As we continue our work with The Ambassador, Rylie and I started very mild script writing.
We have planned to work on the rest of the script on Thursday and then finishing all final touches on Friday!
After working on some mild scripting today and I am more excited for this project and Im excited for building the story!
This week I worked with Rylie and we continued to brainstorm our project. For a refresher see our trailer here.
We have decided to host this interactive media on twine. My hope is to play around with it more and seeing if we can incorporate sound into the game. I think that this would be essential to creating a audio environment that would immerse the user.
Though this game does not revolve around our characters, we are going to add our characters into the story as side characters, or character that the users interact with once or twice in their adventure.
We have also discussed splitting the game into three chapters. The first chapter is the beginning of the story, in which we introduce the character that the user plays and the conflict with some minor choices. the second chapter is is the bulk of the conflict in which the user will make choices that go against the main conflict of the story. The third chapter is the epilogue that will conclude the story into an ending, good or not.
I am a little nervous about writing the different narratives and keeping them consistent with the story. With the way that the story just branches out because of the different choices that can be made Im nervous about having loose ends. But I think that this will end up being very fun!
For the final project, Rylie and I are working on an interactive choose-you-own-future game surrounding the idea of an AI governed society.
Our trailer:
To make this trailer Rylie and I made a script that pitched the idea and premise of our game. Rylie had a text-to-speech (that we wanted to sound like Dr. O, but couldn’t clone him) read the script and edited it so that the pauses and flow of the voice sounded as natural and un-natural as we wanted it be. I worked on compiling a bunch of relevant stock video into iMovie and created a trailer and timed it with the finished script and uploaded it to youtube!
I think I would have liked to have more filters I could use but iMovie didn’t have a lot of options. I also had a hard time finding the exact videos I wanted for the trailer on the free stock video websites (that didn’t also had an obnoxious watermark) so I think I couldn’t have done more if I had the right time and materials.
This week i had the opportunity to listen to the broadcast of Noir Games. This was a radio show done by Tyler Flowers, Nairah Killiebrew, Antonio Lewis, and Azrael Fanning. I really liked this idea of a radio show of trivia. I also really liked the surprise of hearing Dr. Oblivion and I also really liked the use of the AI voice for the characters. I think that this group did a great job with the sound aspect of this project. I really liked all of the game show sounds that were added and I think that really helped get in the world of the show. One thing I had noticed, however, is the mixing levels. Some sound effects would be louder than others, though this wasnt a hug issue it was something I noticed. I also heard some longer pauses in the voices towards the end of the show which was interesting in the following of the story. Overall, this was a very entertaining show to listen to!
In terms of hearing my own show broadcasted, it was definitely interesting. I don’t normally like hearing my own voice so editing was a challenge but only I could hear my voice when editing. This time I was hearing my voice AND others were listening to it. So once I got over that I was feeling very proud of the finished product!
This week was fast moving. We finally got an idea on what we wanted to do for our radio show. Because we couldn’t meet together and record we decided to make the show almost like a podcast and have each of our characters bring our listener on a story of the different crimes they have committed. Each charcter got one episode in which we were responsible for our own commercials and sound.
Once this was done we uploaded our final project to a shared google drive and I compiled them into one show and put it in sound cloud. You can find our final project here!
This week was a slow start. We didnt really get a chance to meet about our project just yet but ideas are flowing through my head like crazy.
Our biggest challenge is scheduling. None of us have the time to meet all together for this project so we are in the midst of coming up with ways we can complete this without meeting together.
Here is the final product of our radio Days of Crime and Roses. By characters: Bethany Smith, Evelynn Calico, and Jasper (on the character Greyson Cole)
Radio show by: Rylie Vann, Rebecca Yee, and Ethan Coleman.
Enjoy!
Evelyn loves bumper stickers. She is classy but that doesn’t mean that her car doesn’t deserve some love and decoration. Her favorite bumper sticker is one that warns drivers behind her. Where she lives tailgating is a huge problem and she does not stand for it. Getting to work is hard enough, she doesn’t need assholes in her business.
I used a Canva template to get the bumper sticker size and I chose one that just has a black background. I googled goose with a knife because it’s one of my favorite things and it makes me laugh, so I scrolled till I found one I liked. I found this one that said “flock around a find out” and this gave me the idea to make the bumper sticker have a message that warns drivers rather than a “I’m a new driver” type of message. I then added text that said maintain distance and this gives the other drivers instruction on what not to do to find out.
For this project I chose to do an episode from Black Mirror “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too”. I remember using this episode form another assignment for this class but I cannot seem to find it. Oh well.
I used a newspaper template from Canva and found a scene I wanted to write about on youtube. I chose one of the final scenes where the REAL Ashley is trying to get her life back and they crash a car into the stadium where the hologram Ashley is performing. I didnt was to catastrophize the hologram person because in the scene everyone is excited to see specifially Ashley Eternal, so society already knows this person is a hologram. So the big event that happens that disrupts everything in society’s eye is that the car crashed into the stadium and almost ran people over, so this is what I focused my story on. I then thought about the rest of the episode and there is a lot that happens with the character Ashley where she gets poisoned by her aunt and then is replaced by a character called Ashley O. In the timeline Ashley gets poisoned and then there is a time skip fo 6 months. Therefor, the first “read more” story I chose to do a “Where is Ashley” story. I figured I would want to know what is happening if suddenly my favorite singer/songwriter disappeared for six months without announcing anything. The second “read more” story I was on the sudden takeover of Ashley O after the first Ashley disappeared. I tried to make the timeline of events semi-clear by adding dates to the story of when it was published.
Overall, I had fun with this project. I enjoyed reading into an episode and making sure I covered the story in a way that is effective and entertaining for the audience.
“My goals for this class is to learn more about digital media and learn how to be more proficient with technology. For example, Im still learning how to use WordPress and this blog post is still taking me a while to set up because I have no idea how to use this program, but I’m learning! My goal is also to stay on top of the weekly assignments and to not fall behind.”
Above were my goals from the first week of classes. I became so overwhelmed with the new programs we had to use but now that we are 6 weeks in I’m getting the hang of learning new programs and working with them.
With Design and photography week I used a lot of programs I was familiar with but used my creativity in ways I had not before, so that was a great thing to learn.
Audio Week is where I think I started learning how to use new programs and working with them creatively. I had a great time that week with the audio assignments and learned a lot.
In terms of time management, its still a work in progress. I have started getting into the thick of it for my other classes and senior projects so I have to re adjust my schedule from when we started and its taking more time than I want it to. I don’t think I will fall behind too much but Im keeping an eye on it. I would also like to continue with my commenting on three posts per week and hopefully more when I have the time.