Review a Media Doc

Whether or not you would enjoy the short documentary John Lasseter: A Day In The Life will largely depend on personal preference. The narrative aspect of the documentary is simple, but well executed. It starts from the morning in the home of John Lasseter, the man responsible for Pixar and the numerous films to come from that studio, and follows him throughout a day of work involving the preparation of Cars 2. It opens with a tour of his home and then transitions to his offices at Pixar Studios. The documentary does an exceptional job of seamlessly intercutting the footage from Cars 2 that the viewer is seeing edited. The scoring and pace of the documentary work well, because while on the whole the work is a positive piece that doesn’t really have a lot to say, they are still able to imbue a sense of urgency or drama around certain areas of the documentary. The work does a good job of giving the viewer a small peak at the work that goes into a digitally animated film. If you are looking for an in depth behind the scenes look at digital animation, this probably isn’t the documentary for you. But if you have a passing interest in the field this does a good job of showing several different aspects of the job. The most interesting part of the documentary is John Lasseter’s personality. He really is a unicorn of a man. From his walk in closet of only Hawaiian shirts to his office filled with toys from each of his films, the viewer just gets the sense that he must be a fun human being. Whenever he greets someone in Pixar, he usually greets him or her with a hug. The word radiation alone probably wouldn’t have been a huge trigger, but he was sensitive to the issue and worked around it. You truly get the sense that he absolutely loves what he does. His positivity is infectious and at times even beyond belief. What are the odds that upon leaving the studio, a rainbow would be visible? That’s the kind of thing that happens in John Lasseter’s world. He is living his dream and simply watching him makes me more enthusiastic and optimistic about the future. If you want to watch a documentary about the technical details that go into the movie-making process, or even just an in depth look at Cars 2, this probably isn’t the documentary you’re looking for. But if you want to brighten your day a little bit by learning a little bit more about the man who created some of your favorite childhood films, you should give this a chance.

Short Essay on Interactivity

I think it is possible to create interactive storytelling outside of a video game setting. I think that doing so requires the content creator to go about it a different way. Often choose-your-own story type of videos sacrifice story and just seem cheesy. One of the best examples of interactive storytelling I can think of is the web series My Music. My Music is a show created by The Fine Brothers (known for their Kids/Teenagers/Old People React videos) for YouTube and follows a group of people working for a music website company. They define each character by the type of music they listen to. The main episodes follow a typical sitcom format and have similar production values to a lot of what is currently on television. But each week they also release additional interactive content that is filmed closer to the release. The content is all done in character as well and no behind the scenes content is released until after the season has concluded. Each character has their own active Twitter account that will live tweet music related events. Many have Facebook’s, Tumblr’s, Reddit’s, and Pinterest’s as well that are all run by the shows creators and writers but stay in character. The website that the characters run actually exists as well and features music articles and reviews. If a character shows a picture during the show that they have posted to Facebook, the picture will show up on Facebook the same day the episode is released. The weekly video content includes Tumblr Tuesday, Gaming with Metal, video podcasts, and a program called the Mosh. Each of these programs features an interactive element. On Tumblr Tuesday, different characters will find content sent to the show’s accounts on Tumblr and show it and comment on it in the video. In Gaming with Metal, the character called Metal will play games as suggested by the viewer and film himself playing it. The podcast features music discussion and viewer questions. The Mosh showcases fan art, creates a playlist based of viewer suggested music (that can be accessed on the show’s Spotify account), and answers viewer questions. All of these programs are done completely in character and can be affected by events that happen during the main episode of the week. I think that shows like this will be the future of interactive storytelling. The show is able to immerse the viewers and interact with them in an engaging and entertaining way without sacrificing any of the narrative story quality. I think that the main problem people have with interactive storytelling is that people confine themselves to a single platform to tell a story despite the fact that the Internet provides us so many ways to interact with our audience. I think that MyMusic is a good example of a show that has been able to adapt successfully.

