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Speaking of ... PingRay's Issue 1

"TIMELESS" STORIES

It’s funny … some stories are called timeless stories … but, of course, they’re not.

You know: The Odyssey, Rip Van Winkle, Shakespeare. Stories that still work, regardless of what decade you read them. 

“Eternal?” Sure. Even “ever-ready.” But these stories are heavily dependent on the movement of time in their plots, their characterizations, their moods.

Which brings us to the possibility of stories not driven by time … stories which might resemble ... say ... our Mind-Benders selection in Issue 1, “The Zoomquilt.”

New viewers of “The Zoomquilt” usually express some variation of “wow.” Some people make comparisons to the Eames’ classic film, “Powers of 10"  (see this online interpretation of the same idea), or Escher, or those frequently-copied, frozen-in-air moments in “The Matrix.”

What do they all have in common with “Zoomquilt?”

They all offer scenes that reveal themselves by moving through space, and not necessarily by moving through time …. timeless stories.

“Powers of 10” uses magnification to tell its story of relative size, orders of magnitude, and the size of the universe. Escher hints at stories untold, twisting space in ways both impossible and impossible to refute, implying that time is irrelevant. And the effects in “The Matrix” literally stretch the moment around a scene, as if time were negotiable.

With its seamless infinite zoom, a marvel in itself, “Zoomquilt” opens yet another door to stories driven by movement through space, not time. The funhouse/medieval imagery and the winding orange walkways certainly hint at narrative connections.

Space: the new frontier.

Speaking of ... PingRay's Issue 1

LESS IS MORE, MORE OR LESS

Two of the works in our inaugural issue abundantly demonstrate what is arguably the Net’s biggest contribution to linear (that is, non-interactive) storytelling...at least, the biggest so far.

It’s not only that “The 30-Second Bunnies Theatre” and “No Ordinary Hi” are perfectly designed and realized creations—clever, visually entertaining, send-ups of classic movies on the one hand, and of e-cards/recording sessions/tempermental actors on the other. Both make fun of filmmaking largely outside of the Net.

And it’s not only that both of these have obtained their own Net-driven community of fans, awaiting the next installment of bunny classics (e.g., see FilmStew.com ) or Hoops & Yoyo cards (see Ask Hoops & Yoyo ) … although such fandom would be hard to develop and maintain without a mass self-organizing mechanism like the Net.

It's that these two films represent the rebirth of “shorts”--short films or, in this case, short animation--made possible by the Net. In fact, even more so than the time when “shorts” ran before every movie theatre’s feature movie, we are now in the golden age of shorts...thanks to the Net.

Sure, there has been the occasional theatrical touring program or even TV series of shorts…often animation. Now and again, cable features shorts to fill up an uneven time slot. (Some of the Bunnies Theatre shorts have been shown on TV, although most were born and made available to the general public through the Net…which is why they qualify as a PingRay pick.) And theaters specializing in independent film have been showing shorts for years, but their reach is relatively small. As for music video and TV commercials (essentially, two sides of the same coin), they can on occasion rise to the level of a good short story...but the ones that do so are relatively few, and their primary distribution-- television --bubbles them up briefly before they vanish.

The fate of shorts up to now can be indicated by the answer to a single question: how many Academy Award-nominated or -winning shorts has anyone actually seen?

Now, however, with the widespread use of broadband connections, the Net  has provided the motive, means and opportunity for those interested in making short, moving image stories. It has been to short movies/animation what the New Yorker Magazine has been to short stories, writ very large--a place where the end result can be showcased. Unlike the New Yorker, however, any one can be assured of world-wide distribution very inexpensively via the Net, and, unlike theaters or TV, anyone can develop stories entirely on a personal computer without needing to transfer to video or film.

As a result of the Net, this boom in short movies/animation has led to the kind of refinement in short, moving image storytelling that the best short stories, or the best jokes, have: the quickly observed, fine details; the unique styles that might be wearing if in long-form; a fine attention to pacing; and, often, a wit and intelligence that seems as sharp as it is brief.

A golden age, like being young or having a good night’s sleep, is rarely appreciated when you’re in it. Both the bunny "classics" and the Hoops & Yoyo mini-stories, like so many other works now made for or distributed primarily through the Web, are defining a way of storytelling different from what we normally see on TV, in theaters, on DVD.

Here's to enjoying this new Golden Age as long as it lasts.

Speaking of ... PingRay's Issue 1:

THE "500 CHANNELS" JOKE

Remember “500 Channels?” If you were otherwise occupied in the late 20th Century…or, possibly, had only recently been born…you might have missed the proclamation by cable baron John Malone. He envisioned a glorious entertainment future, driven by soon-to-be-digital cable, in which the average household might receive not some dozens of channels, as was then prevalent, but AS… MANY… AS…500!

It seemed to us then…and is obvious now…that this was pretty much like someone who made telescopes proclaiming that, with telescopes, you could see that the Universe could have AS… MANY… AS…500…STARS!

It’s not only that the Net is already a far greater, more versatile delivery network for entertainment than cable ever was. With high-speed connections widespread, it is now the largest and most flexible entertainment network in the history of humankind, with zillions of entertainment offerings.

And it’s not only that it is the superset network, where interactivity is the norm, and media that is primarily linear, like cable, can be seen as a subset.

It’s that the whole notion of a channel…a fixed stream of branded material, feeding your house like a water pipe…is so…well…so 20th Century. Fixed channels are the triumph of branding over expression…but now, thanks to the Net, expression wins.  And human expression, inexpensively available worldwide, has as many offerings, as, say, an infinite Universe of stars.

But be careful what you wish for: so many stars, so little time. That's the real punchline of the "500 Channels" joke. Malone was way wrong about the number of media-based entertainment offerings, but, with such an infinity of choices, where does one begin to find the best and brightest? That's where PingRay comes in. (You were wondering when, right?)