Week 11 hits and all of a sudden the pressure mounts and the stress begins.  It doesn’t help that our photo shoot with Connor fell through on Thursday either.  But a good team is able to work around issues together and revert to Plan B, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.  Kylie is putting her photography and editing skills to good use and attempt to Photoshop Connor into the background of pre-existing party photos, after Kevin instead took some shots of him in front of a green screen yesterday.  Kylie picked out which photos she would include Connor in, and sketched the positions and angles he should be in, with Kevin replicating her list in front of the screen.

(UPDATE:  Here’s the first few examples Kylie has produced.  I think they look fantastic, and likely have turned out better than our original plan to create a fake party with guests)

My news articles are taking shape, and I’ve decided to use a fake newspaper generator to display my articles with.  Although they look great, the generator does raise a few problems.  Once created, the article is downloaded and saved as an image file.  This means that the articles will not be able to include direct hyperlinks to our other online platforms, as originally planned.  To work around this, I will need to instead change my writing style and rather than link directly to other platforms, subtly ‘namedrop’ each elements into the two planned articles; one which takes place the day after the murders where few details are known, and a follow-up piece that will be released a few days later, confirming more details.  The other problem I face is a strict character count for the generator, so my articles will need to be clear and concise, yet still provide all necessary details.

Progress is still on track, but we need to keep pushing through to have all the content uploaded in ‘real time’ as planned, to match with our event which takes place in the coming days, so next week will be pretty intense.

Although it seems to have been another slow week for the progress of ‘CONNOR’, I think we’ve actually achieved more than I originally felt.  Thomas has sent us his first couple of vlogs, which have been uploaded to his account, which can be found here.  Each of us are in the process of creating five fake Facebook accounts, though this is much more time consuming that I originally believed, as an accompanying email address having to also be linked with each account.  After 2 accounts have been created, both Facebook and Gmail bar you from creating further accounts within the space of 24 hours, so there’s still more work to be done there.

My role for the project is to create interactive news articles that will serve to quite literally link our project together for audiences, and although these will be the final element of the project to be posted, I need to begin researching how they can be presented.  After testing out Wix as a potential platform, I strongly believe it will not look credible enough to pass as a professional news page, and will need to source another option…

Tiana’s diary is coming along nicely, and already she has filled a large number of pages.  Next week’s tasks will include completing all the Facebook accounts, and meeting with Thomas at a public location yet to be determined in order to take pictures of him that will be used for the party photo album.  We’ll probably need to find some party revellers too…

Our transmedia projects took a small break this week, as we took time to more closely examine the week’s complex set reading: Signs, Systems and Complexity of Transmedia Storytelling by Renira Gambarato.  Taking the time in class to unpack the piece once more was highly beneficial, and like most of the denser readings, after breaking it down, it became a lot easier to understand – except perhaps for Gambarato’s use of algebra to explain one of his theories.

However, Gambarato’s reading and the relevance it had with our transmedia project quickly became clear, as he describes transmedia story as being seen as a “super system composed of nested systems”, where the system is the story.  The unfolding of elements and discovery of content is what is important to successful transmedia storytelling.  If these elements do not add to the story, then they are rendered unnecessary.  Gambarato continues, elaborating Henry Jenkins’ concept of ‘performance’, explaining how both interactivity and participation are key elements in order to gain a relationship with an audience.  The narrative likely aims to bring together an audience who share common interests and goals, to greater encourage the need between the participants to interact with the story.

In many ways, Gambarato’s journal article reinforces many of Troy Innocent’s pointers from last week’s lecture, and will again inspire more discussion from our group as we discuss this ‘reward’ we need to ensure we provide our audience with.

Though this week has seen little tangible progress for our transmedia project ‘CONNOR’, our group had some highly productive planning sessions in class, finalising all media platforms our story will utilise, and the stories they will individually tell.  With the short films officially scrapped, we have each assigned ourselves one of the remaining platforms to focus our efforts on.

Connor’s private diary will be maintained by Tiana, and along with written diary entries, will include pictures, drawings and other scrapbooked items to establish Connor’s heightening psychosis.  The diary will be the most personal artefact, displaying Connor’s deepest and darkest thoughts; intended to be kept forever private.  Using both Elliot Rodger’s 140 page manifesto ‘My Twisted World’ and the literary experiment “S.” written by Doug Dorst and conceived by J.J. Abrams as inspiration, the diary will be our only physical artefact.

Mia will be scriptwriter for Connor’s YouTube Vlogs.  This is our actor Thomas’ opportunity to breathe life into the character of Connor, who in turn will be putting on a performance for his intended audience, and are therefore not as open and honest as his diary’s entries.  The vlogs will be uploaded in the coming weeks to a YouTube account Mia created for Connor, spaced between now and the night before the fateful party.

A Facebook Event and Photo Album will be created, including approximately 25 fake Facebook accounts, so that we may contribute to one another’s pages, each of us taking part to build a convincing social network.  Kylie will be in charge of creating photos for the album, which will be taken at the party Connor attends uninvited and executes his murders.  At this stage it is unclear whether we will organise our own event and have Thomas lurking in the background of certain images, or whether we can Photoshop him into pre-existing images.

My designated role is to create some written news articles, which we hope will not only conclude and tie together the narrative, but also directly mention the other platforms as clues for audiences to explore.  In this way, the articles can be used as both a starting point, and a conclusion to our narrative.  At this time, I’m not yet sure how I will present the articles.  The plan is to have them uploaded to a faux news website, although I doubt both the believability of the webpage, and my website creation skills.

Obviously, in creating these elements independently, we will need to ensure we communicate efficiently between group members, so that the coherency of our characters, narrative and timeline remain consistent.  I’m excited to see Thomas’ first video he is due to film later this week, so no doubt there will be some more progress and change of thought patterns next week.