Hasso Wuerslin writes “For the last eight years, I’ve been working on a new form of SF/Horror entertainment for the web called The Deadbooks Project. With the help of 30 actors and about 40 musical groups from almost as many countries, I’m taking a novel and transforming it into something that I have yet to see on the Net. It’s not really a novel anymore, but nor is it a movie, nor an old-time radio show, though it contains attributes of all those story-telling techniques. I call it a Hyper-Serialization. Web-launch of the first 10-hour season is set for 18 August at http://deadbooks.com.”
He’s posted three trailers on YouTube, starting with this one, which gives a hint of the mystery (everyone has disappeared but me) and a taste of the narrative style.
There’s enough there to intrigue me, but I’m not sure what to think. Anyone else have an opinion on the project, or should we just wait to see?
It looks ambitious, but it’s hard to pass judgment based on the three trailers alone. It reminds me a bit of both book trailers and “cinematic comics” (like Marvel’s Stephen King’s N reviewed at io9).
The right technologies are starting to converge: easily accessible multimedia applications coupled with massive online distribution. You’ll see more and more people “authoring” movies. I’ve been waiting for this for a while now. Rather than write a novel and make a book trailer to promote it, why not make the “book trailer” the product in and of itself?
Hey Nathan;
This is Hoss, maker of Deadbooks.com. You remarks hit it right on the nose. This whole project actually started as a book trailer back in 1999, when I was toying with the idea of why couldn’t I go into a bookshop, select a title, scan it on the computer and see the book trailer. So many books, so little time to choose.
Once I started thinking out of the box, the whole concept of what a book could be began to haunt me. What if the “novel” wasn’t done evolving? What if it had just been trapped in that wood, waiting for, as you mentioned, technology to free it.
It will be interesting to me to see how purists of what a book should be, will think of what I’ve done to it. Some I know will seize the idea and run with it to heights I never could have imagined, while others, I think will just rip me a…
Or maybe, it will feel so different from a novel that there can be no comparison. Apples and meatballs.
Hope to see you August 18.
Hoss