With only a few days left before the Small Press of Toronto’s Spring Fair, where an ensemble of small presses, zinesters and crafters, poets, non-fiction and fiction writers, readers, and technologists will gather, Broken Pencil welcomes you to the second installment of our Questionnaire.
I am particularly fascinated by this next project out of Pop Sandbox – the publisher behind Kenk: a Graphic Portrait. When I read Kenk, I was interested in the story itself, of course, but what really intrigued me was the way the story was presented. It s film, comic book, zine, and portrait all at once. One of our comic reviewers who reviewed Kenk commented on the imagery and style, writing that its visual aggressiveness forces a more intrusive relationship between the audience and the work. And not surprisingly, Alex Jansen has produced along the same lines with The Next Day, a graphic novella and an interactive animated documentary film produced with the NFB. Works such as this ask important questions about how media has progressed, how we use it, is there such a thing as “new media”? More specifically, Kenk and The Next Day pose questions about film and the experience of reading and watching film: is film one medium among several other media or is film a medium that combines more than one medium?
Questionnaire no. 2: Good morning, Pop Sandbox.
Rooted in the graphic novel and film, Pop Sandbox is a multimedia publishing company in Toronto publishing innovative and collaborative stories across various media platforms.
Owner Alex Jansen has been in the film industry for many years prior to launching Pop Sandbox, and will be at SPoT this weekend.
Co-written by Paul Peterson – a former social worker – and filmmaker Jason Gilmore, and illustrated by acclaimed indie- artist John Porcellino, The Next Day “is a philosophical exploration where four seemingly ordinary people each offer haunting personal insight into life, the decision to end it, and what comes after,” says Jansen of the project. It’s a fusion of documentary film and comic book that presents significant moments in the lives of the characters, while the online component allows viewers to create their own story path through audio and animation.
The idea that film is inevitably connected with other media and arts has been a persistent issue taken up by many writers over the years. And while some people think film is indeed connected to other media and arts, others think that the relationship between media is simply one of adaptation. Jansen is of the thought that it doesn’t have to be an either/or position.
“The graphic novella and interactive documentary,” continues Jansen, “are really two branches that grew from the same tree. Although built from the same source interviews, and utilizing the same visual approach, neither prject is an adaptation of the other. Instead, the two pieces compliment each other while still standing lone as distinct experiences.”
Thanks Alex, see you at SPoT.