Making it clear

Yesterday our group came up against our biggest concerns with our project, that the ideas and valuable points to the story aren’t clear enough. Our project takes place over the online presence of Emily, a teenage girl. Obviously Emily isn’t going to realise the irony and cultural significance of her mindset, so it isn’t something she directly writes about and is something that must be read between the lines.

Adding to the problem, as we’re writing with the characteristics of a teenager’s diary, everything is very simple and it might come off as a story that hasn’t had any thought go into it, or even as too real. For example, this is one of our recent posts, and it’s quite significant to our story, but it truly does sound like a teenager lamenting about her inadequacies:

argh sometimes i just cant get over how beautiful Kylie (Kylie Jenner) is………it sucks.

she is my favourite Kardashian sister by far and is such an inspiration. she was barely noticed on the Kardashian’s show until she started her tumblr and vine and now she is everywhere and everyone loves her.

i dont understand how a girl the same age as me has a body like that…blahhh it kills me.
i’ll never have a body like that, i dont have any curves, i havnt even got big enough boobs for a pushup bra to work. how is anyone going to notice me without a face like hers. she has so many followers, just because she’s so beautiful, how does an ordinary person compare?

and her style is always so on point. she really is my inspiration, i just want her life. i’m so lame, i’m at home alone on a friday night, she’s probably living it up with all her famous friends. i bet those girls at school are doing something amazing as well. its harder to make friends here than i thought it would be…

There are several connotations to this post:

  • Firstly, how the insecurities of young people are perpetuated by witnessing unrealistic and unnatural ideals projected by the edited and modified presences of celebrities.
  • How people can become famous for nothing as Kylie Jenner is, or famous for being beautiful and projecting an ideal life that others follow due to envy and admiration.
  • It also develops our character Emily as a deeply insecure person who is dissatisfied with her ordinary life due to making comparisons with the lives of those she follows online, and also through fictional lives, as demonstrated through her obsession with The Carrie Diaries. She represents a great amount of young people who compare themselves to unrealistic role models and lifestyles online and through various media.

The concern is that these points aren’t obvious enough, and it is a challenge to make them clearer. We are also reblogging many photos on the Tumblr, and it might seem as if these posts are chosen at random, however much thought goes into these posts, we choose pictures which both support our themes (demonstrating the ridiculous things that circulate online that are not representative of reality) and portray Emily’s headspace. The reblogging supports the textual posts, but their relationship may not be clear and I’m not sure how to make it clearer considering the challenge of speaking only through Emily’s online presence. I’m hoping that I’m not giving an audience enough credit, and they’ll be able to figure it out for themselves.

The Sherlock System.

I liked the foreshadowing with his arch nemesis when Sherlock saw his in the smog, suggesting that the nemesis is the only thing that Sherlock fears. This to me was where transmedia narrative most came through. These brief instances (we also saw the arch nemesis at the very end) that hint to future episodes are what keep fans interested and anticipating future episodes (a cultural attractor), but they also link the TV episodes so that each one is indeed a part of a greater story. The super-system of Sherlock is the overall story, over each season, and the app. While each season follows a plot line, another system, and each episode has a stand alone story, another system. The interesting thing, and a characteristic of many TV shows, is that the episodes work together as stand-alone stories, but contribute to a greater story universe. This relates to the discussion in class about all parts being greater than themselves, similar to the parts of a transmedia text.

I wouldn’t classify Sherlock, the TV series as a transmedia text though, each episode belongs to a unified story, but they are told across the same platform and are not an extension but an updated version of the books. The app is interesting and could make it a kind of transmedia story; however the game narrative is not very significant to the unified story of the TV show, although it does have ‘easter eggs’ for the community of dedicated Sherlock fans to uncover.

The foreshadowing in Sherlock that I mentioned earlier, drew attention to the fact that within our project, foreshadowing should be used more as a cultural attractor, to add complexity to the plot and to unify the components of our story. We’ve done a little but we really need to do more and I’ll bring this up with our group during the writing process.

