ABSTRACT
Through video footage, photographs, audio and text, the creators of Welcome to Pine Point, Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, present the story of a town that no longer exists. Pine Point was a community planned around an open-cut mine in the Northwest Territories in Canada, and when the mine closed down in 1988 the single-industry town also closed. Shoebridge and Simons manage to capture not just the geographical details of the town so that the audience understands its location and unique characteristics; they also capture the social and cultural details of the time and place that turn out to be universal and instantly recognisable even for audiences outside Canada and North America.
The project is designed to resemble a photo album from the 1980s, and through using this nostalgic aesthetic they are able to convey a mood and a spirit that is necessary in order to truly understand the cast of characters that share their experiences of growing up in Pine Point and their feelings about its eventual demolition. The details of the town, and the creative ways they are communicated to the audience, are the key to the immersive nature and the universality of this story. This is a story not only about place and memory but also about the macroeconomics that influence our lives and how individual fates are tied to corporate decisions. More so than many other contemporary transmedia projects, Welcome to Pine Point illustrates a new understanding of place and of immersive storytelling in a new media environment that presents a radical approach compared to the dominant platform-centric views of new media storytelling.
