The Coming Media Production Paradigm, Part 2: What's a Wikumentary?
Last week, I talked about the three orders of order, as outlined by David Weinberger in his book Everything is Miscelaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder," and how that relates to media production. I theorized that most of our digital media production tools are still constrained by workflows and power structures that were developed to support first-order media like film and analog audio tape. In other words, many digital media tools still depend on the idea of a receiver, when in fact, they should be supporting something more like David Parsons' specticipants. We need new media production tools that truly harness the power of digital, networked information and communication technology.
As an example, I'd like to briefly introduce the idea of "wikumentary," which is something I've been developing for a while at http://wikumentary.net. As you might guess, wikumentary is a portmanteau of 'wiki' and 'documentary.' That is, if a wiki and a documentary had a baby, it would be a wikumentary: a collaboratively-produced documentary.
To flesh out the idea a little bit, it might be easiest to explain what a wikumentary is not.
It is not a film or video. These are linear media. A wikumentary is hyperlinked, fragmented, interactive, distributed. A wikumentary might include video, but only as part of a larger architecture!
It is not Wikipedia. For several reasons: 1) A wikumentary is produced by a single community about a subject of its choosing. 2) The wikumentary can be as subjective as that community chooses to make it. 3) Everyone cannot edit everyone else's wikumentary - each community will develop its own rules for access. 4) A wikumentary does not have to be made with MediaWiki, although it certainly could be. Any wiki technology will do.
It is not a wikimentary. Although there's not currently much data to base this distinction upon, purveyors of wikimentaries are still a bit first-order for my tastes. Rory O'Connors efforts, while compelling, are still very much based in the traditional documentary production model, with the addition of some distributed editing. The project 82 Bars uses a different approach - soliciting source media from a variety of places to be edited by just one person. Neither approach really takes the fundamental idea of melding wikis and documentaries far enough. The "democratizing" of the documentary process can happen at ALL levels of production, including both the contribution/collection/production of media and the organization of that media.
As of now, my dream of a complete wikumentary tool is far from complete. When I started wikumentary.net, I had the misfortune to choose a Content Management System that eventually made me want to shoot my computer and give up on the whole project. As far as I can tell, there is no good, easily deployable solution. Any free wiki site would do in a pinch (e.g. Google Sites, pbworks, etc.), however none of the solutions I've explored support creative, rich, interactive media use...
Which is why I went back to school! To make a tool for creating wikumentaries.
Anyone with me?
Next week: Part 3, Why We Need Wikumentaries
Mike
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How the Industry Interprets Collaborative Production
I have very much enjoyed your posts about wikumentary. They remind me of the iHollywood Forum conference I recently attended in Los Angeles. One of the panels featured Yair Landau who described his crowd sourcing production company Mass animation. During his presentation he described his process for creating one of his films. His production company attempts to use the social networking power of Facebook to entice animators and filmmakers to contribute to the labor of creating a short film. Mass Animation develops the storyboard and then submits it to the social network for their consideration (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_2NcijwPWE). The animators then begin to construct the texture and tone of the film by filling out the storyboard section they have selected. During the whole presentation I couldn't help but think that this model seemed more like "out-sourcing" then crowd sourcing. My suspicions were confirmed later in the talk when Landau explained the marketing genius of this business model. He argued that when a social network is engaged in the communal creation of a film they are likely to be advocates for the film and thus start buzz for viewers. His explanation of culture in a network society echoed many of the concepts from Pierre Levy, Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins but the motivation was clearly commercial. The whole concept left me feeling a bit worried about digital communal filmmaking and the concept of interactivity (an argument that is well articulated in Mark Andrejevic's book iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era).
After reading your posts I have new hope that there is possibility for networked media production that puts creativity ahead of commerce and marketing. Your explanation of the way in which new media users can harness the power of second order organizing tools is an intriguing alternative to the more centralized efforts of companies like Mass Animation. Looking at the Wikumentary that you linked to your post I was interested in the way it takes the form of an autobiographical story. Is there a potential for doing a fictional wikumentary?
Ethan, Yes, I think the Mass
Ethan,
Yes, I think the Mass Animation approach is inevitiable. MIT has partnered with a production studio to form the Center for Future Storytelling, and I think they will probably incorporate some collaborative content creation into their products as well. It will be interesting to see which parts of the industry embrace "crowdoutsourcing" and which ones resist it, but it makes sense from a business standpoint to try to capitalize on the energy people are willing to give away for a corporation's benefit - in word of mouth advertising or in direct contribution to a product. As you might guess, my interests are in making tools that provide ways for a community to keep the benefits of their production labor, and even generate money for themselves. I think wikumentary could be a powerful tool for community economic development. (I co-wrote a paper about digital storytelling and community economic development last year, anyone interested can see it at http://wikumentary.net/TheStoryEconomy.pdf).
And yes, I would love to see something like a fictional wikumentary! Although it might then kind of loose the "documentary" aspect. But you could have mocku-wikumentaries, which would be pretty hilarious. Penguin experimented with a crowd-sourced novel: http://www.amillionpenguins.com/blog. I definitely think of what I'm doing as a kind of interactive multimedia autobiography, although I'd like to see it happen on a small community scale, too.