Video Shooting Plan

Personally I am more interested in interactive design compared to video/ film making. The reason is because video production has more unpredictable circumstances to deal with compare to coding in front of computer. But I have chosen to take the learning challenge in STI project, so I need to really work on it!

Challange #1: Time Management

My project required altogether 5 talents to act in the video. With the tight timeline we have, I need to work out a schedule to accommodate everybody's time.


Challenge #2: Location
In my plot, I need a student house that can fit all 5 actor/actresses to tell the story. Minimum 3 rooms needed. As the project uses makeup and beauty as the theme, I also need 2 girl rooms.

Challenge #3: The Inter-Connected Storytelling Video Angle

There's one main character as the guide of how I will film the story. But to film a different perspective of the same story is indeed a challenge to me. I haven't fully planned the details scenes. The logic of how the final answer is gonna review to the audience is still a question mark in my mind. Because my project did not tell story from a linear perspective, plus the interactive component, I am a little bit overwhelm by the production challenge at this moment. 

Challenge #4: Equipment

I know that I am going to film the video, plan the schedule, refine the plot of the story, get the location and etc. But video format and camera setting is always something from the other planet to me. I don't really know how to handle them. At this moment, all that I could think of is "head-mounted camera" as keyword to proceed to my next stage of research. 

My next stage planning is to search for the location, the talents to act in my video, the props to put into the video so to give clues as interaction hints and lastly, the shooting equipment needed.

There's a study break on Christmas and New Year holiday period. I planned to get the video shooting done before semester resume. 

Script writing - Adobe Story

This is the first time I write the scripts all by myself.
I worked in a group to produce short film around 7 years ago. And back then I wasn't in-charge of the scripts, so I did not really learn a proper script writing process.

In my research and study about screenwriting, I learned that screenwriting helps the video production team to communicate effectively by letting the actors or actresses have an overview of who appear and where, when, and what should the actor or actress do in different scene.

There's quite some standard practice and format to follow during screenwriting. Then I came across quite a few similar keywords that sometimes confused me, there are people who use screenplay, scripts, screenwriting to term the process.

After consulting tutor, I continue research on the screenwriting format and come across few useful URL:
http://www.screenwriting.info/
http://www.writersstore.com/how-to-write-a-screenplay-a-guide-to-scriptwriting/


In the midst of research, I came across a free screenwriting software, Adobe Story as a tool for pre-production project management allowing user to tryout it's trial version. In order to get an overall understanding of pre-production process, I try to learn Adobe Story by checking out how others have used it from youtube tutorials and also Adobe tutorial site. Below are some of the links of reference:

My Personal Exploration of Adobe Story

The dynamic feature of highlighting different actor/actresses appeared in the number of scenes

Close-up look of the features

The Navigation Analysis

To make the investigation video interesting, it needs to begin with an exciting and inviting opening - the rabbit hole (Alice in the Wonderland). After closely observing the navigation system in my main reference, below are the findings:

The Introduction - How to Play

At the beginning of the project, user is informed about the switch character control and the icon that indicate the switch capability.

User can also explore the video content from different characters point of view by choosing the character at the bottom.

The ultimate mission exploring the content is to find the secret bottle.

At the beginning of the video, user are welcomed by the host and then asked to try switch to the host perspective once. In this UI, the bottom circle highlighted the host photo which shows that user is playing the character's life. There's other characters available for user to explore. The highlighted icons above actor and actresses in this video is also hinting user that user can walk around in the view of those characters. The top menu allow user to press space bar to pause or resume the video. If user switch character in the middle of the narrative, user can pull the timeline of the video forward or backward to discover the story of individual character better.

If user cannot accomplish the mission within the time limit required, the result scene is displayed as below:

In this ui, user can see the different roles he/she has switched point of view into. And then how many more character he/she can explore further. This is a very user friendly inforgraphic display of the interactive history of the user.

Analysis of Interactive Narrative - Plot structure

In the interactive narrative component of the project, I would like to know how should the plot being structured. Therefore, I go online and search for collections of plot structure. I found the image above from Ingrid's Notes. As the diagram displayed above, I wanted to user the open plot structure for my interactive video which allows user to explore the interconnected relationship among the characters in my story. And most of the scenes are designed to allow 2 or more characters to appear and interact with each other so that it gives user the opportunity to switch POV at different scenes.

