Media pt.2: The “Complex” media to tell stories
- Leo Marcorin
- Nov 23, 2022
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 24, 2022
Note 1: This is the 3rd article in the series “How to write stores”
Note 2: This is the second part of this topic. Check out the first on the link
WARNING!!! This is a long post.
This is the second part of the “Chapter” Media of our series How to write Stories, available here on my website and on my YouTube Channel (Portuguese only).
In the first part, we discussed the three Basic forms: Sound, Image, and Writing.
The Complex, as I define it, is when one mixes up the basic media (compound). By nature, the more complex you get, the less individual and more expansive it gets. More importantly, complex media require less interpretation from the audience.
Músic and plays may require more performers to deliver, yet a single individual can write the entire piece. So, Basic media can be created by a single writer/composer/artist. Therefore, the nature of basic media is individual.
On the other hand, complex media cannot be fully delivered by a single individual. So, complex media has a collaborative nature.
One can still write, play, record, edit, direct, color, draw and paint its own work, but it is hard and rarely rewarded. No one can be good at everything and has all the time available to produce (Believe me, I know). Commonly, a successful Complex media depends on a competent team.
So, let’s talk about complex media.
Comics
Comics first appeared at the end of the 19th century and evolved during the 20th century into Comic books. Until recently, this medium was always frowned upon, and the picture of a comic lover is one of mockery that does not reflect reality (See Big Bang Theory).
There are many types of Comics, and none is more famous than Cartoons.
The Cartoon was the first tool the artist (cartoonist) had to picture reality in newspapers. They are often satirical with exaggerated features, usually trying to make a point (political, religious, etc.), and always used to either criticize the status quo or teach moral lessons. Funny enough, the politicians used a LOT of cartoons for war propaganda (including favorite characters like Superman - The Alien, who is, coincidentally, the face of conservative America).
Later, the media evolved to short stories (Comic Stripes) with famous characters like Charlie Brown, Calvin, Dilbert, and Garfield. Then to Comic Books (Heroes, McDuck), and finally into Animated Cartoon (See Walt Disney history), becoming an excellent medium for TV Dramas (Bojack, Rick and Morty, Archer).
Note: Not coincidently, the era of Super Heros flourished during the two big wars. It was the moment where anxiety and desperate dreams came to play: Wouldn’t it be nice to have an all-powerful being protecting the common citizen from the dangers of the world, like war, crime, and the bloody communists???
Anyway, comics are awesome. It is where the image and written words meet smoothly. They are a great way of telling complicated stories with huge “special effects” for a low price. It doesn’t have too much text (so not hard to read), and it has 6-10 images per page (so 10.000 words, hum?). Besides, there are huge pieces of art like the works from Dave McKean (Neil Gaiman’s Black Orchid or Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum) and very intriguing stories like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore’s Watchman, and (again) Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
Sadly, Comics are an underused medium.
Like all media in this list, Comics are collaborative, which comes with challenges. You can have the best script, but without an artist, your story is as dead as the 3 million new yorkers in Watchman. To produce a comic, you need (At least) an artist and a writer. You will need many more people to publish, like editors, a publisher, revisors, colorists, etc. Making a Comic is cheaper than a movie but way more expensive than writing a 150.000 words novel.
Hence, Comics are great for any story (no exception). Yet, it demands investment and still holds a lot of stigma with the general public.
Sound (Again...)
Sound works both as Basic and Complex media. Talking of Complex, I will focus on telling stories via Audio, i.e., Radio Novelas. Yet, who still listens to the Radio these days, am I right???
Oh, sorry, I meant Podcasts and Audiobooks.
Podcasts are 21st-Century Radio. Nowadays, it is very easy to find language courses, TED talks, and narratives, largely used for True Crime and short stories. The public is not as large as other media but has his charms.
Audiobooks are similar but large in scope and have fewer audio effects (but nice voice actors like James Earl Jones). The best analogy is to think that 1 podcast episode equals 1 book chapter.
Different from music, the listener doesn’t need to interpret anything. Like a book, you will have all the right words given to you.
On the flip side, how can you pay attention to an audiobook or podcast for more than 3 minutes? I mean, REAL attention. I like Audiobooks, but I keep re-listening to the same parts over and over because my mind easily goes somewhere else. The point is that this media is a time filler: you listen to it while showering, driving, doing manual labor, or waiting in lines. Podcasts and Audiobooks are passive media, the opposite of reading or interpreting a piece of art. The information is thrown at our faces no stop, lost in distractions inside our messy brains.
Yet, it is a good tool to complement a book reading. It works perfectly for me: I always read before sleeping (so I am actively engaged in the story), and while driving, I continue listening to the Audiobook. It helps me read faster. If something is confusing (either in the written or the spoken words), I have another medium to help me understand. It’s like a book club with only one participant. Thanks to this combination, I could read enormous (and tedious) epics like Iliad and Dom Quixote.
