‘In the distant future they will have what I call ‘the Tickles’. People will go into a big darkened auditorium and they will be mass-hypnotized. Instead of identifying themselves with the characters on screen, they will be that character, and when they buy their ticket, they will be able to choose which character to be. They will suffer all of the agonies  and enjoy the romance with a beautiful woman or handsome man. I call them ‘the Tickles’ because when a character is tickled, the audience will feel it. Then, the lights come up and it’s all over.’ Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

Alfred Hitchcock, son of a greengrocer, started off in theatre and moved into film, the new medium of his age, changing how we told stories. In November 2010, with a background working on Doctor Who, I asked myself the questions: How would Alfred tell a story today?

We don’t think it would be a film. We think it would be a story that used all the devices available to us today to tell that story. 

And we would take part in them.

With that in mind, we created Portal Entertainment: a UK-based premium digital entertainment company that makes ‘immersive entertainment’: stories where the audience take part in them (or ‘Tickles’ as Alfred would put it). We have begun, with the CIKTN’s help to build Immersion: a storytelling platform that allows us to change the direction of a story based on the audience’s anxiety level. But before we talk about the company let’s talk about the journey we have been on…

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I wrote last year of the types of metaphor in cinema - cognitive, emotive and, of course, visual. But at the core of what a metaphor is nothing explains so succinctly as this TED talk video from John Geary.

In this compelling 10 min presentation, Geary distills the importance and power of metaphor for all human society - present in our everyday language and shaping (not always for the better) the way we see the world and behave in it.

Whilst never mentioning screen media or narrative storytelling the Ideas the video contains speak to heart of cinema. 

Having spent many years reading and developing screenplays, writing coverage for scripts, assessing treatments and judging writing competitions, I can say with certainty that the two elements unsuccessful or uncompelling screenplays lack are Metaphor and Subtext. Watching this 10min video might well be the solution to part of this problem.

I have been recently compiling a new lecture on Stanley Kubrick as part of a screen histories course Im teaching this semester. Of course there is much to say about Kubrick and indeed it has all been said many times by many people over many years. I confess to not, ostensibly, being a Kubrick fan and yet as I research, write and compile my lecture I find myself entranced by his films. His narratives don’t overtly interest me and his subject matter often bores me; but on a scene by scene level, moment by cinematic moment, he is intoxicating.

What i find particularly interesting - and which is perhaps obvious in this context - is that his early photography from his time as staff photographer for Look magazine, is just as compelling as his films. His portraits remind me of a New York incarnation of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

As I tech not in a university context but within the very different demands of a national film school (which is to say NOT teaching ‘cultural studies’ pretending to be Screen Studies, but actually teaching the Study of the Screen) i am aware of being sure to contact thick and tangible threads between ideas, concepts and screen production practice. And as I look to Kubrick with this frame I can see profoundly 5 core tenets aspiring and developing screen practitioners can take from the story of Stanley Kubrick.

The power of Genre - Kubrick may be a definitive auteur artist filmmaker but he was absolutely a genre filmmaker - war, horror, thriller, noir, slapstick. And he understand the power of genre to elevate stories, rather than (as they are too often perceived) a constraint to weight them down.

The power of Knowledge and Research. Kubrick proves a notion i often struggle to drive ohm to students; that there is no such thing as knowing too much. That there has never been a consistently greta filmmaker who wasn’t also a deep thinking and astute researcher. intuition is worthless if its not informed by knowledge, ideas, research and articulate considerations. Kubrick himself once observed about himself and his love of Chess is that it “teaches you that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas”

The power of Technology. Cinema IS technology and no other art-form so wholly relies on technology for both its construction and reception. Kubrick certainly understood this and the precision, artistry and visual richness of his films can be seen as stemming directly from his deep knowledge of cinema as a technical process. Kubrick was a director never at the mercy of the technology or ignorance of it. And the results are on the screen, camera movement by gloriously exposed and lit camera movement. 

The importance of Development. Kubrick may have taken many years between films but this was not down time chilling by the pool with a margarita. Kubrick understood that great films come from long and rich processes of development. he was a filmmaker always and perpetually in Development. And this drives home the notion for emerging filmmakers to always been engaged with the process of making. Filmmaking does not begin with a camera and a set, it begins with a book and a notepad. 

The importance of Adaptation. There is unfortunately a modern phenomena that inextricably links the director Auteur with the moniker of Writer-Director in popular young filmmaker perception; and moreover as the Writer-Director of original narratives. Yet Kubrick’s great skill was that of adaptation with virtually all of his films being adaptations novels and short-stories. In the digital ago of cross-platform, immersive, interactive and episodic storyworlds the fundamental skills of adaptation, I would argue, is the Single Most Important skill a creative screen media producer can possess.  The ability to see a property, understand it, extract form it it’s essence and articulate that essence into new mediums and constructs is the basis of almost all modern screen production. As movies become games and games become websites and websites become mobile apps and apps become augmented reality games and ARGS become episodic series and graphic novels and…. Adaptation is the core skill we must all possess. 

He may be dead and many may think his films dead boring but Kubrick still has much to teach us.

Stanley Kubrick Filmogrpahy by Martin Woutisseth - martinwoutisseth.com

And now back to work….

And you have just over 1 week left to get your entries into our Immersive Writing Labs STORYWORLD Writing Competition. One lucky writer will have the opportunity to win 6k to see their storyworld developed by Portal Entertainment. 

As soon as you hold this tiny camera no bigger than 2 match-boxes and gather the assortment of suction cups, clamps and mounts that accompany it, your mind immediately spills into a landscape of image potential. Strange, wondrous, absurd places you could stick it… Creative, dynamic, kinetic perspectives it might capture. All the the DSLR’s F3’s and RED’s in the world will, of themselves, prompt your creative imagination no further than how sharply you can rack-focus and how pixel-dense your image can be. But pick up a GoPro and you immediately stop thinking about framing and focus, and instead start imagining in terms of Space, Motion and Perspective. Hence I feel compelled to suggest that the most ‘cinematic’ camera released in the past few years is NOT an F3, or a 5D, its not a RED Epic or an Alexa, It’s the GoPro. The word Cinema derives from Kine meaning motion. The GoPro is the one camera I have picked up in many years that immediately makes me want to Move and to think in Kinetic dynamics.

It’s also a great camera to document a scuba dive. Its not the best underwater camera owing to a curved housing lens (flat works better to account for light refraction in water) But, its the perfect, hassle-free way to document a dive. I just strap it to my wrist, press record on the surface and capture the entire dive in one long take. 

This dive was at Shelly Beach, Manly - a location right round the headland from Sydney Harbour. Not many places can boast such great diving right within a major city metropolis . Wobegong sharks, eastern blue Gropers, giant Cutlefish, Stingrays and a back flipping Numbfish. A great dive with Dive Centre Manly divesydney.com.