Brief 3

Mid-Project Reflection 

Proficiency: How did you develop your technical skills and knowledge? Give examples of the skills and knowledge, techniques, and self-directed research that inform your project (min. 50 words). 

I've found that most of the skills required for this project are ones I had already developed or begun developing during the course of Brief 2. The two main differences are the topic of my research and the concept of transmedia, rather than semiotics. Transmedia storytelling is a relatively new way of conveying a single story or narrative to an audience by way of multiple forms of media (Schiller, 2018). In our project, we've chosen to tell the story across a novel, a video game, a TV adaption of the novel, and a complementary soundtrack. I had some degree of familiarity with transmedia already, having learned about Alternate Reality Games in my discipline-specific unit this trimester. 

Process: How did you improve your workflows and processes, including changes and setbacks? Give specific examples of your research and how it influenced your creative process (min. 50 words). 

I attempted to find an academic source about audience drives to inform our pitch presentation, but I couldn't get hold of the specific book that was referenced in Week 8's class slides to cite. Our lecturer advised that we find sources along similar lines instead of trying to find the specific audience drive terms. 

During my research, I was interested to discover that music isn't just something that people enjoy as entertainment. According to Blacking (1969), music is crucial in "enhanc[ing] in some way the quality of individual experience and human relationships..." This is a prominent theme in our overall narrative, as the plot is about human protagonists rebelling against the AI-controlled music industry. I think it will be useful to have this information on hand, as we want the audience to understand that our protagonists are not just vying for a place in the industry, but trying to retake an integral part of the human experience. 

Person: What communication and collaboration skills did this project require, and how did you develop these skills? How did you manage collaboration, receiving and giving feedback to others? (min. 50 words) 

Just like in Brief 2, our group immediately set up a Discord server to use for outside-of-class communication. I also suggested that we follow a similar framework, and we've agreed to split the workload so that everyone has the opportunity to contribute equally. After presenting in Week 10, our feedback was to investigate what the common features are across the different media types, and how we can use those to drive the audience's immersion. We decided that, as music is such a key concept, we could have physical records/cassette tapes that we distribute in the real world to catch people's curiosity.