In the last two weeks in Iceland i had time to think about multimedia and how it is used. One of the thoughts that came to my mind was that the time for multimedia how many photographers see it, will maybe soon be over as long as it is something only web-based. Or maybe over is the wrong word, more that it will need a lot of development to become something what is strong enough to become equally important for reporting than video for instance. Ben at duckrabbit called the audioslideshows, we so much like to call multimedia, recently photofilm, a term that makes it even closer to video, that makes them even more direct competitors of video. But first maybe some words on what i mean when i talk about multimedia as this term is so much fashion and used for more or less everything nowadays. In my point of view (and i guess in the understanding of many photographers) multimedia is the combination of different forms of media in one piece. That could be text, video, photography, audio, graphics, you name it. Each one of those forms of media has advantages and disadvantages so combining this different forms gives us the ability to use the advantages and skip the disadvantages (at least in theory). In a photo-audio-slideshow this concept is not working as it only adds a new form of media, but still has to fight with disadvantages the picture might have in communicating the story. There might be stories where it works (and some of my stories are exactly told like that), but it is not always the best way. Just to keep that in mind. Now, it is for sure difficult to learn all that different forms of media when the only thing you have done before is photography or audio for instance. One important thing for me was to understand that multimedia needs or allows new ways of telling stories, but it needs an deep understanding of each form of media and what is the best way to use it for telling the story. Not easy to say the least as many of us also need the ability to capture the story with this different forms in a compelling way with great pictures, video, audio and so on. So we need this knowledge in the capturing and in the editing of the story.

Why am i now even go further with the headline and state the question: Is multimedia already old? As i said, for most multimedia is a combination of different forms of media at the end combined in a video by using the advantages of the different forms to tell the story in the best way. And here we have an important point: We want to tell a story. And multimedia is right now a web-based way to tell stories. And if done right, it is very powerful, brings us stories closer and more direct. So why do i think it is already old? The web developed a lot in how we use it through social media, web 2.0, however you want to call it. The one-way communication we were used to in the past is here at least getting less and less powerful. When we had before a world of only consuming information/content, we now interact with the content. The easiest expression of that might be comments where ever we look at or the possibility to share more or less everything with other people through Twitter, Facebook & co. But what does that mean for multimedia? Multimedia (always to be seen in the understanding described above) is first of all a linear way of telling stories. Maybe not the story in itself, inside the film, but how it is communicated. It tells the story how the journalist, editor, whoever thought it would be best. He decides where the story starts and ends. But one of the big advantages of the internet is in my opinion that we have so many possibilities to connect content with each other, make people interact with it, share their thoughts, and therefore decide how they approach the stories. As we no longer just watch TV or listen to radio or read newspapers without direct connection (maybe beside reader letters, most of the time without replies) the possibilities of the internet in communicating are massive. My goal for all the stories that I do has always been to tell them in a way that engages the people who see it, makes them understand and connect with the people who’s stories I tell. And with the combination of the different forms of media, it is a first step. Interactivity, in my opinion, will be the next step.

Interactivity truly brings the one who watches out of the passive consuming role into a active role and when it is only about where to start the story, what approach to choose. When that leaves to making comments or sharing it, that is great. Most of the time comments are maybe not important for the content, but they are the result of a thinking process and the creation of a vision. In this case the quality of the comments could also be seen as an indicator how good the project was able to engage and connect people with the story. Interactivity offers us many opportunities. When the journalist was the one who was doing the combination of content and the guiding through the story, maybe now this is something the user is able to do by themselves.

Now, it is nothing new. There are many powerful interactive projects out there and blogs like Innovative Interactivity write about it on and on. But most of this projects are big, long-term projects, flash-based and need a big amount of programing. Nothing what you consum when you are not 100% into the story. Only speaking of myself, i barely made it all the way through one of the features. Even the great ‘Prison Valley’ has a long start film giving you a multiple minute introduction without being visually compelling that makes me want click away after a short time. I think one of the biggest steps sometimes in interactivity is that we have to learn to trust the ones who are interested in the story that they will search for the information themselves as long as you make it easily accessible. And that we have to get away to see interactivity as something what needs this big projects. I think the future will be made with interactive multimedia, done with easy programming, links, lightboxes and so on. It might not look that fancy as this big projects, but it could do the trick and tell exactly the same. Only that it could be done in a short amount of time.

Do i still think multimedia is already old? Maybe not. But there are still a lot of possibilities that will be more and more developed in the future, i guess. Interactivity is just the next step. Something else what we have to learn how it works. What i truly think is that future storytellers will either work in small teams or will be masters of different forms of media. I think we will come away from labels like photojournalist, that is for sure, to something broader. As a little story on that to the end: I was recently asked in a pre-talk for an assignment how i would describe what i do. I thought for some time and said: ‘I tell stories.’ Even when that might not be all, but the rest are mainly tools to do so for me. I got the job right after.

Do you have other opinions or thoughts on the topic? Let me know.