One of the key changes facing storytellers today is that listeners want to get involved in the storytelling, says producer Don Carmody (pictured).

“You see it in gaming and in international television and the main challenge is that interactivity,” said the producer at the Whistler Film Festival’s The Future of Content panel last Friday.

“The idea of a story being told is pretty much the same as it was millions of years ago, but it’s the delivery systems that have changed.”

Carmody added that on the feature film side, story structure has changed in the form of offering alternate endings. “I’m seeing that a lot now,” he said. “Audiences, mainly geeks, want to see what they missed. They want to experience that world. We’re starting to see studios not sure about endings, but saying, ‘Shoot it anyway, we’ll put it on the DVD.”

The producer’s comments echoed those of the previous day’s panel on Navigating the Digital Domain on how fans’ wants and needs is changing the market.

Prem Gill, director of content at Telus, believes the future is on wireless devices, a movement that’s already begun, though she was quick to defend television. “TV is not dead!” she stated. “I still see it as the hero product. People are using devices as they watch TV – if there’s content you have access to, you want access to it everywhere.”

On the platform side, Mass Animation’s Yair Landau believes that gaming has led the cross-platform movement. Using Apple as an example, he said the iPhone did not initially set out to become a game device and it eventually did so because of consumers.

But good games are fundamentally developed with interactive, he noted, which is why the translation to film can be challenging.

“The emergence of games rivals long-term storytelling,” said the former vice-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “They will influence each other.”

That said, it doesn’t mean that one story will always work across all media and there are real challenges in forcing that marriage, says CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton, “It’s like saying every book should be a feature film,” she explained. “It’s a little bit of a stretch.”

Other panelists included Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos, moderated by Eye Steel Film’s co-founder and president Daniel Cross.

Stay tuned to Playback Daily for an interview with Valerie Creighton and her comments on the CMF’s first year.