After a few short weeks of identifying narrative techniques and cross-platform storytelling, this week sees the first real commencement of our own transmedia project, which is titled ‘CONNOR’.  Kylie and I ran auditions for the title role of Connor; an outsider who is bullied and excluded throughout his schooling, although he brings much of this upon himself.  Connor’s character is arrogant and narcissistic, which only helps to further his segregation from his peers.  He is also highly misogynistic, blaming girls for dating ‘immature’ and ‘unintelligent’ jocks over himself.  Both the character and narrative draw from the murders committed by American teen Elliot Rodgers; though we hope that our way of communicating Connor’s plight to audiences will the unique factor.  The aim is for our narrative to spill into the real world in real time as the story unfolds, largely via the use of social media, including Connor’s own YouTube vlogs, and a Facebook Event that will include a photo album from the night Connor decides to claim his retribution.  Other platforms we plan to include are three short films, from the perspective of those around Connor, a highly personal private diary of Connor’s, that will build to the eventual murders Connor will commit, as well as a series of news articles, which will be used to direct audiences through the narrative.

In particular, two actors who auditioned for the role of Connor stood out; their names were Nero and Thomas.  Both actors were highly impressive in their improvised performance, which was recorded in the style of a YouTube Vlog.  Both actors had clearly done their research on our narrative, both drawing the connection between Connor and Rodgers, without being prompted.   It will doubtless be an incredibly tough decision to make, and as a group, we will re-watch the audition tapes before making a final judgement.

In class, we had a guest lecture from Dr. Troy Innocent, a world builder, iconographer and transmedia artist.  Though his projects he discussed were on a larger scale than our projects could possibly ever hope to achieve, Troy stressed that the audience needed a reward for completing and participating in our projects.  Obviously, with our projects being extremely low budget, this reward would not be a physical one; rather we need to provide our audiences with a sense of self-satisfaction once they find each interlocking narrative platform.  To me, this means that our narrative should not be a complete one, therefore allowing audiences to piece the story together for themselves, so that not only will it prove satisfactory, but also hopefully help in keeping them actively engaged throughout the entire work.