INFO 303 -Sooin Kang @info303sooin-blog - Tumblr Blog

MDIA 380 Documentary Pitch

What we’re doing.

We’re here on Kickstarter trying to raise funds for our feature documentary mini-series “The Christian Salon”. We will be producing a multi-episode series where we open the conversation on difficult topics such as sex, LGBT issues, Church and State, Evangelism, etc. Bringing in knowledgeable and influential Christian speakers, biblical scholars, and the many perspectives that have been formed on such topics, the series’ goals are to educate and inspire budding Christians, or to offer perspective to non-Christians, to think more deeply about these issues, what opinion that they on on it, and to put these conversations onto an online platform for everyone’s access.

Why we’re doing it.

This series was born when the creator questioned why there were plenty of political and social videos online, but when it came to exploring controversial, and even taboo, topics in Christianity, there were none. To help stimulate conversation and questions in the online, Christian sphere, we wanted to create video sources where it might be more entertaining for someone to watch this explorative process, rather than reading about it from a book or an online

(Picture of the team filming an episode)

What is the money going towards?

We need to raise money in order to start production for this film series. We have to raise at least $20,000 in order to cover production insurance, production expenses editing expenses, archival footage licensing fees, film scoring, sound editing and mixing, color correction, music licensing, and mastering for final exhibition... all to professionally and tastefully create these religious documentaries. We strongly believe in the films and the impact they can have, but only if this film is completed and done professionally can it reach the audiences we need to reach.

Risks and Challenges.

The biggest challenge in creating this documentary mini-series is to make it as open-ended as possible. Not in our or anyone’s best interest to impose a specific interpretation or perspective onto the viewer, these documentaries are being made with the intention of creating the space and opportunity for conversations on controversial topics to be discussed on an online platform. Hopefully, by bringing in multiple perspectives and scholarly, Bible-based information, we will avoid favoring or depicting a specific side to be “correct” and instead, have viewers start questioning themselves on where they stand on a topic and why.

(Picture of the team editing an episode in post-production)

And finally...

These films are NOT propaganda. These films are NOT trying to promote one way of thinking. And these films are NOT “hit pieces” (where a film’s motive is to take down or “expose” someone or some group). These films are explorative documentaries and the creator’s only intention is to motivate people, especially Christians, to become more open-minded and to not be afraid in starting these conversations with themselves and the people around them.

Blog Post #13: Remediating Theory Project Proposal

Documents are extremely important and necessary for a person to live in the world today. Used to register for licenses, sign legal documents, or sign up for important benefits and registration, documents take on larger social meanings in order for us to use them within society. An example that the book gave was how an undocumented young woman described seeing her name printed on her diploma as the highlight of her studies. That paper document, to her, symbolized and represented legitimacy, belonging, hope. So where the author argues in chapter one that papers and literacy mediated migrants’ physical and social mobility, the rest of the book was then used to examine how papers and literacy interacted for three different groups: documented Azoreans and Azorean Americans, undocumented Brazilians, and documented and undocumented Azoreans and Brazilian young people. The conclusion being that, however empowering functional literacy was thought to provide, it was seen quite differently through transnational eyes. It did not make immigrants American, however, sociomaterially it made immigrants by paper.

For this project, I was thinking about relaying a first-hand, primary account of how my family and I became United States citizens and the differences we felt before and after obtaining the documents and papers that deemed that so. The medium in which I would do this in would be through a sound essay. I chose to relay my family and I’s experiences through a sound essay so that listeners could really focus on my voice and how personal it was for us throughout the process of obtaining a U.S citizenship. Without any visual distractions, I am hoping to relay how stressful, time consuming, and expensive the whole process was with only my voice to guide listeners through the experience. This project would be remediating and relevant to the book as I would be explaining how the documents and texts involved made a monumental difference to my life. Even though they might be flimsy pieces of paper that might be meaningless to others, to me and my family, all the documents, paperwork, cards, and certificates represent years of our lives and countless experiences of hard work, time, frustration, and money.