Here are links to the Fine Brothers channel (where the main episodes air), the MyMusic channel (where the bonus content airs), and the music website

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros

http://www.youtube.com/user/MyMusicShow

http://mymusicshow.tv

Interaction for Social Change

Here is my response to the discussion about clickingcreateschange.com and the link to the blackboard discussion: Discussion Board


I agree with everything Harrison said about clickingcreateschange.com. The website is very well-desiged for a local organization and simple to navigate and use. I also like the comparison to Kickstarter. The website functions in a similar way to sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Pledgemusic, wherein users choose where they want their money to go to out of hundreds of projects vying for funding. Social media promotion and user interaction plays a large role in whether or not a project will get funded. It fits a few of the experiences of interactivity as defined by the book including: No. 8 - Taking part in polls, surveys, voting, tests, and contests; No. 10 - Learning about something; No. 13 - Socializing with other and participating in a virtual community (Media and the Creative Process 37). The polls are a defining aspect of the interactive experience of the website and voting determines how the money donated to the website will be spent. Voting gets viewers active because they want their organizations to win and ones they don't like to lose. That might be a cynical way to look at it, but people are competitive in nature and personally I would rather the money went to more deserving organizations rather than Young Life. I'm religious, I just don't like some of the specific teachings that the Young Life uses. The website gives the user the opportunity to learn about organizations and charities within the Athens area that they otherwise might not have known about. I learned about Live Healthy Appalachia which is a group that wants to improve the dietary habits of Appalachians. The website also functions as a virtual community where people socialize in order to bring votes to their organization. All in all, I think that the website is a very good example of local online interactivity.

Multi-Platform Storytelling

Jonathan – Mini Saga

by Matt Serafini

Jonathan knew that he was going to be huge. When he left home, he told his mother and family that he would miss them. After months of wandering the country, he found himself in a mad scientist’s laboratory. No one could have possibly predicted that Jonathan would become a giant

Script Idea #1 – Video Game

I have an idea for a video game based on this mini saga by Matt Serafini. The video game will focus on the life of Jonathan. It will chronicle his adventures through a series of quests. The first half of the game will feature him exploring different areas of the country, where he will encounter obstacles and puzzles that he has to overcome to get to the next stage of the game. It will be an RPG to an extent, but each level will feature challenges and puzzles. The tutorial will start in Jonathan’s home and he will have some basic puzzles that will teach the player the controls and set up the story of him leaving home. The player will briefly interact with his parents. Dialogue will be part of the puzzle for the game and the player will earn points based on how well these social interactions go and potentially unlock bonus content. The player will go on to explore various scenery and different areas of the world, completing puzzles, challenges, and interacting with other people to earn points. Halfway through the game the player will meet the mad scientist. From here he will have to complete several quests for the scientist in order to get all the components necessary to turn him into a giant. The mad scientist needs a certain elixir to complete the job, so Jonathan needs to find all of the ingredients to make the potion. He again has to navigate various areas of the world to find these different ingredients and must complete several puzzles and challenges to move on to the next area of the game. Once he finds all of these ingredients, he returns to the mad scientist and must complete some sort of potion making puzzle to actually get the completed potion. He then takes the potion and grows into a giant. Now he can explore other worlds, the scientist tells him, for now the player can grow as large or as small as the player wants to and can simply walk from planet to planet and then adapt to his environment. The player now goes on to visit several different worlds and explores the environments of these places. Each world will have different unlock able content and puzzles for the player to solve. The game will end with Jonathan saying that he has had enough adventures for a while and he’ll return home to his parents. You may be thinking that this game sounds a little pedestrian, but my target audience is children ages 5-13. The game is intended to teach children critical thinking and problem solving skills in a fun environment. The game is designed in a similar format to the currently popular Skylanders and Disney Universe games, where additional content, powers, and worlds can be unlocked by purchasing game encoded figurines. This is appealing to the target audience because they get to do more in their game, plus they get a tangible object to play with outside of the game.

Note: Video games are clearly not my strong suit.

