Well, that’s a wrap on this project (and this semester).

With our final assessment, we aimed to really build upon what we did with our last one and take advantage of all the possibilities offered by online spaces. The main thing we did was try to make it more interactive, through creating a website. Our last project ticked that box by allowing users to choose the order in which they viewed the sequence, however there wasn’t necessarily a more important or online component to it. This time around, we implemented a quiz asking people to give us their impressions about what they found engaging as well as the answers to some questions we asked. The idea was to allow the quiz to answer what our project proposed – what do people find engaging (or not boring) and why?

Did it work?

It did in some respects. From observing people interact with our project and through looking at the online results, I’ve found that the answers were a bit all over the place; what one person said contradicted another. However, we were never looking for concrete data. The aim was to explore what is engaging to us as viewers and people, and I think this was a part of the project that people enjoyed. The prospect of the ‘tests’, being asked to pay attention and explain why they payed that attention to certain videos instead of others was something people seemed to respond to.

I would consider our project web specific to a large extent – the two different parts of our project, the video and the quiz, would be difficult to chain together without creating a site. We also would not be able to access the data of the people who have taken the quiz seamlessly and allow users to compare their percentages to others. This was something we wanted to be a bigger part of the project, as we thought the data should be integrated into the project rather than a result for us to look at, however we couldn’t find a platform within our budget that would allow for more specific answers to be compared.

Through making our project, we learnt a lot about online screen production (especially the online part). During our brainstorming phase, we had lots of ideas but were unsure how to put them into practice. After researching lots of platforms, we realised we had to tone it down a bit and go with something that wasn’t too complex. Unfortunately, without the right level of web development skill, the internet is not a canvas to paint whatever we want on to it. Compromise was a challenge for us, and in choosing what tools we used to put our elements together, we had to sacrifice some parts of what we wanted. Specifically, the way our quiz worked had to be changed quite a bit. We couldn’t structure a few questions as we would have liked to. We also were thinking of asking a couple of questions during the video while leaving the majority for the end, however the data set would have been split and the website would have become a bit of a tangled mess.

The first question that I think we have shed some light on is: “What are the limits of what we can do online?”. As mentioned previously, I think we have discovered that while in theory the possibilities are endless, we are limited by our own ability. I picked this studio because I believe online content is the future, as I’m sure many do. We’ve had the chance to try out some new platforms such as Korsakow and learn new skills, and I think I want to continue to do that in order to open up more doors for myself when it comes to online creation. Whether that’s in the form of coding or software skills, I don’t know – I guess I’ll go wherever a future project takes me.

I also want to talk a bit about the question: “Why is there such a big interest in online content?”. There are many reasons, however my experience this semester as well as looks at other works from students makes me think that interactivity is what really drives the interest in online content. I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with different forms of interactivity, from livestreaming to Korsakow, and I feel that it is the thread that runs through all our projects that makes them unique and specific to the online space. Even more traditional forms of media such as standard photos and videos thrive online due to interactive elements – likes, comments, sharing etc. We share a common sense that we have only scratched the surface regarding this interactivity. Being given the chance to experiment with the ways we can interact online this semester has not only been a great learning experience; it’s also given me a lot to think about regarding the future of our industry.

Link to website

We’re now in the final stage of our development process – putting all of the elements together to create the final product. This is been going on for a little while now and is a bit complicated compared to a traditional film. We’ve got a few elements to juggle: editing the video, designing the website and putting the quiz together. This is really where we are focusing on the cross-platform characteristic of the project, trying to make it a seamless experience for the viewer that hopefully feels like one project rather than different platforms squashed together.

When picking a website design for our Wix page, we wanted something simple, bold and eye catching. There aren’t many pages or buttons, so the design needed to be clean. We looked at some websites made with Wix in order to get some inspiration. Here is an example, and another one. These encapsulate the simplicity of what we are going for – big writing, few options. We want people to go straight into our project rather than wander around a website.