I believe that my group and I will be able to collectively piece together our artifacts together in order to accurately and interestingly remediate our text through different mediums such as a sound essay, an artifact made from the fab lab that represents a passport or legal U.S ID, and maybe even a game that could help players to identify and live through the life of an undocumented immigrant living in the United States as well.

4:13 VG Wrap Up: In-Class Writing

1. For the most part, as an avid gamer myself, there wasn’t really anything new that I learned through the unit? I guess, the fact that using games to teach in class is a much more viable option than I thought.

2. Video games, in my opinion, enables players to become more emotionally invested in the story, character, world, etc. than any other media platforms. Because players have the largest amount of control and freedom in directing a game to go in the path or direction that the player desires, instead of it being set for them, which is usually the case for movies, TV shows, books, blogs, etc. it lets players get emotionally invested in the game. For example, I know many gamers would be distraught if they found out that their personal save file was deleted in order to create a new narrative.

3. I wish we covered different platforms and the effects of each platform of video games through readings. Even learning about how different game playing functions (open world vs. linear map) affect gamers in different ways. Which ones bring players the most happiness and joy in playing the game.

In-Class Assignment: Twine Proposal Feedback

1. I agree that my game proposal is very much a Twine game that is an empathy machine. By assuming the identity of an assassin, I want players to be able to understand just a bit more on what assassins might be feeling and thinking as they carry out their assignments.

2. In the lines of getting players to understand that bad actions and bad people might not stem from an innate quality, I wanted players to maybe see that it might have been the environment or certain situations for assassins to have become the person they are. Obviously to be able to kill people over and over again, there might be something different within assassins that I want to explore in my game.

Another aspect that I realized how video games differed to other media platforms (movies, TV shows) was the multiplayer experience. In games, especially games being released today, players are able to communicate with one another through in-game chatting or real-time talking in speakers or online resources such as discord.

3. I guess my audience is a bit different from those that crave going against the grain for the sole reason that playing my game really heavily weighs the assassin’s actions. In a way, I guess an audience that’s more open-minded in playing a character that might think dark thoughts. I would say that men over women might want to play my game more just because the nature of exploring a dark, twisted mind?

Blog Post #12: Playing Twine Games

The two different Twine games I played were Black Friday and The Temple of No. Black Friday was a game where your objective was to get all the items on your wish list. Your character was set to a father of a family and in order to get all the presents you were planning to get for your family, you had to overcome obstacles such as rude people and deciding whether or not to be humane and help people. The Temple of No was a Twine game where you had many different choices in what to be and do within the game. Not only could you choose your character and the different paths you could take but there were many times where the narration would break the fourth wall and interact back with you by “speaking” to you. If anything, the fun of playing The Temple of No is the (limited) interaction you had with the narrator.

The game structures are a bit different in both the games even though they are both Twine games. Again, the objective of Black Friday was to try to obtain all the objects that were in the wish list, whereas there doesn’t seem to be a clear objective. Rather, The Temple of No is more like an interactive story with different possible endings depending on your choices. The game structure for The Temple of No is incredibly different and unique because of the unique sound effects that play automatically when you choose different choices. Not only that but there seems to be many different options and detours that players can choose within the game. And again, the narrations seem to interact with you by pointing out certain stuff or talking outside the story as well.

Playing these Twine games made me want to develop my own game to be interesting and fun to play. I will aim to try to make a game with many different choices that would offer insight about the assassin. Also being inspired by The Temple of No, I’m thinking about creating a game where it will break the fourth wall either by having the assassin interact with the players by talking to themselves, or by having a narrator inform the players as the game progresses. I also wish to utilized different choices in order for players to end up with different endings depending on their choices. For example, if a player was more inclined to choose choices that were without empathy and sympathy, the assassin might just end up being a person with psychotic tendencies.