Back to Sherlock though, the characterisation was interesting, I am not too familiar with the original Sherlock Holmes books, but I don’t remember him to be sassy, anti-social and probably belonging somewhere on the autism spectrum. However, his quick wit and eccentric qualities make him interesting, entertaining and more relevant to the 21st century, where being as square as you are super intelligent is not edgy enough for modern screens. They also managed to modernise elements of the old stories quite well, making them more interesting and relevant to the now.

 

Our project within Gambarato’s Systems and Signs

Our project is a closed transmedia story, because the audience is limited to navigating the narrative rather than having the ability to alter the outcome of the narrative, thus it does not have an external structure.

The cultural attractors of our story are the shared (tragic) desire to pry into other people’s lives, and the especially interesting and tragic nature of Emily’s online persona.

The cultural activator of our project is the ability of the audience to navigate our character and her sad online persona at their own leisure, deploying agency and uncovering key elements of the plot.

The desired Umwelt of our story is that the audience will feel like they’re following a trail of signs and links through the online world just like usual, if they were looking into the background of a character.

 

Working in a team

I’ve never been much of a team player. I prefer to work on my own, because I know how I think and how I best get things done. I don’t have to run my ideas or decisions by anyone else before I implement them, it just runs smoother. In any situation, things are much simpler when there is only one person involved; one brain is conflicting enough on its own, partner it with another and things get difficult. However, being simpler doesn’t mean that it’s easier. In a good team with a good system and clear roles and duties, things do run smoothly and the workload for each individual becomes lightened. I experienced that in the hospitality industry, but not until one and a half years into my degree did I experience it at uni. We’ve done a lot of group work in my 2.25 years at uni, in just about every course I’ve taken, but only this semester’s group and two groups that I was lucky to be in last semester, have worked well together.

The most important factor in a team is communication. This involves being comfortable enough to tell someone when you don’t like their idea, or that they’re not pulling their weight. The positive stuff is easy to communicate, the negative stuff not so much. Communication is also important where you all need to be on the same page and working toward the same goal. These have been the issues in previous years, either I (and other team members) chose not to voice my opinions until it was far too late and everyone ended up getting frustrated, or we all had different ideas about what we wanted to accomplish or create, and everyone ended up getting frustrated.

This semester, my group is excellent. I get along with Matt, Sarah and Mollie really well, and while we’re all quite different we find a lot of common ground and sometimes we probably get along too well (getting excited -me especially, running off topic and discussing some awesome thing probably to do with feminism or cinema, or feminism and cinema, that has nothing to do with the task at hand). But this is our biggest problem as a group, and when we really dedicate time to the task we stay on task, and allow chat breaks when we start to become mentally exhausted.

We all voice our ideas, and our ideas have developed our story on multiple levels. And when someone feels like an idea is off-centre, or they don’t understand how an idea functions within the story, it’s easy to bring it up and discuss it, work on it or ditch it. We all pull our weight, because we all want to make the story as good as possible, and get it finished as smoothly as possible. These are our common goals. We haven’t had a conflict, and you don’t really know how well a group functions until a conflict arrises and you see how well you deal with it, but I don’t think one will given the timespan.

Basically, I feel like my attitude towards group work has really changed for the better due to this semester, this class and this group. I know that if you choose your team wisely, communicate well and are all passionate about the idea and the desired outcome, things will go well. This greatly improves your work ethic, the final outcome, and your personal takings from the given material. I will work toward choosing great team members, communicating well and creating a great group dynamic in future because I can see now how much it improves my experience of a course. Sometimes it’s the luck of the draw but if you’re able to create that excellent group dynamic, everything gets better.

