Alongside photofilms, where you are guided through the story by the storyteller themselves, interactivity is another exciting way to tell photo stories.
The National Film Board of Canada is doing some sterling work in this area, combining stills with ambient audio – and then creating an interactive narrative for the viewer to explore in their own time.
A great example of this highlighted over at blog .fu this week is Fire by Aaron Vincent Elkaim.
At its base: some stylised photography, ambient music, really lovely typography – and a narrative you can explore yourself.
I really like the way the captions disappear to reveal the image below at the viewers request, and I like how the whole story is told in just 12 stills, and not the usual 20+.
Check out some of the NFB’s other experiments in this area too.
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I don’t know. I want to like it, because I know Aaron and I think his work is great. I’m familiar with that body of work. But I have two problems with its interactive presentation. It felt overwrought. I hate ambient music on websites, so I can’t say it really added much for me in this context. And while I liked the words themselves and what they added, the typography was also overwrought. All the italicizing felt WAY too heavy handed. The text is already so emotional that it needs to handled with more subtle typography. All that said, I did get more out of this presentation of this work than I did just by the photos themselves. I just wish I didn’t feel like it had all been told explicitly to me. I wish I’d had space to figure out a little bit myself…
Kate, I totally agree with you about the music which was a real turn off for me. Music is very subjective though. I also agree that the text could have been more simple. It did feel a little forced. I thought the text though was strong, not overly emotional and certainly left me thinking.
Hi Kate,
That’s a very interesting point. I can’t remember who said it, but there’s a phrase that goes ‘if you let the audience put 2+2 together they’ll love your forever’ (or something to that effect) – I think you’re right, we get more satisfaction from stories we figure our for ourselves.
Great quote Adam, THANKS
So true.