Lunchtime Talk
Fri 19 Mar 2021 13:00-14:00 at YouTube Live
Choose Wisely
For this Lunchtime talk we are joined by Kate Dimbleby & Ru Howe from Stornaway.io, an interactive story editor and platform. Kate & Ru will discuss how Stornaway.io enables its user to simplify Interactive Filmmaking.
c/o Stornaway
Speakers
Kate Dimbleby
Kate has worked for over 25 years as a producer, writer and performer. She has recorded 6 albums, and has toured the world with theatrical music shows, working with world-class musicians, writers and other artists to tell stories about women's voices. Her work has increasingly focused on interactivity and improvisation, which led her to founding Stornaway.io. Her 2017 album and show Songbirds (2017) was made using acapella voice loops and described by Tom Robinson (BBC Radio 6) as 'an artist absolutely at the top of her game'. Kate has also developed a structure for writing and developing her ideas to allow for maximum creative freedom and flexibility particularly live on stage. This is at the heart of our creative writing tools, particularly how we’ve developed our Story Map and Story Islands™️.Ru Howe
Ru’s film work as director and editor has taken him from shooting and cutting on 16mm to being the first mobile videoblogger in the mid 2000s, long before iPhones and apps. He has spent the last ten years in large media companies translating between top producers and technologists, who rarely speak the same language. He directed interactive short Life Moves Pretty Fast (www.LifeMovesPrettyFast.io) which was recently released at Immersive Encounters 2020. Alongside his day job working for broadcasters, Howe was one of the world’s first vloggers, whose online persona ‘Wolfie’ made Tik-Tok type videos (as far back 2003, even before YouTube) lip-synching to songs and and movie scenes from his desk. His 2005-10 projects Fatgirlinohio and Twittervlog pioneered what we now recognise as the classic YouTube daily family vlog, playing with increasingly lo-fi mobile and pocket devices and the intimate connection with his audience - becoming the world’s first mobile vlogger to Twitter in 2007, and always working to enable other film and video makers to embrace affordable technology and workflows. Along the way, he created the first ever interactive film on YouTube (Indecision, 2008). Since his involvement with the influential videoblogging collective (2004-) he has always been driven to innovate with lo-fi digital tools and explore narrative possibilities in intimate and experimental projects. He has also been a champion of enabling other producers and artists to develop their digital skills and workflows.This Lunchtime Talk will be broadcast live on Watershed's YouTube channel.
Stornaway.io empowers creatives and teams to write, produce and publish interactive films and video story games – without coding. It was designed and launched in May 2020 by Bristol based filmmaker and technologist Ru Howe and writer/performer Kate Dimbleby after many years of waiting for somebody else to do it first. In order to develop the tools, they wrote and produced Life Moves Pretty Fast (released at Immersive Encounters 2020), an interactive short which follows Wolfie (aka Howe’s old vlogging alter ego) across Bristol on several different journeys to work on his birthday. Originally mapped out on their kitchen wall with pieces of paper, they used the writing and production process to design and prototype Stornaway.io as an authoring tool which would put the creative process at the heart of its no-code vision. You might think of it as a Wordpress or Square-space for Interactive.
The company now has projects in development for TV and streaming platforms and are partnering with universities and film schools. Stornaway.io's online subscription means that individual producers can sign up for licenses affordably, unlocking a new wave of interactive film and story games for the 2020's. They are currently beta testing their "YouTube Uploader" which will let producers deliver interactive films created in Stornaway.io direct to YouTube.
In this lunchtime talk, they will demo the application and discuss the potential and challenges of this kind of interactive storytelling, with references to specific mainstream examples including Netflix’s pioneering interactive specials (Bandersnatch; Bear Grylls; Kimmy Schmidt and more).
Join us on Fri 19th March, 13:00-14:00 for the talk and to take part in the discussion afterwards.
