New media old story

I have been thinking about the mix of new media and tech and how liberating it is becoming, when I was a student (back in the late 80's) I was desperate to do film and video work. Cameras were available as this was the video age, but editing and actually putting a film together seemed impossibly difficult.

And here we are in the 21st century and even my eldest son (11yrs) has a video with editing ability on his mobile. But even when we are drowning in tech there is still the difficulty of just doing it.

It should be as easy as breathing to whiz a movie together, and with tech at the current level it almost is, but the real test is whether that movie is worth watching. Sure I would love to see a movie by my boy but I'm not sure if you would, its the strength of the tales that can enable it to travel.

I suppose this is the constant test of all authors, will the story stand up? Perhaps if it does or not just depends on the reader. I have customers in my Toy shop who will read everything and anything, I also have those who wouldn't be seen dead reading a children's book. I understand completly why and try to observe this in my self and then undo that knot (or tie it harder depending!)

When I originally started playing with these GPS stories I put in lots of gimmicks in the programming but they felt extraneous to the tale. The more I wrote the simpler the program became, and any task that was handled by programming that could be done for real was ousted. Why have a virtual flower when you can lean out and touch a real one. My theory was that this would engage the party reading and walking the tale within the story more effectively, and I think it really has, especially with the winding charm in Dunster. Perhaps I felt the walks were techy enough so going for the lo fi approach suited me better, and the walks aswell.

As always the proof is in the pudding, I hope you enjoy the eating. If these go well then perhaps I will break my procrastination and actually make a film!