Following the final development post of the week, I posted a practical project that I had been working on with my partner Sem, involving the idea of an interactive online video resume. Despite the project being an experimental trial of what we can accomplish with such a project, many of the things I wanted to accomplish didn’t work out exactly the way I wanted and I felt disappointed, but I learnt a lot.

The resume was intended to be an interactive, cross-platform experience that would engage an audience of potential employers or colleagues and other interested parties by showcasing interesting aspects and work experience of my life. There would be links on screen taking any viewers to see my past work on short films, my list of qualifications and experience and my social media outlets of Facebook and Instagram; encouraging my audience to get to know me better by advertising my personal interests and constructive hobbies. While the whole premise of the small-scale project was all about directly communicating with my audience, unfortunately the interactivity of the video was cut short by my inability to insert inter-actable visual links onto the end, instead forcing me to leave them in the description of the Youtube page. The project itself ended up less interactive than I had originally intended, but it does align with the qualities of online screen making.

Throughout all of the discussions that took part in class, I learnt specifically about the characteristics of online screen making and explored the terminology that describes the fragmented nature of the internet and the content that makes it up. I learned to associate words like variability and modularity, as well as all that they mean, to my project and everything else that I am able to view on the internet. I can see now that internet content, while they may be contributing towards a whole project, are segmented and separate from each other. I’ve noticed how easy it is to read or watch something on the internet that is out of context, and a part of a larger story or project, and the most engaging ‘somethings’ are the ones that stand out as their own work, not needing any pre-existing knowledge in order to be understood. Its this characteristic that I’ve tried to incorporate into my own work, not just practical projects, but also my development blogs and posts in general.

In terms of how successful this small scale work was: it wasn’t as successful or as effective as I’d have hoped, but I am hopeful for future projects of a similar nature. I’ve been forced to learn more about the platforms that I choose to upload content to, and the intricacies that make each one unique and serve different purposes. I hope in future to build a working resume on a website more proficient in networking abilities, such as ‘Linkedin’, ‘IMDB’ or ‘Vimeo’, both of with are quite often used in more professional settings.

In light of recent developments, Sem and I have decided to change the concept of our online interactive project. Due to time restrictions, and a shortage on equipment, we decided against the possibility of shooting a choose-your-ending story type short film. Instead, while implementing similar formal qualities of online content: interactive capabilities and cross-platform aspects, we decided to do a profiling video for the each of us, where we each advertise ourselves for a short period, talking about our past experience in work, what field of work we are interested in, as well as some personal interests and hobbies. After doing so, we plan to offer links to other sites that contain our resumes, show reels and social media sites, in quite an interview/vlogging style format.

While this is project is vastly different from what we were previously aiming to accomplish, it still demonstrates an understanding of the qualities of a type of content that is web specific, and also it executes the interactivity between the content creators (us) and our audience (potential employers or colleagues). This also has real-life implications that go past this project, as we see it to extend into our future to aid us with finding work. The only shortcoming that I can see for this undertaking is that we are giving the options for our audience to interact with our content, as opposed to incentivizing them to be more involved with our work by giving them options as to further a narrative. As for the platforms that I plan on using, they will be: Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive and PDF viewer.

At the moment, we are still considering uploading these profiling videos to Youtube as it seems to be the most accessible platform to us, as well as the fact that this is merely an experiment to make a self-promoting video that we might choose to improve on in the future. However, we are considering using a more networkable site such as ‘vimeo’ or ‘Linkedin’.

During class this week, some key phrases were brought up that relate directly to mine and Sem’s online project: modularity, variability, numerical representation, automation and transcoding. In particular, modularity, variability and transcoding are directly related to our project, so in realizing the aspects of their definitions and how they describe what Sem and I are doing, I am able to really delve into the ideas of manipulating the online platform to the fullest extent possible. At the core of our concept for interactive online content, our idea of an audience-involving video; comparisons were easily made to our class discussions.

The concept of modularity being that any separate aspect of an online project has equal chance of being viewed without context is very relevant to our project, as a choose-your-ending short film, especially since each transition after each choice the audience has to make will be taken to a separate video entirely where their choices will play out. This is an aspect I hadn’t considered, and may prove problematic if someone starts watching the short film(s) a few videos down the ‘choice timeline’, and is experiencing the story very out of context.

