Since way before I started working in online video, I’ve thought a lot about how narrative structure and story arcs are changing because of the web. My thesis in college was all about this, and culminated in an autobiographical Flash project that is really too complicated to explain in this post.
Non-linear structures are inherent in this medium, and there’s a certain self-determination inherent online - the hyperlink is a powerful thing, allowing you to essentially create your own “narrative” as you browse the web.
Online video started in very non-linear ways, too - or maybe as less of a narrative-driven format. I’m thinking about the Numa-Numa guy, cam girls, and webcasting - there’s not a lot of story there. It just was/is.
I think these types of videos, and the nature of the web, have made us really comfortable with non-narrative content. It just is what it is, and we make of it what we want, if we want to make anything, by creating our own stories around it - by sharing it with others and talking about it, or by building on it in the form of remixes/mashups.
Now that television has made its way onto the web in a legitimate way, by which I am really just talking about TV that’s streamed online (hello, Hulu!), I really wonder how the way we tell stories in online video will change. Or if it will change at all.
After all, humans have been telling stories since we had to carve them into cave walls. Stories won’t go away - we need them too much. But I feel like there is something different happening in video that is created just for this medium - it’s more about the people watching it, about creating communities around the content and bringing that community in, and even letting the community change/build on the content.
When the writers’ strike happened and Hollywood was paralyzed, a lot of people who don’t love the web and don’t seem to understand the web very well began creating content for the web. And a lot of it, even from people who make good TV, really sucked, because it’s a copy-and-paste of one-way TV. It doesn’t add anything. It doesn’t care about its audience.
I love television - but I do think a lot about if TV formats and TV thinking and TV people who don’t get the web are holding back online video. So far, TV developed just for the web by TV people has really failed to impress me, and this seems to be where a lot of people (i.e., advertisers, distributors, studios, etc.) want to pour their money. I think they’re missing the boat.
