About:

Through out most of high school I created original videos and posted them on YouTube. Most of the videos involved videos games in some way. Some of my favorite games were NBA Street Vol. 2,Guitar Hero II, Super Street  Fighter IV:Arcade Edition, and Call of Duty games. As a kid I loved games and movies, so I would have called myself an digital person; however, once I got to college I began to enjoy art and books and would now say I am a bit of both. I can't say I have ran into a media text that I just absolutely hated and thought had no value. I believe if someone took the time to create something, they did it for a reason, whatever that reason may be. I am interested in this class because I enjoy creating new media myself, and am interested in learning new ways to do that. I think this class will help me in the future as I continue to create and consume original pieces of media. 

 

Essential Narratives List:

 

The Last Of Us:

The Last of Us is an action-adventure survival horror video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation 3 on June 14, 2013; an updated version, The Last of Us Remastered, was released for the PlayStation 4 on July 29, 2014.[a] The player controls Joel, a man tasked with escorting the young Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States.

     The Last Of Us, was a game that made me feel depressed after I had completed it. The feeling of knowing that you will never experience the epic adventure you just embarked on for the first time again. This game made me feel like I was in the story. Every person killed every scrap of metal found felt real. 

 

    Wikipedia Page

     Official Site

    Game Wiki

 

God Of War Series:

God of War is a third-person action-adventure video game developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). First released on March 22, 2005, for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) console, it is the first installment in the series of the same name and the third chronologically. Loosely based on Greek mythology, it is set in ancient Greece with vengeance as its central motif. The player controls the protagonist Kratos, a Spartan warrior who serves the Olympian Gods. The goddess Athena tasks Kratos with killing Ares, the God of War, who tricked Kratos into killing his own wife and child. As Ares besieges Athens out of hatred for Athena, Kratos embarks on a quest to find the one object capable of stopping the god: the legendary Pandora's Box.

 

   Wikipedia Page

   Official Site

   Game Wiki

 

Trailer Park Boys:

Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian mockumentary crime black comedy-drama sitcom television series created and directed by Mike Clattenburg that focuses on the misadventures of a group of trailer park residents, some of whom are ex-convicts, living in the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The television series is a continuation of Clattenburg's 1999 film of the same name and premiered on Showcase in 2001.[1] The planned final season ended in 2007, and the planned final episode, "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys," premiered as a special on Showcase on December 7, 2008, ending the initial run of the series.

 

   Wikipedia Page

   FanSite

   Swearnet

 

Jackie Brown:

Jackie Brown is a 1997 crime drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Jackie Brown supplements her meager income as a stewardess by smuggling cash into the U.S. for gunrunner Ordell Robbie--until the day an ATF agent and an L.A. cop bust her at the airport. The cops pressure her to help them bring down Ordell, threatening prison if she refuses.  

 

Wikipedia Page

IMDb Page

Official Site

 

Homestuck:

Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated and animated by Andrew Hussie, and is the fourth overall webcomic published on MS Paint Adventures.[1] The series centers on a group of teenagers who unwittingly bring about the beginning of the end of the world through the installation of a beta copy of an upcoming computer game.

 

Wikipedia Page

Official Site

Homestuck Reddit Community

 

 

 5 Photo Story:

Time stamps and additional cropping was done by me, with original screenshots coming from the TV show Archer on FX

Archer is a TV show made by FX. It tells the story of a self-centered master spy, who likes to party in excess and it not one for following the rules. My 5 photo story is centered on Archer one of his wild nights. He smokes a joint, party’s with his butler, throws a cyborg off the roof, and passes out in his bed. All of this may seem extreme, but most spies portrayed in movies and TV now a days tend to live this life of excess. The final picture is a DARE logo and slogan. While, DARE is a program designed for kids and not adults, which Archer is targeted towards. It is these adults who grew up listening and suffering through all the DARE talks in school that we now know was a waste of time. DARE has had to change its program in recent years, because it was giving millions of kids across the U.S. false information. It is for this reason that I decided to poke a little fun at the D.A.R.E. program.  

 

Critical Review Pay Day 2:

Pay Day 2 is a co-operative first-person shooter action game developed by Overkill Software and the successor to Pay Day: The Heist. The developers of Pay Day not only produce a game that gets updated almost monthly in a serial nature, giving the players a little bit more of the story every time. They also release short films, which use the actual missions and characters in the game. This multi medium approach has been used by game developers before and is nothing new. But rarely has the extra content, either found online or inside a box, been released in a serial structure lining up with the updates of the game. This along with the nonlinear aspect of the game itself, giving the user the opportunity to play any heist they wish. Make this game a good Digital Networked Narrative to analyze.  

