Category Archives: Tech Noir

Week 13: Final Project Update

This week I started putting together the script for my short film “Analog”. The plot for “Analog” will follow a rogue activist who stumbles across a camcorder that contains fragments of a family’s life that took place 100 years before the AI regime. As they piece together these forgotten moments of humanity, the protagonist becomes a target of the State, hunted for the very truth they are trying to preserve. Their journey forces them to confront what it means to be human in a world designed to erase humanity’s past.

In addition to fleshing out a script for my short film, I went through various audio clips that would aid in building out the story, tested different AI generated voices I could use for characters, and found some AI generated tech noir themed scenes I could use to help build the setting of my film.

Preparation for the last week :(

It’s crazy that next week is the last week of class. I’ve really enjoyed the creativity and tools i’ve learned to use in this class. This week was pretty essay in terms of prepping for the final project.

The fearless femmes and I agreed to meet on Sunday afternoon to brainstorm how we wanted to film the episodes for Real Housewives of Cyberpunk. We brainstormed ideas and agreed to meet and film scenes on Wednesday. During our meeting we also established who would do bumpers, edits, and commercials for our show.

We filmed about 4 – 5 scenes on Wednesday which is great progress. We still have a lot to still film but, we’v planned out our scripts and agreed to meet again Monday afternoon to finish the scenes. This ill give us plenty of time to edit and focus on filming bumpers and commercials for the show throughout the week.

Overall I think it was a very successful week. I really enjoyed watching other classmates trailers and i’m very excited to see how everyone’s turns out. I love working with the Fearles sFemmes! We work together really well and have so much fun while working. It’s really easy to bounce ideas off each other and we end up with a great final result.

See you guys next week with the final and finished project!

Sincerely, Kristen

Weekly Summary- 4/18

This week Rusul and I outlined our project and what we want to focus on leading up to recording our podcast series. Rusul took the liberty of creating a subdomain to host our podcast series, as a platform for our audience to gather and listen to the three episode special of CyberTalks. I worked on scripts, completing one and starting another, with goals of having all three done by early next week so we can record shortly after that. After the recording session, we plan to spend the rest of the time editing our episodes, using the same platform we used on the radio show, both having familiarity with it. I’m excited to record! And glad that Rusul and I have coordinated so well to make a solid plan of how we’re going about finishing up this class strong. Stay Tuned!

FriYAY. #CyberManhattanWife

In my post, The Real HouseWives of Cyber Manhattan I gave my first update on how my group was doing with our short film. We had made some further progress, that I talk about here: Cyber Wives Update #2.

We are making great progress so far! I would say we are close to halfway done right now with filming our content. Over the weekend we are fine tuning all of our bumpers and commercials & on Monday we will be finishing up with filming the rest of the content portion of the film.

For the remainder of next week, we will all be pitching in on editing and piecing this film together. I’m very excited to see the final product.

Weekly Summary #13: Taylor Swift’s Lucky Number

M. Marshall 4.18

I cannot not mention that 13 is Taylor Swift’s lucky number on my thirteenth weekly summary, so here it is.

I did a lot of work toward the final project this week. I went into it more in this post:

Progress update!

But here’s what I’ll say here: I’ve been watching all the YouTube videos on cat animating that I can find (admittedly, not as many as a girl could hope for). I’m in the beginning stages of animating, it’s not perfect but I’ve been working on my drawing skills this semester. And I’m about halfway through with a script/plans for the pictures. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of substantive things to say about it that I didn’t already discuss yesterday. So that’s the week 13 update!

Final Project Progress Report

I’ve fully planned out how I want my interactive multimedia narrative to play out and I’m starting to put all the pieces together!

I’m using Prezi to create a click-through choose your own adventure-like software as with the planet topic function on Prezi, you can click them to take you exactly the way you want to go; it felt like a simple yet effective way to accomplish what I’m trying to do.

As mentioned previously, I want to do an interactive narrative that is constructed by the player as they make choices throughout to see how the way they conduct their “life” will be impacted by the ever-growing power of AI in this dystopian world. I was heavily influenced by surrealist/horror game lore like Cube Escape, Samsara Room, and even the FNAF lore to a degree. There are multiple endings depending on what choices you choose. There will be mix of text, images, audio, and design throughout to really immerse yourself in the experience and to keep you on your toes as this is meant to illicit feelings of unease and confusion, much like how it feels to know how the powers of AI can expand and make us unsure of the future ahead.

Week 13

This week, Carson and I divided the work for our podcast show. I created a website for our show using UMW Sites, while Carson focused on writing the scripts. Most of our time was spent handling the logistics and preparing to record and edit our episodes so we can upload them soon.

Here is our site:

About us

(The podcasts aren’t live yet, but we do have an About Us page if you’d like to check it out!)

Week 13

During Week 13, significant progress was made on the final project, Echo Protocol. With no other coursework the focus was entirely on brainstorming and refining the story’s direction. The project revolves around a futuristic narrative set in the year 2149 where Kai, a memory technician uncovers a mysterious unauthorized signal in a world governed by the omnipresent ECHO AI system.

I explored various creative elements in Canvas experimenting with layout, visual elements, and interactive components to determine what best complemented the story’s tone. The visual aesthetic included glitch effects, AI alert screens, and scenes like a digital mirror, cyberpunk skyline, and a void of white, symbolizing the unraveling of reality.

The narrative begins when Kai receives the signal, triggering a choice: trace the source or report it to the authorities. These decisions lead to changing paths involving subnets, neural code rewiring, and questioning the nature of identity and control under the ECHO system.

Weekly Summary 13

This week was a planning and gathering stage for our group, we decided to stray away from another trailer and choose to make a music video with our course characters involved with it. We chose a song that would really fit the theme of tech noir. It is a Daft Punk Song! We again sent out course characters into the group chat so we could plan content for them when finding clips and sounds affects to match our characters throughout the music video. Initially we had the idea of making another trailer that was longer and more in details but strayed off the idea to try something new with music. I have a good feeling about this project because almost everyone has heard of Daft Punk so seeing their song with a different music video will be very cool. I am hoping that our course characters will blend nicely throughout. Overall this week was more laid-back than others because it was more of a gathering phase. This was a very good week.

Week 13 Weekly Summary

Starting Off

Gearing up for finals, I am starting to feel the stress, but I am managing it well. This class is actually the least of my worries, as working in such a great group has made it that much easier. We have been making way on our short film, and I am very excited to see how it will turn out in the end.

Group Project

I go more in depth in my blog post about our progress so far, but we have been meeting a lot throughout the week through FaceTime in order to plan out the plot, script, as well as deciding who will do commercials or bumpers.

We then decided to start filming on Wednesday, where we met at Ball Hall in order to film some scenes. We rented a camera from the HCC, and used it in order to record, and it came with a microphone on top of it.

I also made an animated intro for the show, taking inspiration from classic “Bravo” reality-tv, but making it fit the cyberpunk, tech-noir theme.

Overall

Overall, can’t complain! It was really fun to film the scenes with my group! I am not much of an actor, but I feel like we all did good with staying in character and making it realistic. It will be a really busy week next week, but I am ready. See you for the final week of DS106!