To make the Pocket Museum platforms work together, and tell John Mitchell Christies story effectively and acutely while finding a balance of information so that we don’t double up on things, but also so that enough information is provided on all platforms so that the user can get the most out of the platform/platforms that they chose to engage in. To do this we decided that particular elements are best suited to particular platforms. The case files and websiodes will be on the website, they will both contain large amounts of information that we believe an audience will enjoy, and use, more from home. While the audio component will be most successful on the app. We want the users to be engaged in the story by exploring the real life setting, and we think that the audio artifacts are a good way that they can do that- it is easy to engage with, interesting, and hopefully helps them to connect the space and story. What we chose to include over which platforms has changed since we started this project, I believe that these changes have been for the better and strengthened our project.

We decided to present the ten stories as case files on the website to kept it interesting, and reminding the audience of Christies life as a detective. Because we are changing the format we had to consider the time it would take to change, so I am converting the articles Amy and I wrote while she is working on the design so we can put the already formatted work into its new design and upload it to the website. All of the information has been prepared for the timeline on Christies life (again on the website). It can be tricky to find appropriate images, especially because we would like to have pictures for the app with out repeating them. Amy and I spent some time going through the stories and tracking down the location of the settings in Melbourne today. To do this we had to research the changes some street names and locations. Paddys market was tricky to find at first, however, once we identified the markets surrounding streets (which I believe haven’t changed), it was very easy to find its location on Exhibition street. Some of the locations on the app will not be the exact locations because we either didn’t find it, or because it is unsafe to direct people to the area, and encourage them to stop there for an extended period of time. To ensure it is as safe and practical as possible we have to find accessible areas for all kinds of people to access.

During the week it really hit me just how much work we set for ourselves, and despite everyone giving it their all it will be a lot of work to not only finish everything, but to get it to the standard we want. Amy and I focused on building the Website and App. We are building the app though goodbarber, which is allowing us to upload images, video, articles, maps and a link to our website, which we are building through Wix. Amy and I are working closely with these platforms so that they look and are structured similarly, so it is (hopefully) easier for the audience to use, and move between platforms. While actually designing the app and adding elements into it, the design shifted to what I originally planned, this shift was inspired b both the website and just general practicality of the app. Rather than having a section for videos, or a section for photos, the app, once opened, will display a character or event, in our case, John Mitchel Christie. When the user selects John Mitchel Christie, they will be able to access all of the videos, articles images and map points that are relevant to him. This will be a bit more work, it’s a bit for fiddly and often tends to just not work but with a bit more practice it should work better, and in the long run it will definitely look, and function better. The stories (10 in total) of John Mitchel Christies life that we have chosen to explore have been decided, Amy and I have summarised them and adapted them so we can put them onto the site and app. Meanwhile Jen and Ellie have been producing the audio and visual components, the have been doing a wonderful job, everything is getting to a stressful point but we will get to it, it can be tricky to keep the area you have focused on growing and while helping out with the other areas. Everyone in this group is so involved with every area and we all come to make every decision together, so its been a really great group project experience! This week the video and audio elements will be recorded, and as much of the text and images for the app and website need to be uploaded so that when the audio and visual components are edited and finalised there isn’t a queue to get it all uploaded, and nothing is forgotten and everything ha time to be fixed if need be.

This week, while working towards our final projects, our group focused predominantly on identifying exactly what it is that we need to do to achieve our desired product. We took on our feedback from our previous presentation and we are exploring ways that will encourage an audience to use to the app, in particularly. Ellie suggested a great idea of having badges, or something similar, so each user would have their own account and the stories they chose to interactive with will give them a token or badge which can be collected over time, potentially encouraging people to continue to use the app. By the end of this week, or start of next week at the very latest, we hope to have a few stories selected so that we can all write scripts targeted at a specific platform. We decided that each script has to be different so that the user isn’t simply reading or hearing the same thing over and over, but rather is given the opportunity to engage with the story differently, hopefully broadening their understanding and encouraging their interactions with Pocket Museum. With this in mind, we decided that the website will hold the largest amount of information, it may be a bit dryer than other platforms, but it is the central hub of everything so it will ensure the user will access all they need to know. The app will then have more of a focus on the environment, it will still tell the story but focus on things that have more impact when in the physical space. We hope to use the audio to tell the story more from the figures perspective, possibly using the actors from our webseries to voice part of the narration. We have also chosen to have one webisode dedicated strictly to introducing John Mitchel Christie, which we are learning towards having the character changing between his many costumes. We are now thinking that this video could be great on the website and the app to play automatically when the user first selects to explore JMC’s story. Our biggest challenge at the moment is figuring out how to create the app, however, Jen discovered a site- www.goodbarber.com which will allow us to work on our app, supporting geofencing (a feature in a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries. A geofence is a virtual barrier), push notifications and maps, all of which we will need to create the augmented reality app. We do have backups if we do not manage to make it to the quality we hope within the time frame we have, including using googlemaps and dropping pins or creating a proof of concept video, fully exploring and explaining what we want the app to be. Today we went to the Immigration museum where we saw JMC cane (concealing his sword), and other artefacts and articles from his life. It was great to be able to see elements of the person we are focusing on so closely in person.

