Presented at EBU Multimedia meets Radio Conference – Prague, 5-6 march 2009

1. Amnesia
THE CASE HISTORY OF
A MULTIMEDIA MOCKUMENTARY
Multimedia meets Radio – Praha 5-6 march 2009 Tiziano Bonini (RAI/IULM University - Italy)

2. FORMAT: AMNESIA
GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY/REALITY FICTION?
AUTHORS: MATTEO CACCIA, ALESSANDRO GENOVESI
DIRECTOR: TIZIANO BONINI
PRODUCER: RENZO CERESA
ASSISTANT
PRODUCER: FABRIZIA BRUNATI
CHANNEL: RADIO2 RAI
SCHEDULED: MONDAY-FRIDAY 12:12-12:27 AM
AUDIENCE: 400.000 LISTENERS PER DAY (6.5% SHARE)
WEB ADRESS: WWW.AMNESIA.RAI.IT
WEB DESIGNER: LUCA CAMISASCA
PODCAST
DOWNLOADS: 6-8.000 per day
ONLINE TRAFFIC: 24.395 weekly page views (29/09/2008-
05/10/2008)

3. Amnesia: what the Hell is this format?!?
Amnesia was thought to be scheduled in a time slot traditionally devoted to fiction but its
format has broken the boundaries of fiction, blurring them into reality.
Amnesia is a radio mockumentary:
“Mockumentary is a genre of film and television. The mockumentary is
presented as a documentary recording real life, but is actually
Fictional. The term "mockumentary" is thought to have first appeared
in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it
in interviews to describe that film.
The false documentary form has also been used for some dramatic
productions (and precursors to this approach date back to the
radio days and Orson Welles' production of H. G. Wells' novel,
The War of the Worlds)”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockumentary)
Amnesia is not only a mockumentary (some elements of reality)
The plot: Amnesia is the story of a young man, Matteo Caccia, a former speaker of the
italian public radio, who he's suffering of a form of amnesia that has reset all his
memories of his first 32 years of life to zero. Amnesia is the story of a man who is
living every day as it was the first.
Every day Matteo tells the listeners about his new life, using the languages
of radio and multimedia.

4. Blurring fiction into reality
Elements of reality Elements of fictionality
the identity of the speaker is the memoirs are based on written texts
the same of the main character and are traditionally dramatized
using sound and music effects
the programme is broadcasted live:
It rings true. The speaker/actor makes there are narrative “bugs” all over the
some mistake plot: a patient and careful ear could
easily deduce that the story is false.
he repeats every day that this story is true but radio listening is episodic, it
continuously shifts from foreground to
some national newspapers have published background and the attention span of
his story giving for granted it is true the listener is usually short
some details of his biography published some details of his biography are false
on the website and on wikipedia are true
some characters are true most of the characters are fictional
(the voice of his grandmother) (but most of them are not actors;
they are common people)
there’s a kind of ambiguity on what's true
and what's false

5. Amnesia as a multimedia project:
Radio (93.700 mhz)
Blog (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it)
Photo story telling (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it/foto)
Music (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it/playlist)
Video (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it/video)
Special audio/video podcast (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it/podcast)
illustrations/drawings/cartoons (www.amnesia.blog.rai.it/disegni)

6. Blog (3280 page views per week - 20-26 oct 2008)
why: as the the broadcast live ends, the blog is an effective
place where to let this story go ahead; to let the
listeners engage the debate around Matteo’s life;
comment the story, take part in a dialogue with the
character.
The speaker/charachter/author of Amnesia almost every
day writes a post about issues related to his new life, his
new point of view.
Sometimes the posts follow up or expand the issue of the
last broadcasted episode, sometimes they are opinions
about society and current affairs.

