So after dipping into all of these different new media practices I have had a think about what I might do for my final piece and I believe I have an idea! Once of the videos we looked at, was raising awareness of domestic violence and involved the user with yes or no answers. This interested me as it wasn't about diagnosis or like a game but it was more about raising awareness of this problem.
The whole idea of raising awareness about an issue using interactive media was really interesting to me and I thought that I could maybe create a video that was aimed along these lines. I was at a Liverpool Students Union Staff forum last night and at the beginning of the session a woman gave us a presentation on Mental Health and talked about the different forms and symptoms of mental health issues. I was always aware of this issue and the different types to a certain extent but I didn't know that mental health was such a common problem, especially with students.
I have had an idea, I will have someone in the studio sitting down on one of the sofas or chairs with simply a plain background. I will then pose questions which will be spotlights on my YouTube video and get my character to answer/react to these questions. The user will have the choice to look at as many answers as they please and then there will be a spotlight at the bottom which will be the 'answer' button. This button will lead to a series of answers and the user will have to choose one which will be their answer to which condition they think this person has after looking for symptoms in the characters answers.
I am going to contact the mental health expert at the university and see if I can meet up with her to have a chat and see if this idea could work. If so I will talk with her about the sort of research I need to do and the sort of things I need to convey in my video as well!
I really hope that this idea will work and who knows maybe, if it is successful, she will want to use the video!
Our final look at creative media software before starting our final piece was YouTube interactivity. For me this was the most fun and useful media practice and I enjoyed every stage of the production process!
The presentation we looked at showed us a number of different ways that YouTube videos can be used as an interactive device. We watched an interactive video made for Jamie Oliver's YouTube which included him handcuffed to a wall and you could choose how you wanted to abuse him, That sounds a lot worse than it actually was, it was all for comedy purposes!
This video had a great idea that was relatively fun, but also seemed very pointless to me and I wasn't quite sure why he was doing it, I know that it was to do with audience response but for me it didn't seem to go anywhere and also it didn't have the comedy value that I thought it should have had. Technically it looked like it was well made though.
We were then shown a couple videos that used the interactivity to tell a story where the audience had the chance to choose what path they wanted the story to go. One of the videos was a more serious story about a man living in a rough area and you had to chose what his actions where, arguably none being the right one. The other video we watched was a more humerous story called 'Ronald Has A Spider On His Head' which used the annotations in very funny way, also did I mention all characters where in Lego form, which is always a plus!
We also then looked at using interactivity for education purposes and then also for campaign purposes. I didn't really find the videos used for educational purposes that good except for the guitar video. This basically involved a man playing a guitar with the chords below which you could click on and then he would play the corresponding chord for you.
Once we looked a few more videos, we talked about Freytag's Triangle.
This is the standard Triangle that is used which we had looked at previously in Level 4, but then we looked at some modifications to the triangle which interested me.
These images show how the triangle has been modified for example the 1st image shows how there can be sub plots within the three plots and then the second shows how the reader is missing information and becomes the 'Investigator'. It then got very very complicated as we looked at some structures where there was break off angles that led back to a core narrative.
I got into a group with Michael Shiells and Dave Molloy and we discussed options and ideas. We decided on an idea which was that we would have two characters and they would both be going for the same job and they would be preparing for the interview. We started to plan the narrative but quickly realised that using two characters was going to prove to be very difficult, taking into consideration how much time we had. So we settled with using one character. We then tried to create a narrative that was more detailed as we were only using one person now. We wanted to give the user choice but not a massive amount as this would over complicate things, but we still wanted it to engage the audience.
We filmed on the day that we got the brief and compared to all of the other pieces we did, this one was the most fun for me, for a number of reasons including the fact that out angle was humour for this piece. But overall this was more useful for me because it included standard filming, editing and then using the YouTube annotation programme. Also I think that our idea was really good and that we could make it work well if we were able to edit it properly.
When it came to to the editing, we used Premier again, which I think is very good as it doesn't complicate anything and is good for quick edits. We put our options in text in Premier instead of adding them into the YouTube Spotlights, as we could change the font and size easier. Also we slowed down some of the shots to prolong the time that the user would get the choice to choose their options.
We had to switch around some of the shots to allow the narrative to finish off without then skipping to other parts of the video as we edited the video so all of the scenarios were together rather than linking to a lot of different videos. This was better because it meant you didn't have to load up loads of different videos and could watch the whole thing on full screen.
We were very happy with the finished product and we think we conveyed our comedy element well!
This week we looked into a software package called Isadora. Looking back I don't think I will be using Isadora as although I appreciate that it is a really good product and it has many uses that are simple to use if you learn everything, I still think that it isn't for me and would prove to be difficult for me over all. But I still think it is great and I enjoyed exploring it!
Mark talked to us initially about Isadora and what it was, giving a brief background and then he showed us the Troikatronix website, which is where we had to download the Isadora software from.
We then looked at a number of examples where Isadora is used, which I found quite useful as it gave me a sense of perspective, as before I wasn't sure in what way the software was being used! - Kids and Isadora
We also looked at a video which used sound to trigger graphics using Isadora. This to me was a more useful way of using Isadora and I believe that some musicians use this software when doing performances to give another element to their show. If I was to do Isadora I would have liked to use it this way, but I know that this might have taken quite a long time and that is something I did not have!
Once we had our talk, as always we got into groups, random this time which I enjoyed as I like working with different people for different projects. In our groups we brainstormed ideas and then decided we wanted to do a kind of game/interactive narrative where a girl misses the train home and has to find her way back to her friends house, trying to avoid getting killed! The reason this was quite a dark scenario was because our brief included the element of Halloween, so there had to be some sort of scary aspect to the piece.
