Our “homework” for this week is as follows; Neeve will be taking pictures of the “crime scene” where blood is found, and also the two phones belonging to both Miranda and Tyler. While I on the other hand have the much easier task of just creating more “reflective” Tumblr posts on the new man in Miranda’s life.

This weeks reading was as Dan said, one of the more complex readings. I found myself getting lost while reading it in class so I decided to take it home and read. Two key terms I learnt were the “cultural attractor” and cultural activator”. The cultural activator in Dodging the Bullet is the ability for the audience to navigate through the Williamsville blog, and uncover various elements of the missing person case. Whilst, the cultural attractors are the ability for people to feel included in the missing person case, and feel that they are as much a part of the investigation as the police themselves. We also hope to create empathy towards Miranda. Finally, we have decided that our story is a closed transmedia story as there is a limit to the amount of navigation of the blog and alteration of the final outcome. Despite Neeve and I never knowing nor saying what really happened to Miranda, we are leaving this unsaid, and therefore closed.

 

 

This week in class we discussed the aspects of our pitch that needed improving. The main focus was on the easy navigation on our heavily trans-media narrative. Neeve and I decided on constructing a “Police Database” that will be run by the Williamsville Police Department, which is a fictional town and department that is also the home of both Miranda and Tyler/Joshua.

Essentially this is a collection of evidence that the police have gathered over a five day period, revealing more information and more transmedia elements within our narrative. This will make it exciting for the audience, and add that thriller/suspense aspect we are looking for. The staggered release of posts will be as follows:

1. Preface the case with a press release – “missing person, any info, contact etc…” also detailing that Miranda was last seen walking around a park in Williamsville.
2. Found his phone at the scene of the crime in a bin. On the phone there are videos of him watching her (coming home from school, through window etc), photos of Miranda, voice messages from her asking where he is to make his Cat-fishing profile look suspicious and unresponsive.
3. Found her phone at the scene however, there was water damage so it will need to be recovered a few days later and update the audience with some recovered footage.
4. Access gained to Miranda’s Facebook account. On this post there will be screenshots of suspicious conversations between Miranda and Tyler. We will also locate a link to her Tumblr website.
5. The Tumblr website belonging to Miranda will detail her thoughts and feelings towards her budding relationship with Tyler. This will allow audiences to see things from her perspective. We will also show anonymous questions answered about Tyler. There are also posts uncovered about her previous relationship with Joshua.
6. The recovered information from Miranda’s phone which shows videos of Miranda and her friends playing with the presents from her Ex boyfriend Joshua. There will also be footage from AFTER Miranda realises these things have been stolen.
7. The final post will be a press release or newspaper article, detailing how Police have found substantial evidence to suggest whodunnit but how Miranda remains missing. This is how the narrative will conclude in the “Exhibition”.

Below is the timeline of when Neeve and I will be releasing information under the Police Database:

 

One final note is that we really wanted to incorporate some more of the things we have learnt in class into our story. We believe that we have placed things in a Non-linear pattern, which links to the TED talks video week when we learnt about how to tell a story.

Our homework for this week is to create the Tumblr page for Miranda, and the Police Database page.

This week in Story Lab we experienced what it’s like to pitch an idea to a panel of judges who could comment and critique on our work. For myself and Neeve we found it to be a slightly daunting experience despite all the pitches we have done throughout high school. Upon reflection, the experience was nowhere near as bad or intimidating as I had first imagined. Except for a couple technical glitches getting my laptop connected to the projector, and one point where I got lost in my script, I quite liked the experience.

We both really benefited from hearing where we needed to improve our story, but more-so how we need to decide on a presentation format. Neeve and I walked away feeling full of relief that it was over, but also liked hearing where we had done well, such as her great filming + editing of the trailer, and our sound concept for the narrative. It is by no means competition, but I liked the way our idea was different to the other groups. We have some similarities between one of the groups about the girl with the Tumblr profile, but I think that our choice of transmedia will make it different. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve with the advice of our judging panel, and it was really comforting to see genuine enthusiasm about what we are creating 🙂

The Dodging the Bullet duo waiting to present our pitch on Thursday hahaha!

