Authorship — Author has multiple roles
19 Codings
Nonny de la Peña
“Well, documentary filmmakers are wonderful being able to see the stories and see the thread that ties a larger story together. And I think that that will always be true. For, you know, to have a sense of fear about it seems misguided. I would say with immersive journalism in particular because it does require more traditional, in some way, approaches. It seems like it is extremely different, because it is in a virtual reality or in a gaming platform. But actually to reconstruct the pieces requires a similar skill as a director, quality as a director, to have an understanding of where things should be, be it in a spatial narrative instead of a linear 2D narrative.“
Arnaud Dressen
“I think the role of the author is not written, because there is really a lot happening. If you look at creation for example: That is becoming a very crucial and important subject today. The role of the author is critical, because in a way a creator is also an author and he knows where are the good answers. So I think the role of the maker, of the author, is not threatened, is actually more important than ever. Now it is true that there are (..) Everybody is capable of producing content and distributing it and sharing it within his social network. It is true that there is a lot of noise around. And so the time you are going to spend watching like a shitty video that is maybe funny - but you watch it because somebody just recommended you to watch it - the time you are going to be spending watching this video is the time you will not be spending watching a more interesting video. So there is competition to that sense. But again, well that is maybe where creation comes in. That is where good creators can make the Internet a better place to enrich your knowledge and access interesting content. And I think we are all waiting for that and I think we are going to be - I hope we are going to be - tired of watching, you know, not interesting content or zapping in too many different contents at the same time and take a little bit more time to watch what is important or what is interesting to watch at any time of the day.”
Jean Baptiste Dumont
“So I think it is important that the author keeps an eye on everything. And now everybody is looking who has to do what and we still have to find a good structure to work. Producers do not really know what they have to do. The author neither does not know on which level he can work and I think it is important that one creative person keeps an eye on everything, because now there are more roles than before. And I think that an interactive project has to be seen as a whole and not as a sum of different other parts. ”
Jonathan Harris
“As an interactive documentary maker you do things like decide what your topic is going to be. You decide how you are going to cover that topic. You decide what type of footage you are going to get. You decide how to assemble that footage. You decide what kind of frame to create for a viewer. You decide what types of levers and knobs there are to play with. And maybe there is even some hybrid approach where a portion of the work is a kind of choose-your-own-adventure-process.”
Katie Edgerton
“I think the role of the author is as important, if not more so. I think it might be authorship in a different way than we traditionally think of it. I think designers are authors, for instance. And the design of an interactive documentary, the way the interface is laid out, is critical to understanding the narrative message. But I think there has to be a key narrative point and there has to be an authorial vision, for a lack of a better word, or else it is going to be a sea of information. I mean participatory projects are so exciting and there is so much potential there. But there has to be some kind of curator, or some kind of path through all of the information. And that is created by a person or multiple people all on the same page. But I think the author is incredibly important in this new world. And it is not just directors as we think of them. They are designers, they are developers. There is a lot more potential for different kinds of authorship. ”
Paulina Tervo
“You know, if you just look at Youtube, it is just a bunch of content that is there, that is not being moderated in any way. We need people to curate that content and make something that is very authored, that becomes a piece of work, a piece of art. I think authors aren’t going to disappear because of this.”
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Gary Flahive
“I would say that the role of the author is still evolving in interactive documentary and I think, you know, sometimes you can see that even in simple conversation, in defining what a credit is for (..) Do you use the term director for an interactive documentary? Is it a creator, instead of (...) You know, what term do you use for that? You know, we all understand what a director is in a linear film. I would say (.) You know, again, there is still the beginning to emerge people who are comfortable handling many of the technological aspects of building an interactive documentary. Not just content gathering, even if that is done in a traditional way of shooting video footage or taking still photographs and capturing audio. I think where there is still confusion in evolution is that there is now a new set of people who come onto the scene.”
Jeremy Mendes
“Curation! Whatever it is, I think it still requires somebody’s focus and ideas and ideology to kind of shape these things.”
Richard Lachman
“But it also may be possible to go even deeper for some visitors to a site. Some visitors might, you know, rather than a one hour show that they see, might spend three or four hours or might have visits over the course of three or four weeks with a particular story. That is a different way of telling that story. So I think there is still a vital role. There are just maybe many different vital roles that an author might have, and one of them might be, you know, a more traditional form of thinking of what that story is and another might be orchestrating. It might be conducting. It might be allowing and sitting back, putting the pieces together to allow something, to have something that is quite different than what the fixed version might be.”
Mandy Rose
“The architecture of an interactive project is a form of authorship. The architecture, the design, that is a form of authorship. But you may get multiple layers. You may get layers of authorship. So that somebody designs, somebody is the architect of the overall thematic focus of a project. And then maybe multiple participants contribute pieces, which they may absolutely author, which sit within that overall architecture. So in a way, I think we are struggling to find a new name for an authorship, which is more complex and certainly does not reside with one person in many instances but may not perhaps be totally shared. And everyone may not be an architect in the same kind of way.”
