As this semester has progressed the name of the studio has become more appropriate. This semester we have tried to prove what story consists of and what story means in context of today. So like a lab we’re set out to prove something only to realise that underlying concept is in a constant flux. Like science our understanding is in a constant state of transition. Story will continue to evolve and we will continue to experiment.

From Story Lab I have gained a greater understanding of the mechanics beyond story, the deconstruction of the monomyth and how this can be challenged. Through this exploration the idea of remix immerged and the utopia of creativity was shattered. Here were learnt that not only are our ideas not original we also are going to have to murder them in favour of another. Regardless of how we try the content we produce is an amalgamation of all that we consumed reassembled in a way that hides its hero’s journey structure.

Although appearing like a foreign concept Transmedia is ingrained in popular culture. Examples ranged from Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic universe right down to indie Youtube vlogs. Through the course we’ve teased the links between these examples exploring the levels of agency within different content.

Now that the dust is beginning to settle, one question remains: Was our project a successful transmedia Narrative?
(Thanks to Sam’s awesome post and his elegant summary of Jenkins definition of transmedia)

So how did our Project stand up in the Jenkins Test?

1. Can discrete parts be enjoyed autonomously?
To an extent, obviously by viewing a single aspect there is shallow understanding of the story universe yet the particular artefact makes some sense. In saying this, immersive theatre installation relied upon audiences viewing blog content to then understand some of the more obscure back-story. We tried to curb this by presenting print copies of journals as well as a computer with the ACTIV office so they could go back and check aspects of the story. So I guess the answer is to an extent, you could for instance follow the twitter accounts and see a simplistic story of two opposing forces abusively tweeting one another with some Q&A thrown in for good measure.

2. Did each medium play to its strengths?
   I think that this was probably the aspect of transmedia that we explored the best. To lure people into the story we placed provoking posters around RMIT with an entrance point into the story. We utilised a twitter account for brief summations of progression of Jeff’s campaign that allowed us to retweet other content that added to the narrative. The video posted on Youtube was shared on both twitter and the blog of ACTIV and allowed people to comment and to move between platforms and finally we had the installation piece, which gave the audience some degree on agency in as they uncovered aspects of the story.
3. Did it contribute to a greater whole?
   I believe that each element did contribute to the whole but in saying that the whole was somewhat difficult to consume as an audience member. The narrative required some level of engagement throughout the campaign period to fully understand the installation. So I guess the answer is yes. Ned and I developed a narrative that could have been presented as a film or prose piece that we then sliced up and distributed across the different mediums. Consuming each part individually aspects of the narrative were experienced but the whole only become clear when all content was viewed.

It was somewhat unfortunate that there wasn’t much of an audience for our installation but at the end of the day it didn’t really make much of a difference. Obviously if we had multiple groups going through the rooms we might have been able to change configuration of the offices in response to audience feedback. It would have also been beneficial to gauge the success of the installations ability to convey the narrative. Not only would it have been intriguing to see how other people found it but also how they went about gathering information and how individual their experience was.
I guess the upside of this was that we had more of an opportunity to interview Rachel and Dan and to gauge their experience. If the event had transpired as we had planned it, with a number of sessions, I’m doubtful we would have been able to get the same quality feedback. Not too mention it also meant that we had ample time to pack up all our gear and get it back to the techs before they left which was an undercurrent fear throughout the day.

Existence is now a bizarre thing without my alter ego ACTIV and their pathetic antagonist Jeff Shroud. It hasn’t been 24 hours and I’m still routinely checking twitter hoping that a salacious tweet might appear that I can share, helping to build ACTIV’s narrative…. Enough about my existential crisis though.

Waiting outside an exhibition that you’ve curated whilst two people experience it is a nerve-wracking but exciting experience. Although the content we had placed in these rooms was thoughtfully curated and laid out so that information could be uncovered in loose order, each experience is personal. I’m intrigued to go back over the footage of both Dan and Rachel and to see how they described the room. From what I can remember the weak links that both Ned and myself had earlier identified were picked up on but generally the narrative was experienced in a why that was consistent with our initial proposal. We wanted people to uncover a plethora of information broadening their understanding of narrative yet if information was missed the general narrative wasn’t compromised. One failing of our planning was that this understanding of the narrative was heavily dependent upon following the story via twitter and blogs. Often there were items in the room that only made sense when read in conjunction with a particular paragraph of a blog post. This is a rewarding experience for those who discover the link but could be seen as meaningless for those who do not.