Script Idea #2 – Movie

The next great coming of age movie will focus on Jonathan. Jonathan is our protagonist and is adapted from the popular mini saga from Matt Serafini. I think the studio will be able to benefit from adapting from mini saga’s because there isn’t enough substance to cause fan uproar due to deviations from the source material, but the work has enough recognition that people will be interested to see the adaptation. I am confident that we will be able to add depth and detail to the work that the original 50-word piece could not hope to accomplish. Jonathan just graduated high school and has dreams of fame and glory. His parents are determined that Jonathan must go to college and get a degree so he will be better prepared for the real world. Jonathan is convinced that he will be able to do more if he just goes out to Hollywood or New York and follows his dreams. One of the earliest scenes in the movie will be an intense fight between Jonathan and his mother. Jonathan will storm off to his room after the fight and pretend to go to sleep, but will actually gather all of his stuff together and write a note telling his parents that he can’t pretend to be content anymore and he needs to pursue his dreams. He buys himself a bus ticket to Los Angeles and begins his trip across the country. On his way he makes a friend in the form of a girl named Natalie who is pursuing similar dreams. They arrive in Los Angeles and get a small, crusty apartment on the edge of town together. They both get part time jobs to keep themselves in money, but Natalie is discovered by a talent agency fairly quickly and soon forgets about Jonathan, who struggles to ever get an audition. Months pass and he sees a trailer for a new blockbuster that heavily features Natalie and gets incredibly upset. He breaks down in the apartment he once shared with his friend. He is forced to become a test subject for various products to pay the bills and eventually bites off a bit more than he can chew. He sees an ad that says “I can make you huge” and being a little slow, he misinterprets the meaning of the ad and goes to the scientist’s laboratory. The scientist seems a little off, but Jonathan is so consumed by his dreams of fame and glory that he pays no attention to it. He takes the potion and instantly grows 100 feet. The scientist mysteriously disappears, but after Jonathan has a run in with the police (being a 100 feet tall giant and all) he quickly becomes the latest Hollywood. Everyone wants the giant for his or her movies. He gets his own reality show and a custom made house in the mountains. Jonathan grows tired of this lifestyle. His travel is limited due to his destructive nature and he feels trapped by the paparazzi. Everything he does is documented, but he misses his family and Natalie still isn’t interested in him. He breaks down during the shoot of one of his movies and shrinks back to his normal size. Everyone quickly forgets about him because he really wasn’t a very good actor, but Natalie visits him and apologizes for leaving him. She kisses him on the cheek and tells him that he needs to go home. She tells him that she truly believes that he will do great things one day, but his time hasn’t come yet. She also says that she’ll be looking forward to seeing him again when he does. Jonathan takes a flight home using some of the money he made as a giant. He knocks on his door and the last shot of the movie is Jonathan hugging his parents.

Script Idea #3: TV Series

I think this mini saga by Matt Serafini has a large amount of potential for sitcom adaptation. I’m thinking it could work as a 3-camera setup for TBS or Logo. Our main character would be Jonathan, a giant of a man living in Beverly Hills. When casting we should look for someone that we can either be depicted as larger than the rest of the cast using camera angles and props or someone who actually is fairly gigantic like Shaquille O’Neal (but unlike Shaq, we need someone who can actually act). The pilot episode would explain the circumstances of his height. He left his parents house at young age to become huge and accidentally did in the most literal sense of the word when he misunderstood the meaning behind a scientist’s proposition. The sitcom will be an ensemble cast and will focus on the friend group of this giant. The group will include: Natalie, an aspiring actress and Jonathan’s primary love interest (think Abby Elliot or Anna Kendrick), Timothy, his grounded screenwriter friend who always pitches them an idea for a truly terrible movie every episode (think Adam Pally, Lamorne Morris, or Chris Pratt), Lisa, the diva who owns the mansion next door with her purse dog (Jane Krakowski, Mikaela Watkins, or Casey Wilson), Roy, a character actor who also works as a popular drag queen in the club scene, known for deadpan insults (Willam Belli or Bianca Del Rio would both be good choices), and Jonathan’s overbearing mother (Ana Gasteyer). Each episode would focus on the group’s wacky misadventures and scenarios that this odd group of friends manage to get themselves into. Episodes will focus on the different ways each member is able to navigate the ups and downs of Hollywood. Jonathan and Natalie will have a will they won’t they sort of chemistry and one of the strongest friendships (the actress playing Natalie needs to be the shortest cast member to drive the comical nature of their relationship home. Lisa and Roy will have a love/hate sort of friendship that leads them to frequently insult or throw shade at each other due to their conflicting diva personalities. Timothy will bounce back and forth between each group and occasionally bond with Jonathan’s mother. One episode could focus on Jonathan’s career as a giant actor and talk about how easy it is for him to get work being the only actual giant in the film industry. Another episode could show some of Roy’s disaster of a time on RuPaul’s Drag Race and maybe have some guest stars from that program. Lisa’s main plot line will be opening her shoe business, wherein she works to corner the burgeoning doggy shoe market in Beverly Hills. The show will tackle some issues with people dealing with being different in a notoriously mean town, but will mostly be lighthearted feel good comedy. While I think TBS would be a good fit for the program as well, I think we ought to send it to Logo, because that network has a dearth of original comedies at the moment.

