After having experience several new media projects, as well as making our sketch for Assignment 1, Liam and I realised that most of the non-fiction new media projects were employing one of the key formal qualities of online screen media which is interactivity. Therefore, we wanted to explore the possibilities of making new media incorporating interactivity into our project work for Assignment 2.

We brainstormed a couple of ideas exploring ways of how interactivity can engage mass audience, but in order to do that, we must have an audience to appeal to, and since non of us are relatively popular Youtube or online influencers, we decided to take on another approach. One of the ideas that came to mind was to create a maze for users to navigate through either the entire Internet or in a particular social media app such as Facebook or Instagram. We thought it could be a good idea, and we discussed into great depth, however, we could not find a way to administer the game in order to monitor the progress of people playing it, the mechanics of the game, and so on. The initial idea was to use #hashtags in Instagram. Out of 3-4 hashtags false hashtags that will lead you to nowhere, only 1 will actually take you to another Instagram page, and the maze carries on from there. As mentioned, we were not too clear on how #hashtags worked (as silly as it sounds), but in order for it to work, we needed to have multiple Instagrams account, AND I discovered that if the user were to visit one of the account, he’ll be able to view all the leading pictures with the clues inside, hence the use of the hashtag would be redundant.

So back to the drawing board again, and we thought we should just stick to what we’re actually good at, or at least just slightly better than trying to overhaul the hashtags system on Instagram. Both Liam and I have relatively strong background on filmmaking, hence we decided to shoot an interactive horror scene where the viewer gets to decide the outcome. If you have read the old horror story books by Goosebumps, you’ll remember having little footnotes that tells you what page to flip to if you want the main character to do this, or that. We thought of employing that idea, by providing links to the viewer for them to choose what kind of outcome they wish. However, given the tight timeline we have to go out and shoot the multiple alternate endings on how the protagonists is going to die, I came up with an idea of doing an online Interactive e-Portfolio. Basically the same idea, without the horror, gore, and suspense. Viewers will get an opening message from the profile, and they’ll get to click on links to view that person’s resumé, showreel, social media accounts, and other miscellaneous stuff like their interests, hobbies, family portraits…etc. I’ll elaborate more in my next post on how we think this idea might explore the formal quality of interactivity and other online screen media qualities.