Twine Video Game Proposal

In my Twine Video Game, I aim to create a storyline where players get to play in the perspective of an assassin. Although there are a multitude of games, TV shows, and movies that provides insight and the perspective of paid killers, but to make it in a Twine format where the players use their minds to construct the visuals and depth of the game would be interesting. In a way, similar to when we played The Walking Dead game, players would become more immersed in the game and have an emotional and personal connection to the assassin as essentially they are the ones playing the role out. In my game I want to detail out how an assassin makes the choices that he does to professionally murder someone for money, and to even explore the background on how he/she became an assassin in the first place. As much as assassins are portrayed to be emotionless and merciless within media, I also want to explore what an assassin may be feeling and thinking as he carries out an assignment. Although all the choices and thoughts would ultimately be created by me, someone who has no knowledge or experience of being an assassin, I plan to extensively research in order to get an accurate representation and picture of how an assassin works.

The argument I would like to make through my game is that games are able to provide players with experiences that are so diverse, creative, and unique. Usually, players are placed in the good guy role in a game but I want to provide an experience where one can play in the role of a bad guy. In doing so, I hope to open player’s minds in becoming more willing to understand people who may not be like them. To try to understand why an “enemy” became an enemy in the first place. It’s so often clear in media that there is a good side and a bad side. But I’d like to believe that in real life, that isn’t so. Someone may not be evil just because they were born evil, rather, they became the bad guy because of something that had happened to them. My goal is that anyone that plays my Twine game would be more inclined to wonder how a “bad guy” became a bad guy in the first place, whether by their personal orientation or by experiences that made them become that way.

The audience for my Twine project are people who want to play out a character that isn’t your stereotypically hero. People who want a change from what standard games and media look like and are willing to delve into the life, personality, and mind of a bad guy, in this case an assassin.

The issue I expect to face during my process in producing my Twine game is balancing the line of creating a storyline of an assassin that makes it acceptable and ok for someone to murder people freely and the reasons on why an assassin is killing in the first place. I don’t want to make it seem like murdering is ok and that we should forgive those that are assassins but to provide an experience where people could understand a little bit more on why these people make these decisions in the first place.

Individual Writing

Personally, I would tell Clementine that I had murdered someone. It probably would blow back into my face within the game, but realistically that would be the decision I would choose to help Clementine trust me. Instead of lying to her and having her trust be broken in me later on, I’d rather take the risk in telling her now and win her trust truthfully.

Blog Post #10: TWD, Rhetoric, and Player Choice

As an avid gamer myself, games like The Walking Dead are nothing new for me. Specifically, a game where my choices as the main character dictating how the rest of the story will go, is a concept that I am familiar with. It’s not as if the game is an open world filled with endless possibilities, however, it is a game with many different twists and turns that is drastic enough that it would make the game still fun and new even playing it over three to five times. To explain it to someone who wouldn’t be familiar with a game like The Walking Dead, basically you have different protagonists that you control throughout the game. And within each character, there are different actions or decisions you make that change the direction of the story. Because of this, it’s incredibly important to not make decisions so lightly or the fact that it makes the game incredibly interesting as different decisions even made by the same character could produce a new game experience for the player. The persuasive expression in the game is the player’s choice/choices. Players can decide how, when, and where the story will go just by the different choices they make within the game. And the reason why so many people enjoy this game genre is because rather than the story being defined by the game’s gameplay mechanics (where the game’s story is set and the player is just actively carrying the plot out), a game like The Walking Dead is one where the player’s personal decisions (such as choosing to leave before the sun goes down rather than after night fall) is what determines the story. Even when I’ve played games similar to The Walking Dead, there were many times where I wouldn’t even choose a decision myself. In order to get a certain story to play out, I would look up the “correct” decision online that would lead me to the desired outcome that I wanted.

The concept of the gamer executing a series of rules, and through their choices, a specific story playing out (central rhetorical message) is the presentation of Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric flow. The way a character acts in a situation, whether with another person, object, or conflict, is what guides the choices of the player, which then impacts the entire direction of their game. And something I greatly enjoy through this concept is the fact that for these decision-based games, you have a greater control of the story and an even more personal connection to the game as well since it is the player’s choices that has led the game character to be in whatever situation they end up to be. Basically, the player has more possibilities in choosing how the narrative will play out, instead of having a set narrative being pushed upon you.