If we were to present the installation again I believe that we would spend more time in creating multimedia content such as audio tracks and exploring the use of computers further. We had knocked around these ideas in planning but due to the fact we wanted the room to read as a real office we opted to go with just content that would be present it this way. I think that audio tracks might have been useful to convey information but by would have distanced the audience from their role within the story as intruders.

Is it encouraging or frightening when the techs tell you that you’re hiring the most gear they’ve ever hired out at once? The answer is a little bit of both. When we initially organised the order I don’t think we understood the enormity of what we had got ourselves into. The setup itself took a few hours but ultimately was free of any issues albeit some minor snags. Once we had settled on the two rooms for the installation we knew that they were going to be quite bright so we wanted to experiment with using blacks. On the day we decided on using them to create an installation space rather than just to block out the sunlight. In doing this we created a defined installation space and were able to remove this space from the actual physical location. This also made the experience easier for the audience to explore the space, knowing exactly what was considered part of the installation.

The Dedo lights were successful in providing the desks with enough light so content could be read and understood whilst leaving the room in enough darkness to evoke the setting, the middle of the night. The Lights were useful in that we could point them at significant content which is an idea we could have explored if we had have curated more content. Our installation is fairly minimal, with essentially all the content significant to the story so the lights weren’t used in this fashion. However, if we had filled the desks with more stuff we could have used more dedos to point out the essential content.

For the installation we have always foreseen that it will feature actor(s) to ensure the story is fleshed out. Our initial ideas, drawing inspiration from The Drowned Man production, featured more of a performance element. As the project went on we realised that this sort of performance was a) not all that suited to our narrative and b) probably too difficult to achieve. Due to this realisation we started to move towards the idea of the actor becoming more of a guide for the audience enabling the audience to understand their role within the story, to answer any query the audience may have but ultimately to let them go about the space in their own way.

We found that this evolution was particularly evident during the campaign as our focus was on creating content such as posters. When we returned our focus to the installation we realised that implementing it would be incredibly challenging. This fact led to the aspect being pushed to the side, which was incredibly detrimental. When we finally returned to planning it in greater depth we struggled to find actors to help out. Luckily, Liana is willing to help us out and sadly people will be subjected to my terrible acting when I take on the other role. Our roles in the installation will consist of setting the scene, reinforcing the story world and to guide the audience through the space and hopefully this gives the installation a hint of immersive theatre to it.

Is a Red Herring always a Red Herring?
Disclaimer: Answer to question is not present within blog post.

We’ve begun generating the room content properly now. Obviously a lot of the existing content such as posters, email threads and journals will be in the rooms, its only now starting have we realised how much we’re going to need. In our document (see Google drive) we’ve outlined all that we need to create as main aspects of the installation. Depending on time constraints there may be more secondary material that although doesn’t add anything to the narrative itself they expand upon the universe ensuring the room has an authentic feel. The downside of this sort of material though is that what is essential to the narrative may become lost. This is why we intent to focus upon the essential artefacts.

One of the key artefacts is a set of news articles that will expand upon the past of ACTIV and parallel blog content. These articles will be presented as printouts of online articles and I have used Photoshop to create them. This course of production was taken over reproducing newspaper clippings due to presenting the authenticity. I feel that the time taken to print the articles and to make them look like news clippings isn’t justified when I can print them out as online news articles. To create them I have started with a few different articles as templates, charging the content with each piece.  