Variability, similar to modularity, is defined by the fragmented features of the internet, and how each piece of content, or in this case, each video is treated as separate from the overall project as a whole. This emphasizes the issue that one of the choice’s consequences may be viewed out of context from the project as a whole, and thus alienating any viewers. Unfortunately neither I nor Sem know of any software in which all the different videos of the character choices are combined into a singular project where the audience can choose which clip to choose to see.

Transcoding is also something we have to take into consideration for our project, as this involves the platform that we are displaying our videos on and the file types necessary for it. Since we are using Youtube, we will have to choose a file type that may not have the best image quality, just so it is compatible to be played, which is unfortunate, but Sem and I, after taking part in this class discussion, are now taking into consideration what we can do to upload the video at its best quality on a platform so that we don’t have to worry about the modularity of this short film in particular.

In light of my previous post; my viewing of ‘Deprogrammed’ and my brainstorming on the ideas on interactive media, my partner Sem and I talked more about ways to further integrate our audience into our work, but had some trouble in doing so. After brainstorming ideas such as: an online maze through various links, a breadcrumb trail through Instagram hashtags, an online wheel of fortune (again using hyperlinks), and narrative trail with points of interest, we still had no idea of what we wanted to do, or what would be a viable option. Some of our inspiration for these ideas included  the Rickstaverse Instagram game, the Wiki Game, and the popular children’s book series: Goosebmps.

At the moment we are leaning towards on the idea of a choose-your-ending style video on Youtube, similar to Goosebumps, where a story plays out, but at the crucial moments in the short film, the audience has to decide what the main character should do by clicking a link which would then take them to the rest of the short film based on their decisions.We both like this idea as it actively involves the audience in our short film, and makes them feel like they are getting the story that they would most want out of our work. There are also other features of Youtube that makes it more user friendly and involving, such as commenting, sharing, subscribing, liking etc. to build on the interaction with our audience.

This also fits with more formal qualities of online screen content, such as; unregulated length, a kind of episodic structure, and also hyperlink driven, as the facet of transferring between segments of the short film. I am very excited to see how this project plays out and curious of the kind of response it might get, but am confident that the results will not be what I expect.

This week, our discussions along online screen content turned down the path of interaction. What is interactive media? What interactive capabilities of the internet are we so drawn in by? How can we create interactive content that involves and engages an audience on an online platform? Upon asking myself these questions, wanting to build on my learning experience from last week, was prompted to explore the online ‘MIT Open Documentary Lab’, also known as ‘Docubase‘.

While traversing the site, I stumbled on an interesting documentary called Deprogrammed that, instead of video format, it played our like a game, where I had to press a button to move my character forward, and thus progress with the audible story. It proved to be an interesting and engaging interactive experience, since if I stopped moving my character forward, I would stop hearing the story. This made me want to hear the documentary play out, and so actively participate in the storytelling experience. I was intrigued by the way that I, as the audience, was involved; it made me realise that I wanted to create something similar: I want to make online screen content that involves audience participation and makes my audience want to continue absorbing my content. One flaw in the documentary itself that I partook in, was that there was no way for an audience to contribute to the content or the experience that I noticed, except for the ability to share it cross platform onto social media, and thus possibly create discussions around it.

This then encouraged me to explore more ways of interpreting interactive media, and brainstorm ways in which I could possibly make my audience participate in my screen-making, without it being a platform for just me to show them, or me just ‘calling them to help’. Some ideas off the top of my head included The Wiki Game, riddles, polls, etc. I plan to take these ideas to my project partner Sem, where we will be able to explore our options further.

My partner Sem and I’s Instagram experiment:

Earlier today, my partner Sem and I experimented with the concept of interacting with and audience on Instagram through the use of Insta stories. We used the unique feature of Instagram stories, that place limitations on the length of videos being posted, to tell a story that was meant to be interpreted as a real life call for help, as I acted as though someone had taken my bag, and i was being followed by a random stranger. Our aims were to test how interactive Instagram as an online platform could be, and to see if we could get a response to our SOS.

It was very much a trial by error, as we quickly found problems to deal with, such as how we were going to film it. In order to appear spontaneous and real, we had to film portrait at all times to imitate how someone holds their phone, making use of captions instead of talking at times, filming with the inner camera ‘vlogger style’ (talking directly to the viewers), or filming POV style. We also had to consider that we should shoot all of the posts beforehand, outside of Instagram, to make room for error and re-shooting some takes that we were unhappy with. This in itself, however, became a problem we later found out, because some of the shots lasted longer than the Instagram story cut-off time, which turned out to be 16 seconds instead of 10.

