For those who are interested in progressing their NDIN EPOCs to SMP in 2018, we’ll be hearing brief overviews of your presentations today.
Here are some slides with the details.
Hi digital narrative producers!
As you will remember from the course guide, there are no ‘flipped’ lectures Weeks 11 and 12, but rather the expectation you will spend that time working on your proposals and EPOCs.
Thus, the tutorials for Weeks 11 and 12 are reserved for workshopping together – at a time when you can be sure your schedules align – and under the guidance of your tutor.
Tomorrow we will meet at 930 and I will take you through the peer review element of the assessment task as well as the submission process. Afterwards, I will do the rounds of the groups as well as being on hand for questions. Remember, although the deliverables for assessment are not due until 15 October, you will need to be ready to share drafts by Wednesday Week 12 (11 October) when the proposals for Strategic Media Projects are selected.
Next week, Kim and Vikrant will run that selection process – details to follow.
This week we’re getting into a bit of software and I’ll be running a workshop on 2 different platforms that can be used for interactive stories. These are Korsakow and Klynt.
I will spend the class introducing how to use each of these platforms so please bring some media – video, audio and stills in these formats (mp4, mp3, jpg). Video shot on phones are an easy format as they don’t need transcoding. Also download the trial versions of of both Korsakow and Klynt. Familiarise yourself with some of the projects made in each of the softwares.
Both of these platforms produce narratives in what Judith Aston and Sandra Gaudenzi call the Hypertext mode “because it links assets within a closed video archive and gives the user an exploratory role, normally enacted by clicking on pre-existing options.” (2014, 127). While both of these systems contain a finite amount of material within the projects, these platforms operate quite differently in terms of authorial control and user participation.
They are interactive – the viewer has influence on the film.
They are rule-based – tthe author decides on the rules by which the scenes relate to each other, but he does not create fixed paths.
They are generative – the order of the scenes is calculated while the viewer looks at a Korsakow-project.
Here is a database of Korskaow projects.
Images from Morgan Tam’s Two Horses.
Klynt operates more like a forking paths narrative where the audience is given a range of options to select from. So this could be described as multi-linear as there might be a range of linear progressions in the project. With Klynt, you can also create links to external websites, maps and media.
Elderscapes gives an overview of ageing in urban South-East Asia.
You can also build a gaming into these projects as well. Find Santa uses a simple premise to engage the audience although it presents limited opportunity for participation and interaction.
Further Reading about Interactive Documentary projects
This week we’re going to be breaking down the elements required for your EPOC. These are dependent to some extent on the nature of your project and you should chat to Stayci and I (Kim) to see whether what you are planning to do is relevant for your individual idea.
TASK: read through the following requirements and research the elements that are relevant to you. We will spend the tutorial breaking this down a bit further, addressing any questions and workshopping in your groups.
The EPOC task is modelled on an industry market, so really think about what makes your proposal unique, marketable and relevant. Why do you think it should it be made and what will help to sell your idea?
You should also start to schedule any shoot times for what you need for your EPOC.
You will produce a final proposal document and electronic proof of concept for your digital narrative. This is a template to follow.
OVERVIEW: ALL PROJECTS
Working title: this should be distinctive, relevant to the target market, and memorable.
Form and medium: What form will it take? What software and/or social media will you use? How long do you estimate?
Premise: 1-2 sentences outlining the basic premise, philosophy and purpose of the work
Market: short summary describing who the narrative is aimed at, where they will watch it and why. This Screen Australia Marketing Guide is a useful resource to guide you.
If you’re making a non-fiction project, you might want to look at this guide to Impact Producing.
FICTION
Main characters: briefly describe the characters that play an important role in the narrative, particularly the protagonist/s and antagonist/s.
Story world: briefly describe the settings for your narrative.
Narrative outline: 1-2 pages describing the narrative in simple, non-technical language (ie. no camera angles, transitions, etc.). Write in the active-voice in present tense. Tell the reader what they will see and hear on the screen, from the beginning to the end of the narrative.
Main characters: please ensure all character names appear in this section of the document with their names in bold type. If the user can choose the name of the character, choose a default name for the purposes of this document (it is harder to a story if the main character is variously referred to as ‘our protagonist’ or ‘our hero’).
Images can convey a lot about a character. Can you make a sketch or find an image to illustrate your character/s?
Narrative world: what is the look, sound and feel of the narrative environments? Is the narrative set in the past, present or future? Is it set in the city/country/wilderness? Is it a realistic or fantasy setting?
Images can convey a lot about a world – can you make a sketch or take a photo of your location/s?
Narrative Outline:
Images can convey a lot about a narrative – can you make a flowchart of your narrative describing audience choices?
or
NONFICTION
This template gives useful points to brainstorm documentary proposal ideas. Use this as a guideline for writing out your outline, characters, motivation, style and approach.
