The Story & Its Tale – Emerging Content In Digital Times
Today, when you watch something or you read something, you often feel that you’ve seen it before. You know you haven’t, because it’s on the New Releases category on whatever platform you’ve subscribed to, but it’s so familiar, even though you’ve never seen it before.
This is because somehow, in the content churn, a belief that all content is a straight line has prevailed. That is, a 1 + 1 = 2 structure. And with adaptations in the game, it becomes even more tricky, because the story very directly resembles another, with very little effort spent on contextualizing it or changing it.
All stories, in their respective genres, are the same story when reduced to their bones, following a similar sequence of events. But what is concerning is the growing lack of depth in world and character building. This depth is usually added by ‘flavour tracks’ or B storylines. These tracks are what distinguish a story, making it different from all the other love stories, thrillers, and murders on the market. All love stories have the same structure; all thrillers adhere to the same progression of events. All coming-of-age dramas, and teen dramas, when broken down, roughly adhere to the same structure. The magic lies in how they get to each progression in the sequence of events. In short – what enriches them are the B storylines and the flavour tracks. The context, so to speak, is what ensures variety.
Consumer engagement has now emerged as the sought-after prize. Corporate strategy folks have entered the playing field, quoting data about how user engagement is higher when stories are more to the point. For example, a perfect show, according to the data, should be 6 episodes, of 30 minutes each. This is all valuable information, but the content isn’t math. Rather than a content first- analysis afterwards approach, there is an analysis first-content later approach that is being prioritized, to make content that sticks.
This cutthroat approach to content is actually hazardous in the long term because it misses the point and misses what the consumer is looking for. What the consumer wants is simple - to escape. They want to slip into a world seamlessly. They want to identify with a character. And when content is organized according to numbers, it limits immersion. A great story is like an ocean; you should be able to deep dive into it and lose yourself. But when a story doesn’t have enough of anything, it’ll push back at you. It won’t let you get in.
The drop-off rate isn't a time issue – it’s a focus issue. Grabbing a consumer's engagement is not about reducing the duration of the content. Today, a lot of stories don’t hold your focus because of one reason – not that they’re derivatives of what’s out there, but that they’re only about those derivatives. Many stories don’t get your attention because they feel like a list of bullet points. Check marks on what people think a story requires – a love story, a tortured hero, an item number. But stories are not algorithms. They are, in their purest form, a world that you should be able to escape into. But when you file them down and make them point to point, you’re not letting that happen. A story isn’t a straight line – it’s a web of possibilities.
In 2021, Promising Young Woman, written and directed by Emerald Fennel, won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. What made it groundbreaking and brilliant is that the film brought two opposites together in a single story. It treated a revenge thriller like a romantic comedy, complete with a Paris Hilton soundtrack, a pastel colour palette, and art direction. But if you look at the spine of the story, it’s very straightforward – there is a past event that the main character is taking revenge for. She goes to all the culpable persons and interrogates them, which leads to a breaking point and a defining event. Pretty standard. But what made the film new is the way it was told, blending a rom-com approach with a high-stakes, nail-biting vengeance story. Darlings, on Netflix, is a game changer as well, because what it’s attempted to do is invigorate a story of domestic violence with a totally unexpected emotion - humour. There are some hits and misses. But the question all these films seem to be asking is: Can it be done? Is it possible? And the answer that we seem to be getting out of it is – yes. And in terms of watchability – well, Darlings is the number 2 most watched film on Netflix in the non-English category.
The strength of a story is not just about what you say, but the way you say it. To grab a consumer’s engagement, what has to be constantly evolving is the treatment of the shows. All evidence points to one direction - the way forward for truly pioneering content is to blend genres. Only once the industry starts actively experimenting with genres itself, we will realize what is possible and what can be done.
The first big-budget film to take a punt on this was Eternals, directed by Chloe Zhao. Many critics thought was a terrible film, but I disagree. It was not terrible; it was just the first of its kind. It was, in its truest sense, an attempt to blend genres on a large scale. Chloe Zhao is the director of the Oscar-winning Nomadland and is known as an indie director. Her focus is on the small moments, on moments of interiority and introspection. But Eternals, from the get-go, is a superhero film.
The two could not be more apart. The collaboration between the two genres was not perfect, and a lot of the criticism towards Eternals is warranted. But in its best moments, Eternals spoke about what mortality means to an immortal and the burden of time passing. A human perspective to something essentially inhuman. In short – it brought an independent film director’s sensibility to an otherwise action-prioritized film. And rather than criticizing it for what it was not, it should be commended for what it has started, and what it could become and lead the content industry into.
