I want to tell stories that people experience deeply. Storytellers have always understood that “how” a story is told can be just as important as the story itself. We are in a period of rapid development in the capabilities and availability of technology that can support new ways of telling stories. Our sophistication as an audience has manifested an appetite for authentic entertainment in contexts that may not have previously been considered. At the intersection of these dynamic trends in entertainment and technology, I see a wellspring for innovative material that can be intelligently channeled into new stories that will be experienced in new ways by the people who crave them.
As a kid, I never left the house without a book in my hand, and I knew I would never be bored if I could immerse myself in the world of imagination. While my first love was for the written word, I went to film school to explore other powerful ways of crafting stories that could be seen, heard, felt, and shared by an audience. In cinema, I recognized a sense of urgency and shared experience which carried its own unique transcendence. Professionally, I was drawn to the internet, because I saw its potential to allow storytellers and their audiences to engage with each other in a broader, more interactive context. Paradoxically, because the internet is more of a freeform information network than a narrative medium, it provides an open platform for expression that is allowing the concept of story to develop in an organic fashion with surprising results. The dialogue between a blogger and her audience, crowdsourced live event coverage through Twitter, and MMORPGs provide just a handful of examples of the new types of stories that have spontaneously emerged. My current interest in themed entertainment is inspired by its all-embracing ethos of any discipline that can engage all five senses in the creation of immersive experiences and stories.
I am certain that some of the ways in which we will tell the stories of tomorrow have yet to be discovered. This does not suggest that the job of the storyteller will be any easier, or that we should expect a systematic obsolescence of classic storytelling modalities. Instead, I see it as an exciting process of exploration that will yield new tools and techniques that will help us bring our dreams to life, whether we are telling stories, experiencing them, or both at the same time.
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