For this project our group aims to tell a historically accurate story of John Mitchell Christie (1845-1927), a Victorian detective and customs officer. We wish to tell this story over multiple platforms, each adding to the story and audiences engagement in a different way. A website will be used as a central hub, where the audience can access the story, images and webisodes. The images and written story will provide the audience with the historical context and a wide understanding of the story, while the webisode will be more of a drama, still using historical facts but displayed in a more traditional way, allowing audiences to develop a greater understanding of Christie as a character. This website will co-inside with an App that will allow the audience to physically walk around the real life environment of which the story is set. While no one in the group knows how to create an app, especially one using augmented reality, so we have decided that if it is too hard to achieve during the time of the project we will try a different approach that will allow us to achieve something similar, such as Google maps where we will simply be able to drop pins at the location and people can view the image if they chose to travel to that location. We hope to incorporate an augmented reality component to the app, so that when the audience is at a location of significance they can hold up their phone and see a photo or visual relocation of their phone over the real life location. This app will be accompanied by an audio track, allowing the user to hear what it may have sounded like and listen to the story while in the location, hopefully immersing them deeper in the life of John Mitchel Christie. We have also set up social media accounts, currently including Facebook and twitter, to act as a way of promoting the product and providing users/audience a way to interact with is and the product. We will all work on all components of the story, however, to ensure aspects of the story aren’t forgotten we have decided to each manage one component. I will be coordinating the app, ensuring that we keep to deadlines and have an understanding of how to make the app. I hope that this project allows us to tell historical stories in a new, interesting and hopefully interactive (physically going to the stories setting) way. I hope that I can grow my production skills and strengthen them in areas I have not tried (website, app). I wish that the by the end of this project that we have successfully and interestingly told John Mitchell Christies story over multiple platforms- hopefully the platforms that we have set out, but with an understanding that if a desired platform is inefficient or detrimental to the story that we work together and adapt or project to keep the story strong.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/163958768

‘The Matter of the Great Red Dragon,’ is an interactive story using a collection of hyperlinks to navigate you to through the story over their website. While I was interested in the fantasy element of the story I was not particularly interested in the story, but I was engaged from the start when you could chose your symbol and weapons. The character isn’t greatly developed; it is hard to do when the main character is you. The character is really only developed as much as it is needed to continue on the journey- your weapon choice means you have to learn particular skills, for example, but even this doesn’t necessarily have a great impact on the story or character. The technology used is quite simple and minimal- a simple website made up of text, but what encourages the audience to continue through the story is learning the consequence of your choice which drives the journey. To plan one of these stories I would develop my story, major plot points, characters and themes and plot them. I would then branch off different options from these plot points so there is always a clear plan of any options the audience can go down (if it is kept to the same level of interactivity). If I were to add an interactive element to one of my brainstormed ideas (the workplace setting) it would have to be very limited and wouldn’t have much influence on the story, the audience could become another worked which would be easier to follow some of the inner communications of the workplace, I am quiet inspired by mockumentaries story structure (but on a Transmedia platform) so interactivity with this story may make emails and personal memos between characters and the audience like a talking head would in a TV Mockumentary- a way to create a more personal feeling and connection between the audience and characters which could make the audience more engaged.

Having my work read by someone else was really daunting, especially since I didn’t feel particularly confident submitting it, but feedback and practice defiantly help to change that and I look forward to receiving feed back so I can apply it to future things I write. Reviewing someone else’s work was a good experience. The story I read was great and didn’t need any suggestions on how I thought it might be improved, it was interesting and succinct. But it is tricky to not only consider and understand the works but to then examine how it draws back on the readings and actually specifically point out what it is you did (or didn’t) enjoy as I am used to reading something and forming an opinion on it rather than actually critiquing it.