I guess its best that I justify tweeting Q & A about 30 times.
As Dan and Sam stated it would be quite interesting to see if we did get on television and to see what it did for the project itself.
Justifications coming at you:
-We were tweeting how ACTIV and Jeff would be if they weren’t just us (We’ve almost reached the point where we are sure our characters are real people we’re just filling in for). At this point in time they both yearn for media coverage and through Q&A they could have received some national coverage.
-Q&A’s guest was Joe Hockey and it was particularly relevant to our narrative with Demetri posting a journal article about it and Jeff Shroud focusing on funding in his campaign.
-What we were tweeting was in character as ACTIV and where possible relevant to their battle with Jeff.
-It provided another entry point into the narrative for audience members. Those following the Q&A tweets would’ve seen ACTIV popping up in the feed frequently and may have been inclined to find out more. These people are quite politically mind and often aligned to the left and more likely to check out the twitter page then those live tweeting a boxing match. There was some form of evidence of this engagement with a few retweets and favourites; however, these were only on Q&A related tweets. If people did explore our accounts further we don’t know and unfortunately no one ventured over to either WordPress site.

I probably did get a bit carried away with the tweets…in all honesty I just wanted to see ACTIV on television. I decided that I would delete any that detracted from the story but I believe that they add to the persona of ACTIV. Plus I thought some we’re really funny.

Example:

#QandA Coffee shop analogy enticing the hipsters

— ACTIV (@ACTIVPROTEST) May 25, 2015

P.S Someone from America went on the ACTIV blog. I don’t know what else to say other than that it happened. Jeff wished people in the states loved him.

In our initial planning we discussed that create a Facebook Event for the immersive theatre installation on our personal accounts. Following Dan’s recommendation we decided against this for a number of reasons.

Before discussion it with Dan our number one concern was that by posting it ourselves we shatter the augmented reality we were trying to create. So already we were somewhat uncertain of using Facebook, before Dan explained that facebook wouldn’t be all that secure and difficult to monitor those attending. From there he directed us to Eventbrite, which so far has been fantastic. It’s given us the ability to see who is going to attend as setting up a ticket system. In doing this we’re able to ascertain room audience members wish to experience as well as sending out automatic reminders. From an organisational point of view it has been fantastic so thank you Dan!

One of the highlights of the assignment thus far has been the ‘spoon a rat’ poster that was graffitied in one of the building 9 toilets. When planning the campaign we hoped that people would take it upon themselves to deface some of the posters allowing for dialogue between audiences, ACTIV and Jeff.

From this poster we learnt that the best place to put up posters is in a male toilet cubicle. It’s almost a guarantee it will be graffitied. In initial planning we wanted to create posters that were quite ‘inviting’ to graffiti but never did we foresee ‘spoon a rat.’ The only other poster to receive some fan art was the “Wake Up Jeff Poster” (inherently hilarious, I know) that soon became “Toke Up Jeff.” Sadly this poster didn’t have amazing artwork in the abundance of white space we left on the posters but beggars can’t be choosers.

Toke Up Jeff!

Funnily enough this poster was in the cubicle next to the ‘spoon a rat’ poster.
Could there be a repeat offender?

Photos of these posters were then posted on ACTIV’s twitter and blog with words of encouragement. This was done to perpetuate the idea that ACTIV has an incredibly large number of members and that the backlash to Jeff’s campaign was widespread.

Sadly we didn’t get Jeff Shroud to trend on twitter but we did get the occasional confused tweet. A couple of these initial tweets have now gone missing including lame tweet were a dude tried to convince people Jeff wasn’t real. I suppose it’s a good thing it can’t be found now.

After these initial confused tweets we got one from Bejamin Solah a RMIT student who is involved in the Socialist Alliance (I think, chuck him a follow to find out). As ACTIV I retweeted agreeing with Mr Solah and he became a part of a story without even knowing it. It was probably also at this point he realised we weren’t legitimate and felt embarrassed that we sucked him it. Gotcha!

I know some students that would love to run into this @JeffShroudMP dickhead on campus sticking up those awful posters.

— Benjamin Solah (@benjaminsolah) May 28, 2015

Another twitter user took a disliking to Jeff after visiting his blog. Don’t think he took into consideration that Jeff’s campaign was being run by two media students.  

@JeffShroudMP If you’re going to launch a campaign, maybe have a bit more information online apart from a 1 page, 2 paragraph wordpress?
— Angus O (@jokalla) May 20, 2015

A sign with the slogan ‘F*#K Jeff Shroud’ has been spotted at the state Library during a small rally on Wednesday 27^th of May. The sighting is yet to be confirmed…by my mate who occasionally makes stuff up for a laugh.

