Month: July 2018

We have adjusted the direction of our project Dear X after receiving the feedback from the tutor and the classmates. We tried to use Twitter as the main social media platform before to enhance the participatory and interactivity of our project But after discussing, we decided to use an interactive website which is created by Klynt as the final work for this semester. There are two reasons, one is we only have 12 weeks to develop the project, it is limited that we will do such a heavy workload on the different medium, especially we need to build an ongoing storyline. The second reason is it is hard to achieve an ideal finished product for a small-scale crew composed of three people like us. We do not have a high budget, and we do not have a vibrant network in Australia, so we decided to make our project easier for this semester. And we will continue to do this project after graduation if it can be successful in the initial stage.
Overall, we scaled down the project to make a combination of the interactive website and visual materials as the final work.

My definition of my project <Dear X> is Trans-Media participatory fictional Project, and it is the combination of the short video and the social media platform, also the website. The short video is responsible for explaining the background and put questions to the audience, attracting them to the social media platform to further participate in the project. The social media platforms are the primary medium for audience participation and interaction, and Twitter is the ideal choices relatively.

The fictional story of the project is about ‘distrust’ in a relationship between Julie and Glen, and their problem will attract the audience to find the ‘truth’ through the protagonists’ social media to achieve the interactive participatory. As Claire Bishop (2012) briefly defines the general characteristics of participatory art is the artist is the collaborator and planner of the situation rather than the sole producer of an object, there will be some uninterrupted or long-term projects turn audiences from viewers into collaborators.

What I want to discuss through this project are from two perspectives, one is from a practical standpoint which I try to develop the storytelling through trans-media platform, and also want to practice to engage the audience through the appropriate method which suitable for the different medium. ‘the relationship between trans-media with users lies in the diffusion of stories, which are provided by trans-media storytellers to attract great amounts of potential users. At the meantime, users immerse themselves in these stories by participating in related interaction through different media platforms’ (Yang & Zisiadis 2014).

Besides, I try to explore the issue of trust between human beings, especially couples from the emotional perspective. It seems that trust is extremely fragile in modern society, and it will affect people and the environment around once the distrust appears. So it is tricky to figure out the relationship between the subjective guess and the objective fact. There are a lot of excellent films and tv series have discussed the similar question and received a good reputation. Like <Last Night>, <Gone Girl> and <Doctor Foster>, it can be said that people have a strong reaction with the balance and change of relationship, and they are willing to have a discussion.

I am responsible for screenwriting, casting, and promoting as the producer and writer. It is undoubtedly that the story is the most critical part of this project, no matter the story of the introduction video, or the follow-up development on the social media. We need to hide some intriguing clues in the twitter post and let the audience find them to cause discussion. And the actor is also one of the keys to attracting the audience.

References:

Bishop, C 2012, Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso Books.

Yang, B & Zisiadis, M 2014, Transmedia marketing: strengthening multiplatform user participation through storytelling.