In the lecture today, an interesting point came up about, are our lives stories/ narratives. The symposiums contention was no, some people hesitated before agreeing. I can see why. Sometimes you feel like its all been one big story. It’s disillusioning to be walking down the street with your iPod playing, then realising that nobody else can hear your music but you; its not like in the movies (Unless you are one of those obnoxious people who have their music on full blast…. i feel sorry for your eardrums.) I guess you realise that life isn’t as planned and magical as a story, some people believe everything happens for a reason, like in a story, but i don’t think that’s true. If you or a loved one went thorough hardships, those hardships weren’t necessarily there for a particular reason, but you may possibly become a stronger person out of it. That just depends on how you deal with life. There is also a huge possibility that it could emotionally cripple you, but you don’t say it happened for a reason then, right? “It happened so they can be in emotional pain forever,” yeah, nah. I guess a lot of these beliefs come down to religion, but the main point is that in a constructed story/ narrative, everything happens for a reason, it has to. In life it doesn’t, you can make a story out of events from your past, but you never know what may determine the future, and sometimes the future isn’t determined by anything in your story.

It was also discussed, how does reality TV fit into this. It’s life, but could it be documentary? narrative?  Arguably its not even real life, it is constructed. I remember on America’s Next Top Model (a show i used to watch religiously), a girl saying that while the cameras weren’t rolling, they were not aloud to speak or interact with each other whatsoever. Every interaction they had had to be on film. It may protect against important interactions being unrecorded, but it probably made the girls uncomfortable and meant they couldn’t develop friendships naturally. I imagine in shows such as Big Brother, its is very much the same, yes there are camera rolling 24/7, but there are so many constructed elements that we don’t see. Last night i was in the control room for a live TV show, only observing, but i was amazed at how many things are going on. Productions like this are far less intimate than they appear on screen, its easy to forget that.

I think what i understand from this reading by Marie-Laure Ryan, is that narrative is something that people can all recognise and follow, and people are able to identify a narrative when they see it. However, people are less likely to have the same view of what a story is. Therefore, the writer of the story can never know how their reader will think of it. Also, there are particular conditions in order for there to be a narrative. Spatial, Temporal, Mental and Formal and Pragmatic dimensions. So narrative is the physical constructon of the story, and the story is the mental representation of the narrative that the reader finds.

In Ian Bogost’s writing, he explains how lists are used in narrative. They can create structure where there was none before, but they also disrupt the fluidity of the piece, as lists generally are to be heard and not felt. Even when lists are used in poetry, that can take away from the lyrical, fluid ability of the piece.

Being a Cinema student, I did do this reading last year, so a lot of this stuff had already been discussed, but here are a few interesting points I wanted to note down again:

One of the main ways cause and effect can occur on film is through characters. their decisions are influenced by various factors and we see how everything they do and every way they react is motivated by something. We also get a sense of time in films, and can estimate how much time we are watching, and when. We can even recognise when we have moved back or forward in time, and returned, just by visual elements and the timing within the story. Do not simply ‘start’ a story, begin it. Also, i really want to try an experimental, abstract film, I think it would be a lot of fun. Instead of focusing on conventions and story, you can focus more on tone and concept. Concept stuff is fun, I love it. I should do more conceptual stuff, actually…

In the Integrated media lecture this week, I learned that I shouldn’t think about what my creation should be and just focus on what I’m making. Labels can wait for afterwards. There are far more possibilities open to you when you focus on all of the things something can do, rather than what it means…. This was interesting as it was directly after the Film/ TV-1 lecture, where Jasmine taught us that the best way to write something is to begin with genre, then in integrated media, Adrian said explicitly ‘don’t begin with genre.’ Meanwhile, Jasmine laughed and put her head in her hands, knowing the two lectures had just completely contradicted each other. But let me try to make sense of this:

In screenwriting, a practice that has clear boundaries of what makes something interesting and ‘good,’ deciding genre early is important. While you are being creative in the way you are telling the story, it makes the process easier to give yourself some constraints, such as sticking to a particular genre. This ensures your story is consistent.

Alternatively, I would say integrated media is a more experimental subject. The media we are creating is not limited to one particular discipline. In this aspect, setting these boundaries can be a hindrance. Deciding on platforms, meanings and categories too early can inhibit your ability to think outside the box and create something innovative freely. While there is still creativity involved in screenwriting, there is always a box that you are in; the box of ‘screenwriting.’  So in this way, I see it is possible for both statements to be correct. In screenwriting, deciding genre first is helpful and creates a better end product, in integrated media, deciding genre early can inhibit creativity and be a hindrance.

So i was reading other peoples blog posts, as any normal teenager would do in their spare time, and i was reading Shannen’s post about the week 2 reading. She mentioned various types of film that YouTube is populated with, including the “dodgy recording of a concert you went to the other night.”

I had already talked about the cat video side, and the professional side, but yes! i forgot about this side! The fan-cam side! And, this is important, because apart from actual intended documentaries which are published on the site, this is the interactive documentary side of YouTube. Okay, so every film can be considered documentary because it is a product of the society it was created in, i know, but, this is the closest to ‘traditional’ documentary in an interactive way that i can think of right now. People taking direct footage of an event and uploading it. Although in most cases they and other people never watch it again, so they just wasted  a large chunk of the concert experience trying to film it- ANYWAY, i have already talked about this in the past. Actually, if nobody else watches it, what is it? what does that mean? …I really don’t have the energy to think about these questions right now.