…a movie experience is a passive experience.  The storytelling narrative is something that I think is still a unique and interesting, and valued experience by people around the world.  And whether it’s done in a movie theater or in your home, or on your laptop, or iPad, or whatever the device is, people love that passive experience.  And we see it, again, there’s more and more consumption of it. What all of these devices and social networking things do is they’re going to actually force Hollywood to make better products, because today the thing that is probably most askew in Hollywood is the issue of marketability versus playability.

Katzenberg’s contention is of course, that the stories Hollywood is shilling lately are simply bad art–and that’s why consumption of passive entertainment is declining. Meaning, of course that the root cause of our widespread cultural preference to play around on social networks as opposed to watching movies is simply a content issue, and not a changing habits issue.

For those of you who read my blog, you know I’m a huge proponent of raising the quality of film, and innovating within the medium, so I should be the biggest proponent of the Katzenberg theory on this…but I’m not. Why?  Because I think the ship has sailed. By the time (if ever) the movies come around to being better again, audiences will have developed different habits, and the coming generation of digital natives will not understand the meaning of “passive entertainment”.

Among many arguments for the evolution of consumption behavior changing rapidly is the neurological one posited by writers such as Nicholas Carr, whose book Shallows suggests we are rewiring our neural pathways through digital age behavior. A recent article in the Scientific American concurs, quoting studies that suggest the inevitability of this change.

There’s also the very simple fact of cultural tastes changing with the times, and the introduction of more highly interactive forms of entertainment simply draws people away from the more passive forms. When guys like Katzenberg and his generation who came of age in a kind of golden age of cinema talk about the possibilities of film making a comeback, some part of me feels like I’m hearing my grandfather talk about the days before everyone had a telephone, and people actually talked to each other, face to face. I’m sure it was an awesome experience, and had its merits, but we can’t stop the change from happening. Along with massively world changing inventions like vaccines and and moon travel come these other cultural changes, many of which we are less in control of than we’d like to believe.

So while I applaud Katzenberg for having the balls to say that the emperor has no clothes on (I concur that the sequel nonsense is a dead-end game), I’m not so sure he should be as sanguine about our future willingness to rediscover this elusive LOVE of passive entertainment.

Boy, I sound like such a bummer today! But  really, I have faith in our ability to guide cultural/creative change in a meaningful way into the purely digital era. It’s just that I don’t think it’s ever going to be like the good old days.

Visit me at www.ainamediainc.com

Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald has spent the last six months with his team directing and editing the 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries into a contiguous feature that will screen as part of the Premieres section of the fest. All of the contributors whose footage was used are credited as co-directors, and 26 have been invited to attend the premiere (full list below).

The trailer below is the first glimpse we have of the direction the film took in the editing. A single film from a Spanish contributor, the piece suggests a feel-good personalized world-scape as it were…but I will have to withhold further comment until next week. Watch the premiere here share your comments here – I look forward to your opinions!

Thursday, Jan 27th at 9PM EST
youtube.com/lifeinaday

In just a few minutes, the media onslaught began. And one can cynically regard the non-stop FoxNews and CNN live coverage as exploitation business as usual – after all, television news outlets have been known to run endless live news commentary on highway police car chases. But looking a little deeper into this event finds us inside a narrative with fragments across media, and a backstory embedded in the fabric of the web in a way that suggests a shift in how we understand these kinds of events.

It instantly became clear to me that we have entered an age in which the narrative of real time politics has gone beyond monolithic TV spectacle and entered into a complex mode in which the collective consciousness of a nation and a people surfaces with the kind of depth and breadth that was simply not possible in a pre-web era.

As I attempt to piece the fragments together, I discover an underlying narrative built around artifacts, not merely evidence in the sense of the law, and the justice to be meted for this crime but rather, a trail of moral imperatives, political certitudes and unspooled dogma. It looks something like this:

PART 1: AN INCIDENT

In March 2010, Gabrielle Giffords votes for the Health Care Bill. The Tuscon Sentinel reports that her Arizona office is broken into and vandalized.

On March 25th MSNBC interviews Giffords, and, she says does not perceive this as a serious threat. However, she expresses concern that Republican ex-Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin has targeted her publicly.

