Watch. Like! Entertainment?
Last august, when the Screenwriting course tutor asked me, in our phone interview, in which direction I'd like to go with my writing, I told him I was quite determined to write for the web. I'm a fan of web-sitcoms (or webcoms). Their length is most appropriate for our fast times. You need a good laugh, but can't really waste precious minutes with a 30-minute episode of a sitcom? Open your browser and watch a 5-minute episode of a webcom, then go about your business.
Eight months, two terms, and one Interactive Media module later, I must confess I'm not sure that's still my stance.
I still “had it” in the first term. Wrote a market analysis on webcoms, for the Business module, and even thought about assembling a team of writers to create a webcom in the second term. I was quite sure the IM module would enlighten some ways in which to actually create it (not write it, but... you know... the whole thing).
Now, it would be tremendously easy to blame the IM classes and the almost exclusive focus on videogames for my loss of appetite for web series. But it wouldn't be fair.
The reason I didn't write a web series was having discovered how it is to write for long-form “filmic products”, so to speak. Two TV pilots, one which I'm most proud of, took up most of my writing time this term.
Not being into videogames was just an excuse.
So, I wouldn't have to reflect for ages to realize that no, the IM module didn't do much for me.
I came to understand (and appreciate) many forms of interactivity, but games just don't work, in my case.
To quote Chance the Gardener in Being There, I like to watch. And comment, and like or dislike, and suggest, and share. But above all – to watch. (Which gives me something to ponder on: as someone who likes to watch, why do I actually write because I'd like to be watched? How does this mechanism work? What does it say about human nature?).
I did feel a certain (peer?) pressure into writing something highly interactive (videogame, ARG etc.), but I just couldn't do it. So I turned to what I felt was, to me, the closest to this: transmedia. Which included, but did not limit to, a webcom element. With more interactive features than the “usual” webcoms. Or, at least, than those I like. To watch.
And it did enlighten me, in a way. Conceiving it, and writing it, I realized there are many ways of watching, and that the “traditional” watching – that defined by dictionaries – is not enough to extend to my concept of watching. That's because I don't just watch. I watch and react. I watch and give you the link. I watch and re-tell, or re-do, or re-live.
That's interactive. And I probably wouldn't have come to this realization if it weren't for the IM and the project proposal.
Eh... who knows... I might give that webcom a shot one of these days.