In terms of interacting with our audience, we used methods such as asking questions, using hashtags to as them to help, even a polling function available on the story itself to ask the opinions of anyone watching. However much to our dismay, we did not get much in terms of audience interaction, but we speculated that reasons for that could be related to regularity of previous posts and popularity, both areas in which I lack on my Instagram account.

Regardless of the outcome, I still think this experiment went well, as it allowed us to brainstorm ways of interacting with people over social media, and using social media as a platform for online screen content creation. In relation to the lack of people responding to our story, I wish in future to create a similar experiment on other social media sites such as Facebook or reddit, where interaction of a deeper level is more widely accepted and encouraged, to view the difference in reactions with that of Instagram.

The past two weeks of the studio ‘Thinking in Fragments’ have been spent discussing the properties of online media making; the formal qualities of online content, and what makes them web-specific. The form that i have chosen to explore and research, is the interactive abilities of the internet, and how this feature allows the internet to be a unique and diverse space.

I found the thought of the interactive capabilities of the internet increasingly interesting after listening to the ideas in class.My overall impression of the internet was just a big ball of information, that people could access and take snippets out of, but I’ve come to realise it’s so much more than that. To think that it has become such a big place, where people can communicate, post up on, share, comment on and more importantly, contribute to; it has evolved so much from the introduction of Web 2.0, which is a topic that was also discussed in class that i found interesting. Its astounding to think about how many different facets of interaction there are between both users and the interface in terms of blogs, forums, pages, sites, and many other platforms where people can come to share their ideas of business, interests, skills, and even entertainment.

This train of thought, led me to the idea of social media. Social media is usually the first thought that pops into anyone’s head when thinking about interaction on the internet, and I wanted to explore just how it hooks us all in just by being a platform where everyone can share everything. However, in these types of spaces that encourage video/photography content, a question was raised to me: “What makes this type of content web specific?” I considered Youtube, being a multimedia type platform that has immense popularity by the ability to watch, post or share videos of all kinds, and how it was different at all to TV, or movies, or video content that isn’t of the internet. I considered how the videos themselves were different to those of non-web origin, in that TV series and films usually display a story, or advertisements try to sell something, or teach certain skills, where Youtube has so much more variety, such as pranks, tutorials, vlogs, gaming series, personalities, parodies, reviews, etc. I realised that the main differences lay in the platform itself, and the interactivity it encouraged. the ability to comment, give advice/opinions, to reach out to the content creators themselves, to share it cross platform to sites like Facebook, to review the content itself, to contribute, to even make your own content.

In our classroom discussions, we discussed how this concept of social media being so unique, as people constantly find new ways to explore the capabilities of what they can accomplish in such a space; from conducting strange or confronting ‘social experiments‘, to evolving different kinds of niche jokes and a style of humour, to just discussing theories and stories of things like their favourite TV series and hobbies. From this, my partner Sem and I looked into Instagram stories, and how through a medium where people usually share parts of their lives through, a story could be told by manipulating the limits and restrictions of videos posted; seeing them as ways to segment the story and add new parts to the ‘whole’. We discussed the differences between a social media site like Instagram versus a more interactive site like Facebook or reddit. We saw Reddit as an example as an interface where a post can receive a whole host of comments, which individually, those comments can gain responses of their own, creating their own ‘thread‘, thus turning one post into a crossroads leading off down many branching out pathways, tracks, side streets and alleyways. This idea of a community built on such posts differs greatly from the idea of Instagram, where people just post photos, or short videos as a more one-way interaction from creator to viewer; showing off rather than trying to spark large scale debates or conversations. 

Sem and I decided to test the interactive capabilities of a more one-way interactive platform by posting up an SOS of sorts on my Instagram story, similar to a ‘social experiment’ mentioned above, detailing a short story where my bag is swapped and I try to find the person that has my bag, while being followed by a mysterious and possibly dangerous person. During the sequential videos, we plan to call out to my ‘audience’, with the intent of getting responses to my plight, either trying to help me find my bag, or inquiring for my safety.

For this experiment, we have to think about how we plan to record and store this series of videos uploaded to my story, and also work around the fact that videos can be no longer than around 10 seconds. Because of these limitations, we also have to consider the length of our ‘story’, and how to gather safe responses from our audiences without inciting panic. We don’t want them to call the police to help me from some creepy ‘stranger’. I believe this experiment will involve a lot of trial and error, but I hope it does gather some sort of response from our viewers and friends.