It happened! On Friday all of our efforts over the last six weeks came together in what was overall a really incredible (and stressful) event!
After a week of baking and stressing over the potential of running out of food, I lugged everything into uni on Friday morning. With a variety of gluten free and vegan friendly treats all I could do was pray that we weren’t going to run out of food.
At our meeting with Shelley at 11, we ran over the last minute details and for that afternoon. With a briefing on how to check that the microphones in the lecture room were going to charged, I also had a couple of other bits and pieces to do during the day.
We were blessed with some beautiful weather on the day which boosted everyones spirits and at 2:30 we sprung into action to pick up all of our equipment. With Mollie, Matt, Karen Prani and Maddie we went over to Building 5 to pick up the chairs, coffee tables, city scapes and plants. With a bit of help from the ever present steering committee (mainly my main gal pal Georgia Symes) we got it over to Building 80.
The next half an hour or so is a bit of a stressful blur but just after 4 we were ready to go and started letting everyone in. I was so pleasantly surprised we had a diverse group of people coming, not just the people from our course! It was nice to have other people there supporting us!
The seminar went really well, and we had such an amazing response from everyone, which was really encouraging. Everyone complimented my baking, which is always a plus, and someone even tweeted in asking about my playlist, which was lovely! The guests were all so amazing and gave some really great advice and despite all of the stress beforehand I still managed to really enjoy the seminar itself.
Overall I’ve had such a postive experience in organising the Women In Media seminar. Despite how daunting the task seemed before hand, we really came together as a group to put on an incredible seminar. Massive thank you to Shelley, our ever helpful tutor, the Steering Committee, and of course our wonderful group leader Mollie – it definitely wouldn’t have been possible without you!
Over the mid semester break I met with Mollie and Matt to finish the promo video – which is looking amazing! We also cut three short 15 second videos for Instagram/Facebook. These will act as teasers for our full video, which will be released the Monday of our seminar week.
We also put some of our posters around Building 9, which are looking great! So happy with the way they turned out.
The playlist is now finished! I have chosen a selection of “classic” and modern songs all about female empowerment, and I thin intermixing the two will be really great. We have also included Jona Vark by Gypsy and the Cat, as it ties in closely with our seminar name.
Catering is getting there, I have purchased all of the lollies, as well as some pink plastic cups and plates. Next week I will purchase all of the things I need for baking and will have a big baking day which I’m hoping will all go well. My biggest concern with that at the moment will be how I carry it all into school. Will hopefully sort that out next week.
In terms of stage production, I am getting nervous about when/how we are going to set up all of our complicated lights and set. I have full faith in Sam that we will be able to pull this off though! I have also volunteered to man one of the three cameras for our seminar, which I think will be a good way for me to stay focused during our seminar.
This week we made some great progress with organising our seminar – two weeks to go!
Friday morning we shot and began editing our promo video – featuring our amazing host Prani. This will be finalised early next week. The plan is to have a complete 1 minute video (ish) as well as a few 15 second teaser videos to be released over the next week.
As well as helping out on this, I also have volunteered to create a Spotify playlist. This playlist will mostly be used when everyone is arriving, as well as during our break. That playlist can be found here:
In terms of catering, the plan thus far is to make three batches of chocolate chip cookies – one vegan, one gluten free and one ‘normal’. I am going to decorate these with pink icing of the womens symbol (♀). As well as this, we are going to provide pink plastic cups full of pink lollies! The steering committee provides a urn for us, as well as tea and coffee, but we are also going to bring big 2 litre bottles of water and strawberry big m. Having all pink/white snacks will look incredibly effective and earn us some brownie points!
After the last two seminars we have decided that the best place to put our snacks etc is on the seats to the left of the lecture room. We are also going to make brochures and put them on this table.
Very thankful we have an extra week because of the mid semester break – we are planning on meeting next week to put our amazing posters up and finish the video.
This week we had our first seminar – #socialseminar. It was really interesting and definitely gave us some ideas about how to run our seminar so it can be as good as possible!
Today we split up into smaller teams so we can be more organised! I think this will help because with 13 people in a group it has become increasingly hard to be productive and make decisions. I have chosen to be in charge of the food/drink, as well as helping out with the stage production team.
We are going to assess what we have available in the RMITV offices furniture wise on Monday and then make some decisions based on that. We want to have a open discussion with all of our guests, so we are thinking either two couches or four chairs, arranged in a semi circle.
In terms of food I am going to research some recipes and see what happens!
Today we had some time to work in our groups – we were mostly focused on organising guests as our seminar is three weeks away (!!!) I suggested Natalie Tran, who is a YouTuber and business woman. She is based in Sydney, but definitely worth a shot! I’m going to email her and if we haven’t heard from her by Tuesday next week we will move on to someone else. Fingers crossed!
It’s finally here – the last week of the semester! All of the elements of Connor are coming together this week and I am incredibly happy with how the project has turned out.
The final hurdle for me is the final vlog. I have been really indecisive about how to finish these videos, I can’t decide how to figure what note to end the videos on. I am very nervous about how to finish the video, as when you go to Connor’s YouTube channel the last video posted will be the first one you see. As the news articles will link to his channel, it is incredibly important to make sure this video is as effective as possible.