Main participants: briefly describe the participants and what they contribute to the project
Setting: briefly describe your locations
Narrative outline: 1-2 pages describing the narrative in simple, non-technical language (ie. no camera angles, transitions, etc.). Write in the active-voice in present tense. Tell the reader what they might expect to see and hear on the screen, from the beginning to the end of the narrative.
PARTICIPATION/INTERACTIVITY: ALL PROJECTS
User interaction:
Describe how the user participates in the narrative and/or interacts with and/or contributes to the narrative?
How does the user navigate through the narrative? Write a walk-through if the interaction is particularly complex (a walk-through evokes how the user will experience the narrative on the screen.
Write in the active-voice in present tense. Tell the reader what they will see and hear on the screen).
If you’re relying on users to contribute content to your project, be clear on how you will attract and collect this participatory content. Refer to literature and examples to explicate this.
AUDIOVISUAL
Visualisation: describe any key stylistic elements in filming, photography, animation, editing, SFX, music, narration, sound effects or audio composition. The visualisation described in this section should fit with the form you’re working with, and be demonstrated in your EPOC.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Competition: identify any media work that has already been produced on the same subject, or using the same participatory/interactive approach. If so, what is new, different, interesting, engaging about your approach?
RESEARCH
Summarise any research you have done about the subject matter.
MARKETING AND RELEASE PLAN
Describe the marketing strategies you will adopt to promote your narrative to your target audience. Outline how and when you will distribute or publish your work. The Screen Australia Marketing Guide is a good place to start for this research.
PRODUCTION PLAN
Production timeline, with appropriate milestones, including marketing/release dates:
Crew list: All crew you will need to complete this project
Proposed location list: Start scouting real locations and look at how you will secure these locations. This checklist helps you to consider some of the aspects of location scouting.
Proposed cast (optional): Look through online casting sites and pull some example images of potential cast members.
EPOC: Electronic Proof of Concept
The EPOC should be relevant to the type of project proposed.
For FICTION (including GAMING) choose one or more of the following:
For NONFICTION choose one or more of the following:
Introduction
This week we invite you to consider how your project might position itself within digital simulation and/or environmental narratives.
It is also now time to consider the multi-platform nature of your digital narrative, and the different distribution and marketing strategies you might consider.
Your tasks:
Pre-digital simulations
As noted earlier in the course, narrative is an ancient form of communication and has been with us for thousands of years (if not longer).
Simulation, as a form of communication, also has a long history. Here are some examples of pre-digital simulations.
| A doll that closes its eyes when it is horizontal |
A crane that lifts a bucket when you turn its wheel | An orrery that models the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System. |
| The diorama was a pre-cinematic form of entertainment invented by Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the photographic plate. | It consisted of huge translucent paintings of famous places and used lighting effects to create the illusion of movement and change. | Effects included changing weather conditions, atmospheric effects, shifting day to night, and making figures appear and disappear within the scene. |
The modern-day museum diorama is a descendent of this form of simulation.
Videogame simulations
Gonzalo Frasca argues in Simulation VS Narrative: Introduction to Ludology (2003) that the narrative model limits our understanding of videogames. He contends that videogames are not narratives but simulations.
Frasca’s broad definition of simulation:
A simulation is never going to be identical to the system that it is modelling – often it is a much simpler system.
| Red Dead Redemption (2010) | Grand Theft Auto V (2013) | Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014) |
For instance, the desert environment in Red Dead Redemption is far simpler than a real desert, it still retains some of its behaviours (for instance, it has a day/night cycle, and you can fall off bridges and cliffs).
Simulations as story machines
Frasca claims that a videogame is bigger than a single story. In fact, a videogame is a dynamic system that can produce many different stories, depending on the player’s actions.
In the same way that a kaleidoscope is not a collection of different images but a device that produces images, a videogame is a system that produces a variety of stories.
