————————————————-I S O L A T I O N——————————————————

Reflecting on this assignment, it is clear that not all narratives must be told in a linear fashion. The element of not having a strict storyline definitely contributes to creative freedom in the sense that creators are able to produce different types of media forms without being constrained and having to relate all content to one another. This enables every user’s experience to be unique due to the modular and interactive properties of the project. Another aspect of our assignment that I reflected on was how we employed different media elements to synthesise various fragments of media. An example of this is how we incorporated still images, slow motion, timelapse, stop motion and videos, all contributing different elements to the project.

One main element of media that I hoped we would experiment more in this assignment is audio. This is what I felt was lacking most in our assignment that we did not get to experiment on. In the background of our assignment , a clear noise of a busy crowd is being played over and over again. What I reflected on after fully interacting myself with the project, was that it would have been intriguing to play around with more sound elements and how it can affect the mood and feeling.

What we hope to develop further in this project is to attempt and explore this concept outside of korsakow. Stretching it out further with our next project and possibly engage with multiple platforms.

In conclusion, after going through this online screen media project, we figured that the importance of digital storytelling can be formed without having to produce a certain narration and instead showing rather than telling.

As a group we really wanted emphasized on the idea of showing rather than telling. Throughout our filming process, we had moments of questioning our ideas and trying to think of ways to stronger amplify the feeling of being isolated. We came across a few problems attempting to project our concept such as being unable to show the character being in isolation besides standing/sitting alone or how we would identify and make the character stand out in a crowd. “Will the audience understand?” “Can they tell she’s sad?” All these questions arising as we filmed.

With all this concern and doubt with what we had created at the time, it was encouraging and a learning process as a group to get feedback from others and Hannah during consultation sessions. Hannah reminded us that it was okay to not tell the viewers what our project is about and that when they watch it, they will know. Reminding us of the importance of visual storytelling.

In my opinion something that could be worked on for our next assignment would be the element of perspective. Creating content with different perspectives will take the interactive feature in our project to another level. When viewing our project, viewers are only able to experience it from a third party’s point of view. Being that our assignment was experimental, we were caught up with the idea of showing viewers what a person being isolated looks like  – not what they see. A more interactive way of approaching this concept in the near future would be filming in the perspective of the character. This amplifies the interaction between viewer and project as they would be in the shoes and mind of the character. This epiphany ties in with the characteristic of media that I focused on in assignment #2, virtual reality. Something to think about for future projects.



One of the characteristics required for assignment #3 was the ability for it to be interactive with the users. In context to that feature, we were introduced to a new software called KORSAKOW by Florian Thalhofer.

“Korsakow documentaries are based on evolving modular storytelling and intimate, personal narratives…” Anna Wiehl (2016)

It was created to help filmmaker around the world to produce interactive online projects or documentaries through authoring database narratives. I am not the most tech savvy person and the only media softwares I have been exposed to for media making is Premiere Pro. The difference in why I found  this technological software very intriguing as compared to others is through the complexity of it and the way it gives us a sort of creative freedom. It allows us to experience both being a producer where you get to create the content and customise the interface, and the “user” the one interacting and viewing a korsakow project.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

In terms of our project, we designed it in a way that it had start and an end, meaning that all the content in between is at random and independently connected to one another. We wanted to explore our concept on Korsakow further by having an interaction with one character and the different situations she experiences in a non linear way.

In our korsakow project, any clip chosen by the user will allow them to see what circumstance the character is in. Each fragment is attached with a quote or phrase that represents the characters thoughts, and the crowd noise in the background as to what she hears. It gives the users a sense of what the character is going through.

Our project embodies a very randomized and multi-linear feature which enables the navigation of the project to differ for each user. Every component has one life, so if once gone through all there will be a total of 12 clips. The project is designed in a way that you have the option to end it, with a question – Will you stop me now?

 

Our initial idea was to explore the theme of emotions and incorporating it with colors and how colors contribute in expressing emotion and affecting the mood. However after several group discussions, we figured that it was more important to narrow down our theme and focus on digitally telling it’s story in depth rather than hitting the surface of a broad theme.

Therefore, for our finalised concept we decided to focus just on ISOLATION.

As for the media content of the project, we created them with the motif of it being experimental. The visual appearance we were aiming to achieve was a 35mm vintage film look, which at first we were hoping to shoot the project with an actual film camera as one of our restrictions. But after taking careful consideration towards time restriction and accessibility, we decided to take the idea of it being experimental to another level by possibly using post production to try and achieve that look in the final product.

Some of the restrictions we applied to our project consists of shooting in landscape, using only one main character and no dialogue. This is because, in order for it to look aesthetically driven which is an element of media we wanted to touch on, it was by preference for the content to have a constant orientation. Since our project is on the idea of isolation it only made sense to focus on one subject and really try to emphasize their feelings visually which comes hand in hand with the restriction of having no dialogue and relying on visual storytelling.

To further fragment our project, we have decided to experiment on different elements and forms of media. Therefore we will be delegating different content ideas into 4 forms of media. Casual video (a normal video) , stop-motion, timelapse and still images.



Next of in the Thinking in Fragments studio , Hannah introduced our third assessment which focuses on two of Manovich’s (2001) online screen media production principles which is modularity and variability.

To explain these characteristics in a little more depth, from what I understand in the reading, modularity is the collection of many different types of individual types of media, each carrying different elements of media that because stored independently, it can be modified or separated in pieces without losing it’s independence. In addition, variability is the ability to produce your media components in different versions and formats. Based on these two principles, we are given a task in groups to create a digital interactive project that carries the two principles based on a theme.

An example that was shown to us that embodied these characteristics was the project Are You Happy? by Mandy Rose. This was inspired by another project that was made in the 1960s called, Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. It took place in France showing how various historical events had affected the society after it occured. The project helped me understand the concept of modularity and variability because of the way it depicts these principles through it’s prompt. It essentially is based on interviewing a range of people and asking them the question of – Are you happy? The interviews were then compiled together to form a collaborative film documentary.

After experiencing these two projects , as a group, Sem, Arfi, Meita and myself discussed about what we wanted to do for our project, questions such as “how would our idea for the project be modular and variable?”, “does it respond to the prompt?”, “is it a linear project? Does the clips relate to one another?”, “will the content we create be able to work independently”