Our current website design

For the quiz, we’re still going with the platform uQuiz, and we’re embedding it into the website to avoid outside links or webpages. We’ve run into a couple of problems designing the quiz, just technically so –  the pictures can only be a certain size when inside an answer, so we’ve had to compromise on one fragment and put the image in the question. However, for the most part it has come together well and is completely functional.

We’ve mostly edited the video itself with Adobe Premiere Pro, and just tried to make sure of a couple of things during the process:

a) Most videos have their own aesthetic ‘vibe’ and sound, so we get unique answers about which videos viewers found engaging.

b) The videos are chained together swiftly to create the ‘blur’ effect I talked about in my last blog post, which will hopefully end up meaning viewers won’t be able to remember everything, therefore they will selectively remember what stood out to them the most.

We believe these two characteristics are key to accurate answers from users of our quiz, ideally tying the whole thing together. We’ve just got to put the finishing touches on now and put all of our elements online.

We were given the opportunity to get some in-class feedback this week from other groups. The feedback was pretty positive, and we got some useful tips and pointers. Something we asked for feedback on specifically was whether we should put our videos together for one long video, or small individual videos with a quiz in-between. The general consensus, after some discussion, was that a longer video will work better for what we’re trying to do – gauge what people find engaging and why. If the viewer can’t conceivably remember everything because the video is too much of a blur, they’ll only remember what stood out to them.

There were some other great little ideas from different groups too. One student said putting a second computer next to the video during the media exhibition could display the results in a convenient way. This works out perfectly because through the quiz program we’re using (uQuiz) displays detailed results only when you are logged in. If we login on the separate computer, we can give people more specific answers to compare. We were also given a cool idea for a fragment by another student – an audio only piece where we ask viewers to listen in closely. It could be a nice way to mix up the rest of the AV material.

There was also a bit of feedback on the idea itself. We figured out with a couple of groups that we need to give some context at the beginning on the video, as well as a couple of instructions such as telling viewers not to rewind and to watch closely. We’ll make sure this is done as I think it will be pretty crucial to making the whole idea work. Overall, we have a better sense of direction now, and after we finish filming over the next day hopefully the whole project will start to come together.

Our concept is more concrete now, so we have been able to begin incorporating our research into the way we want to approach production. We’re going to begin filming tomorrow, and we’ve already begun playing around with our Wix site a bit, so this is the perfect time to break down a couple of the articles and AV materials we will draw from.

An article I found (Rosen, 2017) contained some staggering statistics regarding the distracted mind of today’s youth. Most notably, college students unlock their phones around 50 times a day and use their phones for 4 and a half hours per 24 hour cycle. This heavy use of technology backs up what we have suggested – that people feel the need to be constantly engaged with some form of media and their attention spans are suffering in the real world. The data found here has given us some inspiration as to what we want to find from our quiz and what kind of questions we want to ask. We know we want user generated/contributed content to be an integral part of our project through the quiz.

Liam also found an interesting article (Kozinets, 2002) regarding ‘netnography’, a new form of ethnography growing to become a more effective way of studying people. Since this article was written in 2002, online searches, history and application usage has surely become the most widely used way to study someone – spending over 4 hours on a mobile device alone can tell a lot. Marketers now advertise to people online based off this data and it is part of the world they are engaged in. In a similar way, we want to know as much as we can about our users based off how they engage with our project. Many of the ideas here can be applied to the way we approach our production. We want our findings through online data to be used as nonfiction content – it will in theory be a part of the whole experience for the viewer.

An audiovisual material I thought might be appropriate to discuss was Her (2013). The film directed by Spike Jonze follows the story of a man who enters a relationship with a siri-type android. Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it. The movie’s world is set in the future yet scarily close to our own. Everybody seems isolated yet so caught up interacting with their OS that they don’t seem to care. It gives some direct insight into the ideas and themes that we’re trying to explore and gives a different perspective what our lives may look like today, albeit to a lesser extent.

