I wanted to give thanks to the UO:R community for helping me with my school project. I'm in a class about Media Ecology for my master's in education/counseling. One of our projects this semester has been to tell a story using three different media types. Phase 1: Write out a story Phase 2: Use a different media type from text-based to tell the same story Phase 3: Again, use another media type and tell the same story For Phase 1, I wrote the story about alcoholism/addiction. A man has alcoholism and cannot come to terms with it or admit his problems, his friend tries to help, but is shunned away, as the addictions takes over. He learns his mom has cancer and has the tough choice of going to care for his mom or drinking to solve his problems. For Phase 2, I made a video which you can find at the link below. If you have epilepsy you shouldn't watch it, as it involves strobe lights. https://splice.gopro.com/v?id=VJAPgya1e For Phase 3, I wanted to do something immersive. And MMORPG's are immersive and I think are cool ways to tell stories especially if you are roleplaying. So, I enlisted some help from people on IRC, and my rl friend @Amph who plays on here. Together we were able to buy a cabin and decorate it to look like an alcoholic's place with going to the extremes to shed the point obviously. As you can see I put liquor bottles everywhere, a bar, moldy bread on the ground, food, dirty pots everywhere, I got the Moonglow East Player Vendor @Canis to graciously make me a messy bed, and I added some hanging clothes to make it look even messier. For the actual roleplaying story, Amph logged in and we did a short 2 minute roleplay of the story of the guy with alcoholism. We used him walking out of his cabin to slay a dragon as a metaphor for slaying his demons/alcoholism on the road to being a recovering addict, and then Amph "resurrected" him and at the end he had a choice to move on and live or stay a ghost. I have linked the entire phase 3 video, it's only 2 minutes long for the story. I had some technical issues when recording with Razor. 1 there's no audio when you record with razor video which wasn't really an issue as I didn't play on having audio, 2. i didn't really have the time to look into another way to record it., 3. when I recorded using razor and I went over 2-3 minutes long the video files would split into four screens and look all wonky, so I had to shorten the story and make it really fast at 2 minutes long which is why it's so quick to develop- otherwise I would have had it be around 5-10 minutes in length. But that's not the point of the story, the point is the delivery method- using an mmorpg to tell a story, so if you're in a classroom with students teaching using gaming can be an effective method. As you can see from the differences between my phase 2 media type: video and phase 3: mmorpg/immersive media, the story was told in drastically differing ways. Utilizing a game to tell a story is fascinating, while using film is another kind of fascinating, as well as using text. They each portrayed the story vastly different and I obtained different reactions from each version and media type. It was a lot of fun to be able to use Ultima Online:Renaissance for something in real life that other people in my class got to see. I got a 40/40 on it so I'm thankful for everyone in the community who helped!! Here is the assignment description for anyone interested in the specifics of what I had to do. The final project for this course is pretty straight forward. We are attempting to combine knowledge you should have learned in the Digital Narrative Course with that which was presented this semester. The title of the project should say it all: Trans-Media Story: The Medium is the Message. As the title implies you are being asked to create a story using the basic story elements from EME 6646 (see spoiler below for a reminder) as 'told' using at least three different media. The expectation is that the first "media" you would use is text but is not required. Your job, is to write out a short Story (3-5 pages max). Actually, it is optional as to whether the story is real or contrived/fake but we want it to be about a person... their history, chronology of events, etc. that got them to a certain place (whether physical or virtual/mental) in their life. We chose a personal story because we figured it would be the easiest to create but we do not want to cause anybody any loss of a sense of privacy, so you can make up your story using fictional events. But remember, every story needs a point of view. Next, you need to (re)create the same story in two other media forms. This can be audio, still imagery, kinestasis, animation, video, immersive/virtual media... while Web is certainly a choice .. remember this one thing.. you are going to have to justify your media decisions and analyze/compare/contrast the impact/techniques that are utilized on how reader/viewer/listener is communicated with/acquires knowledge from the story. We will learn this term how media affects all of this not only in the message that is conveyed but how it is perceived and what techniques are most often used by each to ensure complete understanding, as well as immerse/motivate the receiver. All of these concepts will become more clear as the the semester progresses. 1. Due: September 26. First you need to identify the content/context of your Story with a working title. Working titles should be expressive enough to give the receiver basic idea as to what the story is about. Write out your story. Around 3-5 pages should work. This will give you enough content to build your story in another two media. Three to five pages, for example, are enough content to be able to create a 1-2 minute, coherent vide 2. Phase 2 Due: October 10. Decide on a second media type. Most will go ahead and pick some sort of time based media.. it could be a video or told as a audio file. If you pick the audio it needs to be more than a simple reading out loud of the text file. Take advantage of the characteristics of the media type and demonstrate the differences between it and text (it could be inflection in your voice, a sidebar/soliloquy, or whatever creative idea you come up with. 3. Phase 3 Due: October 24 . Decide on a third media type. It does not have to be some sort of immersive media but based on your skill level and comfort with the media I am hoping some of you will try. If this was a digital media class we would expect everyone to increase his or her skill level in all media. Our intent her is for you to explore, stretch yourself while also understanding the differences in characteristics of the differing media types. Take advantage of the characteristics of the media type and demonstrate the differences between it and the other two.
Cool, good job man! I made a book in my computer graphics class in High School. It was a story of struggle and the rise of the Council of Mages, back when factions were fresh. It was fairly short with screenshots/photopaint edits.
