You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Interactive Storytelling: Online lecture by Konstantinos Antonopoulos
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat
Vibha B Madhava
7:04
Sharing from personal experience, he says, "Back in 2016, we sent out producers to get panoramic images because that's what we wanted to use on Shorthand. This tool allows you to visualise everything in advance."
7:05
However, he expresses that with an automated tool for the web, the quality of code may not be good enough as compared to handwritten code.
7:06
Antonopoulos: "These three tools and others like Sketch or Figma that Adobe bought a few weeks back are design-first tools and not producer-first tools."
7:07
Antonopoulos also provides another key insight: "As soon as you learn something you need to measure it."
7:08
Answering questions like, "How far did people scroll? How many people finished the story? Did you bore people?" These help to find the most common exit points.
7:09
Antonopoulos: "The last part that producers forget about is writing a brief on how the story was consumed."
Talking about life as an interactive producer, he says it is about creating a specific workflow, creating the content and visuals in a certain way, and most importantly making it for the audience.
7:11
He puts forth a very important point: "You do the story for the audience, not for your portfolio or for the awards."
7:12
Moving to the last part of the discussion, Antonopoulos talks about AI tools that are available to us now.
7:13
While it is fascinating and overwhelming to see and use so many tools, he says that this is the time to remember that we're journalists and that a line has to be drawn about what we can do with AI tools.
7:14
He talks about his preference for Chatbots powered by conversational AI. Since they are customisable, the best use of conversational AI is to get feedback from the audience by asking predefined questions.
7:16
Antonopoulos: "As a producer, AI can give u a few ideas on how to present your story. This is not about creating text out of thin air, but I see good use of AI to find angles in your story. I don't like to use tools that change stuff too much. You can use AI enhance tools as long as important details aren't changed."
For angles of a story and finding the best ones, he suggests Plot Generator.
7:17
7:18
He concludes by highlighting the importance of an interactive storyteller. "I grew up in an era where journalists only had to know how to write but we're way past that stage. No one in 2022 can be a journalist using words," he says.
7:19
He adds two more tools to the list - Versu and Charisma - these are not 100% editorial he says.
7:21
7:22
Answering a question by the students of ACJ about the overdependency of storytelling and art on AI, Antonopoulos says that he would use AI only for ground work.
7:24
About AI as a takeover of human supervision and its impact on the employment of editorial skills, he says, "In case of inflation, AI would not be of any help. This is not necessarily better than what humans can write or do."
7:25
7:26
In 2022, you can't be a journalist if you just write words. Do you agree?
Yes (66.7% | 2 votes)
 
No (33.3% | 1 vote)
 
Total Votes: 3
7:27
Recommending Semafor as a great tool, he answers another question about the relevance of visuals in a news story. "I'm a visual journalist, visuals tell the story for me. A career in visual journalism is very exciting, you get to flesh out images on how to make a story better. I think it's better than writing a story and describing things to people," he adds.
7:29
About a query on smartphone applications, Antonopoulos talks about Google and its mobile-first stories and how he was involved in mobile-first stories at Al Jazeera. "A publication called Frame media creates web stories that are sent directly to your phone," he adds.
7:30
7:31
With respect to emotion in storytelling, Antonopoulos: "Emotional storytelling is an art form that no AI could produce. I don't think can AI can help craft more emotional stories. I don't know if in 2-3 years it will evoke that kind of passion but we're not there yet."
7:33
About Metaverse and its impact on interactive storytelling, he elaborates on how we are very far from the actual form of the metaverse and a lot of things remain unexplained. "This can be answered better in 3-4 years from now," he adds.
7:34
7:37
As a concluding note, Konstantinos Antonopoulos encourages students to think interactive storytelling and calls them to reach out to him through Twitter (@konstantinosant)
That's all for today. Thanks for joining.
Connecting…