Will89’s Weblog

Right due to my operation on my knee, I haven’t been able to keep my blog up to date, so here is the my first blog of the new year. 

Looking back on the Narrative Project, I left my group to manufacture (if that is the right term to use) the Seafront interactive story, which you can view all the planning process and sections in my pervious posts on this blog. However as I wasn’t there to help over see the manufacturing of the story, I felt that the group was some what falling apart as they didn’t know what they were doing. At this point I would like to say this project has been a big experience working with a group to make this interactive narrative project, as I found out that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, trying to organise how the group works is a difficult task in it self. On the up side though once I got back to Uni and sorted the group out, by figuring out what they had achieved in my absence, we managed to get on track and complete the project, which has been uploaded to the Bournemouth Uni sever.

If you would like to view our interactive story called Seafront here is the following address to go to:

www.impsever.bournemouth.ac.uk/~baimp1D2

Just to finish off, here’s a quick evaluation of the aspects I would change and add to this project:

•  Create a Users guide to Seafront as it is vague about how to use it 
•  Tidy up a few things on the flash side
•  Possible make it more interactive for the user 
•  Less chronological in some senses
•  Making sure that everyone is on the right idea and knows what they are doing, instead of change parts of project so it doesn’t make sense
• Lastly making sure that everyone is happy about the work that is going on

Here is the shot list to accompany the storyboards that I have created and posted up earlier. I would like to credit Tom Wickaman for creating this shot list for our project.

Camera Shot List

·      RED = Video

·      BLACK = Still image

 

Shot No.

1.    ES – Looking down seafront towards pier.

2.    LS – Looking towards path from pier courtyard.

3.    POV – Walking along the path.

4.    WS – Looking down path.

5.    POV/Low Angle – Looking up at kidnapper.

6.    CU –  Kidnapper’s hands tearing up paper.

7.    CU – Kidnapper stuffing paper into pocket.

8.    CU – Piece of paper falling out pocket onto floor.

9.    POV – Walking further down path.

10. WS – Looking down path.

11. POV – Camera moves about as girl is grabbed by kidnapper.

12. POV – Camera looks down at floor as girls shoe falls off.

13. CU – Kidnappers hand as he bins a piece of paper.

14. POV – Walking further down the path.

15. WS – Looking down path.

16. CU – Looking down at bottles.

17. POV/Low Angle – Looking up at kidnappers face as he drinks from bottle.

18. CU – Kidnapper’s hand putting note into bottle.

19. POV – Walking down path.

20. WS – Looking down path, beach huts off to the side.

21. POV – As girl is thrown into beach hut.

22. POV/Low Angle – Looking up at kidnapper closing beach hut door.

23. WS – Of beach huts.

 

User helps:

1.    WS – Shows all beach huts, picture fades out.

User doesn’t help:

1.    CU – Of users hands, screwing up paper and throwing it into the bin.

2.    CU – Looking at newspaper article.

3.    WS – Of beach huts. Taped off by police. Fades out. 

Here are the storyboards that I have create for the our narrative project. These storyboards shows the rough basics of our project and how the narrative plot turns out. Each shot shows a visualisation with a description of the camera angle and also how the audio will be represented. So here are the storyboards for our project called Sea front: 

Also here is a detail version of the Synopsis Of Idea to accompany the post of Synopsis Of Idea that I just posted earlier, which explains in detail about each process and decisions that the User will make within the narrative project:

Title of the product: Sea Front

Slogan: Every Action, Has A Reaction. It’s Your Call !

·      The User find her/himself walking along the seafront – early morning

·      While walking, come across a piece of ripped up paper with writing on it – on the ground.

·      When the user picks up the ripped up paper, the user experience a flash back of a kidnapper ripping up a found letter in front of the girl that he has kidnapped but drops the first piece of the letter on the ground.

·      The User returns to reality and carries walking along the seafront further, till the User stops – This is where the User has a couple of choices find to the next piece of the letter – i.e. a bin, a vending machine, etc.

