Assignment 4 Reflection and Demo

Our project achieved what our last one attempted to do, which was to give the audience control over how they perceive a scene. I am very happy with how these previous two projects developed, and how the things we learned from assignment 3 positively influenced how we decided to approach assignment 4. With this project, we did a much better job of taking advantage of the possibilities offered to us by online spaces. By using Eko Studio we were able to create a flowing piece of entertainment but also allow viewers to choose how it unfolded in real time, which was the goal from the beginning of assignment 3.

The footage was filmed very nicely by Trista, who ensured that the framing, timing and positioning within each shot was exactly the same, and this was the fundamental element that our entire project was going to rely on. The lighting was consistent between all three locations, and they were all tonally neutral, which is what we needed in order for our goal of making an interpretive piece to work. Something I think that could be improved if we were to revisit it is to make the footage one uninterrupted take instead of using cuts and edits added in post production. Some parts of the footage had to be sped up of trimmed to ensure that the movements seen in each scene were synchronised. Because of the circumstances and restrictions on the day of filming, getting the timing right was harder than initially thought, but definitely something that can be fixed if revisited. I think a project like this would also benefit from having more locations and movements, as well as an extended run time. Filming a short film in this style would be extremely interesting to watch and interact with, and would better demonstrate how modular filmmaking could work. This obviously would be extremely time and resource consuming as it would involved shooting and scoring the same film three times, but I think it’s definitely something I would like to attempt in the future.

The audio aspect of this project is something that I really wanted to develop further based on the feedback of our last assessment. I wanted to write an original piece of music that smoothly transitioned as the viewer changed scenes, and I half succeeded. Because of limitations in the Eko Studio software that we were using, we were not able to find a way to allow both the visuals and audio to be swapped; we were limited to visuals only. Luckily, since I ensured that all the songs were synchronised (much like the footage was), I was able to blend them into one single cohesive melody that plays over the footage. While this isn’t what we wanted our final product to be, it still has a huge effect on how the footage comes across, and it is also interesting to hear how three different modular parts can come together to become one single tune. However I did edit a demo video showing how the concept could ideally work, and it came across very well, and also got a good reaction from the class. Before we present our project next week I would like to keep looking into ways to make the audio modular as well, because I think it will add a significant amount of freedom to those who interact with it. Another thing I am happy with in regards to the audio is how emotionally subjective it is. Different people who have listened to it have said that the music makes them all feel different ways; happy, sad, peaceful etc. This is very nice to hear as it means this project is less dictative of how the audience is supposed to feel in comparison to assignment 3, and since the goal of our project was to create media that viewers could interpret however they want, I think this shows that we succeeded in that regard.

Our project is definitely something that is web specific, and it shows that there is untapped space out there for a site that can support and host the kind of content we want to make. Our project was slightly limited by the platforms we currently have access to, and I would personally like to see a platform get made that operated similar to how the demo video we created functions. Being able to swap between camera angles is already something that is being implemented on Youtube and live-streaming sites such as Twitch, and if more options were given to creators that allowed them to make content like we intended to make, we would see some very interesting new projects and films that we haven’t seen before. Because of the nature of our project it is absolutely web specific; the modularity of it isn’t something that can be achieved effectively any other way, but it is definitely something that can be implemented into modern sites, and I think giving audiences this small form of interactivity is a good way to keep them engaged without compromising the intentions of the original content.

While there are certainly ways our project could be taken further, I am very happy with what we have been able to come up with, and am excited to further develop the concept on a bigger scale in the future.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g7WS3T_V25mt-SX1gFX2_3o82MiDn7s3/view

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