Now we have allocated roles and set out what everyone needs to do. We each have to create 5 fake Facebook accounts for the party photos and event, I have to find a diary and make a plan of how to go about it.

We have also decided as a group to cut out the webisodes of the point of view of the mother and the neighbour. We have cut out everything that is ‘fake’ and not supposed to be interpreted as real life media. I think we are better off doing this because we had a lot on our plate for just a few weeks, and making not one but two or there short films is a lot to take on. Locations were also a problem as we couldn’t find two houses next to each other that we could use.

With the diary I am planning to connect the fake facebook accounts people are making with the people Connor mentions in his diary. I will create personalities around them and significant histories with some, which could create another pushing off point for the Facebook event.

Inspired by the Elliot Rodger Massacre in the U.S our project looks at a socially awkward teenage boy by the name of Connor who chronicles his hatred for the world he lives in and more specifically targets the kids at his school. He ends up going on a rampage, murdering a bunch of other teenagers at a party in which he wasn’t invited to. We are looking at the psychology behind Connor and how the perceptions of other people affected him.

Firstly we will construct a public opinion about him through a news article, highlighting the facts of the murderous event. He won’t be named specifically in this article, but the journalist will signify what sort of person it takes to commit a crime like this. Then, in a “tell-all” A-Current-Affair type piece, we will show an interview will those that knew him, perhaps his mother and some class mates. This will indicate his odd and aggressive behaviour and perhaps delve into the psychological world of Connor. In addition, his personal Youtube Channel and diary will also be mentioned, to really explain to the audience about Connor’s mental state.

On his Youtube Channel, Connor will talk to the world, explaining his problems about how he feels ignored and teased at school. He will show signs of aggression but none of his plans of murder will be revealed. If audiences haven’t read his diary yet, they could assume his acts of violence were merely an outburst, because it is in his diary that he outlines his plans for revenge. In his diary we see a more personal side of Connor. We really get an understanding of the inner workings of a psychopath and how he manages to blame everyone else for his own problems. We are thinking of included profiles on particular people at his school he has a hatred for, much like the diary from the television series “The Fall” (2013 – ). The diary will also have a lot of parts stuck into it, drawing information from a lot of different places. We have taken inspiration from J.J Abrams’ “S”. The diary will serve a similar function as Elliot Rodgers’ Manifesto did, allowing audiences to see what went on through his head.

At this point we are also thinking of including a couple of webisodes to further display how others perceived him. The webisodes will be from an elderly neighbour’s perspective, restricted to their house because of their old age so they notice things that others don’t and his own mother who also notices odd behaviour from her son. One night when he is out she goes into his room finding the diary and realising his plans for murder. Only it will be too late because he will already have begun murdering people at the house party.

The house party will have it’s own event on Facebook with people uploading photos in real time, where we see Connor in the back of some photos, and some people lying in the bush thought to be intoxicated but actually have been murdered. This will be the only content form the night available.

We are splitting up the roles and the work evenly, according to our interests and skill levels. I am really interested in creating the diary as I am fascinated in the psychology of serial killers and have the ability to write from the perspective of someone with murderous intent.

Today we shared out pitches in class for the transmedia project.

A project that really stood out to me was “Dodging the Bullet” about cat fishing on social media. It’s a topic that’s really relevant in today’s society and that I find really fascinating. It’s a modern day thriller. I love how social media is used, and the screen captures of a computer tells the story. It reminded me a lot of a trailer for a new film filmed completing using screen captures and Skype videos called ‘Unfriended’. (CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE TRAILER). Another plus was the music and the suspense created throughout the hovering over buttons and such. Really well presented!

In terms of our pitch, I wish we had a little more time just to make our parts a little more cohesive. I do agree with a lot of the constructive criticism that our group was given. I do feel like we have a bit too much content and could do with cutting some out. I guess it’s hard to make everyone in a large group happy, so putting something in that everyone wants was an easy way to satisfy everyone. However I think we all should have a meeting and discuss what cab be culled. Personally I agree with the idea of scrapping the video logs as I think that can all be said in the diary (yes I am a bit biased because I’m excited for this section of our project). However I think it would add an air of mystery to our project if we get rid of Connor all together.

