Tag Archives: project three

It is pitching our probe idea time!

Reporting:
I did not attend this week’s second studio session. Thankfully, I had my partner, Peter, to catch me up to date with our work. The agenda was also put up on the module blog so I managed to continue my work from home. We were to discuss and finalise our probe for Project THREE sketches. I have been pushing back this project due to my other assignments so I am pretty much freaking out right now. I have messaged Seth, our lecturer, for feedback on our “things of interests” to see if they were acceptable. We were on the right track but Peter and I are always complicating things with new technologies.

Mindful of our old habits, Peter and I came up with the three ideas that would be (well.. at least to us would be) non-related to one another. Here is the list of it:

––

1. we are interested in the interactivity element from the 89 steps. so what happens if the elements are used in new online services on Periscope? 

– how is Periscope interactive?
– how can Periscope be made interactive in different ways?
– will it only be in real time?
– how do we incorporate 89 steps to this?

OR 

MEERKAT VS. PERISCOPE

– how would these services help in interactive online videos?
– what can these live streaming services work with interactivity aspect of 89 Steps?

2. youtube doubler – as a form as participatory

– what is this youtube doubler?
– what is this tool related to 89 steps? – location + playing with sound
– in terms of participatory, what can you do with this youtube doubler?
– what happens when viewers are allowed to create the narratives with given found footages?

3. online video in real time.

– Maria was walking up the stairs in real time. How can we make online videos in real time?
– With real time, it would be boring and long, how do you make it interesting in terms of non narrative/anti-narrative?
– using 89 steps elements, playing with audio and narrations, how do you make real time videos more interesting? (look in a different perspective)

––

While I was sending this email, I kept asking myself, is this really simplifying things? Is this how you relate back to the case study in terms of the location, the element of ascending the stairs in real time, etc.?

Relating:
Our ideas were literally all over the place. It is a difficult topic we have chosen but I am adamant that I can pull it off. After receiving feedback, I realised that we were thinking way ahead of the project. We complicated things instead of unraveling the case study. The issue here was that our understanding on relating back to the case study seemed different to what Seth had told us. Reading through Seth’s comments from the email reply, his questions prompted me to go back to the start. The questions guided me to understand what this studio prompt was all about. The first was “What did I like about 89 steps?” I started linking my interests to the suggestions he made for Peter and I.

Reasoning:
Seth prompting us to return back to the beginning of the research was a tremendous help in many ways. I had been trying to look for ways to backtrack and see where I went wrong for days and I did not know where to start anymore because we were so far into our research that I lost track of the relations to the case study. The next prompt was from our interests, what else could we make more interesting in terms of the narrative/non-narrative form. Being able to see the case study in another perspective, thanks to the prompting, we decided to change our three draft ideas.

This was the best possible way of solving this issue. I can’t think of any other possibilities.

On Monday, we used the two hours of studio session to discuss on project three brief. Peter and I continued our discussion where we left off from Friday. We continued searching for our 3 big ideas.

Reporting:
After the Easter break, we continue with our fifth week classes. We continued with the remaining groups for the project two presentation. There were plenty good case studies like the game montage and Vine collaboration and the non-narrative reviews  YouTubers such as Devin Supertramp and Phillip Bloom. Project three brief has been discussed at the end of the class and we had a few minutes of group discussion to flesh out some ideas. Peter and I were discussing on this new service called ‘Periscope’ and we thought it would be an awesome idea to tie it back to making interactive game shorts into video format. There it was, our first idea was born! We had shared our idea, where we wanted it to be like the ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’ (just without the codings and stuff), to Seth and we had something to ponder about. Our first sketch idea was:

We are interested in the interactivity element from the 89 steps. so what happens if the elements are used in new online services on Periscope?

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to discuss further so Peter and I had to work with whatever we just discussed over the weekend and come up with more concrete ideas.

Relating:
Something I realised over this brainstorming session is that these sketch ideas are really open. It is so vague but instead of just cracking up with one good idea, I should be coming up with different ideas and finding the best one. Seth had mentioned about making three ideas that are completely different from each other and then choose them in terms of which one we feel more interested in. This was a little more open with creativity as compared to the previous sketches we have done for project two. I am definitely getting a clearer picture on what sketching is all about. In terms of my knowledge, I am still not completely sure on the interactivity and participatory aspect. It is going to be a trouble in the future projects and I know that it will only slow me down especially with the time constraint.

Reasoning:
I understand that my basic knowledge on participation in online videos isn’t enough for further reference. Our projects are going more in depth with our case study and if I do not have strong knowledge in my field of research, I will be producing half-assed work.

There are a lot of thinking to do as well. I have been focusing too much of ideas that I have seen instead of coming up with something new. The whole reason of this studio is to experiment and pick on certain elements of an online video and THEN transform it into something different.

Reconstructing:

I believe starting to read more on my field would be helpful to my research. The key concepts from the readings could help in my brainstorming when thinking of ideas and find out what has been used in the past. Also, checking with our lecturer would seem like a good idea to make sure we are going on the right track unlike my last project.