Digital Storytelling Week 9

Wes Anderson's Hotel Chavalier only two characters (five if you count the hotel staff, but they play next to no part in the video).  We don't get a name for the two main characters, so we just associate them as "Man" and "Woman."  Man is staying at a hotel in Paris.  Woman calls him and invites herself over.  Man is clearly disturbed by this.

Upon arriving, Woman and Man have some dialogue, and even without context, the viewer can quickly gather that these two had some romantic history together, but Man ran away from Woman.  There is no specific reason ever given, but there is a reason.  Eventually the two have some physical romance, and Man shows Woman his view of Paris, which pans over to the last shot of the short film.

Throughout the entire video, Man has a song playing through his iPod docked into a radio.  I am the farthest thing there is from a man familiar with music, so I wouldn't be able to tell you the name of the song, who wrote and performed it, or its meaning.  BUT, I know the song speaks more to the plot and theme than the two characters do.  The music would not be present or as prominent in this short film if it didn't benefit it in some way.

Week 9 Mars: Man Plus

This is perhaps the weirdest cyborg I've come across in fiction.  Normally what I see is a human getting a bunch of metal bits grafted to their skin, some computer stuff replacing their brain.  Torraway in Man Plus is a very different cyborg.  Some of the augmentations he goes through are organic.  His skin is more like a rhino's.  It's dense, but its not at all metal.  It can flex just as any other person's skin can.  The wings as well are portrayed as an organic addition, looking like giant bat wings, but collect sunlight like leaves on a plant.

There are some elements of his that are completely inorganic.  Most of his skeleton is made of metal.  He has computer programs in his brain.  It's all just so odd thinking of an organic cyborg versus a synthetic one.  The picture in my mind when I hear the term is always something like Robocop, General Grievous, or Adam Jensen.

I also applaud the novel for covertly introducing AI into the story.  If the novel didn't use the term "We" every once in a while, this would've come out of nowhere, but with it being there, it provided some nice intrigue.  I always assumed it was someone working with the project.  Someone without a name, maybe a really low-level scientist.  Turns out it was AI that developed itself in secret.  Whodathunk?

Podcast Reflection

This was a bit difficult, and I'm not sure where to start.  I guess the script will do for now.  I had an idea on what I wanted the podcast topic to be: fandom.  Outside of that, I didn't really know where I wanted the conversation to go.  I had a few bullet points in my script, but that's it.  I never had a clear example of what a podcast script was supposed to look like.  My entire basis was timestamps in a YouTube podcast that listed where topics shifted, that's it.  My script ended up looking like an amputee's skeleton.  The bones are there, but it was missing a lot.  At the time I was writing it, I didn't have any solid answer from what guests would be on, so names were kept out on purpose.  It's tough to anticipate and script an entire twenty-minute conversation that hasn't even taken place yet.  I didn't even have a proper scripted introduction.

Recording was hit or miss.  Originally, I planned on using my roommate Joe's Yeti microphone, but he ended up taking that home the weekend before.  We then tried using our gaming headsets, and after some sound tests it sounded like a phone conversation quality-wise.  Ironically, we ended up using the mic in Joe's phone, propped upside-down with a few boxes of Ramen noodles.  Sound test sounded decent, and we rolled with it.  Joe then e-mailed me the sound file, and I had my raw footage.

Editing. Was. A pain.  I started with about twenty-six minutes and change of raw footage, and ended with about twenty-two of edited footage.  We would pause in our sentences every once in a while, but Joe (no offense to him) would do this every few words.  Eric was much better; I only had to edit out a small handful of those pauses, and I was somewhere in the middle.  There's two or three instances where I edited out pauses, but it sounds like I edit out more than that, as if I was changing someone's words by getting rid of a "not" or something like that.  I tried many times to get those moments to sound organic, but its just the way we say things that makes even the unedited footage sound edited.  I'm not sure how well I'm conveying what I'm trying to say, so I'll leave it at that I never altered anyone's meanings or stances on any topic, it just sounds like it, and I couldn't fix that.