While the idea of killing cops and robbing banks may seem as if it is geared towards adults. I think this game is geared towards teens and young adults ranging from the ages of 16-30. Even though the ESRB rates this game as being M for mature, I still think the developers were expecting a younger audience than that. It is more and more common to find teenagers playing video games designed for “adults”. Game developers realize this and use it to their advantage.

The Pay Day 2 web series takes place on YouTube, a place many teenagers go for entertainment. It cost no extra money to view these videos. So why is this all important? Because, if you main audience is just going to sit around and watch YouTube videos all day, you should give them something to watch and watch until they get bored. What does the bored user do after he has watched all these professionally made videos about your game? He goes and plays your game, silly. This is exactly what is happening now. Every new update, Overkill releases a video to hype up their younger audience and get them ready to keep playing their game.  

Overkill has mastered the art of using multiple mediums to engage the same audience. Even going as far as giving even more to those that are willing to pay. Offering a digital book that includes maps of the different heist, and more detailed information about the game. Overkill is an example of a DNN success. More game developers should keep the strategies they use in mind when developing their own games. In today’s word, it is not enough to simply create a good game. You need a good website, and other forms of media for your audience to enjoy. 

PayDay2 offical site

OverKill YouTube Channel

Machinima Hotline Miami:

My machinima uses the world of Hotline Miami, a 2D top-down action video game, to tell a story. My story starts with Chris, the main character, receiving a call from his friend saying that his wife has been kidnapped. My machinima follows Chris as he uses any means necessary to get the love of his life back. In order to tell this story, I used clips from the original game, clips from the Official Hotline Miami trailer, and created my own voice over. These are all used in various ways, to help the viewer follow the story. Yes, the story and the game may seem confusing and like questions go un-answered. The main reason for this, is like the original story I wanted to keep it vague. You learn what you need to know when you need to know it, nothing else. 

My Machinima can be found Here

 

 

GIF:

After struggling with money, having his wife leave him and sleeping in a public bathroom with his son. Chris Gardner was finally given a break, a job. After working as an unpaid intern for many months, and struggling just to find a place for his little boy to sleep, Chris, finally got some good news. This GIF uses images from the Movie Pursuit of Happiness. The entire movie is the Pursuit. This one moment expressed in this GIF, this is the Happiness. This GIF is everything Chris has been working for. In my GIF I used images of Chris clapping and holding back his excitement. Being, one of the most dramatic scenes in the whole movie. If you have ever seen this movie, you will immediately know why this one sequence was chosen. 

 

 

Remix video:

Feeling, audio remix video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyh8BVfulqk

In my remix I wanted to show how different songs can be mashed together, just because they use the same word. This technique is becoming a more popular technique for DJ’s, as it is easy as a listener to pick up on the transition from song to song. Popular songs are used so hopefully you recognize a couple of them and can distinguish yourself when a new song is being played. Since my remix focused mostly on the words of the songs, I decided to use a lyric video. This allowed me to show the viewer the lyrics and bold every time someone used the word “Feeling”, helping to further emphasis the point of the remix. I then added an audio visualizer to the background to keep the video from being too bland. To do this I recorded the visualization separately and rendered it behind the lyric video. 

 

 

Project Proposal:

For my project I would like to tell the story of the life of a star. I find it fascinating how the stars in our sky 

are born and die just like us. My project would be geared toward a general audience with no previous knowledge in Astronomy, as to allow the story to be viewed by anyone interested in experiencing the life of a

star. An interactive website with videos and images that walks you through the life of one star, "Your" star is 

how I imagine my project. Although, I do not have any specific images or videos in mind I plan on using what I

can find from various resources including but not limited to textbooks, websites, and museums. 

 

What will happen with the Sun?

 

Design Prospectus

 

What is the universe like? What is our place in it? My project seeks to answer these questions and more through the journey of two Space-Apes. 

You are a chimp fresh out of school, looking to make a name for yourself as part of Beyond Earth Elite Space Apes, a squadron of monkeys dedicated to solving the problems of

space. Your commander will walk you through your training and give you your first mission.

The training and all conversations will take place on a website. Below is a flow chart with different web pages that may be needed in order for this project to flow smoothly.

Flow Chart of Project

Buttons at the bottom of each page will lead you to the next. 

I plan to complete a page of the website every 2 days. If I stayed on schedule the project would be complete by May 11th. 

 

Fail Badge

This semester I failed in managing my time. While, I started out the year with a schedule and a plan to accomplish everything I needed to accomplish I wasn't able to stick to it. Early on in the semester I got news of something that would require me to go home every weekend instead of staying at school to work. This caused me to lose the weekends as possible work time, which was the main time I had originally planned on working. After this happened I should have reorganized my schedule to be able to stay on track. I did not do this however, which put me behind. Being behind my intended schedule made me unable to finish some of the projects I had intended on doing such as a Archer remix video and a machinima based around the video game Pay Day 2. Through this set back I have learned, that things come up sometimes and you need to work around them no matter how disastrous they may seem. In the future I plan on making a schedule at the beginning of the semester as I did this year, but I also plan on making changes to it as needed in order to stay on par to complete it by the end of the semester. 