In Game design as narrative architecture Henry Jenkins argues that although games and stories have profound differences, game designers and critics can learn a tremendous amount through studying older storytelling media, such as films and novels. Jenkins believes that game designers should be understood less as storytellers and more as narrative architects: “Game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces” (2004: 120 – 122). According to Jenkins, narrative architecture, or environmental storytelling, in games can be achieved in four different ways:
Evocative spaces
A certain place can evoke narrative associations by drawing on a pre-existing genre tradition (for instance the haunted house) or work (for instance Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865))
| American McGee’s Alice (2000) | Fearful Tales: Hansel And Gretel Game (2013) | Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008) |
Enacting stories
A series of locations can stage narrative events (here a plot is organised spatially in the form of a world full of obstacles and aids to the progression of the story)
| Red Dead Redemption (2010) | Far Cry 3 (2012) | Call of Duty: World at War (2008) |
Embedded narratives
Narrative information can be embedded in the mis-en-scene of a location (as in the classic detective story model, where the player assembles a narrative history through uncovering clues)
| L. A. Noire (2011) | L. A. Noire (2011) |
Emergent narratives
The player can use the resources provided to design their own worlds (for instance, The Sims (2000))
| Minecraft (2009) | SimCity – Cities of Tomorrow (2013) | The Sims 2 (2004) |
Machinima
Those filmmakers without 3D animation skills may be interested in creating environments within online virtual worlds such as Second Life and Kaneva. These environments can be used to create machinima. Machinima are digital films made using real-time computer graphics engines. machinima artists, sometimes called machinimators, use video games (such as The Sims) or simulated worlds (such as Second Life) to create their film clips. As derivative works, machinima could violate the copyright of the videogames used to create them. However, In 2003, Linden Lab changed their license terms to allow users to own their works created in Second Life. Electronic Arts, the makers of The Sims, encourage users to create and share their own Sims’ narratives using the in-game camera. Screenshots and video footage of The Sims games can be broadcast freely, as long as the machinimator does not attempt to make money from its broadcast.
The Sims 3 Machinima – Madness – Best Of
The Sims 3 Machinima – Fascination
Multi-platform (and transmedia) storytelling.
It used to be that most stories were told using a single medium, such as a book or a movie. At a later date, particularly if the story was a very popular one, it might have been adapted for another medium. So comics might have been adapted for television, or novels might have been adapted into films and so on. In general, when a narrative is adapted for different media channels, its basic story elements (characters and plot) are retained in the new format.
But, as leading transmedia scholar Christy Dena was already observing back in 2009:
“A television show is no-longer always just television show, it may have specially crafted books and a feature film that are all part of the storytelling, as is the case of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s early 1990s work Twin Peaks. The website for a feature film can do more than advertise the details of its screenings, it can reveal detail about the characters’ lives after the film plot ending, as with Richard Kelly’s 2001 Donnie Darko website. The arias and childhood visions from a character’s memories can be shared with the reader of a book, with specially created illustrations and a music CD, as author Laura Esquivel orchestrated in her 1996 novel The Law of Love (Crown Publishers, Inc.). The setting and ideology of an album can burst beyond the music, across fictional websites and anarchic live events, as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor showed with his Year Zero alternate reality game (Reznor and 42 Entertainment, 2007). A computer game can bleed outside of its virtual walls, with fictional characters emailing players directly, as with Electronic Art’s 2001 alternate reality game Majestic. The canvas of a painting can stretch beyond the gallery and onto the Internet, as tonyjohanson.com (he changed his name to a URL) did with his 2005 Archibald Prize entry GoFigure.Net.au. An installation can exist in multiple locations and websites, with patrons on the Internet interacting with strangers on the street, as with Susan Collins’s In Conversation (1997-2001). And players on the Internet can be chased by people running through the streets with GPS-enabled devices, as with Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now? (2001–2005)” (2009, p. 1- 2)
One of the first transmedia productions was The Blair Witch Project (1999) a docufiction or ‘found footage’ film. The story concerns the disappearance of three students in the Black Hills woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. The students disappear while they are making a documentary film about the legend of the Blair Witch. A year later their documentary footage is found buried under the foundations of an old house. The Blair Witch Project movie consists solely of this ‘found footage’ whilst the website presents additional material about events that happened before and after the disappearance of the filmmakers.
Transmedia storytelling is a very different approach in which a narrative is designed from the ground up to exist in multiple complementary modules across multiple channels. In other words, the narrative modules are like pieces of a puzzle that fit together to create a unified whole.
“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” (Jenkins 2011).
Ideally, as Jenkins points out, a transmedia storyteller will exploit the strengths or affordances of each medium to their best effect. For instance, a game module of the narrative might simulate one aspect of the narrative as a dynamic system, whereas a cinematic module of the narrative might represent another segment of the narrative in a visually spectacular and highly plot driven form.
Since transmedia narratives are distributed across different media and comprise a persistent universe, they can often be misconstrued as real rather than fictional. This was the case with Orson Welles War of the Worlds (1938), and also The Truth about Marika (2007), a narrative produced for Swedish television about the disappearance of a young woman. Many people believed Marika was a real person and helped search for her. Understandably, they were not happy when they found out that the story was a fiction.
The truth about Marika (participative drama)
Notable features of transmedia narratives are:
Multiple media – the narrative exists in different modules across more than one medium (usually 3+, often combining live events with traditional media).
