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Today:

 

 

Thanks to everyone for a great show on Saturday!!

 

 

Everything I know about narrative I learned from comics: new young blades-  - harkavagrant (Kate Beaton), supermegacomics, sophie's blog, The classics: Zippy the Pinhead (Bill Griffith), R. Crumb. Scott McCloud has written (and drawn) notably on the subject. 

 

Previously:

 

Running a Cultural Chop Shop : Participation can include creating 6-10 clips from 8-20 seconds each, must be in Quicktime .mov format, PhotoJPEG compression, 320 X 240, 12fps.)

  

Basic Sound Player - on/off switch (sorry, no preloader). You need to import a sound and make a linkage, like we did in class.

 

Think about applying to MTV Development Fellowships - if you have animation, comedy, and reality/documentary ideas

 

preloader-single animation (with sound) .fla file for today.

 

Check out -  

 

Now with extra spiffyness: Experimental Media (pdf, 2.2MB)

 

FAU Faculty Biennial Show - Schmidt  Gallery, Fri Nov 13 - 7pm (runs through January).

 

The most important lecture of your LIFE: preloaders!

 

We need to start thinking about how sound (i.e., primarily voice-over, but also soundtracks) figure into all this. Check out Adding Sound to the MovieClip Interface and the Calendar Template (in progress).

 

A set of re-worked Flash tutorials:

 

Tutorial 10 - Introduction

Tutorial 11 - Flash Interface and Workspace

Tutorial 12 - Making a Simple Graphic Symbol

Tutorial 13 - Making a Simple Button Symbol

Tutorial 14 - Timeline to Interface - Movie Clip Version (part 1, part 2)

 

REVIEW this - - see if there are things you hadn't encountered before, see if you can apply this to your work (many of you already have, that is, using a movie clip to hold your page-turner of storyboards).

 

 Previously - 

 

Quick review of Linear vs. Non-Linear Culture, sorta. Let's focus on the Product > Form part of the chart. Identify how those forms recede and distill on either end (i.e., cinema on the left, the video game on the right), and how those forms pooch out toward the middle, admitting, perhaps, more possibilities . . . (i.e., the video jam, what we're doing here, etc.). If you are leaning toward the interactive edge, you will want to start SEPARATING material FUNCTIONALLY, leaning toward the ANALYSIS part of the equation in the previous chart. As you move toward the cinema side of things, you're COMBINING material, and creating your particular, authorial mix (the beginning of some sort of essay, perhaps).

 

And this - - a little audio archive, about 12.3 hours in duration (no, you don't hafta listen to it all . . . ). But, it is out there, and like any river, it will be different whenever you dip your toe into it. Feel free to, uhm, appropriate material from it (with proper attribution, of course!).

 

* * When you get the wiki 'invite' email * * :

      Please set up your own wiki page (instructions here), and link it to 'Your Pages' above. 

 

More on Levels in Flash (it's Lecture 4, if you're interested), and I haven't scrutinized this in a while, so there might be a few mistakes.

 

Check to see if the Feedback page works for you: enter your Z number (UPPER CASE Z followed by eight digits), and hit return. No feedback at the moment - - that's coming soon.

 

Scripting Basics and Dynamic Interface (the calendar)

 

New Version of Interface, With Lovely Fly People: JB_interface_newer.fla.zip

 

New Version of Interface, With Lovely Fly People and Submenus: JB_interface_withSubmenus.fla.zip 

 

Next quantum leap - moving around in x and y space. 

 

Be sure to have a good grasp on Flash fundamentals, including the Timeline to Interface tutorial.

 

Here is the .fla file we worked on tuesday:timeline_to_interface.zip

 

Start sketching your narrative: make a series of 'snapshots' of your character in a situation. Where does this happen, what happens, and how does your character respond to all this? Can you pour this into a three to four minute timeframe?

 

LAB TIMES for the fall: 

 

Monday (AT 414) 2pm - 9pm

Tuesday (AT 414) 4pm - 9pm

Wednesday (AT 415) 2pm - 9pm

Friday (AT 415) 10am - 10pm

 

Remember, it pays to PRACTICE a little every day.

 

• The COURSE RESOURCES link above goes directly to your tutorial source (on fau3711).
• Read Tutorial 10 - the introduction to the Flash hierarchy. Check out Tutorial 11 (on Symbols) if you have time.
• Be ready to present your Character Sketch (a preparation for your Scenario / Script assignment): a single paragraph, in which you sketch out a character. Tell us his or her most ESSENTIAL and DEFINING characteristics. 

 

Welcome to New Media Narrative!

 

New Media Narrative (MMC 4713) 4 credits

This course explores traditional and alternative storytelling using new media tools and paradigms.  The class encourages experimentation, while developing critical, technical, and design skills.  Taking inspiration from film, video, animation, comics, art, and literature, the class creates collaged, multiperspective, modular, and multiparticipant narratives.

 

While "narrative" usually describes a sequence of events usually rendered in the form of a story, and expressed in terms of conventional means (short stories, novels, theatre and movies but oral traditions of storytelling, song lyrics, epic poems, myth), this course will examine an array of new media forms (blogs, interactive media, gaming, etc.), as well as forms that expand the notion of narrative form (experimental film, improvisational media, data visualization).  In addition to conventions of dramatic structure, we will examine character, setting, and event constructions that impact narrative (psychological and physiological conditions/processes, altered states, brain chemistry, pharmaceuticals, dreams; cybereality, sci-fi physics, etc.), and explore how new media technologies can enhance the vocabulary of narrative.

 

*Radiohead's House of Cards - a music video created by data visualization. What's 'narrative' about it? What's 'new media' about it?

Baby Cakes - really great, diaristic series, with very sparse, but essential production.