7. Photo (7002 page views per week – 29 sept. - 05 oct 2008)
Every day the authors and the assistant producer shot,
chose, edit and upload on line some original photos.
The images have been thought to be daily snapshots that
epitomize some details of the episode.
The images are rather rough; there’s a “low profile”
aesthetics in the way pictures are taken: with mobile phones,
cameras, from weird perspectives, always hiding some parts
of the subjects, in order to make them look like stolen images.
We believe this aesthetics contributes to the “reality effect”
of the story

8. Music (1716 page views per week – 29 sept. - 05 oct. 2008)
The music of the programme has a role in the plot:
it is the music he found in his i-pod when he wake up from
amnesia. It tells something about his previous life.
It is the music of his generation, people grown up in the '80-'90.
Beside the music of his past there is also new contemporary
pop music that he has discovered in the last year.
The playlist is composed by an original blend of classic rock
and pop music of the '70-'80-'90 and contemporary alternative
indie/pop music.
Every day the audience
can re-listen on line to the
playlist broadcasted so far
Music has a main goal, to trigger:
- a sense of nostalgia/memories of youth
- the discovery – out of curiosity - of new sounds

9. Video (1122 page views per week – 20-26 oct. 2008)
Video gallery section contains the videos that
the charachter recorded/is recording
from his wakening so far. The aesthetics is the same
of the photos: rough style, no postproduction, low-fi
image texture (use of mobile phone videocamera).
The videos want to show brief moments of his new life,
his rediscoverings, his first travels, his first rock
concerts, but also very common moments of daily life,
like doing bricolage at home.

10. Podcast (around 30.000 downloads per week)
Amnesia can be listened to both live and on demand
We produce two different kind of podcast:
1) traditional podcast: mp3 version of the broadcasted
programme
2) special video and/or audio podcast: special contents
for the passionate and more interactive listeners
25 oct 2008
Amnesia is ranked 17th in the (fragments of off-air moments of the programme;
iTunes podcast chart readings of books quoted by the speaker on air;
interviews with some of the best charachters of the
programme ecc...)

11. illustrations/drawings/cartoons
Starting from January 2009 we asked some italian
illustrators and cartoonists to read the written texts of the
radio play and give their free drawn version of Amnesia.
This section of the website contains a gallery of all
the drawings made by the artists. We have decided to
host a different “artist in residence” every month.
In the next month we will host the first drawings
made by one of our listeners (some of them have
already sent us spontaneously some of their works)
February series cartoonist January series illustrator

12. THE ROLE OF THE WEBSITE IN AMNESIA
The website is:
a continuation of the radio programme by other means
(“War is the continuation of policy by other means”: Von Clausewitz)
an archive for disseminating additional informations about the identity of the
charachter and his story
a lively medium (the site changes as months go by)
a metamedium: a medium able to remediate different media languages
Remediation entails ‘the representation of one medium in another’, and is ‘a defining
characteristic of the new digital media’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 45).

13. Audience interaction in Amnesia
The paradox of radio:
“Radio is too much cultural to be mainstream and too much mainstream to be cultural”
(David Hendy, Bbc researcher)
We'd like to say that Amnesia audience is young, smart and open-minded.
But this is not true. None of us can say who are our ideal listeners. But we dare say that
we know two or three things about them:
- there are more women than men
- in Amnesia coexist the traditional listener of the channel (45-54 years) and the fan
of the programme (25-35 years)
The major part of the listeners take part into the programme in a traditional way, sending
sms and email during the live broadcast. They are satisfied by the 15 minutes of the
radio programme.
But it exists a small portion of them – not only the younger ones – that wants more.
They re-listen to the programme and its music; comment the blog every day;
write email asking for more contents; send music, photo, drawings, suggestions, even
presents for the speaker. They want to take part in the new life of Matteo, to be part of it,
suggesting him places and things to do.
Maybe the website is not so much web 2.0 oriented (not so much user generated content)
but it's an experiment of translating a radio drama into a multimedia project, giving to the
more passionate and active listeners the tools to enjoy the story in different ways.

14. The end