/ramblings: Film without a frame

Traditional film storytelling is a beautiful thing. A film well told will suck you in and take you for a ride. You will almost believe you are experiencing what the characters are going through. But there will always be a wall between the story and the spectator. The story is what happens inside the frame, for a set period of time. The spectator’s only task is to give his full attention. To stare at the screen. And to be entertained.

That wall between the film and the spectator is something that has traditionally been meticulously guarded by filmmakers. A film doesn’t refer to itself as a film or make reference that somebody is actually watching it. Actors have to be careful when their eye lines cross the camera so as not to look straight into it, the difference between an intimate moment and an uncomfortable stare to the center of the camera’s lens, the audience, could be millimeters. One wouldn’t want to break the illusion.

And it’s that simple illusion, the suspension of the spectator’s belief, that defines the film experience. Filmmaking is all about working within a set of rules, inside the frame, to entertain spectators. But what happens if you get rid of all those rules, if you get rid of the frame itself and you break down the wall that separates the story and the audience? Madness? Where would you even start?

The beautiful thing about the craft of film are the rules themselves. After all, they’re there for a reason. A storyteller needs a framework to tell his story. And film is the ultimate storytelling framework. But what if the madness worked? What if one broke film’s frame and told a story in multiple screens across multiple mediums? What if one broke film’s time limit and told a story that varied in length in each individual viewing? And what if one broke film’s wall of illusion and literally involved the audience in the story? Could it work? And most importantly… Could it be easy to follow and not be terribly cheesy?

“It” would have to have it’s own set of rules. “It” would have to create it’s own unique wall of illusion. “It” would have to create a new storytelling framework that could be repeated. Then… Maybe.

Here’s the challenge:

• Tell a story that happens in more than one “screen”.
• Tell a story that takes place in a “non-standard” time length.
• Tell a story that directly involves the audience in some aspect of the storytelling.
• Tell a story that is easy to understand and to follow.

What are the tools? Everything.

Shit…