In this class we visited Grenfell Art Gallery for the March Hare reading with Don McKay, Daniel Payne, and Carmelita McGrath. Afterwards we returned to the Mac Lab, where I took a look at what everyone is working on for the video project. I did a quick iMovie demo to show you how to copy clips in the library (hold the Option key and drag a clip) and split a clip into two (click the clip to edit it, position the playhead, and then click Split in the Edit menu).

A still from "Welcome to Pine Point" by The Goggles

I thought I’d add a link here to a really great interactive storytelling project I came across recently. Welcome to Pine Point tells the story of Pine Point, a mining town in Northwest Territories that was not only abandoned but completely demolished when the mine closed (see Pine Point, Northwest Territories). It was created by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, who collaborative under the name The Goggles.

Created with Adobe Flash and with a soundtrack by The Besnard Lakes, Welcome to Pine Point has been described as a “web documentary”. It was produced by The National Film Board, and the NFB.ca blog has a great interview with The Goggles about how their background in book design influenced the development of the work.

How do you describe the project when friends or family ask what you’ve been working on?

Mike Simons: It’s a bit tricky. We’re not really able to compare Pine Point to anything else out there, because we’re not seeing other projects like it. It’s a new form of storytelling, really, so in conversations with people, I don’t know how to call it. It’s not a website, it’s not an interactive doc… what is it? Coming from print, part of the process for us was minimizing the interactivity to only those elements that serve to forward the narrative. We’re in a bit of uncharted territory here.