Gigi’s audiovisual material will give us more of an idea of what we can shoot tomorrow. The music video is somewhat similar to a something we looked at earlier in the week for inspiration, in that a single shot has constantly changing elements. We think something similar to these two AV materials could work quite well for our project. The interactive parts of our project will use similar ideas, with changing elements within shots to evaluate engagement.

Group Articles

Andrade, J 2013, ‘Sensory Imagery In Craving’, Principles of Addiction: Comprehensive Addictive Behaviors and Disorders, Volume 1, p. 445 – 452.

Kozinets, R 2002, ‘The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography For Marketing Research in Online Communities’, Journal of Marketing Research, 39 (February), p. 61-72.

Rosen, L 2017, The distracted student mind — enhancing its focus and attention, Kappan, viewed 15 May 2018, <http://www.kappanonline.org/rosen-distracted-student-mind-attention/>.

Group AV materials

Childish Gambino – This Is America (2018), Hiro Murai

Her (2013), Spike Jonze

MAX – Lights Down Low feat. gnash (2016), Scranton and No. 2 Pencil

After our last project, we knew we wanted to take our theme of boredom and dig deeper. Following our presentation from the previous assignment and some early discussions, we came to the conclusion that we liked the idea of focusing on engagement and attention spans in the modern world. It felt like a natural continuation and evolution of our theme of boredom – it should speak more deeply about why we avoid boredom and why we feel like we lack of meaning with nothing to do, both of which were questions we raised at the end of the last project. We’d also like to focus on interactivity with the audience this time around as an important characteristic, as well as some form of user choice/user generated content.

We’ve now spent a couple of classes working out exactly what we want to do for this final project. I think we struggled to find our footing at the beginning; there was a lack of cohesiveness in our ideas and we struggled explaining them to each other. We had something of a general consensus – some sort of interactive experience that would say something about the user and their engagement with our content. Liam had the idea of a social media feed that the user could scroll through, upvoting or downvoting content based on how engaging it was to them. I had the idea of a series of videos with some kind of skip button, allowing the user to pass on videos they felt were boring. However, neither of the concepts felt fleshed out enough to proceed with.

Feedback from other students was interesting. They had suggestions for us, such as timing the user and a quiz, but it never all came together. Hannah proposed the idea of a quiz at the end of something simple such as a Tumblr blog, which would allow us to measure the user’s engagement in an easy and achievable way. We think that could be a great direction to go in, so we’ve set out a timeline and chosen Wix as our platform. Over the next week we’re going to work out the details and what kind of content we want to shoot, and move on to the website and quiz from there.

Our Korsakow project is done and dusted. We gave it our best go – the program was unfamiliar to all of us, so hopefully it’s an interesting experience for the viewer. We’ve learned a lot.

We responded to modularity through Korsakow, by creating an interface that allows the user to pick the type of boredom they want to explore next. Each type contains two fragments, which each have one life. The user is then looped back to the home page, allowing them to pick the next section. These separate and simultaneously conjoined pieces make up our film. The variability comes in trying to create a balance between fiction and non-fiction for viewers by creating one of each fragment per type of boredom. Our fictional elements were themed as 50s instructional video parodies, trying to create some levity in an attempt to counterbalance the non-fictional elements that might come across as, well… boring.

In terms of what I learned from the experience; it’s difficult to think outside of the box. Traditional forms of filmmaking and storytelling exist for a reason. Not that we tried anything too bizarre, but I remember early conversations within our group about creating a nonlinear narrative with different user options. We realised it was unachievable within the time frame – even contemplating it and creating different fragments for something that is supposed to come together made me admire films like this even more. Memento (2000) is a great example.

Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)

I feel as if I now have a much better understanding of Korsakow and its intended use however. We had an perception early on that these complex narratives with all sorts of interactivity was what was expected of us. Our presentation feedback may have led us astray a little bit, as we started worrying about how our film would be interactive. However, as our project continued to develop, we were told to just create fragments first, and worry about combining them later. Our project still ended up with a somewhat structured feeling, even though there is interactivity and variability. For our final project I really would like to make something that gives each viewer a truly unique experience they can interpret. I feel as if this is really Korsakow’s strength and what makes it distinctive.