PART 2: THE CROSSHAIRS

Sarah Palin targets a handful of Democrats on her website using as a graphic representation, a crosshairs symbol that resembles that of a gun. Giffords is disturbed by this image and says in the MSNBC video that this is dangerous and may incite violence but the image stays up on the site.

PART 3: A RANDOM GUY WHO LIKES MEIN KAMPF BUYS A GUN

Eight months later, on October 25th, 2010, Jared Loughner signs up for a MySpace page, on which he posts his love for books such as Mein Kampf. Less than a month later, on November 19th, Loughner purchases a Glock semi-automatic handgun in Arizona.

PART 4: THE SHOOTING

A surveillance video in a Tuscon Safeway captures the shooting of Representative Giffords and the other victims. The video is puportedly on Youtube but quickly removed as is the identified shooters MySpace page (screengrabbed above).  Bystanders instantly document the scene.

PART 5: WHO DID IT?

Police apprehended and identified Loughner on the scene. Artifacts from his Youtube channel, are found, downloaded and re-encoded by several youtube users following the removal of his channel.

PART 6: WHAT MOTIVATED THE SHOOTER?

At this point, little is known about the shooter or his motives. But then in the hours following the shooting, Sarah Palin’s name begins to surface and her map with the crosshairs makes its way around the blogosphere. Many commentators see Palin’s map as a call to arms and a violence-inciting graphic that could be related to the shooting. The Huffington Post reports that the map is taken down from Palin’s site and a controversy ensues about why.

PART 7: THE AFTERMATH

A few days later, Palin takes to her Facebook page to defend herself against any association with the acts of violence by Loughner.

Within hours of her video, President Barack Obama gives a speech memorializing the victims of the shooting. He calls for civility, and his rhetoric addresses a the wide swath of political animus generated in the previous days. His message: reconciliation.

PART 8: POST-MEMORIAL

At this writing, Representative Giffords appears to be recovering if still in critical condition. The shooter, Jared Laughner, is in police custody, awaiting his trial. In the six short days since the shooting, millions in America alone have watched video coverage and commentary, read accounts and opinions, stared at the web artifacts online, and written hundreds of thousands of comments on blogs, youtube videos and tv and newspaper sites. A Google search for “Gabrielle Giffords shooting” yields 87 million references, and a YouTube search finds nearly 5,000 videos.

THE MAKING OF A NEWS NARRATIVE

The core of the narrative cycle of this story has played out in so broad a field that it is almost impossible to catalogue it all. But what we can observe based on the myriad ways in which information was both generated and revealed is that we are no longer in an era where a handful of journalists report to the public what they have observed or what they consider “the facts” of the story to be. For example, had the presence of the Palin crosshairs map not been widely blogged about, then the disappearance of the map may have sounded like an outlandish conspiracy to defame Palin. Even the sudden emergence (by a youtube user) of the nearly year old MSNBC video in which Giffords refers to the Palin map is a function of a narrative that refuses to be corralled by any one source.

As information surrounding the shooting surfaced from social media, news, and first person sources, what became evident was that the substance of this tragic narrative –the story itself, would become one in which America both plays out and questions its love for and discomfort with the rhetoric of violence. After all, these calls to arms are documented in many places – every leader, in politics or media who has ever called for or suggested anything close to assassination of a rival or other public figure can be found online and studied and/or played ad infinitum. In what other era has this been possible?

And in the broader political scene that is a backdrop to this chilling story, many narratives are aggressively being played out including the one that pits Sarah Palin as a presidential contender in 2012 against Barack Obama. In constructing this narrative, political operatives on both sides will use as their tools, the artifacts of this incident, now over 87 million strong, to build the fabric of the presidential history of America and the moral tenor of its people. Within the chaos of it all, there are a number of stories, not the least of which is the question of how our rhetoric can so seamlessly become narrative.

Naturally, studying the thread of this narrative made me question how it is that some of the most relevant moral and social issues of our time are patently NOT present in the more “constructed” narratives that we consciously create for television and film.  There is something here, inside this story–this wide-ranging “news” narrative that floats from Facebook to FoxNews to the rabid comment section of the Huffington Post and beyond which I think we ought to observe very closely. We are in an era that spins constantly – it is not the “web” for nothing, after all. Though the loom has become invisible to us with our tethered devices and time-wasting digital blithering, let’s not forget that we are weaving rapidly, frequently and without conscious regard for what the fabric is saying. Yet that fabric is where the handwriting of our story lies.