 

 

Final Project

Here is a link to my Final Project, an interactive website that follows a space monkey as he learns about the Universe. 

http://beyondearth.my-free.website/

 

For my final project I wanted to create an interactive website that informs the viewer about space. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected. Having to try and keep everything factual and still create a story was rather difficult. In the end, I decided to make up a story to tell factual information. The viewer is sent on a journey through Space monkey training were they are to learn about the Universe in order to be able to complete their mission later on. My website does not include any actual missions and I didn’t plan on it doing so. The idea of the mission is just something to push the story along. Although YouTube prevented me from using two of the three videos I originally intended on using, I feel that my website is still able to tell a story and inform at the same time. The ultimate goal was to have the viewer leave the site having learned something they did not know before, and to have learned it in a new and entertaining way.

Three other DNN’s:

Snow Fall:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

Snow Fall is an interactive news article created by John Branch that gives news in a new way. Similar to this website, I wanted to create a way to tell facts but in a way besides huge blocks of text. The interactive videos and animations bring life to the site, which is something I tried to add to my own.

 

Pine point:

http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint

Pine Point is an homage to memory, at once linear and exploratory, unraveling through a poetic collage of writing, image, video, sound, voice and music, all in service of a story. Created by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, this interactive website tells a story using quotes, images, animations, audio and more. One thing I think this site did really well, is the audio. While I do not use any audio in my site, Pine Point is a great example of how physically telling a story, is still a fantastic way to tell a story. Like, my website this site uses quotes to carry the story along through the sight as well as next or advance buttons.

Knighttime:

http://www.hazardousplayers.com/KNIGHTTIME/Intro.html

Knightime is a multimedia, multi-item Web story series of medieval fantasy and humor. Like my site this Web story uses an intro page to start off the story before actually entering the site. Unlike my site however this website was uploaded in parts, and in blog form. Still videos and other mediums are used to tell a story in a new way.

 

In my project I used the concept of recut, reframe, recycle as mentioned by Henry Jenkins

http://henryjenkins.org/2008/02/an_interview_with_pat_aufderhe.html

I recut an episode of Cosmos to use in my story. I wanted to show how black holes work, but didn’t know how to make a fancy animation or a good way to explain it. In my opinion the particular episode of cosmos did an excellent job of both explaining and showing exactly what black holes are. It is for this reason that I decided to recut and link to a clip from the show.

Henry Jenkins also talks about creativity in an interview with David Gauntlett.

http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/studying_creativity_in_the_age.html

Just by simply creating a site of my own I was able to be creative. I could have easily found another website to explain how a star forms and how a star dies. But more than likely I would not have been able to find a site that tells me about stars through the story of two space monkeys. By adding to the DNN culture, and taking away from it the cycle can continue.

 

 

In Class Work/ Thoughts:

 

Thunder Road:

I would use a five photo story. 

1. Screen Door on a porch

2. dress flowing in the wind

3. Old Chevrolet

4. Two lane highway

5. Two people riding in a car  

 

Stop Light Photo Story:

Questions-

What kind of equipment will I need?

 a. Need to figure out what props will be needed for the pictures

 b. Need to figure out what lights and camera are needed to get consistent pictures

1. Trial and error 

2. Google good lighting techniques to use for filming in a garage

 

How will the story be setup?

- How will the viewer be prepared to view the pictures.

 a. Could make a photo story with naration over the top

 b. Make a video were the actors in the video are seeing the pictures at the same time as the viewer. 

1. See if anything like this has been done, and brainstorm ideas how to improve on it. 

2. Talk to others to brainstorm ideas

 

Who is the audience?

- 18+, this puts less limitations on what is possible

The partner I originally planned on doing this with got really sick and isn't able to do it anymore. For this reason the idea was scrapped. 

 

 

Story Ideas In class exercise March 25: 

Something that happened this week.  I got sick and didn't feel like leaving my room

Something you witnessed or heard about. I heard that one of my friends got a job in Dallas

Something from the news. I saw a man get shot in Dallas by a police officer. 

Something that could happen next week. I could move to Canada 

Something that could never happen. I could never find a watch that stops/resumes time. 

 

 

 

 

 

Archer Remix Video idea:

Combine clips of Archer to form a new story. 

Need to see if Audio will work. 

Could show everytime Archer tricks people with his voicemail.

Could tell the life of Brett the Bullet Magnet.

DANGER ZONE!

 

 

- internet loading slowly

- nobody has actually made something 

- not able to be specific enough in their search

- phone battery dies

- car won't start

- locked keys in car

- someone gets shot