·      The User experiences another flashback when picking up the next piece of the note, showing the kidnapped girl being grabbed/dragged by force by the kidnapper, as this is happening, she looses one of her shoes, but she sees the kidnapper putting part of the letter in the bin.

·      The User returns to reality again and carries on down the seafront path and finds the lost shoe and take it as evidence. The User come across a pile of empty beer bottle. The User smashes the bottles and finds the next bit on the letter and picks it up.

·      This causes the third flashback showing the girls perspective of the kidnapper who is getting more abusive and drunk, as he has been drinking. The kidnapper grabs another piece of the ripped out letter out of his pocket and stuffs it into the beer bottle and throws it drunkard onto the beach and laughs at the girl.

·      The User returns to reality and carries on along the seafront and come to a beach hut, which has a piece of the kidnapped girls clothing caught on the wooden banister with blood on it. At this point the User has a look around the beach hut and finds a pair of keys on the floor and searches for any another signs for the next piece of the letter. 

·      The User find the next piece of the letter caught under a wooden slat. When the User picks it up, triggers the next flash back of the kidnapper throwing the girl into the beach hut, she catches part of her top on a wooden banister, ripping part of the top off, which has a bit of her blood on it. As she sees the kidnapper closing the door and before hearing him locking the door, she sees him dropping the last part of the letter out of his pocket and then the noise of keys dropping as the sound of footsteps fade out of earshot.

·      The User returns to reality and after finding the pair of keys and the last piece of the letter and piecing it with other three parts of the letter, reads it – voice over of the girl who has been kidnapped narrating it.

·      Now the User has a life or death choice to make, whether to find the kidnapped girl even though the police could frame him for being part of the kidnapping of the girl or take the cowards way out because of fear and the fear of being framed for the kidnapping.

 

If the User act upon what the letter:

·      The User steps away from the beach hut, to view other beach huts along the seafront and has to make a choice on which beach hut, the User thinks the kidnapped girl is being held prisoner by trying to unlock the padlocks on each of the beach huts with the pair of keys that the User has found.

·      Once the User unlocks the right beach hut, The User finds the girl and saves her. This will result in the User have successfully completing this interactive product and a message will appear on the screen saying: The choice you made that day means that someone can live another day.

 

If the User doesn’t do anything about the letter:

·      The User walks away, crumpling up the letter and throwing it away, because of the fear to act upon what has been found and the fear of being framed for the kidnapping.

·      Next the User will see an image of a newspaper article about a kidnapped girl found dead in a beach hut on the seafront, this will transition into footage of the beach hut tapped up with police tap to show the crime scene.

·      Finally the User will be faded out of the product, with a message appearing saying something like: The choice you have made today have come at a cost.

 

Right once again the stupid idiot that I am forgot to publish the synopsis of idea that  I completed two weeks ago, so here it is: 

Our interactive narrative story take elements of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, for instance, we will be focusing on the breadcrumb trail aspect for our story.

The interactive story is set on a sea front path in the early morning, where the User enters the prospective of a person walking along the path.  As the User experiences the person walking along the path, the User will come across, part of a ripped up letter, which has some writing written on it, asking for help.

As the User picks up the part of the letter, the User will experience a telepathical flashback of the past, set on the same path the User is walking along, looking through the eyes of a girl who has been kidnapped and who was the one who originally wrote the letter.

The aim of these flashbacks is to show the User, past events linking with the pieces of the ripped up letter. After the User see the flashback and returns to reality, the User then embarks upon this trail to find the other pieces of the letter.

The User will have to interact make choice for the plot to unfold by having to find rest of the letter, experiencing more flashbacks with every piece of letter the User finds to understand the events of the girl being kidnapped.

Also gathering clues and items to help solving the location of the kidnapped girl. Once the User finds all the clues and items, the User has a life or death choice to make, whether to find the kidnapped girl even though the police could frame him for being part of the kidnapping of the girl or take the cowards way out because of fear and the fear of being framed for the kidnapping.