Below is a CBS promotional video for the series, launching this fall. My immediate feeling was that I enjoy the twitter feed more than what I can see of the show so far. The obvious reason is that so much of Halpern’s dad’s humor is totally R-rated, and it doesn’t translate to network TV.You can watch the video below and also read the original Twitter feed to see what you think.

I’ve long been fascinated by memes like I Can Haz Cheezburger and FAILblog, many of which have been extended to print and published in book form. The beauty of most Memes is that they are image-based and take a split second to appreciate – essentially a single joke that can be played in many ways to great comic effect. But with entirely text-based memes like we’ve seen on Twitter, including TextsFromLastNight (which I’ve also heard will soon become a TV show),  I wonder if there is something that makes some memes more narratively compelling than others.

With William Shatner in the role of the Dad from ShitMyDadSays, a nice dovetailing of Shatner’s own social media savvy and interest (he’s very active and often amusing on Twitter as @WilliamShatner) with the clippy, 140 character way in which the Dad character developed on Twitter makes for a more interesting experiment than most. It makes me wonder if the secret sauce is character + personality = sustainable series. We will soon find out if the 1.4 million fans of the @shitmydadsays meme will actually enjoy the extension into story and stick around to watch the show.

JULIET: @julietcap16 You need to remember that he didn’t tell you the truth. Do you honestly WANT to be with someone who lies to you?

Ok, that exchange between Juliet and Nurse is probably not the Shakespeare verse you remember from your high school English class. It seems that this Juliet,(@julietcap16 on Twitter) has more in common with lonelygirl15 than she does with the classic 14th century heroine. (As we discover from her Facebook profile, she loves Taylor Swift and Twilight).

But the beauty of Shakespeare is that it never gets old, and the genius of the great author’s classic texts is watching them get reinvented over and over in various eras. So it should come as no surprise that Such Tweet Sorrow, a Twitter performance of Romeo and Juliet is having its moment. A British production performed (or tweeted) by the Royal Shakespeare Company with the help of cross-platform media shop, Mudlark , it is funded by Channel 4′s digital investment fund, 4iP.

A loose interpretation of the original text, this Romeo & Juliet began on April 10th and takes place in the span of five weeks and over 4,000 tweets. Now a few weeks and storylines in, you can follow all the characters tweets on a timeline that lives on the website, read a summary of what has happened so far, and check out the playlist for Juliet’s masked birthday party on Spotify and last.fm. which include, with some irony I imagine, Beyonce’s unforgettable Single Ladies whose lyrics demand a ring on the finger. And no less cheeky, the inclusion of MGMT’s Kids, no doubt a nod to the folly of youth, with its hypnotic refrain “control yourself.”

For Juliet’s party, she invited guests on their Facebook page to RSVP and send photos of their masks. 83 people responded and a handful participated in the mask challenge. It seems Juliet has the most active social media profile, including a Youtube page with 3 videos, where we get a glimpse into the Juliet’s feelings and interests, in the teenage girl bedroom (again another nod to lonelygirl15). The  most viewed of all three videos is the first, with 13,690 views at this writing, is perhaps the one that gives the most insight into Juliet. See below.

Based on the mainstream media’s response and coverage of the project, it appears to have made some sort of impact and certainly marks a notable moment in the expansion of theater performance into social media space. While I’m fascinated by the collaborative work this project is doing across theater, literature and social media, I have to say that this attempt falls into the caveman days of of interactive fiction. I have some quibbles with the actual design of the site (including the annoying inability to move through the timeline with ease), but most importantly  I’d have to critique the experience/story designers for not integrating the performance more into the social media space.

While Twitter in and of itself is an engagement platform, the lack of context (outside of clever pop culture references and lingo) seem to kill the “play”. I guess my expectations included a high level of interactivity and audience involvement. Put simply, why would I, as an audience member on Twitter, engage this drama outside of the novelty of seeing Shakespeare on Twitter? There’s no story hook for me, no compelling invitation to participate in the (vastly underdeveloped) world of the Capulets and the Montagues, and no reason for me to stick around…since I already know the ending. If the contemporary-ness is aimed at the teenage girls who know the dance routine to Single Ladies, then it certainly fails to engage them; if it is aimed (very slightly older!) ladies like myself, it seems perhaps over simplified and too full of silly teenage drama.

