ON PRODUCING "CRUSHING IT": The Future of Storytelling

“Crushing It” has gone live today! Pop the Champaign and pass the party hats. Or maybe I’ll just have another coffee.

Producing this project hasn’t all been about schedules, contracts, and content elements. “Crushing It’ has inspired my thoughts to more philosophical things; such as creating a new storytelling language. It reminds me of another storytelling language and how it evolved.

In 1891, Thomas Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson demonstrated a test film called “Dickson Greeting” in which Dickson himself bowed, smiled, and tipped his hat. This short film of a single, static shot was a perfect example of how the technology of motion pictures was developing but cinematic language was practically non-existent. It would be many more years before this new medium would acquire the storytelling language we now take for granted.

Storytelling languages rely on people’s ability to follow what they see and hear. At the time “Dickson Greeting” was produced, people were cinematically illiterate. They had never seen edited scenes of different shots. Furthermore, the ‘filmmakers’ had no idea how to shoot and edit footage into anything resembling a modern sequence. Consequently, these early films used the familiar language of the theatre stage: a wide static full-shot. Actors were portrayed in full, head to toe, due to the belief the sudden insert of a close-up would be confusing or disturbing. It was in 1894 that Fred Ott's “Sneeze” pushed the boundaries and used what is believed to be the first medium-closeup. Not even an extreme closeup, mind you. Just a medium. Over the ensuing decades, filmmakers experimented with different shots and editing techniques and audiences saw more films and became more literate.

Today, people are very cinematically literate and can follow storytelling languages that employ a mind-boggling array of shots, edits, and structures. Just as film evolved its own storytelling language, Social Media, with its many integrated tools and venues, now affords storytellers a chance to weave posts, blogs and vlogs into a narrative structure. People who are Social Media literate will grasp this new narrative structure and will follow the story. Those less familiar with Social Media might wonder what’s going on. I hope they won’t react like the first audience to see the 1895 film, “Arrivee d'un train en gare a La Ciotat” (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat), who, upon seeing the train coming straight at them, leapt panic-stricken from their seats and fled from the theatre.