Interviewer: Can you give us some history about your work in storytelling and media?

Harry Marks: The way this kind of came upon me was by my accidentally falling into the job Of being in charge on air advertising at ABC. I'm not a writer. I found that just by trying to avoid writing, I used images. I found that in a lot of cases I could be more effective by manipulating images and being very spare with words. And I guess that's the designer part in me that wants to communicate iconicly if that makes sense.

As a matter of fact, I just went to a wild animal refuge two days ago, and I shot a few minutes of video. The difference was going eye to eye with big cats, the images were very different from anything I'd shot before. I came back and I made two little spots with some of the video. There was a story here that could be said with images and only three words. I just see the power of the image. And that's my approach to it.

Interviewer: The 20th Century is really about the language of the juxtaposition of image. While we have an elaborate language going back to Aristotle about structuring words into story, we have hardly developed a broad literacy about making media. How do you know a piece without words works?

Harry Marks: How do you know what works, works? Well, let me use this recent animal example. As I said I came home and I was just imprinted with these images, these animals' faces. I just had to put this down and see what it looked like. I had no intention of making anything out of it. But then I scored a piece of music to it, and it was case closed. What I saw was a very powerful tool to get the animal rescue message out to the public who support the rescue station. Almost everyone who sees these two little spots chokes up. A couple of people have come to tears. That's when you know it works. You develop a gut feeling about what works. I mean, it's like, as you say, the juxtaposition of image, sound, whatever to come up with some package that is emotional and compelling.

Interviewer: So, it speaks to some limbic part of our brains that most of us wouldn't care to know how it works. We just know it works. As somebody who had worked in an analog world, what are the new possibilities for storytellers in the digital context that excite you?

Harry Marks: Well, initially, I was totally excited about the power to do this juxtaposition, to take images and music and words, and put them into a document that could get a response. And that was why I was so fascinated by what you were doing. But as I thought about it in the last year, I have come to some specific conclusions. . Do you remember Susie Clark? [One of students in the digital storytelling class in the previous year]

Interviewer: Yes.

Harry Marks: Susie had the makings of a very wonderful story. What happened was that she got really bogged down with technology. I thought it would work, I hoped it would work, but I don't think the making of a little movie is a realistic thing for the general public to do. I think it becomes daunting. But I think there may be other tools that are very accessible, very easy to use, that could may the bridge in terms of storytelling through image and sound. I really don't think people want to read on a computer. There's Derek Powazek’s Fray.com, the site that was presented at the Festival last year, the send-in-your-story site, it was wonderful. But I don't know how many people read on a computer. I can't. It makes me nuts.