A year ago last spring, after a numer of years of mulling over the idea, I embarked on a project to recocile the linear nature of stories with the interactivity of digital media and began writing a book, New Media in the New Hollywood: The Marriage of Movies and Multimedia. I also created a demo DVD to illustrate the concept described in the book.
For the demo (and a full product I hoped to sell at a later time), I choose a 1947 feature film, Life with Father. Since the story is set in 1880s New York City, the film lends intself nicely to non-fiction links about general Victoriana and Victorian New York.
Stories appeal to the affect and provide interest and motivation. In an educational setting, that motivation can be used to create interest in related factual information, typically considered "boring." Look at how many people developed an interest--including teens--in Titanic and that era, based on the movie. The story of Titanic's demise would not likely have garnered much interest among teens, without the movie.
I thought this approach could create a new way for film production companies to gain revenue from films collecting dust in their vaults, by adding new value. This value would derive from a digital version with supplemental links to the movie's content as opposed to its making--the primary addition to current DVDs. I believed this approach would be especially appealing to parents as a way to supplement their children's learning.
Since I was heading to LA last summer for a social get-together, I combined the trip with meetings with some of Hollywood's top multimedia developers, during which I showed them my demo.
While they found it intriguing, they believed Hollywood wasn't much interested in multimedia since the few excusions they had made had not proved profitable. Putting out DVDs was about as far as these executives were interested in going. The developers did feel, however, that there was a niche for this approach in the education market.
Since other things competed for my attention, I didn't complete the book or full DVD product. I do have the demo and am waiting for a time when other educational technologists see the inherent value in embedding links to supplemental material within a digital movie. I suppose it's simply an idea whose time has not yet come.
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