Project Brief 3: 500 Word Statement

Our project is a black comedy about a young woman named Emily, who represents the wider problem of young and inexperienced people who become obsessed with online validation and superficial gratification through their naivety and desire to be recognised and accepted.
As the digital age is new, it’s effect on young people and their development is unknown, and we are currently finding out as the generation born into the digital age are now adolescents and will soon become adults. Emily is representative of this group of people. She is an emphasised version (for comedic purposes and also to aid the story and themes), though not an unrealistic one considering some real world examples of teenagers who have gone to extreme lengths for online validation and fame.
The plot has been written, we know what will unfold over the three week period in which the story will take place and be published over three media platforms. However, we still have to write and create the media that will be published, the elements which will actually tell the story. These will be blog post diary entries on Tumblr, images and video on Instagram, and question/answer type text through Qoohmee. The three platforms are especially interesting because the audience can actually interact with Emily through these platforms, by commenting on or liking her posts, or by asking questions through Tumblr and Qoohme. If people interact with our protagonist we will respond in character.
Another interesting quality of our project is that it is both linear and nonlinear, depending on how and when it is experienced. If people follow along during the three weeks that the actual plot will take place and when we will be publishing in ‘real time’ it will be a linear narrative. After that, it will exist online as a database narrative that the audience can traverse at their own leisure. In this form it will work in any order that the audience chooses to consume the media within it.
So far we have all contributed equally, and we discuss and make all decisions about the story together (rather than assigning roles), through discussion and co-operative brainstorming and problem solving. In some circumstances this would not be my preferred style of group work, but as we work well as a team and are all equal contributors it works efficiently and fairly and I think we’ll continue to work this way in future, until the completion of the project. When it comes to the actual actions of having to post the pieces of the story, we will assign different parts to different people, but we will be writing and creating the elements of media together.
I’m excited to spend several hours writing and creating the media that will tell the story of Emily. The next major steps of our project are to create the Tumblr, Instagram and Qoohme content in line with the plot we have already constructed, and then create a schedule of events determining when it will be posted and by whom.

Presenting and reflecting.

Presenting is not my strong point. As much as I love to talk, I am a nervous public speaker. Writing the presentation was easy, we have a group of four people so I suggested coming up with four different important talking points that covered the project. As a group we discussed each category and had a joint Google Doc in which we scribed our ideas and notes, which were gradually refined into what I think is a pretty thorough four person speech. If it had have been a written assignment, our 1200 word presentation notes would have absolutely nailed it. As it happened, in the spoken form, it was not as strong. I prefer to speak with only dot points to navigate me through my planned notes, which is risky because it might not come out impressively or even coherently, but as long as I know the knowledge is there, I know I can speak about it. With this project, having discussed it at length with my team many times, I know what I wanted to say but I’m not sure how clearly it was expressed.
There were a few important points that I think could have been emphasised more, they were:
  • When you take superficial online content seriously it’s harmful, but when looked at out of context it is ridiculous and trivial, which is where the comedy element of our story comes in.
  • We want the audience to act and feel as they usually would, as someone wasting time online, traversing the internet through hypertextuality and stalking someone for personal entertainment, humour and sick self indulgent pleasure.
  • The key motivating factor for our audience will be their sense of agency. While they can’t actually manipulate the plot, the audience’s actions and choices within the media platforms will directly provide them with the reward of more information.
  • The story will explore possible damage that being so involved on the internet has on young people, that have been born into the digital age. The superficial and edited nature of the internet and the trivial and ridiculous qualities of online content, can have serious consequences when embraced naively and intensely by inexperienced young people.
As for the other presentations, I think people had the exact same issue as us. They’d written a fantastic passage of writing but it was long in the anxiety of presenting in front of a silent room of (probably rather bored) students and four very academic and stern middle-aged men. As such, the energy that is required to have a really engaging presentation was lacking. However, everyone’s projects sound awesome and it’s really great to see people who seem to be genuinely excited about their projects. While the presentations themselves may not have been amazing, the concepts are super impressive and as are the people talking about them.

Forming a Transmedia story

EMILY DOEE

Sequence of events:

Back story:

  • Moved away from anonymity, hopes for a new start. She likes Disney, Little Mermaid, One Direction. Admires Kylie Jenner and the idea of famous of nothing. Is desperate for some kind of validation, looks for this online. Is obsessed with ideas of internet celebrity.

STAGE 1

Positivity, new start.

STAGE 2

The video comes out, she thinks it’s her ticket but things don’t really go as planned. She starts to become more desperate.

STAGE 3

Her posts turn dark, she is excited to go to a party. The party happens.

STAGE 4

Aftermath of the party and suicide.

