[And now to something totally different..] As a true carlifornier would have done it, I would like to *share* an experience that I made the other day with you folks. It's about storytelling and it was rather interesting for me. I hope I can communicate this experience to you through email, but I promise it ain't easy :\ Ok, here we go... The other night I was working late and lucky me Vienna has a lot of bars opened till 6 in the morning (first lie: it wasn't that late obviously). I have found this nice place where I sometimes go to just drink a beer and relax after very long days at work (hmm.. soon to be a-holic?). I go the much because I like to meet new, odd people and this is just the place where you go if you like to do exactly that. You can meet people ranging (without ranking though) from software engeneers to .. yeah sci-fi writers. Well, anyway I met this guy who was totally non-tech but still wrote the most techie sci-fi storys. He also worked professionally writing scripts for theaters (which could prove to be important later) and worked with songwriters producing text. Well, now you have pretty good picture of this guy I hope (you know the basker and scarf and stuff:) so your not in for a surprice if I say that this guy never tried Internet. Anyway, because of my interest for sci-fi we discussed a lot about how you tell stories (about sci-fi) and different *kinds* of stories you can tell. It shows that this writer (lets call him something typical Austrian... Wagner [yeah, I know - his german]) .. anyway t shows that Herr Wagner specialized in describing overall enviroments and how people interact with that enviroment (in other words, society) which of course made him somewhat more interesting than the normal sci-fi like [you fill in with your own favourite trash sci-fi writer so I don't get flamed]. So after a couple of hours of discussion about exactly how he produces his stories and stuff I decided to make this guy a proposition (not a dirty one I promise). [As everybody probably know it's VRML99 and it's demo time] To give Wagner some background I tried to explain what the "RavenStories" was to him (he still never saw internet and there I am trying to explain the cut'n edge of Internet to this guy - recognize it?) and explained to him that there was something missing in thouse stories (no offence Alan, but I think you explained that yourself), namely interaction. What I wanted is somewhat more than a 2d-movie in 3d representation because I wanted some kind of interaction. Anyway, due to all the fuzz about demos here, and demos there (and yeah, they are pretty much everywhere?) I was sort of concentrating on 3-5 minutes of high speed content trying to communicate a message which would normaly take more than a day to communicate normaly (2'nd lie: At least a week it would take), sooo I suggested that he would work together with me and create a story that would at longest take 5 min to communicate. I also demanded that he would write it first and just give me the manuscript and leave all the modeling to me. That would meen that he would have, more or less, no saying about the end result. It would be totally up to him to descibe it good enough for me to be able to do it the way he wanted. Yeah, I know, this doesn't sound like much of teamwork, but I acctually think it would be very interesting. What would be especially intersting is how this guy, without acctually having the knowledge of what I can do on the computer side, will be able to adjust to the limities it presents. For Wagner himself this introduces him to a totally new sort of interaction with his reader. You all know how increadible nice it is to get an email from someone re one of your VRML files. It doesn't even matter if it's bad critics, but you know that people saw it and you know that people care (at least enough to make you feel bad for a couple of minutes:). First of all he has the direct feedback from what I would do on the computer. Then he would have to mixed feedback from when you put it up on a web-site and people start commentating on it. Luckily Wagner have the theater experience so at least he knows that sometimes it just doesn't look as he thought it would look and well, the audience knows how to "not applaude" too :) It will also introduce a new media to this guy, a media wich contain very rich forms of interaction and visibillitie, meaning a media by which you can communicate in one scene more than you sometimes can do in a book (well, yes of course the contrary too). We talked a lot about "Starship Troopers" because of this reason. If you didn't read the article about it on sony pics homepage I strongly recommend it since it gives a good insight of how these people think when they want to communicate something, something that maybe isn't that easily communicated (like the gravity and weight of a 1km long space ship). Wagner of course (well, yes) loved this movie because he thought it had something "real" over it in the middle of the madness and that every scene seemed to communicate a message even though he couldn't understand exactly how himself (that's also something I think the big gods of 3d gfx tend to keep to them selves). Unfocused for a while.. sorry.. A small question for you (if you are still with me). I can be pretty sure of that he won't peek himself so it's really up to me... Would You show him the 3d stuff (aka VRML) before he wrote the script? What would you say are the cons and pros of doing that? Ok, the outcome of this meeting is still to be seen but we promised eachother to start working on this before summer so we will see what happens. I promise to keep you posted, but just wanted to share the experience just beacuse, as I said in the beginning, I found it most interesting myself :P One thing is for sure, it will defenently be the longest script he will ever be writing, at least relative to the viewing-time it will get :) /Niclas - let me know when you found the 3'rd lie :) -- niclas olofsson christian doegl virtual real-estate gmbh mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] breite gasse 3, a-1070 vienna http://www.dc.co.at fon: ++43 1 526 29 67 fax: ++43 1 526 29 67 11
