follow along on the Columbia DSL medium publication, and/or the living breathing syllabus for the course.
New Media Producing — Building Storyworlds: the art, craft & biz of storytelling in 21c
Columbia University School of the Arts
Professor: Lance Weiler
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