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.