 

This week Daniel brought in J.J Abrams novel (not sure if it is really?) called S. We were working on our final projects and I’m fascinated with the idea of creating a diary/scrapbook for someone, where all the pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. That is pretty much what “S” is. There are a few stories overlapping as people converse through graffiti in a library book. Every little detail of the book was so fascinating down to the time stamps on the back cover. This book is a whole new genre of stories that acts a lot more like a database than an actual novel. It has a collection of news articles, hand written letters and notes, post cards, compasses and so much more to guide the audience through a story. And because of all it’s different interactive parts the books remains nonlinear. For instance I opened the book to a random page with a note sticking out and read it. The book feels like you don’t have to go through it chronologically to understand what is going on. And even if you do, do you read the typed text or graffiti text first? How can the author control that? I hope this is the future of stories because I think it’s a lot more fun trying to piece things together than being spoon fed sequential events.

Our transmedia project will tell the story of Elliot Roger’s Californian shooting spree where he attacked women out of his anger for rejection. We will focus on his psychological state leading up to the event in 4 media platforms:

Film

News article

Soundtrack/Song

Diary/blog

 

Each piece of medium will add another element to the story, either informing of what happened, or an insight to his psychological state and thoughts behind his actions.

 

Members:

Me

Kylie

James

Mia

Kevin

 

5 RULES:

1. Endeavour to come to class.

2. Good communication.

3. Even contribution.

4. Adhering to our time line.

5. Willing to offer opinions /advice.

The cult reading resonated with me as I am a huge fan of a lot of cult films such as “Back to the Future” and “Hot Rod”. These two films are similar in the sense that they use light humour that can be quoted in many random circumstances. However, the “Back to the Future” franchise has created a whole world as Eco states in his ‘Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’ article where as ‘Hot Rod’ doesn’t seem to follow Eco’s formula for a cult movie. He claims that creating a ‘furnished world’ gives the audience a world of their own to quote and learn about, to participate in trivia games and participate in a set of beliefs.

Although I found Umberto Eco’s article very captivating and insightful, I have to disagree with a lot of it. Yes a lot of cult films are because they are able to be unhinged and dissected with many ideas and an ‘[incoherent] philosophy of composition’, I believe a cult film can be created without all this. Movies like ‘Hot Rod’ and ‘Stepbrothers’, even if they didn’t do so well at the Box-Office, they continue to be quoted and celebrated by millions around the world. It’s not because it provides a fully furnished complex world with a collection of ideas, it’s simply because it is a sense of humour that only certain people identify with, thus connecting people who enjoy these films.

The same way two people who discover they listen to the same band will start comparing their favourite songs, people who find out they both like something like ‘Hot Rod’ and other Andy Samberg films/tv shows will start quoting scenes.

Gone Girl is a modern-day thriller novel written by American author Gillian Flynn that challenges traditional story telling “rules”. It’s specific genre “Domestic Noir” was a term that only came about in 2013 (1). The novel follows the lives of a married couple, Nick and Amy, dealing with life and love from the beginning to after the first exciting few years of marriage. When Amy goes missing on their 5th year anniversary, uncertainty surrounds Nick as to his involvement with Amy’s disappearance and that is where the novel’s suspense comes from.

Firstly, the novel is not structured in a linear and chronological order, immediately defying the traditional story telling values. The novel requires a lot more involvement from the reader as it skips back and forward depending on whose thoughts we are reading. The novel is split between Nick and Amy. We hear Nick’s thoughts about the present day while we read Amy’s diary from years ago, learning more and more about their relationship. As the two sides are told, it is up to the reader to notice the overlaps. It is up to the reader to compare how each person interpreted the moment, and decide who is telling the truth and who is lying. This adhere’s to Pixar’s Andrew Stanton’s unifying theory of 2 + 2. He claims that the audience want to ‘work for their meal’ (2). This is exactly what Gone Girl does. It hints at things and insinuates that Nick is involved in the disappearance of his sweetheart wife Amy. The reader is lead through three-quarters of the book, slowly being convinced that Nick Dunne is guilty. Flynn does this by subtly portraying him as a lazy, bored, greedy, cheating husband. The reader thinks the novel is going one way, the ‘finish the sentence’, assuming Nick is guilty, and then Flynn turns the story on it’s head(3). Everything you think you know about the characters is challenged. We finally truly meet the personality of the novel’s main character, Amy. Truly meeting a character this far into the novel also challenges traditional story telling values.