INFO 303 Documentary Video Intervention-

The Price of Freedom: A Documentary on College Students and their Money

Filmed, edited, and produced by Soo In Kang & Mohnish Soundararajan

Video Remix

#inclassassignment

Wohl 2/28

Why do you think I assigned this piece for reading?

It was a very practical, straightforward piece that told us how to shoot film. It was like advice for us to have in mind while we’re shooting for our own documentary video projects.

In what ways has this reading been useful/will be useful to you for your video documentary project?

This reading was useful because it explained to us how useful and effective different framing methods are in film/video. Especially when we go in to film for our own documentary videos, knowing how to frame is immensely useful.

More conceptually, do you buy the film-as-language concept? Why or why not?

I do because film is still trying to convey something, whether it’s in action or through mise-en-scène.

The video clip I chose is from a scene in The Wolf of Wall Street and it includes two of the techniques that Wohl mentions in the reading, Mismatched Shots and establishing characters within the scene. Firstly, the scene is on Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and Donnie is confronting Jordan on how much money he makes in a month. Through the use of mismatched shots where the camera is angled to look down at Jordan and another angle looking up at Donnie, as Jordan was sitting down and Donnie was standing next to him, the shot goes back and forth to whoever was talking. This scene also solidifies both characters as Jordan is portrayed to be the rich, successful businessman who Donnie aspires to be (he immediately quit his job and went to work for Jordan after finding out how much Jordan made in a month). Not only that, but this scene also introduces how Jordan and Donnie first came to meet and know each other. This is important as the audience soon realizes that Donnie is Jordan’s number one sidekick. They scheme with one another and they start to build their company up from the ground as they utilize their skills of social persuasion to expand their team and convince their clients to buy more expensive stock.

The editing of the scene, fast-paced and erratic, is also a reflection of Jordan and Donnie’s relationship and their soon-to-be lifestyles as well. As erratic and unusual their meeting was, their future relationship as business partners and friends is also unusual as well. Not to mention, similarly to how fast-paced the editing was between the back-and-forth of Jordan and Donnie, their lives soon follow that chaotic pace as they start to become rich and exuberant in their lives with a variety of drugs, hookers, and unnecessary excesses of entertainment, such as throwing dwarf people onto throwing dart boards.

#blog post 8

The Dynamics of Roommates

For this documentary video project, Mohnish and I wanted to explore the topic of roommates. The specific question we want to center our documentary video around is “To what extent has having a roommate changed your life?”. The reason why we chose this question is because it’s pretty much a given that you’ll have a roommate at one point in your college life. Whether it was in Freshman year where it was required for students to live at a college dorm, or the other years when it’s more economically reasonable for one to have a roommate or even roommates throughout their years in college. Specifically, the problem that we’re addressing through our project is the concern that many incoming college students may have on why it is required of them to spend their first year in a college dorm and to have a roommate.

As much as some people might have had a problem (or still do) with the idea of co-existing with other individuals in the same room or house (that isn’t family), we’re sure that it’s still been a huge learning experience for most students. Our target audience is specifically incoming students coming here to the University of Illinois –Urbana Champaign, as they might have questions and concerns with having a roommate or roommates their first year here. And our proposed solution or “answers” that we hope will be relayed to the audience through our documentary video is that having a roommate will be a great learning experience for anyone. Whether it’s by learning how to successfully and peacefully co-exist with other students who may not have the same lifestyle or whether it’s learning how happily befriend and become closer with other students, having a roommate is a great stepping block from moving out of one’s home and finally getting a taste of how it’s like living in the real world. Because it’s quite common that even after college, there may be many moments where one chooses to live with a roommate or roommates as well.

For footage, we’re hoping that the commentary from inside our respective living situations can make for compelling content. In this sense, the footage will have (naturally) lots of dialogue. We’re stylizing the footage after the hit-show The Office, and we’re using elements of that show - from recording each character’s perspective to stylizing the cinematography - to highlight the more interesting parts of a mundane reality. In a sense, we’re trying to take the ordinary (having a roommate) and transform it into something compelling. We want our roommates to establish narrative, reveal conflict, and push the film forward. Most importantly, we want to document our roommates honestly, and we want everyone involved to have their own take represented in the final film.

