Final Project Idea

New Media and Video Game Theory

Video gaming has been advancing and changing the way that they provide their entertainment.  Some of these games rely on cut scenes to get the story moving, while others are supporters of telling the story mainly through the environment and dialogue with other characters rather than yanking control from you and have you watch a 10 minute cut scene.  There are also games that are able to combine both of these kinds of storytelling in order to fully immerse you.  

The best way to convey this topic is a mix of both video and audio.  They both add to the atmosphere of a video game.  I plan to maybe show clips of video games and maybe showing the differences in interactivity between them.  I also want to record narration to maybe tell my point.  I want to make the point that video games are moving towards the more cinematic. Video games used to simply rely on game play.  This no longer seems to be the case.  As the technology advances, it has been used to further the realism of the game.  This point will be made through a mix of my narration and game play footage.  

I plan on using the sources:

Computer game modders’ motivations and sense of community: A mixed-methods approachNew Media & Society December 2014 16:1249-1267, first published on September 24, 2013
Brand interactivity and its effects on the outcomes of advergame playNew Media & Society December 2014 16:1268-1286, first published on September 18, 2013
Does game studies have “Complete Confidence in Its Own Legitimacy?”New Media & Society December 2014 16:1332-1337,
I also want to make a point of the McCloud reading and adstraction
Sound Engineering by Shipka
Also Language in the Landscape, but apply it to game design.
For my remediation topic, I plan on using my horror story audio and placing it on top of my technology video.  This will completely change the meaning of the video, as well as the audio.  It won't take place in an abandoned asylum anymore.  I hope to use my existing narration, but play around with it enough to make it different from the story I had told before.

Questions for Interview

1.  How would you define technology?

2.  How do you use technology?

3.  What devices do you use the most?

4.  Is technology bringing us together? Or further apart?

5.  Do you use your laptop in class?  What do you use it for?

6.  

Themes from Students+ Technology

1.  Technology has become an integrated form of learning.

    Many of these videos contain students using technology to complete their homework assignments.  It is hard to believe that anyone can get through college without using some form of technology

2.  Libraries are dead.
     We used to picture students going to the library to study and learn.  This is no longer the case.  Many of the videos portray the students doing their homework at cafes or random areas.  Whereas the video I took of the library was completely empty of people.

Hampe

Hampe brings up an important question to ask yourself when you are conducting an interview. What's the motivation for this scene?  By asking yourself this question, you are able to determine the usefulness of the interview to your documentary.  Hampe argues that a unnecessary interview should not be used and should only be used if it provides visual evidence of your point.  It should show and not tell us the main points of your documentary.  I recently watched a documentary called Waltz with Bashir.  I believe that this documentary is what Hampe would like to see more of.  It is entirely animated with the interviewer's stories providing the context of the animation.

It does utilize a lot of interviews, but we never see a shot of the interviewees.  Instead, their stories are animated and we see the visual evidence of their tales of horror during a Lebanese conflict.  This kind of documentary film making solves the problem that Hampe encountered in his Making Analogs of Reality paper.  Here,  Hampe had trouble with his many interviews that he conducted with veterans.  While these stories were interesting, it was just "talking heads" and was visually boring.  In Waltz with Bashir, these issues are completely resolved.  The stories that are told are beautifully animated and serve to increase the impact of these stories.  Although, it is possible that Hampe would absolutely loath this documentary.  It does not use real-world visual evidence.  Instead, it is all done with animations.  Hampe may see this as lying and cheating.  Hampe has stated that he likes to take tons of footage in order to provide his visual evidence.  He may say this is like taking a shortcut.

Sound Project, Audio File

https://uofi.box.com/s/d4ngtrwoeatm0i7jphcp

Hoop Dreams

• There is cutting between inner city street basketball games and professional level NBA games.  
• the child gazes longingly at the basketball game on TV, giving it a sense of fantasy or daydreaming.
• there is inter cutting between the last child playing street basketball and a pro-basketball player also doing his moves.
  
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Sound Proposal

I love films and storytelling.  I want my sound project to be able to tell a coherent short story by using sounds.  It will be a success if I am able to transport the listener into my world of fiction that I create. Due to the time of the year, I plan on creating a horror story.  I believe that this is also a genre that relies heavily on sound and sound cues to relate a story.  I'm thinking a Blair Witch Project type sound story.  In that I can pretend to be a protagonist that is in a haunted house.  These homes can creak their own atmosphere through their sound.  The creaks and moans of old floorboards and doors, maybe some rattling of windows.  It would be able to quickly draw in the listener to this spooky environment.  I also think that horror movies lose their power when they show the villain or monster.  Usually whatever the viewer is creating in their mind is scary than what is shown on the film.  This would not be a problem for this project because this is all being created in the mind of the listener. Using McKee's bullet points of sound, I believe that the project will be a success.  I can use silence to create suspense, then break it with a creak or a noise.  It will be simple to get many of the sounds as they are all around me anyway.  It wouldn't be a problem to record floor creaks or door squeaks, maybe even some screams.  I will provide the voice as the curious person who messes with something that doesn't need messing with.  I may ask some friends to provide their voices as well to create a larger and more intricate story. I have not really planned out the script yet, but I see no problem in breathing new life into the tired genre stereotypes that horror movies fall into, through the use of sound.