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| Trajan's Column, a unique form of storytelling in which the plot (literally) wraps around the tower nearly thirty times. |
The second
video I watched is a TED Talk by visual novel artist Scott McCloud (no relation
to Fox). He discussed how the comic book industry is struggling to change in
the wake of the Information Age. He proposed many offbeat methods of
storytelling that, even nine years later, I haven’t heard of. The comic books
I’ve seen lately still subscribe to the standard paging and paneling that’s
been paramount to modern comics before computers and the Internet. It’s a
shame, really. The ideas presented by McCloud are fascinating, but then again,
I’m not too surprised that they didn’t take hold. Many of his examples would be
too confusing for the layman, who isn’t receptive to change and would likely
rather read his comics the same way he has for the last half decade. From what
I’ve seen, there are two ways in which comics have adapted to today’s
technology. The first is digitalization. Comics are now easily available in a
digital format that can be read on many computers and mobile devices. The
second is animation. Artists will either give simple animations to certain
scenes, characters or text. Sometimes, they may even control which panels of
the page the viewer can see, which can be advanced when the user presses a
button or touches the screen.
The radio
show I watched is an episode of This American Life from 1999. It’s all about
the art of selling. Ira Glass considers selling and pitching to be an art form,
even more important than every other art form in existence. In a way, Glass is
right. In the film industry, for instance, if you want people to make your
screenplay a reality, you must convince them to do so. But one thing can’t
carry another. In order for a pitch to be successful, the subject matter has to
be good (obviously), but the pitchman needs to be able to persuade his
audience. He needs a certain charisma and passion that demonstrates that he’s
confident in his work. If your pitch is very good but your screenplay isn’t,
you’ll probably fail. If you can’t give a good pitch period, you’ll probably
fail. One of the people in the program even suggested using short catchphrases
that easily captivate the audience while informing them of the gist of the
movie. Consider a movie about a dangerous dog that gets let loose: “Jaws with
Paws.” Easily recognizable and catchy, don’t you think?
*Some practice, speech coaching, reality checks, etc. may be required.
If you want to enact change, you have to be able to convince
the population that it’s the right thing to do, that it’s the way forward.
Steve Jobs was especially good at this. Former Apple employee Andy Hertzfeld
told of the influence he had, and wrapped it around the idea of a “reality distortion field.” He told of Jobs’ charisma and superb speaking and marketing
skills and how it permeated people as they communicated with him. The result of
this was that people believed nearly everything he said. The people in This American Life claim that scriptwriters
and other people who have to pitch must also become adept pitchmen, perhaps
even as good as they are in their main craft. It’s a hugely important process
in which countless amount of dollars could be at stake. If you are a comic book
writer and you have a radical idea that needs the assistance of a publisher,
you’re going to need to do a damn good job of explaining why. You may not have
to rely of hyperbolous god terms like “revolutionary,” “life-changing,” or even
“for mere mortals,” as Jobs would sometimes quip (you also probably don’t need
to make up a word like I just did). Of course, you don’t need to have your own
reality distortion field to be effective either. As long as you believe in
yourself and your product, it may come naturally for you.*
*Some practice, speech coaching, reality checks, etc. may be required.
