The Shift: Storytelling mediums have expanded... and with support, so can the industry

Right from the start, WorkWise for Screen has worked in partnership with people from across the screen sector, so that all our resources are relevant, accessible and practical.

We have commissioned this series of opinion editorials as we believe that having industry perspectives are vital to move the conversation from theory to practical reality. We hope you feel the same and want to join that conversation either here or on our LinkedIn.

As always, the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

Something is shifting in how stories get told and in what it means to do good work in the screen sector. 

Audiences no longer just watch; they explore, inhabit, and move through narrative worlds that exist across film, VR, games, and graphic novels simultaneously. That creative expansion is genuinely exciting. But it only works if the people powering it are properly supported. We’ve been seeing this firsthand on a project I’ve been developing, The Pirate Queen.

In one iteration, audiences explore a 19th-century Chinese pirate ship through virtual reality, climbing up the hull before finding themselves inside the cannon gallery as a battle erupts around them.

In another version, an immersive installation, dragons swim beneath your feet across a vast projection floor, as the sea swirls across the walls.

In the graphic novel, the same world expands across pages of history and character that simply wouldn’t fit on screen.

Each medium reveals something different.

It’s a very different way of thinking about storytelling from the model many of us grew up with, where a project had to fit neatly into a single category.

Now the question is different.

Instead of asking “what format should this be?”, creators are increasingly asking “what is the best way for this story to be told?”

Sometimes the answer will still be film or television.

But sometimes, the story might begin as an immersive experience, a game, or something that sits somewhere between mediums entirely.

For the screen sector, that opens up a huge opportunity. And seizing this requires more than creative ambition. It requires building the conditions for that ambition to be supported: through clearer skills pathways, better knowledge sharing between disciplines, and mentorship structures that help practitioners move fluidly between formats without having to start from scratch every time

A strong narrative world doesn’t have to live in one place anymore. It can reach audiences in different ways, across different platforms, revealing different layers of the same story.

If anything, that doesn’t dilute storytelling. It expands it. And it can expand the sector - but only if we invest in the people navigating it.

Because the most interesting stories rarely stay inside the box. And neither should the people telling them.