Pushed for time? Want just a short fix of narrative? Try a 60 second story, a story told in a minute of video. Go on! Click that link! See, it’s our entry for the Contagious Media Showdown, and the entry that gets the most unique visitors wins! Switch computers! Visit it again! Oh, and link it if you’ve got a blog, cos Technorati’s got a prize for the entry that’s most linked from blogs! I wonder if multiple links from the same post count?

No seriously, prizes aside, what’d be most fun is if people’d submit stories of their own.

My story (which, I should point out, is entirely fictional except for the truth that yes I like travelling) was made in its entireity during a 90 minute train journey from Salzburg to Munich last Sunday. I couldn’t think of a whole story, so I figured I’d just sort of pretend I was blogging except that I wasn’t me, which made it all much less demanding. I also decided I could edit the movie to allow me to cut out all the (many) awful bits. I shot it using the video feature on my digital still camera (never figured out what to use it for till now!) and edited it using iMovie, which I’ve only used once before. Most of the other stories up there aren’t edited at all, they’re just a minute of video of people telling stories. For me, editing let me think of my storytelling as less daunting, but I think others might find editing more scary than just talking for a minute.

I want Profgrrrl to shoot a minute’s video of herself telling a story but we can only see her chin! And Hanna, who wanted to do sticker blogging, I bet her stories would be excellent. And Weez has practically done 60 second stories many a time. Oh, and I want to read Steve’s and Oblivio‘s stories! Do you think they’ll make some?

And you know what? I’ve set this post to publish while I’m flying to New York to attend the launch party for the Contagious Media Showdown. Talk about show business, eh?

5 thoughts on “60 second stories

  1. lesley

    Loved the film, very Lars VT. Is that an Australian accent? By the way the first couple of links aren’t working. have fun in NY.

  2. Lozen

    Sorry, this is a little of topic. You should check out http://63days.com/

  3. shawn

    I also liked very much Crying While Eating (an awsome work!)
    and Boyz and Girlz is worth a peek at too and is also the most “classy” of all entries

    keep it going!

  4. Jill

    Hey, I’m Lars von Trieresque! Groovy! And yes, that’s an Aussie accent, carefully honed despite my normal distance from the country of, uh, well not even my birth, actually, but my family. (So the travelling bit’s true, just not the details.)

    Lozen, 63 days is fascinating – I’m going to read more of that.

    And Crying While Eating seems to be winning so far, what with that link from Boing Boing – you can see the stats at the main Showdown site. It is rather fascinating. The Boyz and Girlz quiz though — I guess quizzes never really seem to get my blood rushing. I find them kind of dull in general, and this one doesn’t seem particularly different from other quizzes out there. I suppose it is “classy” in that it divides people into different classes based on their answers…

  5. […] We left the launch party kind of early. Well, actually, we arrived kind of late, because it takes a while to get from JFK to M […]

Leave a Reply to Jill Cancel reply

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]