Arguably, Gone Girl could be considered as a database, just as much as it is considered a narrative. It is a collection of thoughts from different people scattered out of chronological order amongst pages. It does not follow the classic ‘cause-and-effect’ structure of ‘ordered events’(4). However, Amy’s diary on it’s own and Nick’s thoughts on his own can each be seen as narratives. They each tell a clearly told story with the conventional beginning, middle and end. When put together they become a collection of stories forming a database of narratives to expand on the story. The audience finds out more this way and it heightens the experience. Much like how transmedia projects work, as Andrea Phillips describes the ‘stories’ and ‘interwoven’, ‘each piece can be consumed on its own, and you’ll still come away with the idea that you were given a complete story’(5).

 

 

 

 

1 Elizabeth Haynes, posting on A.J.Waines blog, August 2014

2 Andrew Stanton, TED: “The Clues to a Great Story”, Feb 2012.

3 Andrew Stanton, TED: “The Clues to a Great Story”, Feb 2012.

4 Lev Manovich, ‘The Database’, (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998).

5 Andrea Phillips, ‘The Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling’, May 2012.

We played around with remixing stories this week – different from the usual remixing music and sometimes videos that I’m used to. (a great mix of both – CLICK HERE)

In our peer groups we created a simple story (ours was guy and girl on a trip, pick up a hitch hiker who ends up killing them) and we have to completely turn it on it’s head (guy and girl meet a hostel owner, who takes them to a cult night in the woods and they get killed).

This was a really fun technique on how to jazz up a plain story. Wanting to be a scriptwriter in my future, I come up with a lot of stories, and I find a lot have been done before or are just too boring and unoriginal. Using this technique made it quite easy to get the creative juices flowing and spark ideas.

This week made me think differently about story writing. I always tried to be original, and when I found something too similar to my idea I would feel like I had failed and had to continue to make it even more unoriginal. But the video we watched in class made me realise that nowadays nothing is original. Humanity has been around for long enough that everything has been thought of. Especially with over 100 years of cinema, a lot has been filmed. The video by Kirby Ferguson stated that “Creation requires influence”. He pointed out that even Star Wars was influenced by plenty of films that came before it. Especially the opening credits I always thought was original but actually came from the film Flash Gordon.

Back to this week’s project, each peer in the group had to take a part of Transmedia-ing our idea up. I wrote the script, and my partners wrote a short story and a marketing campaign. (See Below).

 

It was also quite interesting to see how different people interpreted the idea we came up with together.

 

  

 

The TED speech we watched in class was incredibly inspiring. When I was a little girl I used to draw cartoons with the goal of one day working for Disney Pixar (pushed by my father), so I have always felt a strong connection to films like The Little Mermaid and A Bug’s Life. I now still want to work for Disney Pixar, but on the story side. I wan’t to create stories that anyone can watch regardless of their age and feel connected to.

It was that sense of wonder that Andrew Stanton mentioned in his speech for TED that reminded me why I ever started wanting to work in this industry. My favourite films (as mentioned in class) are those that transport you to another world, and show you something that you could never imagine happening in your own life. Back To The Future, Indiana Jones, Avatar.

I loved his idea of teasing the audience.

“Don’t give them 4, give them 2+2.”

Audience’s love to work for their meal. I find myself being drawn to these stories a lot more. Ones that are crafted to make the audience work, to finish the sentence. One of my favourite genres of novels are murder mystery and that is mainly why. I love trying to work out what has happened before the characters do. I love trying to work out what the author was thinking, all their sly red herrings, all their subtle hints at the killer. Even though Stanton was referring to Pixar films, I believe this theory can be applied to every genre.

It has really inspired me to go out looking for hidden gems of stories that are in everyday life. He teaches to capture truth from your own experiences and express values you have felt.

“There isn’t anyone you can’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.”