Technically our idea involved all POV shots, with options at each stage of the narrative, for example, the character could choose to go down a dark alley or up a lit street, by using the left and right arrows. As we planned our piece we realised that the more options we had at each point of the story the more complex the piece would get, which would then involve more time creating, which once again we did not have, so we had to simplify things a little and leave out a couple of stages of the narrative. We drew out our plan on an A1 piece of paper to give us a clearer idea of the story, which helped a lot because righting it down just as text proved to be very confusing and didn't visually show us our story.
Once we were happy with our plan we decided on a film date, but unfortunately, for one reason or another, none of us where able to make that date so on the next Thursday I came in and instead of using original image I downloaded images from the Internet and used those instead. I was quite disappointed that we couldn't get moving image for this project as the idea I feel was really good and if we had pulled it off it would have been a really good piece, but unfortunately the time management wasn't right and maybe we just didn't work well as a team.
I created a short piece using the images I downloaded that lasted for around 3 stages of interactive narrative. As a finished piece I don't think that it was very impressive but looking back at Isadora I now believe that it is a great piece of software, but maybe not for the sort of thing we wanted to do, I think that it is better used for shows and for music.
For my final project I don't believe that I will be using Isadora as I believe that if you want to create something using this programme you need a lot more time than we have for our final piece, but I may be wrong, it might be because my ideas involve to much work!
Today we started looking at QR code. QR code has never caught my attention because maybe I'm too lazy to want to try it out but I was willing to give it a go today. We first looked at a prezi where we were shown various examples of how QR code can be used. Some of it I had heard of but then some of the rather strange examples I had never even though of, here are some examples below.
This idea was really cool to me because it was simple yet really effective. The only issue I had was that if you were to put that on a child the chances are they may complain or remove it in some way, we know what kids are like!
This idea was very peculiar to me! The idea is that you can 'dial up the dead' using a QR code, I'm still quite confused as to how this was good or what actually happened though. I get why this could be a cool idea, if someone that died left a message or a number of videos that you could go back and watch, this may be heart warming for loved ones. I'm not sure if I would have this though....probably would actually!
The most interesting example for me though was this. I was aware of QR codes being used for advertisement, but I had never seen it to this size or extent!I thought that the idea of using their roof to advertise from the sky hopefully benefiting from things like Google Earth was an absolute genius idea!
Once we looked throu8gh the presentation, we then got into our groups and decided on what we would do. I was in a group with Drew and Sam. We looked at a number of videos on YouTube and came across one that used QR code to generate someone speaking.
We thought this was a great idea because it was simple and could be done relatively easy, but it was quite effective and interesting. We wanted to add another dynamic to it though just to challenge ourselves a little bit more so we decided on using all three of us in our video. We decided that we would have a conversation between three of us having a laugh with each other. Because we wanted to create the QR code using a triptych dynamic, we realised that trying to trigger all three of the videos at the same time might prove to be difficult.
When it came to producing the piece, we took a picture of each of us, added the QR code (using QR Stuff) and then printed them out. We then went into a quiet room and videoed our mouths talking to each other, which proved to be quite humorous! We needed to film all three phones in sync so we needed another phone to do this. This proved to be the hardest part of the project because we found it extremely hard to time all three phones so they worked in sync with each other.
In the end it didn't work quite as well, but I believe that we couldn't make it perfect because of the short period of time that we had. If we had more time we would be able to sit down and work out timing with each video in detail. Also we would have been able to properly film the project using equipment such as a tripod to properly angle the footage.
This task wasn't interesting to me initially because I have never really seen the point in QR code but after having a play around with it I now have a new love for QR! It adds another dynamic to something and I believe, even if the code is just a link, it is a great way of interacting the audience with something.
Hello again! I have started a new module this year called Creative Media Practice, so far it seems like it will be very interesting and worth wile! This week, in our first class, Mark and Ian talked to us about spacial montage, multi-screen narrative and triptych images and videos. At first for me it seemed like it was maybe a little but pointless to have three images when it would seem one is enough, but as we looked more and more into the reason and the effect of these narratives it actually became very interesting to me. Initially we looked at some old paintings that where the start of thinking about triptych images and images that have different levels of narrative.
Then we went on to look at some more examples of this, and the development of the triptych. The triptych images ranged from very early on to very modern day versions and even though there was maybe 100 years between these images, they all had the same concept and idea.
As mentioned before, I didn't really get the benefit of an image that required more thought and told more of an in depth story but as we looked at these images I started ti understand why these were so interesting. With a normal singular image you look central normally and don't spend to long thinking about what is going on whereas with a triptych image it seems to be deeper and require more of you to see what is going on, it caught my eye.
We then talked about split screen within moving image and how it added a new dynamic. The presentation mentioned films like 'Suspense' and 'Pillow Talk' which used split screen to capture a phone call between three people. For us today this doesn't seem like it is very impressive or original but back then, especially in 1913 when 'Suspense' was released, this would have been quite a shock for people watching, being brought into a new way of projecting narrative.
Here is an image of 'Pillow Talk' showing how Michael Gordon portrayed the phone call scene and how it added a new dynamic to the movie, almost have a symmetrical feel.
Here is one of the triptych sequences we watched. This one stood out for me because it seemed to be more complex than normal, as I don't think the screens were totally in sync.
Once the lecture had finished we were then set our brief to get into groups and to create our very own triptych sequence. I was in a group with Michael Shiells and we decided that we would create a sequence where two people wanted the same computer. It was very interesting to me, making this sequence, because before I had made moving image but piece together shots chronologically, but this time I was piecing together shots at the same time, side by side. It proved to be an extremely fun exercise in the end, although piecing together shots at the same time so they sync with each other is a lot harder than it sounds!