Many loose ends remain regarding our theme of boredom. I feel as if we portrayed boredom, but only scratched the surface of the topic. Why is the experience of boredom unpleasant to us? Why does the lack of meaning or direction make us feel empty? As we discussed in our presentation, a modern take on this subject matter could be super interesting. Our society’s current fixation on having to be engaged with something throughout the entirety of our waking lives is fascinating to me – I’ve grown up with this generation that is almost hypnotized by screens.

It could be so interesting to me because I want the answers for myself: why do I feel the need to sit in bed watching something until I can barely keep my eyes open? However, it does feel like a natural progression for the topic, and a bit less broad. I’m happy with what we’ve done on this project, but I’m also excited to dig into the different ways we can expand on the matter through different fragments that are a bit more vague and up for interpretation.

We’ve finished filming, and are in the process of editing/compiling into Korsakow right now. I’m mostly handling the editing of fragments in Adobe Premiere, which is feeling like the easy job after we all had a look at Korsakow. Apparently the program is easy to use, and we have some of it figured out, however a bunch of the little functions are still a mystery to me. The editing process in Korsakow is also not just about cutting and pasting, it’s a challenging assemblage we’ve had to talk about as a group. I even had to draw a little map to plan it out. It’s a different experience to cutting with traditional editing software.

One thing I’ve worried about during the editing process is how the audience will perceive the final product without context – how can we help them understand what we’re trying to do without being too on the nose? We’ve discussed titles to help differentiate the different kinds of boredom. Maybe that will be enough. The week 6 reading (Weihl, 2016) says it is “up to the user to become a kind of co-author or co-editor navigating a database of  audio-visual material”, so hopefully their experience comes together through their navigation. The images themselves should theoretically convey the ideas we are trying to present through intellectual montage (regarding non-fiction).

With our presentation tomorrow we’ve had to begin thinking about what ideas and questions have emerged from the development process of this project. I feel as if our fragments have been successful in trying to portray boredom, but haven’t explored what it means to people in a deep enough way. I hope we can focus a bit more on current issues regarding distraction and a lack of meaning for our next project, as well as how technology plays a significant part in today’s society and keeps us constantly engaged. I’ll go into more detail about how we could tackle these matters in my reflection post.

References

Weihl, A 2016, Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries, NECSUS Journal, Small Data.

Last Thursday we had our group consultations, which was a good opportunity for us to finalise our idea before we began filming. We pitched our idea essentially in two different forms. The first, a Korsakow with random fragments simply linking via keywords. The second, a multilinear Korsakow that would place the viewer in a first person perspective, allowing them to choose objects around the room that would play out different fragments from the point of view of a bored student. The Korsakow would loop back after playing one fiction and one non-fiction fragment related to a type of boredom.

The main two pieces of feedback we were given were:
a) To go with the non-fiction/fiction loop structure, however, the point of view screen was not necessarily needed.
b) To film our fragments sooner and worry about how we’ll put them together later.

We took a general structure away from the feedback that gave us the confidence to begin shooting. Soar’s reading from week 7 was something else that personally gave me a better idea of where we were going with our Korsakow film. The program was a little bit confusing to me at the beginning, but his description of multilinear narrative as fragments that “will be viewed collectively in sequences partly prescribed by the maker and partly chosen by the viewer” (Soar, 2014) was enlightening. The way we covered his material as a class last week helped in giving me a sense of direction regarding our third assignment.

Over the weekend, our group shot a couple of fragments that could be done individually, however, we shot most of our footage today. We actually finalised the theme for our fiction fragments this morning during class – we’d been contemplating the idea of creating parodies of old 50s instructional videos for each type of boredom. I’m sure you understand what they look like but here is an example of one we looked at for inspiration. The idea behind it was to keep the viewer engaged my making the videos ironically on the nose and a bit self-aware. Hopefully they turn out to be a bit humorous and a nice counter-weight to the non-fiction fragments.

References

Soar, M (2014), Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly, New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 154–73.