Fingers crossed though this is a legitimate sighting.

Over the course of the campaign a large chunk of ACTIV’s narrative and in particular their opposition to Jeff has been housed in their weekly journals. The idea around the journal was to create an artefact that places our entirely fictional characters and their feud alongside stories written about real current news such as new legislation. Alongside tweeting about current events we attempted to blur the lines between fiction and reality. The same could be said about the physical placement of posters and graffiti.
In the journals I also have attempted to explore the different voices of ACTIV’s editorial team through stories they personally care about.

Fiona is the ACTIV member that writes about their feud with Jeff Shroud, revealing that she is the driving force behind the antagonism.
Martin typically writes about the importance of protest or passionately rebuking media coverage of certain events.
Demetri is then the voice of reason discussing the budget, gay marriage and his area of particular interest domestic violence. Through these articles I tried to set Demetri apart from the other members with his less aggressive tone. I feel that for the most part this has been conveyed but at times I felt that my writing regressed to my innate style that would have also come through in Fiona and Martin’s articles.

To gauge the general tone of a socialist publication I spent a bit of time reading similar articles on the Red Flag website. I also did some emotive language research on the comments section of Andrew Bolt articles.

Easter Egg Alert!
To explore these three unique voices, on the ‘Wake Up Jeff’ blog post I commented as each ACTIV editorial member. In this dialogue Demetri is concerned about ACTIV’s treatment of Jeff, only a couple of days after he first emailed him. In terms of narrative progression it provided a bit more back story around the divide that is present within ACTIV’s members whilst also revealing hints about Demetri’s sympathy towards Jeff.

There is a sense of satisfaction in going to the effort of printing out A3 Colour Posters, sticking them up around RMIT and then having them torn down hours later. In one instance we positioned one alongside some socialist posters on a lamppost on Swanston Street, five minutes later they were gone. Tough Crowd.

The few that were taken down around Bowen Street where often removed hopefully because someone had become enraged at Jeff’s campaign promises rather than them just wanting space for their own poster.
We knew that his was going to be the case and had accounted for it in our planning. Throughout the two weeks of the campaign we are going to progressively erecting different posters. A poster is only a very quick way of getting peoples attention and to mirror that we used a QR code as an easily accessible way of accessing the narrative. Alongside the QR code we feature the twitter handle, which hopefully will be used. Twitter provides a fantastic platform in that people except concise information. On twitter the narrative becomes yet another part of their twitter feed that they consume daily. After the defacing in which ACTIV attach their own QR code people will be able to make sense of these actions by following the new QR code and twitter handle.

Jeff Baby!

Having never managed my own twitter I was unsure of what I was getting myself into. After a little while you discuss it’s a more aggressive version of facebook minus the pointless photo albums and vines.

Interesting read #thinkaboutit #budget2015 https://t.co/nIioDkswfY

— ACTIV (@ACTIVPROTEST) May 14, 2015

When creating twitter accounts for both Jeff Shroud and ACTIV, Ned and I had to think about every follow and how that would look from an audience member. Without even posting anything we already had to think about the audience and what they expected. For ACTIV’s sake I found myself following socialist organisations and media outlets.

To continue to curate ACTIV’s online persona I began by retweeting different things in relation to the budget, often adding ACTIV’s thoughts on the initial tweet. Although not related to the Jeff narrative these were important in forming this initial character. They weren’t posted as the result of any narrative event so as the narrative became central they were phased out.

What’s a story without some betrayal and Blackmail?
*Thinking music*

Terrible.

If experienced via twitter and the two wordpress sites our narrative appears to be a simple feud between (wannabe) politician and protest group. However, gain access to the various characters’ emails another story emerges, one of jealous lovers, blackmail and betrayal. Although sent during the two-week campaign, these emails will be revealed during the immersive theatre installation both electronically and physically (who doesn’t bring out their emails?). These emails are used to explain the impetus for the break in (the theatre installation) and how the two parties become linked beyond their feud. Conversely they explore the tension within both office spaces and two volatile romances. Essentially these emails are the link between the immersive theatre installation and the two-week campaign, justifying their actions as intruders seeking information.