Due to the dynamic nature of my project, I need to learn how to plan detail character actions so that the activity of the character in the story. In order to plan the details, I need to define the overall outline of the story. There's a main goal, which is to find out the missing palette. To spice up the searching experience, the narrative of the incident play an important role. Since the story is designed to be a investigation mission, I reference the storytelling approach from detective film and comics where the narration has given every suspect in the room a fair chance to want to commit the crime. This reference point has allowed me to grow my character design better by identifying the different personality of the characters and the potential reason of them needing the makeup palette.

The TV series, "Big Bang Theory" has inspired me to grow my characters in the video stronger. The unique combination of different personality, value system and self expression of Raj Koothrappali, Leonard Hofstadter, Penny, Sheldon Cooper and Howard Wolowitz indeed add to the series some depth.

Some of the reading and research link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898266/

Simulacra and Simulation Inspired theme

After going through one semester of contextual module in Media Culture, I am very inspired by the theory of Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard who seek to interrogate the relationship among reality, symbols, and society.

The way my interactive content is developed to reflect some of the fours sign-orders of Simulacra and Simulation.

1. The first stage is faithful image:
   In the video, there'll will real makeup palettes display in the scenes.
2. The second stage is the perversion of reality - signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
   The missing palette is in gold and black. There's some of the items hidden in the video shows a hint of gold and make user think that those are the missing makeup palette. User is hinted but not really given the actual content.
   The final answer is that the chocolate that wrapped in gold paper with a product label around it. The makeup palette is hidden underneath the product wrap and it somehow distorted the reality of the content.
3. Stage four - pure simulation.
   I use the interaction of switching perspective form different person in the video to give pure simulation of how the incident happened and allowing user to peek the story from different person's world. Through connecting dots, user will then be able to know the complete story of the video. 

Inception

In wax museum where celebrities stand next to their wax statue and take photos of it.

Some reference links:

Simulacra and Simulation By Jean Baudrillard (Google Book)

Slide Share of simulation and simulacra

Wikipedia - Simulacra and Simulation

What to put into the container?

The proposal of the learning technology is approved.

My challenge now is - What story should I be telling?
With the idea of simulation and simulacra, it's challenging the perception of audience (in my case, the user). In today's  media environment we are living in, with a computer screen we are make believe in the world that never exists or we are make believe by the technology as if we are presence in the other side of the world.

To make it more personal, I think makeup can be the topic to explore simulation and simulacra. Putting on powder and colours on our face, re-shape the eye brows, making double eyelids from the mono eyelids, wearing colour contact lens to change the eye colour and etc are all possible today. Our true identity is altered. Besides that makeup industry has grow exponentially, I would like to catch up with the trend and reflect it in my project. So, the theme of the interactive video will be MAKEUP.

I'm very interested to work on it also because I have a friend who has many makeup collections that can contribute to the props to make the whole idea possible.

At this moment, my learning process is more focusing on the the nature of the media I wanted to create and the content that fit the media capability.

Specialist Technical Inquiry (STI) - Brainstorming

When the semester started, we were briefed to set a learning target in any field that is relevant to Interactive Media. Our challenge is to propose a learning plan that shows sufficient evidence of learning, not too simple yet not too difficult so that we could accomplished the learning by week 12 of the academic week.

Since the module name is AIN (authoring interactive narrative), storytelling or narrative will be the focus, no matter what media or approach I'll choose later on. Personally, I am very inspired by some of the schools of thoughts introduced in the contextual module like simulation and simulacra. I am always curious about the other sides of the story. What does it mean? To me, everything that I see in my life, what I know and what I understand, all comes from what is presented before me. I might only know the partial of what the matter is or what the world is, based on the collective given incidents happened in my life. I am always wanting to know how does it feels like to stand at the other persons position, looking at things from different eyes. 

With some projects I've seen in the internet, I'm inspired to learn how to tell story from the first person point of view in a non-linear approach. The story will be told in a way that many characters will appear in the scenes that allow user to switch point of view during the narrative process. 

Below are my inspiration links:

On Perspective:

http://www.perriersecretplace.com/

On Interactivity:

http://www.onlybecausewecan.com/

http://tour.kathart.dk/