Inspired by “Catfish”

Name: Dodging the Bullet

Group: Neeve & Bonnie 

• 2 characters: female character (victim), male character (sociopath)
• Instead of “meeting”, the girl gets abducted (this is shown through the news report, and it is revealed that after investigation the person she has been chatting to doesn’t exist)
• Predator could know her from high school and want revenge for something?

Roles:

-1 social media profile each

– Each of us will act as one person in the “chat”

– We will both write the “scripts” together, and character profiles/descriptions, and write most of the chat while we are together so we can speak to each other and tell each other what to write.

– Neeve will be in charge of the “phone call” recording and planning

– Bonnie will be in charge of the Newspaper Story configuration

Media Platforms:

• Facebook Chat:

This will mean we need to create two “fake” Facebook accounts for the purpose of the story, one of us acting as one character each. This interaction will be where most of the story takes place.

• Facebook Profile:

We will need to create a social media profile for both characters after we create their account, which will include things like name, hometown, interests, age, D.O.B, photos, friend list. We will need to keep in mind that one of them needs to look more believable than the other, as one is supposed to be fake.

• Phone Calls/Audio:

The “phone call” will probably be a one-sided phone call from the victim, leaving a message on the other person’s phone, who isn’t answering. This is when the audience starts to get suspicious.

• Newspaper Report: 

The “chat” will end abruptly as the story begins to come to and end, and a newspaper report will be the last media platform being used, that will tie all the loose ends together, confirming who the “Catfish” was, what happened to the person he was ‘Catfishing’.

 

Dodging the Bullet

Bonnie Dunleavy / s3484634

Niamh Fagan / s3488729

Rules: 

1. Set and Meet deadlines
2. Communicate in our Facebook group
3. Fulfil our roles but still help each other out if needed
4. Don’t leave things until the last minute
5. Come to class each week to discuss and communicate ideas and problems

This week had a strong focus on video games. In the reading from Janet Murray about Agencies I learnt the difference between the terms interactivity and agency. Murray states that interactivity is “vague and pervasive” and is more the mere ability to “move a joystick and click a mouse”. The agency comes down to the thought process of the audience member and the various decisions they have which may lead to different outcomes or conclusions. Agency is all about “the satisfying power to take meaningful action”. One day I sat down and watched my brother play Grand Theft Auto 5, a game that has an enormous terrain for various main characters to explore, or as Murray says, “orienteer”. The incredibly intricate details of the Los Santos/Los Angeles area make for endless outcomes depending first upon which character you choose to play as (you can even play as Chop, the dog!) and then get thrown into various challenges. Even so much as just driving down the LA streets in a stolen car, and making the choice to cause some kind of trouble will lead to wild police chases and so forth. For every action there is a series of reactions.

Reference: Murray, Janet H. (1997). ‘Chapter 5: Agency.’ In Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press.

In class this week we watched a short series called “Everything is a Remix” that essentially reminded us that “anybody can remix anything”. Remixing brings together the basic elements and steps of creativity – Copy, Transform and Combine. When I think of the word remix, I think of the way an original piece has been created into something completely different but using something that already exists as a starting point.

One of my favourite examples of a “remix” is series of songs that I have listened to since they were first released in 2008. Every year around New Years Eve, Youtube “DJ”, DJ Earworm releases a mashup/remix song of the top 25 songs of that year, using lyrics and beats of different songs and combining them into one.  Below is his most famous one, the 2009 “Blame it on the Pop”.

A question was posed to us this week – What is the point of coming up with new stories if everything has been done before? I think in relation to remixing, this question becomes almost rhetorical. There is no need to create new content when in fact we can work with content that already exists to create something new. Perhaps, “originality” is best expressed by working with something that already exists and making something different from it, rather than stretching to invent something totally new. Nowadays it could be fair to say that really nobody starts out with an “original” idea, we are all just making variations of something that already exists, whether we are aware of those things existing or not.