Watching Movies With the Sound Off
As a student in the Literary Media and Communications department (Duke Ellignton School of the Arts), I often get questions about what we do in class. “You all don’t do anything!” “This school doesn’t need Museum Studies and LMC, they both are lazy.” Dealing with that everyday is taxing, but it does not bother me as much as it should for one reason and one reason alone: because I know I put in hard work to improve my skills as a writer, as someone who interacts with words, as an artist. I have written dozens of poems and short stories since the beginning of the year, but a standout class for me was our New Media class. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the class itself, I learned some important things that I did not know prior to taking the class, and some of those things have helped me improve my storytelling abilities.
For example, I learned the key points of filming, called “The Four P’s”: People (who is in the story?), Place (where does the story take place), Plot (what is the conflict and the journey?), and Purpose (why should anyone care about this?). Using those four points along with my previous experience with storyboarding and brainstorming, I was able to begin a documentary with a subject that was very close to my heart. However, I was ultimately unable to use the concept and footage due to complications. Building onto that, the documentary itself and the setbacks I continued to experience taught me that I have to be prepared for anything, whether that means not being able to get proper documentation earlier, or neglecting to compose extensive notes for my documentary. This class has taught me that procrastination is a terrible thing to deal with, and is also very hard to get past.
Throughout the year, I also learned about NFC (Near Field Communication) and AR (Augmented Reality), the former I did not know much about and the latter I was well versed in. NFC is a set of standards used by smartphones and similar devices that establish radio communication by being in close proximity or actually being in contact with one another. I did not know much about that feature outside of the application Bump, which I never owned, though my knowledge about AR was vast due to its more recent usage in video games (AR is a view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input of varying types). The reintroduction of AR to me through this class reminded me where my skills of retention and understanding information could be implemented:
Creative twists on pop culture. My major project that began to actually gain traction in New Media was my comic strip that was a satire of world news and pop culture, called “Gaza Strip”. That was my major strength, using the technology at my disposal to deliver once a week on a product that people actually wanted. However, that highlighted a serious flaw of mine: productivity lags painfully slowly when it involves something I don’t 100% care about. For example, Gaza Strip ran an entire week late for its final two weeks because there was no interesting news.
So, for my final project in New Media class--to make an accompanying interactive that revisits something that was challenging for you--I have decided to make a Thinglink interactive image based on Mac Miller’s new album “Watching Movies With the Sound Off”, with links to my personal Tumblr posts that contain poems for each song on the album that, together, compose a story. Hopefully with this, I can prove my improvement and skill in what I do: tell stories and find inspiration in anything and everything, using technology and the power of the human mind.
Mike Stevenson - http://miketheoctopus.tumblr.com/