For filming, there's a few problems we can anticipate coming up. One is the issue of getting compelling footage. As said earlier, the topic isn’t the same as following a murder case - it’s relatively ordinary, mundane, and it’ll take compelling footage to make for a compelling film. Hopefully, we can make creative decisions in the loose scripting before hand that’ll naturally predispose us to interesting scenarios, interesting discussion, and conflict that we can capture within this documentary. Having a roommate and undergoing the day-to-day triumphs and difficulties with them is inherently interesting to us because we’re key players in these scenarios - trying to make these personal relationships interesting to others, will be a separate challenge.

Another challenge: audio and footage. Generally, equipment can be as simple as an iPhone, but the problem is that of getting the audio to be (ironically) audible. We’re not focusing on sound (like the sound essay) but instead, we’re focusing on the shot, and when characters are far away (for instance, a scene where two roommates are cooking), if there's interesting conversation, it’ll be hard to snag it on tape. This is where proper equipment comes into play, and that’ll be it’s own learning challenge.

#videoprojectproposal

Montage Freewrite

1. What’s the difference between continuity editing and montage?

Continuity editing is when shots go together to create a seamless chain of events. It aims at hiding (or minimizing) the shift from one cut to the next whereas for montages, they are deliberately edited to show the relationship that shots A and shots B could result in a new idea, shot C.

2. What’s the Kuleshov effect, and why does it matter?

The Kukeshov effect is the mental tendency of viewers to attempt to figure out how filmed shots fit together, even when shots are totally unrelated. It matters because through editing certain shots, viewers can perceive the sequence of the film in different ways.

3. How does the Soviet Theory of Montage help us understand how film can transcend space and time?

Soviet Theory of Montage is an approach to understand and create videos/film that relies heavily upon editing. Series of short shots are edited into a sequence that could condense space, time, and information, thus transcending space and time.

4. How do Marxist notions of dialectic play into montage, and why was this so important at the time?

A way to look at the course of history as the perpetual conflict in which a thesis or force collides with an anti-thesis to create a new phenomenon (synthesis).

And the Other

#blog post 6 #video sketches

One Side

#blog post 6 #video sketches

Prelim Documentary Ideas

1. A Fun Night Out

Similarly to what my group and I explored in our last project, I was thinking I could explore what a fun night out looks like for students here at UIUC. The target audience would be current students that attend U of I as I want my video to relay that a “fun night out” for college students doesn’t necessarily have to be parties and bars or consuming alcohol/drugs. In order to break this stereotype and let students know that you can still have a great time by not partying hard. This could be an intervention for those who think that they have to go out every weekend and get wasted because if they didn’t, then they would be thought of as losers or loners. And this would be great to be explored through video as we could fully express and help students see a fun night being had by hanging out with friends playing board games, or jamming out, or watching movies, etc.

2. Diversity

The idea where we would interview multiple students here at U of I, asking them all the same questions in hopes of getting similar and different answers. In this way could we break the echo chambers that many students stay in and really show students (our target audience) that even though we come from different places, backgrounds, histories, that ultimately, as students and people, we might want the same things. Our target would be to break the fear that many people have of approaching new people and trying to reach out to them in order to become friends.

3. Drinking

What makes consuming alcohol so appealing? Why would students go through such lengths to break the law and drink it illegally? What are the positive AND negative effects of drinking that students have noticed? Does the good outweigh the bad or the other way around? Through this exploration, it would be interesting to interview students’ replies and see what their thoughts about drinking. It’d also be interesting to get adults’ perspectives on this as well (such as authorities, teachers, bartenders, etc.) The target, again, would be university students here at U of I to show them different perspectives about drinking alcohol. Maybe not with a focus on convincing students to stop drinking, but to broaden their minds on what others may think about alcohol and maybe helping to nudge them to drink more safely/moderately.

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