In our first week of the project, me and tom decided to sit down and discuss about ideas for our group project, over a nice cold pints of beer at the student bar. As time past we came up, with a list of fairy tales and folks stories that we knew of, which were the following:

 

• Goldilocks
• Little Red Ridding Hood
• Three Little Pigs
• Humpty Dumpty
• Gingerbread man
• Jack & The Bean stork
• Rumple Stiltskin
• Hansel & Gretel
• Pied Piper 

Now looking back at the brief, it said that we were to choose a well known fairy tale or folks story as a foundation for our interactive product and that it didn’t matter that are story ended up being completely different from the original tale, but had to say how it evolved from the original tale to the final story. 

This gave us the chance to modernise and change the story to how we wanted it to be like, but still having those key elements of the original tale that we still needed to decided on. 

So after another pint each we discuss more about each of the tales in turn and decided how we could adapt them to our liking. In the end we choose to looking into more detail about the following two tale:

• Little Red Ridding Hood
• Hansel & Gretel

We both started to talk about how the tales were structured and broke them down to their basics, so we could have a better understanding of how each of the narratives worked. After we talked about them in detail and realised that everyone was probably going choose the tale of Little Red Ridding Hood, for the obvious reason that everyone one knew it and would be pretty easy to do. Us two decided to be completely different and do Hansel and Gretel. 

At point I thought we were barking madding to be honest, because of one simple thing. 

Where the hell are we going to find an edible house made of sweeties in Bournemouth ! 

However we did not reflect upon that to much as we would change that aspect of our story, but we would take this element of the story and change it. Also we thought that we would use the bread crumb aspect of Hansel and Gretel as our main focus point for our interactive narrative story.

By the time me and the others in the group have fully discussed this idea of Hansel & Gretel and have sorted the final idea, I will post up synopsis of the idea on here for anyone to view and also the flowchart that explain the interactivity parts of the story.    

Here is the production schedule, which myself and my group members will be working towards:

Week 1:

 

• Research Into Fairy Tales
• Choose A Fairy Tale As Foundation
• A Synopsis Of The Idea
• Assign Production Roles

Week 2:

 

• Story Development Plan
• Flowchart
• Storyboard
• Get Visual Samples

Week 3:

 

• Create Presentation

Week 4:

 

• Pitch Presentation (14^th January)
• Capturing Video Footage
• Gathering Audio Content
• Editing
• Start Programming XHTML/PHP

 Week 5:

 

• Continue Editing Video & Audio
• Continue Programming XHTML/PHP

Week 6:

 

• Finish Product
• Testing
• Upload Finished Product 

Right the first week of this project was a bit bumpy as we didn’t know where all the group members were, however that little issue has been all cleared up now and finally we have our group and I believe that good things will result at the end of this project with the work we will produce. anyway in our brief we had to assign production roles within the group and here is what myself and my other group members will be doing:

Myself:

 

• Programme writer/producer

Tom:

 

• Video Director
• Camera & Lighting
• Editor

Sadie:

 

• Graphics Designer
• Assistant Audio Director
• Assistant Editor

Joe:

 

• Audio Director

Dan:

 

• Production Manager
• Programme Director 

 

Focusing on what my role, which is Programme Writer/Producer, I will be mainly helping the group to kick start this project off, with the following:

• Creating a synopsis of the idea.
• Contributing to the story development plan.
• Starting off the storyboard for the narrative.
• Constructing a flowchart showing how the narrative works.
• Lastly creating a production schedule.  

Hopefully by doing this much work for the group and contributing to a high level, will be recognised before I leave for my operation in January. 

Also I will putting the presentation together for the group to pitch to our seminar group, which will take place the second day back from Christmas holidays. This presentation will count for 20% of our final mark, for our project.

For the presentation we have to fill a assessment criteria of the following:

• Quality of the idea and relevance to the brief.
• Ability of the group to articulate clearly and concisely, the concept and proposed production details.
• Demonstration of the understanding of the processes and needs for production of the project.
• Finally quality of the presentation assets in terms of the digital and written materials. 

So it is up to me to produce a high quality electronic presentation for my group, before the 11th of December which is a week on Thursday, which isn’t long away.

O Bugger !

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 !