Many weeks ago I started a post. I had a plan to add one word a day for a year. The second day I decided it was a stupid idea and deleted it. At the time I knew I was on to something but I couldn't tell what it was exactly. It was an idea about how the length of time it took to present something, the more impactful it would be.
And I was right. There is truth to the idea.
I just finished reading the comic book collection "Watchmen". This series is going to come out on film this summer. The internet is abuzz. Supposedly this comic book is part of the 100 best pieces of Fiction list.
Yet I was sorely disappointed by the ending. There were some pretty good bits, but in general, nothing that deserved all the hype I was hearing. And something I already knew about struck home.
The difference between me reading it, and those who first read it was the time span over which we had read it. I had read it in about two weeks. I was allowed to read issue after issue the very same day. Those who had first read it, had to wait weeks between each issue. They got to live with every issue for a month.
I'm going to call this type of experience a "long format" experience.
And now that I have really figure out what it is, I see it everywhere.
The "Halo" universe has been a long format experience for me. A trilogy spread out over many year, thousands of games played, a few books read. The games might be eight hours long, but it was presented over years. There were ads on the internet and tiny bits of news from the company every week.
In highschool I walked a few specific ways through downtown everyday. After three years of those walks, they became long format. There was more susbstance to them after that.
I read the newspaper comics religiously for about five years. Alot of those comics aren't good anymore, but there was something of substance in them. Or at least it felt like there was.
One of the greatest long format experiences I have is this very blog. It's been almost five years, I can feel substance in this. None of it is very good, even for the amount of time spent on it. But because it has been such a long process in my life it is long format, it is more important.
Now the question is how can we use long format in art. Gallery shows I see at an art gallery generally only last twenty minutes. Most televisions shows far out weigh there impact simply because they last a few months. Making things of substance really matters to me. It is "the" fundamental piece of being successful at what I would like to do.
Kyler
3 comments:
Your first point is an interesting one: wait=weight. I don't see how you get from that to "longer stuff=more substantial". Just because it seems more important doesn't mean it actually is. With Watchmen, you seem to have a legitimate problem with the ending. That can't just be because you're "reading it wrong". What, if you'd waited a year for the ending to be published your dissatisfaction would be melted away by the time? I don't buy it. And if you regularly read comic strips which you didn't see any value in, I don't think the habit makes it more meaningful. You integrated it into your life because it was there, not because the creators had any especial ambitions.
So here's my question to you: Are you looking for things which are substantial, because they're good, or things which feel substantial, because people have been anticipating them?
Another small point of confusion, for me: how is something repeated, over and over, a "long form experience"? In old TV shows, when each episode was a stand-alone, were those "long form"? I don't think they were. Long form is what happens now, with shows like Lost. When the story spans years, and each episode pushes that story forward a little bit. So a months-long trip could be seen as "long form", but a repeated area not so much.
Hey Ky,
I really like some of the ideas you presented in this post. I am in no means an "artsy" person, but I have thought about this before too.
I remember when i was in grade six I came across Harry Potter. I loved the first book, before it became this huge phenomenon. Part of the reason I think that I love the books so much is because I always had to wait anxiously for the next book to come. Part of the fun of the books was the waiting for the book to be written and wondering what would happen. You knew that there was probably only one person on earth who knew most of the story and that was the author.
I hope some day my kids will read and love the books like I did. But they won't ever have the same feeling on longing to know what will happen, because they will be able to just pick up the next book.
-Robyn
First a response to Mory:
"So here's my question to you: Are you looking for things which are substantial, because they're good, or things which feel substantial, because people have been anticipating them?"
One thing that I think is important to see is that I don't see something that has Long Form anticipation and time better than something that is simply good.
I really see long form as something that can elevate something that is already good one step higher. If two things were equally "good", yet one was long form, the other short, I feel the long form one wins out, and I guess in terms of "substance".
As for repeat TV shows. A show like the Simpsons I have seen as repeats mostly. But they join up in my mind over years of watching them. The Simpsons is one of the best long form things I have experienced, except of course that recent seasons have been less then good and are slowly eating away at my views of the show.
With a shows like Lost, the number of people who really experience the show is much fewer than the simpsons because you need to see all of the episodes in order to really get it. There is a much larger anticipation factor in a show like Lost due to it being a sequence.
And a response to Robyn:
This could be a really important part of any Marketing that you get into. I think most business thrive off of long form stuff.
Kyler
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