Magnum In Motion: The philosophy behind the story

I remember the first time I really did a mix of still photos and sound and played it on my laptop. The Danish photographer Peter Hove Olesen had shot a story and we were at my flat working on the sound design and the rhythm of the images. I started playing the multimedia piece, we just looked at each other and both had the same thought: "Wow! This is really working!" For some reason watching this on a computer felt very different from watching a film or seeing a slideshow projected on a wall. Sitting ten inches from the screen and watching in a very concentrated fashion was a new kind of viewing situation. So I knew I was on the right track toward something that could change the way we view photography.

Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Guantanamo" by Paolo Pellegrin

The digital revolution gave us all a new type of free and unrestricted distribution - we could be our own publishers. But I felt that distributing slideshows and photography was just part of the challenge. If we were to define a new type of storytelling we needed to experiment with interactivity. Enabling the users to choose different paths through the story, navigate different layers of information and react on what they experienced is to me where storytelling could be changed. At Magnum In Motion we usually put a "react" button on each story. This is a pretty simple way of adding interactivity. But we also experiment a lot with "extras" which are separate layers of information that pop up while the user is watching the story. In "Guantanamo" we added "extras" along the main story, where the user can click to hear the story behind a certain image, or read more about the people who are talking.

For the last eight years I have come to discover that the interactivity is also the most difficult part. First of all it takes some technical programming skills and a lot of editing resources, but secondly it gives the storyteller some philosophical, and practical challenges. If you do a documentary story it is very difficult to make the user choose a path through a story, the way it can be done in an game or another kind of fictional, scripted story. Secondly, the question is how much control you should really give to the user. As a storyteller it is your story, and in my view you have an obligation to make certain choices and to serve the story in a particular way that you choose. On the other hand, it would not make sense just to do a traditional linear video in an online world.

It is easy to get swept into technology discussions and drown in terms like multimedia and interactivity. At the end of the day this should all drive the story. What I ultimately see as the mission of Magnum In Motion is to do the same thing as Magnum has been doing from the beginning, just online - to chronicle the world and interpret its peoples, events, issues and personalities, and hopefully make a slight bit of difference in the world. The new thing is that we can do it in a different way, with the in-depth power of a book and the emotional catch of a movie, and at the same time reach an online audience without owning a broadcasting network or a printing press.

Back to the table at Magnum's office - Alex is showing us his vision on how he wants to create a cinematic experience. He has an idea of how he wants different actors to read parts of a play by Pirandelli. We are all pretty excited about the storytelling part. It will definitely be more than a slideshow. The question is how we present the story online. We discuss dividing it into different chapters, and maybe adding a special section that explains the making of the project. At this point it is all just brainstorming. In my next post you will hear more about how it actually came together.

Any comments and questions to the Magnum In Motion team are very welcome.