Jesse Shapins
“I think the biggest challenge and opportunity to be able to actually have a successful storytelling experience is that you as an author create an environment, where people’s interactions are paced. So, there is moments where people are able to do things and it makes sense and it is narratively motivated. There is moments of where options are extremely limited. And I think you try as hard as you possibly can to have a kind of series of pathways that always feel exciting and that you want to be a part of. Because I think, you know, put yourself in the shoes and think about how you experience the web. I mean if you are bored, you leave. And I think that, you know, that is basically the core challenge for authorship. The stakes are higher. We have to make things that are better and more interesting.”
William Uricchio
“I think that the traditional understanding of what an author does - and I mean traditional - is certainly threatened. Alright, the author is a –the curator - the one who controls and structures, the one who hands something over to the reader to be read. That is under siege. If we think of authorship in a little more complex way - and I would point to someone like Michel Foucault or Roland Barthes, both of whom have written well about the death of the author or the author function - there you start to see the author more as a brand or as a reference system. And of course, those ideas of authorship work quite well. I think what we are seeing new is really a kind of, the author as a collaborator, the author as someone who is shaping and curating an environment, providing structures, avenues for experience that are in a sense brought to life by the reader, by the user. But very much in a kind of a partnership. So that kind of curatorial, collaborative shaping function (.) Authorship is shifting in that direction. I do not think we are ever going to lose the old author of control, the great storyteller. That will stay part of our culture. But I think we are seeing a new breed of author.”
Sandra Gaudenzi
“I think there is a big crisis in the role of the author in interactive documentaries because people who come from a documentary background and are used to be in control of the narrative (.) Obviously, when you have to open it up to either collaboration from other people or to some form of interactivity, you have to give up to one part of the authorship. But I think there is a confusion there. I think the confusion is in thinking that authorship means to be the narrator. So, if this is the definition of authorship, then definitely there is in interactive documentary, you know, this opening of the narrative to your public, your audience, your user or your collaborator, or participator (.) means that you are less in control of your story. But what is happening - to me, is what I start to see - is that authorship might take a new meaning in interactive documentary. And the authorship becomes the conception of the framework. So the author is not anymore the person who tells the story, but is the person who facilitates a space of discussion. Someone who does an architecture, if you want. Where a building, where people will come in, meet, to do their own things, go out, find their ways, understand whatever they want. Okay, so you are not building a narrative what people are doing in your building. You are creating the infrastructure for this building to accommodate other people’s participation. And so in a way the author becomes a facilitator and an architect and less maybe a narrator.”
Seth Keen
“I like the idea of creating frameworks to set up people to actually create their own content. So creating basically tools and frameworks to allow people to collaborate and participate in the creation of a work. So in terms of that question being asked to me, I am not someone who has an issue with holding on to authorship, in fact almost the complete opposite.”
Sharon Daniel
“I always when I, or normally, when I talk about my own work, I am careful to mention that I think of myself as a context provider, as opposed to a content provider. And I think, you know, the world of the author has been in question since, you know, the early poststructuralism, Foucault, Barthes etc. So I do not think that is new in any sense. In fact, I have written essays where I take from their body of theoretical discourse to talk about the kind of work we are all doing in participatory and collaborative kinds of interactive documentary practice. So I do not think that is new, but I think that this is a field in which new models of authorship, of collective authorship, can flourish. And I really like the word collective, even more than collaborative, because I want the collective voices to emerge within the context of the documentary project. And collaboration is a method for having that take place.“
Vincent Morisset
“I am interested in proposing something, where I guide and I accompany the spectator if I am saying (.) And you just create that connection. So in my work, I am still interested in kind of keeping a certain control over it and just give this sense of freedom and certain interactivity. But I know that I am still controlling the pace and the story.”
Adrian Miles
“So I think there is still sort of authors, but I think your relationship changes. In some projects, I think the author is better thought of as a choreographer. And that is (..) So, you know, if you think a choreographer is an author - fine. (.) I think you are choreographing relations between parts and people are a part, you know, audience is a part of that, your mood, your asset is a part of that, your technology is a part of that and so - you are a choreographer. And just like choreography you have got some control, but, you know, your dancers they are not robots, so you got constraints that you have got to work with.”
Kate Nash
“I do not think the author is dead. I think we have seen plenty of examples of works that are highly authored. Authorship has changed, no question. You know, it is no longer just about constructing audiovisual sequences. Authorship is a broader concept that includes structuring user experience and structuring interactivity to produce something meaningful.”
Gerald Holubowicz
“An author is more a leader. He is going to actually think about the project a while ago, but allow other people to work with him, not in a dictatorial way, but in a more democratic way. So it was already the case in, you know, traditional production, but ego, fame and all that stuff very often take over that kind of situation. So I am hoping that in the future we are going to see more and more people that understand that collaboration is not a synonym with losing his voice as an author, but just another way to work and make different voices existing altogether.”