October 3, 2007
Magnum In Motion: The philosophy behind the story
Bjarke Myrthu
This is the first part of a multi-part article series about the work of Magnum's multimedia department. Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
Latvia. Riga. 2004. Photograph from "Libera Me". © Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos
"This is not a slideshow, we want to do something more," says photographer Alex Majoli. He is sitting next to me and Adrian who is a producer at Magnum In Motion. We are discussing how to do an online version of "Libera Me", which is a personal story about identity, loss, heaven, and hell that started out as an exhibition in Rome. Alex is expressing exactly the same ambition I have for Magnum In Motion. We want to create a new language for photography. Something that can only be done online and not just a new way of distributing old-fashioned slideshows. Are we reaching our goals? Not to the extent that I would like to, but I think we are moving in the right direction. However, we need to take the storytelling and the use of interactivity to another level, if we really want to live up to our mission and the ambitions I have for Magnum In Motion.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco
When I started doing online storytelling eight years ago, my mission was to create something that could give the same kind of experience as watching a good documentary or reading a nice narrative story - an experience that could speak to the heart and stir emotions, and not only be a factual news story. In my opinion one of the stories where we succeed with is Paul Fusco's "Chernobyl Legacy". This is a solid, factual documentation of an issue, but at the same time a larger story of what happens when humans play too much with nature - all driven by Paul's incredible passion and sensitivity.
Secondly, I wanted to create a new kind of storytelling using interactivity and multimedia - instead of just transferring existing broadcast and print journalism to the online world. It became clear to me that the way to do this was to make the stories very visual and auditory. This seems a bit banal now, but in 1999 a lot of online content was either text, single images, or sound clips.
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.
Published on the Magnum Blog on October 3, 2007
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