For one thing it's a multimedia story, made by and featuring multimedia people, using multimedia tools and facing the multimedia stresses of late 20th and early 21st century lives.
But that's not enough - a book about authors is not necessarily better than a book about rabbits, a film about focus pullers is not likely to be better than a film about the inmates of a mental hospital or about suburban Americans and their troubled relationships.
However, like a good movie or a children's classic, this is a story
of tension and struggle, of love and friendship and, as I mentioned earlier
(so much for non-linearity) it's serious, it's funny, it's a story of science,
of technology, of inefficiency, of intrigue, of despair and of hope in
a maxed-out multimedia world.
(By the way I'm not claiming to be on a par with Milos Forman or Sam
Mendes, well not yet anyway.)
And it's real.
The Words
I haven't finished interviewing for the radio doc yet but I have gained access to so much other material that would not work on Ideas but could be extremely interesting in a webumentary: backstory, drawings, diaries, additional incidents, highly relevant and colourful aspects of the players' life or character, etc...
What I personally wouldn't do is just download audio or transcriptions of all the interviews for the audience/participant to work through themselves, supposedly building their own documentary or unedited version of events, although I realize that this is sometimes done and indeed is sometimes very valid. There is, however a significant amount of interview material that I would make available though. It may include overlapping perspectives of the same incident, which is often interesting, it may include additional contextualisation, it may tell of other incidents, it may qualify statements that could be misunderstood in other circumstances.
Because of the character based structure of our rendition of the story,
the audience/participants will be able to negotiate their own ways through
the material and what will be interesting is that each journey through
the story will lead to a slightly different interpretation, partly because
of the personal baggage that every reader/viewer brings to a story, and
partly, indeed similarly, because if you read one piece of
information and then another, your interpretation of the second piece of
info would be affected by the first.
You probably know this already, but a nice example occurs in this story.
Erella's colleagues and supervisors saw her "not keeping up with the pace,"
falling asleep at work, getting headaches, looking frustrated, failing
to achieve the high turnover rates they were endeavouring to deliver. Their
assumption was that she was not up to the job. That sounds pretty
callous in the circumstances. I played the clip to an intelligent,
mature broadcasting executive and she was somewhat shocked at their analysis.
She knew about the tumour though. Erella's colleagues didn't know
she had a huge lump growing inside her skull, directly or indirectly causing
all these symptoms. With hindsight they do and now they interpret
the situation differently. As I understand it, this is what happens
in hypernarrative, it's a different experience, depending on the route
you take.
The Look
Erella's pictures are enchanting, as many who I've spoken to who receive updates on her daughter's life have testified to me. They work on screen, I've seen them. I'd like to get her to do some for us. If you need examples of her work I shall arrange for some to be mailed to you. Although the pictures on the radio were always said to be better, these pictures will be both good and different and will add to the experience.
With the web we'll be able to delve deeper into the workings of the
brain and endocrine system - we could use graphics here for extra
clarity.
I did study some brain structure and chemistry in my psychology
degree, so I can handle the material, but a decade in mainstream broadcasting
preceded by 4 years teaching non-native speakers of English has honed my
skills of simplification.
I'd like people to see the tools the brain surgeon uses, I'd like them to see the route he had to take to get inside her head. Erella also has the MRI scan, about 30 pictures of the inside of her head, each one like a slice of ham or if you're a vegetarian, like a slice of tomato. If you put all the slices back together, you end up with a representation of the whole thing. I was talking recently to the head of Online at the BBC Natural History Unit and he told me of software that should recreate a 3-D view of the head and the tumour and the eyes, ears and nose, putting it all into glorious perspective.
The radio program will be different, it has a different target audience, although ambitious and pushing boundaries, it is constrained by many of the constraints that constrain a 1 hour audio broadcast on CBC radio 1 under the banner of Ideas (and that is a wonderful banner to march under).
The Conclusion
The web needs something like this - it is interesting entertainment - it isn't just aimed at youth - and the internet isn't just used by young people - even for entertainment. I'm lucky that I still have vestiges of a sophomoronic sense of humour and consequently love Thugs on Film, South Park, etc., but, although I agree that the youth market is big, and important, there is room for everyone else too. (Don't let that stop you offering me a job on a youth oriented service by the way!) Perhaps, when this is made, we can explore further similar co-operations with, for example, Ideas.
Oh yeah, did I mention that this "show" would be serious, funny, a story of science, of technology, of inefficiency, of intrigue, of despair and of hope in a maxed-out multimedia world?