Tone Language

I think it is so cool that if I wanted to write a novel, all I would have to do it pull out my cell phone. However, I do believe it would also be difficult. I make many typing mistakes and rewrite my work  various times and typing on a cell phone would limit that. But the Japanese are doing it. Anyone can be a novelist, though maybe not a good one, and all they need is a cellphone with internet access. And people read it. You don’t need a publicist or an editor. You write how you txt and people love what you write. And if you want to make money off it, that’s no problem either. Basically, I feel that with online blogging and cell phone novelists, any one can be a writer. However, do you believe that this is making the quality of writing that people read go down? Do you think that people are not longer reading the work of great authors and settling for junky ameuter stories?

Interactive television

As soon as I say the words interactive television, I thought of viewers screaming at their television sets saying “No, don’t go in the dark scary alley”, “Catch it, catch the ball!”, or “Oh come on, just kiss her already you know you want it”. We act like the people on tv can hear us, and that our yelling will make a difference. In other words, we are trying to interact with an inanimate object who isn’t really doing much to interact back. But I guess interactive television is real in some sense. We do yell at our tvs, there are fan clubs and web sites for our favorite shows. It has become “an interaction between fan communities and the broadcast television producers (along with their new media teams) or, perhaps, the interaction between story elements in one media and another.” Producers are creating story telling experiments by introducing their stories outside of the living room. This is called cross-platform storytelling. An audience can experience the realm of their favorite shows whenever and wherever they want, and not just half an hour once a week. They can find out what has been going on in between each broadcasted show. There are some rules to the real world story telling element in order to link audience with tv show. 1. Act like your characters are real, they are someone audiences can learn more about through the internet. 2. The elements should be plausible. 3. Tell the story, don’t make it look like your trying to sell them something or persuade them into participation. 4. Make lots of participation oppurtunities available. 5. Monitor how your cross-platform storytelling is going and update it all the time. Create new and exciting ideas for participation. 6. Try to engage people through a mystery or a riddle. And finally, 7. make sure that people who chose not to participate still understand whats going on in the story. 8. Start cross-platform storytelling right from the beginning of your story. 9. Don’t force it to work. 10. Think outside the box. Go outside the realm of tv and internet. How do you feel about participatory television? Do you want to get involved in tv or would you rather just veg out and watch the action?

Lost as New Media

So Lost has done amazing things to interact its audience with the show. It is truly a new form of media. He uses the word meta-media which refers to developing layered, interwoven media, which engage fans to create further media. There is a site in which you can creat anagrams of characters names, look at codes, mysteries, featured works of literature and philosphy. There are puzzles everywhere. There is a Wikipedia-like website devoted to everything Lost. There are series of unofficial fake sites based off of the show. There are message boards, blogs, and community sites for Lost all over the internet. And Lost producers probably read all of this and take from it. But what the author of this blog finds so amazing is the product placement of a book called Bad Twins. If you look the book up on Amazon, it is actually real- and Lost and Amazon have made their stories collide. “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary Troup. Bad Twin was delivered to Hyperion just days before Troup boarded Oceanic Flight 815, which was lost in flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles in September 2004. He remains missing and is presumed dead.” This paves way for serious interaction. “The amount of content produced about your content should be of far greater weight than the originating content itself. This in turn creates a new kind of content, forged from a social process of collaboration with users, viewers, listeners.” I find this truly amazing that Lost could promote itself in such a way and truly get its audiences involved. it seems that there are quite a lot of people interested. Do you watch Lost and if so, how do you feel about the idea that the producers might be creating their stories off of fan feedback? Would you be happy or upset to one day see an idea that you came up with and wrote on a fan site actually show up within the show? If you were upset, is it because you might consider the idea your property, and therefore Lost is stealing your ideas without giving you credit? Does any of what I’m asking make sense?

1. So I am starting to piece it all together, actually starting to make the movie. I have divided it into about seven segments and mapped out how I want each segment to go, what style I want, what music to go with it.

2. Next week, I hope to have most of it done, or at least more than half way. The actual video parts should be done and I can just work on voice over and editing.

3. I had to give up on trying to figure out how to use iMovie. Fortunately, I found another program that I seem to get along with better. It is called muveeproducer and though I have problems with it as well, I have figured out the general basics. Plus, the program is now on my laptop, which makes it easier to work on my project any time I want rather than going to the lab.

4. I am starting to realize, through doing a lil editting, how hard it actually is to make a movie. To get the timing right between picture and sound mixed in with how you want it to look and the flow of everything is very difficult. I have also realized that if I want to get this project done on time, I have to try and put my perfectionist traits aside until its fully completed. Then if there is time, I can go over everything accordingly and see what needs the most work.