I know this is just the beginning and that experimentation will be going on for a while, so I hesitate to be overly critical. However, looking at this case really drove home for me the need for completely thought-through narratives and inventive engagement strategies, even dare I say, when you are working with the master of narrative himself, Shakespeare.

You can follow the characters: @romeo_mo, @julietcap16, @Tybalt_Cap, @Jess_nurse,@LaurenceFriar and @Mercuteio

Time was short but I promised that I would post a followup with video and here it is.

From Aramique Krauthamer, who works at Syrup as a story director.
Flashback”, directed by Marco Brambilla. it’s an interpretation of 6 stories of 6 perfumes. the perfumes are about experiences of nature and this film is imagining if we have destroyed natured and the experiences are gone how they will be remembered in the future.

And for Puma, a short documentary about the making of a painting. The painting shows the “Unity Kit” which is the first time a jersey has been made for an entire continent as a symbol of solidarity

Then from Writer/Director Hunter Weeks, who is often the subject of his own films and featured in the video, a collaboration with the sandwich chain Quiznos, in which he travels to 50 states in 2 weeks.

Weeks’ new project is “Ride The Divide”, for which he has raised $100K in product, marketing, and cash before making film (about 50% cash). He’s partnered with Lance Armstrong’s foundation Livestrong, YouTube and a few other major distribution channels for a unique release strategy that combines online events and a theatrical tour that benefit Livestrong.

Ride The Divide Movie Trailer from Ride The Divide on Vimeo.

Ritesh Batra, who worked with Cisco on a project called “Digital Cribs” is a fascinating profile of a homeless entrepreneur:
Embed removed. Click link here to watch video: CISCO’S Digital Cribs

From Jake Abraham, formerly of Dandelion (division of Epoch Films) are two branded entertainment examples, the first for Sun Life, and the second directed by Brett Morgen for International Trucks:

Bayne’s openness stuck with me and I made note of the fact that he was working on a film called DRIVEN. But at the time, I wasn’t aware of the details. Then a few weeks ago I wrote a post on Kickstarter and thought it might be useful to talk to a filmmaker on the frontlines of crowdfunding. Glancing through some of the most successful projects on Kickstarter, I noticed Bayne’s project, an ambitious documentary with an equally challenging funding goal of $25,000, which had been funded in a remarkable 20 days.

I was impressed and reached out to Bayne for an interview, which you can read below the trailer of DRIVEN. I hope it will provide a much-needed perspective on the crowdfunding process and also illuminate the journey of an artist with a vision, which Gregory Bayne is handily proving himself to be.

WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT ABOUT?
My film is an intimate look at the life of Jens Pulver. Jens is a legendary Mixed Martial Artists, 3 time World Champion, and the first ever Lightweight World Champion in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Challenge) who rose from a childhood laced with violence and substance abuse, to become one of the most loved and respected mixed martial arts fighters of all time. The film chronicles Jens’s journey back to the cage for what could be his final bout.

Ultimately, DRIVEN is not about a single fight: It is a film about a universal human struggle, transcending loss, and overcoming hardship through the many fights we all share in our pursuit of greatness. It is, poignantly, a film about one man’s drive, in an increasingly dire American psyche, to overcome the most trenchant of odds, and redefine his fate in a quest to provide a more solid future for self and family than his own meager inheritances would have allowed.

And now, with the fight behind us, and a fairly extensive interview with Jens ahead of me, I’m finding that the film is also about mortality, and transformation. It’s become apparent I believe, to Jens, that in order to thrive as a fighter, in his personal life, and build a future for himself, he must in some ways walk away from the legendary status that was the fighter “Little Evil”, and carve out a new path for Jens Pulver.

DESCRIBE THE CREATIVE ROAD AS A FILMMAKER THAT BROUGHT YOU TO DRIVEN?

I’ve worked as an editor on many feature documentaries, probably most notable was Trudell (Sundance Competition ’05), about legendary Native American activist John Trudell, so approaching this project was definitely in my realm.