District 9 (2009) marketing involved billboards banning non-humans – see Henry Jenkin’s discussion of District 9.
A timeline of Dexter’s transmedia elements
Narrative expansion- the different modules expand, or add to, the core narrative and its story world, past or future, points-of-view (focalisers).
The Office webisodes: The Accountants
Doctor Who – A Finding Freeflow Case Study
Narrative continuity – the modules are closely integrated and consistent with the core narrative (the canon).
The Holocron continuity database is the database used internally by Lucas Licensing to keep track of all of the fictional elements created for the Star Warsuniverse, and contains elements from nearly every officially sanctioned Star Wars product. Some statistics from the database – the database currently contains 8,742 characters and 3,419 planets.
Transmedia: Multichannel Storytelling Transcends Platforms
Narrative participation – the narrative is at least partially participatory, so that the audience can participate in the unfolding or creation of the narrative.
Game features – the narrative often contain some gaming elements and a playful sensibility.
Dexter Interactive Investigation: Start Here!
Rabbit holes – the narrative contains at least one public point of entry through which the audience find clues or pieces of the story (the rabbit hole). For instance, the film A.I. (2001) had a credit for Jeanine Salla as ‘Sentient Machine Therapist’ hidden among the credits for Spielberg and the actors, along with a phone number. These were the initial clues that lead players into the world of The Beast (2001) , an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) set in the A.I. movie universe. Here is Jay Bushman’s recollection of the game.
Cheese holes – the narrative contains spaces in which the audience is encouraged to create or contribute content.
“Cheese hole design is about recognizing the opportunities within the story … Cheese holes are the places where you would like or will actively steer an audience to create content, perhaps in the form of back story, additional characters, ancillary storylines, Rashomon-style alternative perspectives or around artifacts from the storyworld. It doesn’t necessarily mean disruption to impact the storyline.” (Alison Norrington, quoted in Miller 2014, p. 168)
Cheese holes often form on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and on blogs. A Yahoo! Group titled The Cloudmakers was created by players of The Beast. The Cloudmakers sorted out information from the game and created elaborate flowcharts of in-game activity.
Further exploration:
Transmedia Documentary Storytelling
Finally, this is all of consideration for your proposals and EPOCs, in preparation for an industry where “Other design ecology factors that influence the creation and design of transmedia projects include institutional ones, such as the rise of funding bodies, arts organizations, broadcasters, studios and the like mandating cross-platform, cross-media, 360, and multi- platform projects” (Dena 2009, p. 52).
References:
District 9 (2009)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Spiral (2012)
The Truth about Marika (2007)
War of the Worlds (1938)
Dena, C 2009, Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney
Frasca, G 2001, Simulation vs Representation, Ludology.org.
Frasca, G 2003, ‘Simulation vs. Narrative: Introduction to Ludology’, Wolf MJP & Perron B (eds) Video/Game/Theory. Routledge
Jenkins H. 2011, Confessions of an Aca-Fan (blog), available at http://henryjenkins.org/
Jenkins, H 2004, ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, in Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrington, P. eds. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004, 118-130
Miller C. H. 2014, Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment, Focal Press, Mass. Available RMIT Library http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=806308&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Hi everyone,
The EPOC (Electronic Proof of Concept) you make to support your proposal is somewhat dependent on your project, your skill set, the skill sets of those in your ‘production company’ (or wider community) and, frankly, how driven you are to see your project selected for production in Strategic Media Project.
The EPOC requirement for this course is born directly from contemporary ‘real world’ and ‘industry’ situations, whereby very few funding agencies or production bodies will accept a proposal without one.
To be clear, it is not the whole project, fully realised. It is a taste of what the full project, if made, would look, sound and feel like. How it will be experienced. An audiovisual example of the world, tone and (where applicable) genre of your premise.
Just for example, here are the Screen Australia guidelines for what they simply call a POC (same thing):
As part of your application, you will need to submit:
Screen Australia, 2017, Program Guidelines: Online Production, p. 4 (full doc in resources tab).
I encourage you to think about what you might want to make over the break. Bring these ideas to the Week 7 tutorial and you can discuss with me, and your team, the possibilities for your EPOC idea. That is, how feasible it is to achieve and how effective it would be in selling your digital narrative. Only by sharing your ideas can we decide whether you’re taking on too much work or not enough.
Let you imaginations run free, and I look forward to hearing your ideas!
Have a great break,
Stayci
An opportunity to hear from one of Australia’s leading screenwriters. Details here.
Steven Soderbergh’s new film allows you to follow different character’s perspectives. This presents a new take on interactive narrative.
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/08/mosaic-steven-soderbergh-plot-branching-narrative-hbo-1201868064/
May be of interest to some of you for project and blog inspiration! Check out the flyer.