Will89’s Weblog

Right, at last after the nice week off uni i have had off, I have started the next unit, which is Narratives. This unit is based on mainly group work and seeing how we cope with a larger project, which will involve learning new software, for example XHTML/PHP (o bugger comes to my mind about here!) and also seeing what the end results will be from using a wider range of media (meaning our finished product). 

The brief that all of us were given states that we have to choose a well known fairy or folk story as the starting point for conceiving an interactive narrative. This means that within our group we will have to do research into fairy tails and folk stories we know and break them down to see what structures and elements they have, so that we can then develop, script, design and produce them. we have been told that it doesn’t matter if our story ends up completely different from the original story/tale, for instance if my group decided to do Hansel & Gretel, I very much doubt that we are going to find a edible house made of sweeties in Bournemouth, hence why changes may have to be made. If any changes are to be made, we have to explain which elements of the original tale/story have been used or changed, in order to justify the finished product.  

A quick example so you can understand what all this idiotic babble is about.

If my group were to choose the story of Goldilocks, this could be used as a metaphor for a modern day story about a burger breaking in to somebody’s house. There are three stages during the burglary that are shown through a combination of gameplay and interactive narrative choices, for instance the burglar either gets caught or escapes with the goods.

Now this new project seems to have exciting prospects and having a bloody good time also, by making fools of our selves, however as this unit is timetabled as having 3 weeks before and after the christmas holidays. I have to have an operation on my knee because the idiot, that I am, tore the cartilage out of my knee joint and needs an operation to get it fixed (O joys !!!!). This means that I will not be here to help with the production side of this project which pisses me off greatly, but my role in this project will be the Programme Writer/Producer. This means that I will be writing up ideas and developing them and also help with the presentation which all the groups in the course have to do, which contributes 20% to our final mark. 

This presentation has to show the following work done by the group:

- a synopsis of the idea 

- a story development plan 

- a storyboard and visual samples

- a flowchart showing the construction of the narrative

- individual production roles

- a production schedule

And guess who has to do all of it before the 12th of December ? 

Me ! 

Hopefully by doing all this work, this should show that i have contributed to project well enough, so that I can sod off to have my operation. 

Yet there is still a slite problem, as there is only two people out of the 5 in the group who are doing the project at the moment. but one person gets back from an operation on Monday which is good, which will raise the number to 3 people doing the project, yet we know that the forth member of the group is away sick and the fifth member of our group has not been seen for a couple of weeks now, also when I leave the group will be back down to 2 people again. 

So four words come clearly to my mind 

“We Are Kinda Screwed !”

However I think with the people who I am working with at the moment, I can say that we can definitely pull this off. 

He Who Dares Wins ! or in our case They Who Dares Wins !