I started my road in filmmaking in the early 90′s, and as the years have passed I’ve found myself becoming less and less excited about, or interested in, what I would call the ‘clean’ or ‘perfect’ cinema. The status quo of films that are manufactured within an inch of their life, leaving no room for the spontaneous, or the truly emotional, that are so wrapped up in ‘style’ to let us know how cutting edge they are. I like my cinema imperfect, a little dirty, and open to the journey.

So when I came across Jens, and his story, I knew instantly there was something there. Right off the bat I definitely had, and have, ideas in mind how it would come together, and what the shape would be, but I purposefully didn’t impose a style upon it, because I didn’t want to get in the way of the story.

What I’m trying to say is that my creative road has jumped track from the world of manufacturing experiences, to engaging in the experience, and finding the story within. I don’t do this because I know everything, I do it because I want to learn.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT JENS PULVER AND HIS STORY THAT COMPEL YOU?

I admire people that put themselves out there, and Jens is very much out there. In the last 10 years, in his world he has become a very public figure that has had to weather the ups and downs of wins and defeats while millions of people watch. I find that fascinating, and when that is coupled with the fact of his abusive childhood, his incredibly giving nature, his adoration among his fans, and his deep complexity as a human being that, at this time in his life, is so keenly self aware of where his real battles lie…I just find myself incredibly compelled by all of it, compelled to tell his story, compelled to try and understand him and his journey, and best I can, by viewing life through his lens.

IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE ATTEMPTED TO MICROFUND/CROWDFUND A FILM? IF SO, HOW HAVE YOU FUNDED YOUR PAST PROJECTS?

Whether it was collaborators kicking in a few hundred dollars, someone giving me an unexpected check after seeing some of my work, or making the direct plea, in one way or another everything I’ve worked on has depended on a level of crowdfunding, DRIVEN is just the first time it’s expanded way outside the realm of friends, family & acquaintance.

My other film I am currently finishing, Person of Interest, garnered most of it’s budget via crowdfunding, on a much smaller scale than DRIVEN, but still largely fan supported from day one.

HOW DID YOU FIND KICKSTARTER? WERE YOU A CONTRIBUTOR/FUNDER BEFORE YOU LISTED YOUR PROJECT?

I became acquainted with Kickstarter when I backed the launch of OpenIndie. Since then I’ve backed, and supported several other projects on the site. I basically view it is another level of social networking, as it were. I’ve met, albeit electronically, some incredible people on Kickstarter, I think their staff is amazing, and I want to be part of helping the site, and this style of launching creative endeavor, grow. So, I think it’s important to participate, and at risk of sounding cheesy…pay it forward.

ONCE YOU SETUP DRIVEN FOR FUNDING, HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT DRIVING PEOPLE TO THE SITE?

By leaving no stone unturned.

About a week before launching the campaign I put up the first teaser trailer on YouTube. Within a week it had been viewed 10,000 times, and I began receiving several emails a day from people that were moved by it. So, seeing the writing on the wall that ‘the time was now’ I just jumped in the campaign, and never looked back.

I responded to everyone that was emailing me, began sending out to my own modest email list, set up google alerts for search terms like “Jens Pulver Documentary” so I could find out where the film was being talked about, and used YouTube’s insight tools to find out where the trailer was being watched. Then, I simply ventured out into the world wide web and engaged with whomever I could. MMA Forums, blogs, journalists writing about MMA, and so on.

After about a week there were 10 pages of relevant links on google about the film, discussions were springing up everywhere and the trailer shot up to 30,000 views. Long story short, I spent all day, every day in MMA discussion forums, responding to blogs, and emails, sending new emails, keeping in constant contact with backers via Kickstarter updates, Facebook updates, Twitter updates, I used YouTube annotations to update the two trailers I had online there to both explain and help guide people to the campaign, did a couple of MMA Radio shows with Jens…it was basically an all on the table approach.

There is additional detail on this, and the ebb and flow of funding at the Kickstarter.com blog.

WHO FUNDED YOUR FILM? FRIENDS? FANS? CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR SUPPORTER BASE?

All of the above, but with an emphasis on fans, or those who became fans through connecting to the initial trailer that was released. Now it’s up to me to deliver for them, and to continue to engage with them, so they make that very important transition to ‘true fan’.

I IMAGINE MANY OF JENS PULVERS’ FANS ARE SUPPORTERS OF THE FILM. DID THE NICHE NATURE OF THE SUBJECT IMPACT THE DONATIONS IN ANY WAY?