I could reveal how these emails link the two stories but that would be a spoiler. Doesn’t Doctor Who have some quote about no spoilers?

Cultural Attractors and cultural activators:
We believe our project draws in people with common interest yet it seems we are yet to extend to the realm of cultural activators. At this stage of development the role of the audience is very minimal in their involvement. In saying this though, in our story there are elements that invite the audience to interact. As individuals they are free to deface Jeff Shroud posters and to comment on the wide variety of online content and finally they are able to engage in our immersive theatre installation become predetermined characters in the story. This discussion feeds directly into the notion of interactive vs participatory and how I would categorise our transmedia story. In essence I believe it is interactive, Ned and I have a clear understanding our how the story is set up, conveyed and concluded. No amount of comments on our blog posts will affect the narrative. Yet it includes elements of a participatory story because through commenting and retweeting how the narrative is viewed is changed. Due to the fact it’s presented in real time the story has the potential to develop through external dialogue. The story that we intend to deliver will not deviate from what we set out to deliver but what surrounds its presentation could drastically change. I believe that due to the content of our story for it to change due to audience input would be somewhat unrealistic, A political candidate is unlikely to change their behaviour due to comments upon their blog post or youtube video. Instead the candidate is likely to respond in a professional manner to the comments enriching our existing story. When comparing our transmedia story to those Gambarato uses as examples ours appears to closely align to the participatory text, with some minor deviations.

Going into the pitch we knew we probably had too much content so Dan’s feedback was reassuring afterwards. I guess our think process was better to run out of time than to run out of content. Yet at the same time I feel that all of what we included was necessary to convey the project we wish to produce.

In retrospect, we did have a lot of narrative information that probably could have been substituted for more beneficial discussion around our intended platforms and justification for their implementation. Funnily enough, Ned and I believed that we withheld a great deal of the narrative intricacies that will flesh out the story. A lot of these side stories are going to be revealed in the installation and we want them to remain a surprise for audiences.

A more balanced pitch would have given a brief narrative overview but not focused so heavily upon the background of each character. Instead focusing on implementation and justification of platform choices and how the audience will navigate the story. I think that our structure was quite strong and we ensured that we had drawn audiences into the story and characters before revealing the mechanics and how we are going to implement the story. Due to the two distinct aspects of our narrative (Campaign and installation) we could have divided the pitch up to make this distinction more obvious.

We aim to create an audio/visual/spatial experience for an audience to react to and piece together their own understanding of a particular narrative. This will be achieved through the use of various different mediums, such as a mock-viral marketing campaign; featuring posters and a variety of different online content, i.e. websites, blogs, in order to influence and direct the audience uncovering the story. The marketing campaign will ultimately lead to a ‘grand’ event that will take place on a designated date, at a predetermined time and place, within RMIT. During this event the climax of the narrative will presented through a spatial experience that will feature many different mediums, such as print, video, audio, physical objects, in a constructed live-reality experience, for the audience to interpret and decipher independently in real-time, in order to gain closure from the narrative.

Rules of Collaboration:
1. Discuss project development periodically at least once a week.
2. Creative direction is shared and should be the responsibility of everyone.
3. All decisions regarding the project must be unanimously agreed upon.
4. All conflict will be resolved in a professional manner, with the quality of the project being the main priority.
5. This project will not seek to offend any parties but to challenged and intrigue, as our primary objective is to convey the narrative and the underlying morals it seeks to instil.

Ultimately I was somewhat unhappy with my essay and it was nice to be able to reattempt to articulate what I had tried to explain within it. It was also a relief to express some on the ideas I was unable to explore or expand upon in my essay. Ideas I thought carried importance but weren’t included due to my novice understanding and the vast amounts of content that exist. When beginning the essay my thinking was that music would evoke emotions within audiences that the music has set out to evoke. Yet when researching I discovered that within music there is the notion of narrative in two senses. One being the story or emotional journey the musician is narrating whilst the second is the narrative of the music’s composition, including compositional devices and how it adheres to conventions of its genre. This wasn’t something I had initially foreseen, so the essay I wrote was a complete stranger to the one I had in mind.