So, Audiobooks and Podcasts are good for short stories that don’t require unconditional attention from the listener. It is also collaborative media, requiring a script, research, and a nice voice actor. Yes, one can do a podcast alone, but would a writer record his own Audiobook solo?
The Big Screen
Finally, let’s talk about Movies and TV Drama, another huge collaborative media.
Unlike anything we discussed before, to produce a Movie or a TV Drama, you need a large crew (Actors, a director, a cameraman, a photographer, a figurine, a stylist, sound engineers, compositors, producers, screenwriters...). In short, you need MONEY.
Movies first appear at the dawn of the twentieth century. The Cinema was first used to display day-to-day life and documentary. A Trip to the Moon from 1902 was the first ever attempt to use the Cinema as a medium to tell fiction, in this case, something inspired by Jules Verne’s novels. Many things have happened since, including important artistic movements, such as the French and German Impressionism, Realism, Free School, etc.
A few years after the TV was invented, broadcasters started to display cinema movies and, in addition, created a new medium: The TV Drama. Pinwright’s Progres in 1946 was the first TV series, attempting to record a live theater piece (very much like ANY Sitcom until the 2000s). This form of TV drama was the norm until Lost came in 2004, changing the formula from cheap and weak-plotted episodic Sitcoms to large-invested serialized movie-like awesome Dramas. The next revolution came with Streaming, putting film and series production on steroids.
Movies and TV Dramas are excellent for telling any story, particularly the horror. After all, imagery and sound effects do a better job of making you afraid than a few letters on a piece of paper. Opportunities are endless... as long as you have an endless budget.
Money is the problem of this medium.
Anything is insanely expansive in the movie/series industry, from the director/actors salary to the practical effects and scenery. So, as usual, any producer will look at the work based on profit expectations (box office).
Let’s see some examples:
Disney’s The Pirates of Caribian - On Strange Tides is the most expensive movie ever made (up to 2022) with a budget of 422m$ and a box office of 1,04b$ (return on investment of 2,5x. Not bad, right?).
Disney’s Mulan is the second biggest flop in the cinema industry, with an investment of 250m$ and a loss of 180m$ (2x loss). Think in proportion: that is more than half of Somalia’s wealth.
The Blair Witch Project is the most successful story of profit. With a mere 0,35m$ budget (1% of Mulan’s budget), it had a box office of 250m$. Look at Mulan’s numbers and think about that for a second.
Are you still thinking about the numbers? Think again... I’ll wait.
Because Money is the biggest driver of Cinema, there are very few studios on the market. These interstellar companies control almost all resources in the industry and curate every mass content you watch.
But what if they find my manuscript and I have a chance of doing a movie? Eeehhh, it’s not that simple. Even if your story has a shot on the big screen, they will pay you shit for the royalties and probably butcher your script to its barebones, making it unrecognizable but profitable. That’s all that matters in the end: Profit.
Not that it is all bad. A huge number of examples of good movies and series were only done for profit and, due to a great crew and a visionary producer, made not only numbers but history: 2001 Space Odyssey (11m$ budget, 146m$ box office), The Silence of the Lambs (19m$ budget, 273m$ box office), Interstellar (165m$ budget, 774m$ box office)...
<Image: space.com>
There are also limitations in cinema as a medium, such as...
It's hard to change narrative styles after it starts (of course, you have exceptions like Citizen Cane, The Cabin in the Woods, and Shutter Island, which uses the medium limitation to throw you off your seat). There are also a few things seriously hard to do on camera, like convey thought (of course, you have exceptions like in Fleabag or House of Cards), pass on feelings (of course, it can be done with a good actor), or picture unimaginable/ futuristic/ fantasy scenes.
Because of the Money wishes and being so hard to depict certain stories (Sci-Fi, 3rd person narrative, unimaginable), the studios will always choose to invest in something that obviously will return Money (like Disney’s producing the 82.173.978.123th Star Wars spin-offs) than produce original and challenging stories.
So Movies and TV series are great for any story, given that you know their narrative limitation and have the right budget.
And those were the Complex media. In short:
Comics:
Advantages: It is the perfect combination of art and text.
Weakness: Collaborative medium, niche market.
Good for: Anything.
Bad for: None dorks?
Audiobooks/ Podcast:
Advantages: You can hear any time, anywhere, and require no interpretation.
Weakness: It is a passive medium and easy to be distracted from.
Good for: Short stories, sharing ideas, and lessons.
Bad for: Long and complex stories that require the listener’s unconditional attention.
Movies/ TV Dramas:
Advantages: It is great for ANY story and accessible to any audience.
Weakness: It is a massive collaborative media and depends on big producers and budgets. Hence, the box office number is all that matters.
Good for: Any stories.
Bad for: Today, anything original or challenging that is not a spin-off or live-action of a wearied old story.
Still, every rule has their exception like the ones mentioned. Never give up hope!
So, after 4.000+ words, how is this useful for me?
Remember to choose the right medium for your story based on its limitations. If you insist on using a hard medium for your story, know its weakness and hurdles to overcome them with creative solutions.
And that is all for today!
Next time we will talk about genres.
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