In Wednesdays class of this week, we were introduced to the concept of transmedia, and how we must first focus on our story, then introduce the best media to support it later on down the track. In the reading for this week, Manovich says that ‘ new media lends itself to a database model’ (Manovich 2001). What I found most interesting was analysing our experience of these technologies, which in essence, are broken up i.e. when we use a phone, our interactions are divided between Facebook, the calendar app, safari, the weather app etc – all are different sections of the phone and all appear to be segregated from each other, even though we are still using the singular phone. The internet is another example of a database where you can start on one page and end up somewhere completely different (something which can’t really happen in a library). Using these analogies helped me understand what Manovich was talking about.

What we also looked at was the idea that everything is a remix. Its funny because this is a concept which I have recently thought about. I tend to sometimes challenge myself to think of an idea – no matter how far fetched – that hasn’t already been written about, filmed or sung. And its always hard to do. Basically, Ferguson’s web series was so interesting to me (and was very entertaining). We are allowed to collect material, combine it, transform it and create something ‘new’. An artist who I (sometimes) like is Kanye West, and recently, it seems his albums are all about remixing everyone before him. Nearly 90% of his songs are sampled from elsewhere. But what he ends up with is something original. But the sampled material wasn’t his creation… so is he really that great? I don’t know – frankly you can get a headache arguing about it.

Something else we touched on this week was good story telling and some basic rules:

• Throw your characters at a situation, and if you have a decently written and constructed character, their response will basically write itself.
• Most of the stuff we will experience in our lifetimes will have been done before. This needs to be expected.
• Be prepared to kill your babies: at some point we will get feedback whether we want it or not. We need to be prepared to reconceive our entire narrative
• If you shock yourself first, that will usually shock the audience.