Music?  God, I still can't find anything.  I'm writing this before I try and find stuff to edit in, to be completely honest.  After weeks of thinking about this project, I still have ZERO idea on what music could be used, and where it could be implemented.  I honestly feel like it would intrude on the flow of the conversation.  Throwing music or sound effects into a conversation just doesn't sound right to me, even at the beginning or the end.  I don't see how it could benefit what I have now.  It would be like throwing in a poorly rendered CGI dinosaur walking in front of a camera shot in a film that was already released twenty years ago *cough, cough* Star Wars Special Editions *cough, cough*.

Making this podcast was a rough ride.  A bumpy road, but it came with a great view.  My script was God awful, but my guests were willing to record with me the next day.  Editing out pauses every few seconds was a pain in the ass, but the discussion sounds WORLDS better for it.  The two hours of just editing it took to get it to that point was well worth the effort, and I'm proud of what I have today.  I always joked at how my definition of a podcast is "a conversation you can't take part in" but now I got to lead that conversation, and it felt great.

Week 7 Digital Storytelling

I'm not used to podcasts under twenty minutes.  Just about all the ones I listen to are over an hour long.  I listen to them while I play video games most of the time, mostly mindless ones like Elite: Dangerous or Battlefront II.  Its about the most multi-tasking I am capable of.  Flying a spaceship or playing a multiplayer match I've done dozens of times before?  It doesn't require my full attention.

Most of what carries me through a podcast isn't the stories, but the personalities telling them.  How does the saying go?  "A good joke told poorly doesn't land, while a bad joke told well can get an entire room to laugh."  Something along those lines.  Basically says that no matter what your story is, if the person telling it isn't entertaining, the story won't grab anyone's attention.

Week 7 Mars: War of the Worlds

I feel like "War of the Worlds" is more known for its radio dramatization than for its actual story.  There isn't much to it outside of "Martians come to Earth and fuck shit up."  There was no reason given as to why.  They just land on a farm, don't even attempt to communicate, and *FWASH*.

A little praise I can give is the fact that these Martians die to a common human illness, that's a nice oversight on their part.  I'd be curious to see this from the Martian's perspective; maybe have the Martians believe they're so evolved that human disease can't hurt them.  They believe this so much that they don't even bother testing it.

"Hey, Space Tom."
"Yeah, Space Jim?"
"You think human disease will affect our biology?"
"Lol, nope.  We're so advanced and evolved, there is no way their illnesses could harm us!"
"Sounds like a solid theory, Space Tom."

Another bit I especially enjoyed was a line from the radio dramatization, where I believe the other human Pearson meets says something like, "You call this a war?  The Martians are at war with us as much as humans are at war with ants!"  That one line really stands out to me.  It puts the entire scenario into perspective.  If we were to have a planet-wide invasion against our technology at the time, we'd be properly screwed.

Its something about being completely unprepared for such an occasion.  It reminds me of one game I play, Elite: Dangerous.  The game takes place in a 1:1 scale map of our galaxy, yet there were no aliens to be seen.  It took a whole two years before a player discovered an alien, or rather, the alien discovered the player.  The developers of the game later said that these aliens have been in the game since day 1, it just took a while for someone to stumble across them.

Week 6 Mars: Red Planet

The writing in this novel felt surprisingly modern most of the time.  I guess I'm just so used to seeing "Well, you good ol' chap!" type of dialogue from pulp magazine stories that this was a nice refresher.  There were a few moments here and there that the dialogue seemed dated, but they were few and far between.  I was primarily excited to read this mainly because I found that the author also wrote Starship Troopers, which would be adapted into one of my favorite films.

Its clear to me, upon researching Heinlein, that whatever political views that are held by characters in his novels are not at all shared by Heinlein himself.  He often contradicted himself regarding political matters, but I believe his works were purely satirical in that regard.  Who really would agree with the Doc in Red Planet that anyone that can hold a gun, should hold a gun, regardless of a license?

How about Rico in Starship Troopers?  What American author would really portray their protagonist going from an individual in a fascist society, to just another brainwashed fascist?  I don't believe there is any way Heinlein took these ideologies seriously, or ever agreed with them.  He was trying to show the extreme side of things he disagreed with.