Yes, Jens is incredibly well thought of in the MMA community. He’s a legend in the sport, and probably the most approachable person in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. I think the niche nature of the film definitely opened the campaign to a wider audience quicker, for sure, but I also think it was the transparency of my approach, and willingness to engage that helped drive the campaign contributions.

YOU ARE 100% FUNDED WITH A VERY AMBITIOUS GOAL OF $25,000 IN 20 DAYS. ARE YOU SURPRISED?

I don’t know if I would say surprised, I mean yes, on just the sheer magnitude of the goal, I’m amazed it all came together. But from day one, I just had in mind “I’m doing this”, so I’m more grateful than anything that the work paid off, that people connected with the project, and that I’m making a film that I really believe in.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN THE PROCESS ABOUT THIS KIND OF FUNDRAISING?

A lot! Most of which I outline in this blog.

YOU ARE FILMING LEADING UP TO JEN’S BIG COMEBACK IN MARCH. WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE FIGHT?

Well, the fight has now ended, and I am about to sit down with Jens for an extensive 4 day interview, in an effort to really get inside the world, and mind of Jens Pulver. We will be discussing every aspect of his life, his career in and out of the ring, key fights, the sport and artistry of mixed martial arts, and his road from here. This interview will provide a road map for the film as we begin to put the picture together.

Post production starts in April.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE WILL HAPPEN WITH THE PROJECT WHEN IT IS FINISHED?

I will be releasing the film myself (at least initially), and my greatest hope is that it’s a successful film, in terms of storytelling and artistry, that people enjoy, take something away from, and feel compelled to tell others about.

Sometimes, marketing and advertising can be brilliant. This is one such occasion.

I think the answer is yes. And I did some research to challenge my own assumptions.

Of course, now with the heavily rumored and anticipated i-something (maybe iTablet or iSlate) device from the happy people at Apple, it seems the transformation of reading is perhaps closer than we might have imagined. As is often the case, technology will drive the charge and likely change user behavior and only then will creative ideas for the product follow suit. Looking beyond the cool gadgetry of the new Apple toy, let’s just consider it another gateway into the world that Amazon’s Kindle has already established with e-reading. We can be sure of one thing though: it will likely be a user-friendly, very portable device that makes the crossover between text and image very appealing.

So there we are, sucked into the magical interface, switching between a Youtube video,  the latest issue of Vogue magazine and pages of Anna Karenina, making leaps of imagination and information that may have been a little more difficult when those materials were tactile. And I describe a scenario in a sequence that has actually happened for me. I have the Kindle for iPhone app, and I confess, I am currently reading Anna Karenina on that tiny, tiny screen on the subway and sometimes, I switch tasks and watch a randomly unconnected  video, then quickly flip through a fashion magazine all in the time it takes to get from Soho to Grand Central Station. So, essentially I contradict myself.

So I’m a media zombie, a self-proclaimed future filmmaker. But a book purist, right? Yes and no. I wonder how I would feel if there was an option to watch a dramatization of Tolstoy’s novel within my app. Would I do it? I’m not sure. But I think most people would if it made an old Russian novel accessible. And for that reason, companies like Vook and Fourth Story Media are emerging in the hybrid book space with titles ranging from how-to’s to teen novels and popular adult fiction. I downloaded and sampled the Sherlock Holmes double Vook and gave it a whirl. Frankly, launching a documentary about opium use during late 19th century London was really distracting to me when I wanted to follow the characters. But I found that I liked the interface when not actually engaged in the narrative. My conclusion is not that the Vook concept itself is flawed, it’s just that turning a classically structured narrative into a multimedia experience is a complex creative challenge. And I can’t say this particular title succeeded.

However, if a title was written by the author with the intention of creating a multimedia narrative in which the text and video where simultaneously conceived, the same way we do when writing screenplays intended for filming, then I think it would be an entirely different proposition. And I actually look forward to the birth of a new form with as much creative and intellectual rigor as good literature has traditionally had. As Bob Stein, whose Institute for the Future of Books says in an LA Times piece, “We’re going to see an explosion of experimentation before we see a dominant new format. We’re at the very beginning stages” of figuring out what narrative might look like in the future– “…the very, very beginning.”