I had a tinge of jealousy yesterday as I watched the behind the scenes bonus documentary that came with the DVD of the 1975 Doctor Who "The Sontaran Experiment." In the documentary, the writers, technical producers and stunt men explain how limited the resources were, how nothing really worked as planned. They were riding on the seats of their pants. And they pretty much had one shot at it all - proven I suppose by the fact that the second half of the show was filmed with the lead actor having a broken arm. It reminded me a bit of the patching something new together based on the existing technical capacity as with live TV in the 1950s or 1930s radio - or maybe blogging.
I haven't associated the word "cheesy" with blogging before but that is what is really is. Half baked ideas whipped off with about 17 minutes before the bus to work leaves. But cheesy is often good. Cheesy is about people having not yet figured it out but giving it a good try. For some reason I used to have a book of the letters of Alfred North Whitehead in one of which he stated that he much preferred the "B" students in his classes than those who got "A". They were working it out still, they come up with ideas an "A" student would have rejected and not explored.
We sort of got into this in the comments on Friday but there is another point. One of my problems with blogging is how it always has the foot a bit on the clutch. Far far too often either a good idea is not taken far enough or a bad one is taken way too far. From the day about six years ago when I thought I would like to do this bloggy stuff, I thought a blogger's Parliament would work - but it was too difficult a structure to set up and who would take the time to do it? Yet, I still like the idea of structured debate amongst a group of 50 or 100 or 500 political bloggers along ideological lines, those who now only go on and on in their own echo chambers without real challenge. You would also need to have the technical resources to make it look as good as a game on Wii so it would be compelling to others, let alone the participants. I also thought there could be something in collaborative writing or other art form, like the early TV children's shows saw their new medium as a way to advance education or other social goals. That, too, does not seem to have taken off in any real way though there is a largely unsatisfactory aspect in wikis.
Cut to the chase. Could you create a group of bloggers to work on a joint project - even if it were only the creation of a cheesy sci-fi entertainment on line? Through using volunteer effort and allocation of skills could you create something of value that might end up being fun or even paying for itself. Who would take the digital video of the paper mache space ships attacking each other? Who would oversee the application of the rules by the speaker of the bloggers Parliament? Or is it all destined to be no more than ham radio as opposed to broadcast?
Comments
Ben (The Tiger) - February 22, 2009 10:22 AM
Star Trek fans have been doing that -- they're making fan episodes of a new starship's adventures...
Alan - February 22, 2009 10:34 AM
I am aware of the Door Repair Guy scripts for reasons of DNA but I had not seen actual productions.
James Bow - February 22, 2009 10:35 AM
Well, we did do something similar late in 2007 with the Week of the Rhinoceros (http://bowjamesbow.ca/politics/canada/election-canada-2/). Blogging has plenty of potential for a venue for fiction. Bloggers can play themselves or play other characters in a journal based format.
Ben (The Tiger) - February 22, 2009 10:37 AM
See here.
It gets quite elaborate.
Anyway, it shows what can be done by original amateur productions, too...
Alan - February 22, 2009 10:50 AM
So, maybe what is needed as a central sign-up sheet or some other way to create a group. You know, come to think of it, we did have a kick at the can with Shadow Cabinet and Tantrama City.
I still think the IT wonks hold the key. Text and images is fine but I want at least BBC photo novels which combine story, images and sound.
Robert McClelland - February 22, 2009 11:18 AM
The structured debate has already been tried.
The Great Canadian Debate is an attempt to provide intelligent, civil discussion of some of the major issues facing Canada and Canadians. Two bloggers with opposing points of view will present their side of the argument on an agreed-upon topic. The two posts will be published side-by-side on a webpage. Each debate page will link to a sister thread on a discussion forum. Readers are invited to register on the forum in order to debate the topic. The registration process is quite simple and will take less than a minute - there is no validation required - so once you register, you can begin posting on the discussion threads.
It didn't fare so well. Mainly because too many of the participants had reputations that preceded them.
Alan - February 22, 2009 11:26 AM
The debate is not what I was thinking of. I am imagining a larger group, Robert's Rules of order and voting. A real Parliament where "reputation" is balanced by alottment of resources. If for example you have one speech on an item, it is pretty hard to bully.
Jay Currie - February 22, 2009 7:14 PM
Sounds like fun.
At the same time it also sounds like work....
It is sort of like the Rosseauean problem of the General Will: sure we should be governed by the General Will but, very quickly, we will find we are governed by the people who organize and minute the meetings at which the General Will is determined.
One way around this problem is to recognize a degree of organizational dictatorship is required and then invite particular people to write on particular topics at a particular length.
In any case, I'm game.
Alan - February 22, 2009 8:41 PM
That's the spirit! Plus diversification of tasks. So if we have:<ul><li>story board</li><li>various writers writing bits of text aligned to the story board</li><li>various illustrators illustrating the text</li><li>Various people attempting bad paper mache diaorama and space ship scenes with "real action".</li><li>Various people using whatever editing skills are required to patch it all together.</li></ul>Then I think you can pull something off that could be quite funny. I quite like the idea of claymation. And maybe we could do a critique of Canadian politics in the style of a Gumby and Pokey cartoon without much actual effort from any one person?
Jay Currie - February 23, 2009 4:09 AM
I have access to a lot - and I mean seriously, a lot - of playmobile and smalll children with cameras. Gifs - of deeply unendurable length - have been animated in assorted bad causes - look, here are two hundred shots of the Playmobile guys dumping stuff in a wheel barrow. Think Thomas the Train level animation. (must get tripod...but you know what I mean.) Being home schooled they have tons of time and have just been volunteered. Poor little buggers.
Alan - February 23, 2009 8:00 AM
So, there are the staff. We, too, have Thomas coming out the orifi. Which begs the question - which train is Iggy?