The main source of inspiration for this video comes from Elliot Rodger’s video. His final video, ominously titled ‘Retribution’ clearly outlines his plans and how he is going to kill people. While I don’t want Connor’s video to be that clear, there are elements from this video I would love to use.
A couple of quotes I like from the video are:
“It’s an injustice, a crime, because…I don’t know what you don’t see in me”
“You denied me a happy life, and in turn I will deny all of you life. It’s only fair”
“You deserve to be annihilated and I’ll give that to you. You never showed me any mercy and so I’ll show you none”
“You’ve forced me to suffer all my life”
I’m still undecided about if I’ll just get Thomas to say these things or directly reference the video within his vlog but I’ll figure it out.
The other thing I want to reference in the video are the facebook event, as well as names and other things from the diary.
Connor is progressing really well – the vlogs are coming together really well in the short time frame we have and are creating a character profile for Connor which gives enough character depth without being full of exposition. The trick with these vlogs is to provide enough push off points to the other platforms while still providing enough distinct content for the platform to be considered sustainable.
In an ideal world, I would love to have like 6 months of content created before our ‘big event’, to create a really full character profile which fully explored all of the nuances of Connor’s character. This is the benefit of the diary, as we are able to backlog content and put dates on things to create the illusion of this project going on for longer than the 12 week semester. I would have also loved to flesh out the Facebook aspect of our project, create profiles for people which exist in their own world. It would have been really good to incorporate some more social media elements into our project, such as some Instagram work. I don’t know what the most effective way of linking these projects would be, it would just be cool to try.
That’s the annoying thing about creating projects within the coursework, the 12 week timeframe doesn’t really allow for projects for fully develop and come into their own. Realistically, by the time you suss out the class, the groups you’re working in, and the nuances of your project you have 6 weeks to create a project which is fully fledged.
Here’s hoping all the other elements of our project come together on time – the news articles are coming together really well and Tiana is handling the diary. My main concern at this point is the photos, as I want them to be as effective as they possibly can be. We are scheduling time with Tom next week to take them, and then pulling together a collection of photos from our personal albums and working him into the background of them.
Our first piece of the Connor puzzle has come together – our first YouTube video!
We’re really happy with what Thomas has put together – considering we just send him the script (which very few directions) we are so happy with how it has come together.
Our aim is to put two videos up each week for the next few weeks – and we are just writing them week by week. They’re only going to be short videos, like two minutes each, but by the end we should have about 10-15 minutes of videos.
All of the other bits and pieces are slowly coming together – Tiana is working on the diary and we have slowly started drafting the newspaper articles. My only concern at this point is the photo album – as it’s meant to be the draw card into our project I’m just really hoping it works and is as effective as we are planning.
This week we were given a reading by Renira Gambarato, which explores the relationship between signs, system and complexity in relation to transmedia storytelling. I found this a particularly hard reading, mainly due to the fact it involved algebra, which I haven’t dealt with since 2011.
However, after a few readings, I finally got what Gambarato was talking about and pulled a few key ideas which I found interesting, as well as ideas which relate to our final project.
Garambato defines a system as the composition (or the set of components), the environment and the structure of that environment. This can be applied to any environment, be it a school, a workplace, or a narrative world.
Garambarto argues that a transmedia environment needs to involve “at least five main areas (systems)” to be considered an engaging project
Garambarto argues that a fundamental of transmedia storytelling is the relationship between the story and the people interested in it. This relationship can be divided into two different ways – interactivity which allows the audience to relate to it without changing the story and participation which allows the audience to engage with it and express creativity in relation to the story.
Garambarto explores the dichotomy of sytsems, either being open or closed. An ‘open system’ is one which invites and allows the audience to fully immerse themselves in the story, and allows them to express creative control over where the story can go. In opposition, a ‘closed system’ is one which does not allow the audience to interfere with the narrative..
The most interesting thing I picked up from Garambarto’s reading is the idea very few projects are created as open projects, that “all the story development was already planned and controlled”. I was thinking about this particularly in relation to the projects we have undertaken this semester, which are predominantly closed systems. The idea of creating a story but not having control of where it goes or how it will finish is really terrifying.
This week I wanted to provide a progress update on Connor
Webisodes: I don’t remember if I wrote this anywhere – but we’ve decided to scrap the webisodes. Given the small amount of time we have left this semester and how much time they would take to produce, we decided as a group to get rid of them. This gives us some more time to ensure the other artefacts are going to be as high quality as possible.
Vlogs: We’ve set up a YouTube channel to upload all of your videos (link coming soon and we are looking to upload 1/2 videos a week, with at least 5 in total. We are taking turns in writing them and going to write them week by week – just to allow changes in our project to progress. The key points I want covered in the vlogs are to really demonstrate Connor’s character, as well as providing links to our other artefacts.
Diary: Tiana has decided to take control of the diary – which I am more than happy to relinquish control of. Obviously we will help out creating content as much as we can.
Photo Album: We have planned to take these photos in Week 10 – we still haven’t decided the best way to approach it yet. We have created five Facebook profiles each, in order to make the community surrounding Connor as real as possible.
Articles: We have started drafting the articles – as we want to appear as professional as possible so we need to start on these as soon as possible.