Listening to other people’s presentation I was intrigued by the avenues that were taken by the people who explored the same prompt. I was somewhat envious of other’s exploration of albums and their exploration of the ‘album’ as a platform. If I were to write this particular essay again there is no doubt I would explore the implications of the album format potentially exploring the idea of Side A and B. This divide in the music often dictates an albums structure and a concept I find intriguing.

My understanding of story has contradictory both solidified and incredibly transitional. In the past month, my ideas have changed so often that I have come to terms with the fact that this understanding will probably never be concrete instead a fluid concept that warrants further exploration. Story at its core has the overarching idea of emotions, understanding of a world/ event. Due to the potential of vast amounts of non-linear content there isn’t necessarily a feeling of closure but acknowledgement and engagement.

One quote from McKee that struck me as odd was that “a story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything.” As I started to deconstruct it quickly became incredibly philosophical. It isn’t possible for a character to not want anything. By not wanting anything do they purely want their life to remain the same? There are plenty of films in which the protagonist wants nothing more than their life to remain exactly as it has always been. Vertigo is one and there a plethora of other films which share an un-driven and disinterested protagonist. I guess this notion falls apart when the characters that wish for no change have to make decisions in order to continue their lives of no change.

McKee thinking about scripts.
Source: www.mckeestory.com

McKee also got me thinking about films in which the protagonist fails their conscious goal. I can’t think of a salient example as I write this but I’m positive there are films in which the protagonist falls short unable to fulfil what they set out to do. In these films would McKee suggest that the protagonist exhibits an unconscious goal of finding their physical limit? Could this unconscious goal instead be the protagonist wishing to change their attitude or behaviour? By failing to fulfil their conscious goal their subconscious goal is fulfilled and once again McKee wins at screenwriting.

The protest group ACTIV is based upon the ethos of a multitude of existing groups including the Socialist Alternative. ACTIV descent into moral ambiguity as their actions become increasingly more aggressive invites the audience to question how far they would go to fight for what they believe. Does their actions make them any better than the oppressive nature of the governments that they detest? ACTIV is presented as a flawed group whose fight to do what is right by thousands results in them destroying the life of one.

For the duration of the project my focus will be upon the ACTIV narrative thread, creating and maintaining email, twitter and blog accounts for the group. This maintenance includes regular postings as the group alongside digital publishing of journal articles from various members. To explore the inner turmoil of the group a variety of accounts will be created to post comments reflecting the various factions within the group. My interaction with this fictional protest group will extend to partaking in the defacing of Jeff Shroud posters and attacking his online presence. To maintain both authenticity and the mystery surrounding the group these activities will be carried out late at night or early in the morning. Hosting much of our narrative online and in our final installation experience we eliminate the need for a large crew and cast of actors. Ned and myself are able to take on the role of both writer and actor though our online characters.

Also by presenting a vast majority of the content we create online we open the story up to public viewing and hope that there will be, however little, some interaction with audiences outside of our course. Placing a number of posters around RMIT particularly focusing on building 9 we are attempting to minimise confusing the general public whilst also targeting an audience that is engaged with online media and potentially already involved in socialism or politics in general. By utilising social media platforms and digital links such as QR codes on our posters we hope it is simple for people to initially engage and then follow our narratives. Using twitter as a medium, we intend for the narrative to become just another part of the their endless newsfeed, a story they can follow with ease.

Throughout the two weeks prior to the final installation event Ned and myself will immerse ourselves into our respective roles of social media managers. In this period we intend to meet regularly to insure that content is posted at correct times that make sense within the two simultaneous narratives and that responses directly address the opposition’s post. Toward the end both Ned and myself will take on the role of Director as we begin to explore the way in which our presentation will take on an immersive theatre aspect. During this period we will start to work with a handful of actors who will facilitate the audience experience alongside us. As the presentation shifts to one of a spatial and performance experience our roles will also shift to curators. In this role we will select from the vast plethora of content we have created for each narrative thread plus content specifically created for the theatre installation.

As a whole we hope our project shatters the conventions of good verses evil and allows the audience to explore two simultaneous narratives as they interact with one another.