Doc Elements: Ideas for a Documentary

My news source is more of an online blog called http://www.diaryofadragqueenhusband.com. The website is run by the husband of Ohio based drag queen Vivian Von Brokenhyman. Vivian was the emcee of the Athens Ohio Area Drag Race competition in October along with RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Mimi Imfurst. Here is an article about that show : http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-40907-rupaulrss-lsdrag-racers-brings-glitzy-show-to-stuartrss.html and a collection of professional photos that I could use for the documentary: http://sarahwarda.com/2013-athens-area-drag-race . I love drag queens and find the whole art form to be incredibly interesting and I think there are several different ways to make an entertaining documentary from this.

Documentary Idea #1: My first idea would most closely follow the Von Brokenhyman’s. It would document the daily life of the two of them. I’d want the whole thing to be loosely chronological. For the first part of the documentary, I would interview Tom and Vivian and discuss their childhood and what it was like to grow up as gay men in Ohio. The documentary would discuss the beginnings of Vivian’s drag career and how the two of them met. For Tom’s interviews, we would discuss what it was like to be married to a drag queen, which he often does on his blog and Vivian would talk about the nature of a drag career and difficulties associated with such a thing. This would be intercut with footage of Vivian’s performances from various occasions and shots of her different wigs and outfits. The target audience would be drag enthusiasts, and local Ohio viewers. The goal would be to spread the knowledge that drag is just an aspect of a person, but they are actual well-rounded human beings in most cases.

Documentary Idea #2: This next idea would focus on popular Ohio based drag queens. Vivian Von Brokenhyman would still be highlighted, but the screen time would be spread to others including Penny Tration, Amaya Sexton, Selena T. West, Veronica Lake, Helena Troy, Nina West, Virginia West, and drag king group The Royal Renegades. It would include interviews and performance footage from each of those drag queens. The interviews would be questions regarding their drag careers, goals, and family reactions. Penny Tration won the fan vote to be on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5 and was the first eliminated contestant. We would discuss that and any regrets she may have had. Amaya Sexton was in the running for the fan vote for Season 6, but barely lost out to Adore Delano and Laganja Estranja. I’d ask her about her plans for the future. The target audience would again be drag enthusiasts, but my goal this time would be to get some talented local queens some attention and help build up their fan base in case they wanted to audition for RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Documentary Idea #3: One of the heated debates that was recently incited by the most recent seasons of Drag Race was over the validity of different types of drag, with polished veterans like Chad Michaels, Detox, and Roxxxy Andrews losing out to campier queens like Sharon Needles and Jinkx Monsoon. This documentary would interview local queens to get their thoughts on different types of drag. Ohio has a wide variety of styles of drag from pageant queens to comedy queens, so I think these queens would offer insight to this. The documentary would be aimed for a larger audience including fans of drag outside of the state of Ohio. It would be intercut with footage of some of the better fights between Sharon Needles and Phi Phi O’hara from season 4, Roxxxy Andrews, Coco Montrese, and Jinkx Monsoon from season 5, and of course the Heathers and the Boogers from season 3. The documentary would analyze the show. Right now the show has crowned 3 glamour queens (Bebe Zahara Benet, Tyra Sanchez, and Raja Gemini) and 2 camp queens (Sharon and Jinkx), but the two camp queens were from the most recent seasons, so it would end with the acknowledgement that the winner of season 6 could indicate where the trends are going (right now fans are either leaning towards the campy queen Milk or the polished glamour of Courtney Act).

Storyboard a Joke

JOKE #6

Mrs. Peterson phoned the repairman because her dishwasher quit working. He couldn't accommodate her with an "after-hours" appointment and since she had to go to work, she told him, "I'll leave the key under the mat. Fix the dishwasher, leave the bill on the counter, and I'll mail you a check. By the way, I have a large Rottweiler inside named Killer; he won't bother you. I also have a parrot, and whatever you do, do not talk to the bird!"

Well, sure enough the dog, Killer, totally ignored the repairman, but the whole time he was there, the parrot cursed, yelled, screamed, and about drove him nuts.  As he was ready to leave, he couldn't resist saying, "You stupid bird, why don't you shut up!"  To which the bird replied, "Killer, get him!!!"