 

INSTAGRAM:

#NewBeginnings post of a new house. (Not on Tumblr)

Instagram videos:

Snippet of the viral video that she appears in

General LA videos using captions to tell the story

Something from the party before it goes wrong

 

TUMBLR

Written posts

Reposting

 

Presenting, Week 5 (Story in 140 characters or less)

Speaking about my essay, Agency and Medium, was difficult, because I’m terrified of public speaking, but also reasonably easy because I realised that I know what I’m talking about. While it was difficult to articulate what I was thinking, due to the fear, the information was there. Listening to what other people had to say about their essays was more interesting of course because it was new. Unfortunately I was late and didn’t hear anyone else speaking about my essay topic, but hearing about others was very engaging.

While my essay wasn’t directly involved with ideas of story, it touched on the ideas of agency and how the audience’s involvement in a text will alter their experience of the text and the feelings which it provokes. Listening to others talk about story, particularly hearing Sarah discuss dance as a form of storytelling, straying far from the digital realm which we focus on in class, was enlightening though. The emotionally provocative nature of dance as a physical medium of storytelling is highly involved with the audience’s experience of story, while I would not think that it involved agency, this would be focused on empathy, two different and I’m sure two of many, emotive responses to storytelling.

My new ‘philosophy’ of storytelling is that storytelling is taking an audience on an emotional journey of perception and understanding. The medium, structure and method of conveying a sense of narrative is important to the creation and perception of stories but are not all that relevant to the defining of a narrative as a story.

Agent Carter VS All Men

Central themes of the superhero tales seem to be:
  • Courage in the face of adversity, weakness, the underdog, marginalised,
  • Heroic qualities
  • Goodness, selflessness, all based around ideas of courage.
  • These are reflected in the text’s treatment of both Agent Carter and Captain America
Soooo many archetypes:
  • In Captain America
  • The dial, the ridiculous amount of knobs that need turning as they do the Captain America make-strong machine thing
  • The wistful looks between Captain America and Agent Carter
  • Someone dies in the hero’s arms and his last words (although no words are actually spoken) are of inspiration to the hero
  • Car chase
  • On the roof, shoots bullets through the roof, Captain America dodges them
  • Hail Hydra, Hail Hitler
In the short:
  • Playing the innocent woman and walking straight through the front door
  • The cute music while people are getting beaten up in the background
  • Henchman turning up behind the protagonist as it looks like her quest is successful, just happens to be the biggest, baddest henchman. Like the boss level in a video game. Everything about him makes him look like some kind of monster
  • Witty quip as she leaves the building having kicked ass, Learn to count
  • Close-up self pride moment
  • The underdog wins moment
Kettle scream
  • The anonymous hats
  • The old school spy gadgets
  • Iconic image of the trench and the briefcase, the silhouette
  • Weeping over the body of her dead friend
(In the episode of Agent Carter) she becomes the femme fatale
She turns objects associated with oppressed womanhood into deadly weapons. Great symbolism. Knocking someone out with a stapler, getting people tea to get information, the great fight scene in the kitchen.
The male characters are all pitted against her, it’s sexism to the extreme. They are all characterised as fools, where she is wise and brave in the face of oppression. None of the characters are trustworthy except
But still, she’s the token female. In the scene from Captain America, she is the only woman to appear in the 25mins who wasn’t a nameless victim on the street. In the short she’s the only woman full stop. In the episodes of the four woman who have dialogue, Agent Carter is the only independent woman. Of the other three we have the innocent victim who dies after congratulating Agent Carter on finally getting dolled up so that she won’t become a spinster, the assistant at the call centre thing, a friend to the protagonist and the second strongest female character with only two lines, and the other a victim of sexual harassment who must be ‘saved’ by Agent Carter. I looked up the series to discover that every episode in the first season was directed by a man, all but one were written by a man and the majority of the show’s producers are men. This show isn’t even remotely concerned with gender equality.
The content of the show is feminist, but not quite. I’d like to see some henchwomen and some evil lady overlords. In the world of Agent Carter, congrats to her she kicks ass and whatever, but apparently she’s the singular woman in her entire universe who’s capable of looking after herself or sees herself as an equal to a man. Fuck the patriarchy and mainstream media.