As someone who does not read or write many short stories, this task was quite daunting. I drew my concept from an Inuit myth I had once read about a girl whose fingers were cut which turned into fish and seals and whose spirits ruled the ocean after her death, so the story came from my theories as to how or why that myth may have become a reality for her. My greatest struggle to this task was not as much the story as it was actually keeping it a short story. The reading that influenced and guided me most, to stay on track, was Brander Mathews ‘A philosophy of the Short story.’ Branders wrote that a short story is “precise” in its choices and is built from “one action, one place, one day.” While my story tells the events of many days and even months, by trying to contain it to one day with the contextual side of the story remaining as a memory helped me to keep to the brief. Branders wrote “the short story is the single effect, complete and self-contained.” I often referred back to this line while writing, often when I began to drift from the focus of the story or began to describe things in far too much detail than required, it made me constantly ask ‘what is the story I want to tell?’ ‘am I telling it effectively, and completely in this piece?’ While I should have spent more time on the mythological aspect of the story- possibly describing it in better detail, it reminded me that my focus was on how Sedna came to rule the ocean, not about her ruling it.

The way in which story is told, and an audience can interact with it, constantly changes as technology evolves the platform on which we can tell story. Sherlock Holmes is a character whose story has been told on a variety of platforms over the last 100 (plus) years, first appearing in print in the late 1800s, the story has been adapted to novels, films and multiple television shows. BBCs ‘Sherlock’ is an incredibly popular portrayal of Holmes. Much of the story has reminded the same, the show closely follows Sherlock’s life as a detective in London (still living on Baker Street), taking you on cases with him and his friend, Dr John Watson, but elements have been adapted to fit with a modern telling of the story- Sherlock uses current technology (mobile phones and the internet) and Dr Watson fought in the Afghanistan war. An app, ‘Sherlock: The Network App,” using the same characters, actors and story was also created in conjunction with the series. In the app, you are helping Sherlock and John solve various cases, searching for and deciphering various clues. The apps story structure is close to that of the shows. You are presented to a case, search for clues and decipher the key pieces of information that you found, you maze through the case with the framework provided[1]– “different interfaces of the same material”[2]. The story’s progression is more dependent on you in the app that on the show as you must try to make an understanding of the facts presented with in a set amount of time before you move on, but clues become more obvious over time with the use of clues and there is the option that Sherlock will solve the case for you. This app presents ‘new’ way to tell story- a case that you open and solve- the story is still set by an ‘author’ other than ourselves- “it is not authorship but agency”[3]. However, it does not add to the ‘Sherlock’ series, the characters are not developed any further that in the series, in fact very little is revealed about them in the app as you rather use the knowledge of what you learnt from watching the series to make a deeper connection and understanding of those presented in the app.

(BBC Worldwide- ‘Sherlock: The Network’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3penzsmK2E, 10/3/16 11.58am)

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

[2] Lev Manovich, (2001), ‘The database.’ In The language of new media. Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press, p. 227

[3] Janet H. Murray, (1997), ‘Chapter 5: Agency.’ In Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press p. 153

What is story? 

Texts looked at in class: 
Roald Dahl, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ (originally published in Harper’s Magazine, September 1953)
Orsen Wells, ‘War of the Worlds’ (Radio Broadcast CBS Radio, October 31st 1938)
‘Frankenstein’, (1931, Directed by James Whale)

When writing a short story consider:

 ‘The Substance of Story.’ Robert McKee, 2007

A story must build final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another

• “The audience wants to be taken to the limit, where all questions are answered, all emotion satisfied- the end of the line.”
  • “we’re meant to be better writers than they”
• “The protagonist takes us to this limit. He must have it within himself to pursue his desire to the boundaries of human experience in depth, breadth, or both, to reach absolute and irreversible change”

The Philosophy of the short story, Brander Mathews

• “A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere story which is short… A short story has unity as a novel cannot have it”
• A short story: “shows one action, in one place, on one day” – this is seen in Roald Dahl’s ‘A Lamb to the Slaughter’
• A short story “… can [neither} be conceived as part of a novel, nor can it be elaborated and expanded as to form a novel.” (pg 26)
• “the chief requisites are compression, originality, ingenuity, and now and again a touch of fantasy” (pg 72)

When writing a short story it is advised to plan. You do not have the space to explore and elaborate as you would in a novel so you must be concise. Have a plan of who the characters are, the setting, main plot points and genres (and the themes and ideas that come with it).

Robert McKee, ‘The Substance of Story.’ In Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting, 2007, New York, USA: HarperCollins, pp. 135-154.

Brander Matthews, The Philosophy of the Short-story, 1901, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.