Narratives: Narrative

Following a lecture with Jools we were told to look at, and analyse the narrative content of the following websites; Coca-Cola, Nike and Gorillaz.

Coca-Cola: You have to interactive as soon as the page loads as it has a language and region selection to make sure you get the correct settings as a user. Good use of intetactive menus and use of scrollbars to show Coca-Cola products.

Nike: Having to interact in the same way as the Coca-Cola site, with the language and region selection. Again a good example of interactivity, with menus and a flash interface, paving the way for many different routes through the site.

Gorillaz: Simple, yet effective layout. Like a room and you have to choose where to go in the room or to go into a different room [or page], each with different items [menus etc]. Well thought out and a good design.

All sites are constructed in Flash, and are something that I would like to aspire to, one day!

Narratives: Short Film 001

After spending the week finding other Narrative Group 9'ers we [Myself, Artis, Owais and Jennie] met up to discuss our thoughts and ideas for the project. Although, we believe we are one, possibly two members missing, but non of us have had any form of contact.

Brief Synopis

Group Members : Artis Svenne, Ben Lill, Owais Mohyuddin, Jennie Shackleton, Emily Fichna

Title: A Day In The Life. . .

For our 2 minute narrative we have decided to have a minimalist approach - the concept where nothing much happens and nothing ever changes, it depicts the grimness of the situation and a sense of hopelessness. There is no start, middle and end, and no conclusion as seen in a 'classical narrative', so that it gives the feel of continuity.
In our narrative we aim to follow the day of a man in a predicament. It doesn't need to be stated what it is - drugs, alcohol, a broken heart, etc as the way it will be shot will give plenty indication and clues for the audience to guess or even make up their own minds as to what the specifics are. It must be clear, however, of the desperateness of the situation.
We want to shoot it with a mixture of stills and action - the stills can represent flashbacks to better times, which will show the human side to the character and emphasise the situation wasn't always this grim. This will hopefully have the effect on the audience of having empathy for the character, rather than just regarding him as a lazy drunk, or junkie for which the audience may have no sympathy, hence become detached from the emotinonal side to the narrative. There is no plot as such, the narrative is more about depicting emotions rather than key events. There will be hints, of course, at events taking place but exactly what is happening.

Written by Artis.

Narratives: Film Analysis

For the first assignment under the narrative section of the course we [as individuals] had to look around the internet for short films and describe what we liked about them and the way that they were filmed. I chose the short film site Pawky to gain a look at some of todays short films. Pawky is a popular site, and has various categories [docmentaries, animations, music videos etc] so I thought this would have a wide range of films.

Short Film 1: Click here to view this film

Outline: The film is about a boy who gets upset over a drawing that he has done. There isn't much point to this film apart from it been a bit of fun, but I like how the shots are from an angle just to the right and below the boy. With the use of animations and bursts of [white] text on a [black] background work very well, and gain an effect that is normally seen in informative adverts.


Short Film 2: Click here to view this film

Outline: This film is very short, at only 60 seconds long, and doesnt really have much point to it. But i was interested in the design of the film, the fact it was made of plasticine really appealled to me as they got such a great effect with something so simple. The way the lighting changed aswell also played a big part for me.

SPP1: Ideas Generation

In a workshop lead by [guest lecturer] Dominic Shaw we were given a task to bring in objects found on the street. Having no clue as to why this was we nervously brought them to the lecture. We were then told we had to make up a story [in groups] involving everyone of ours items [mine been packets of sauce!!]. We were told that if we laid the items out that we could get a better look at them as a whole, we did. As we did this we thought of trying to base the story around everything been on the floor. We thought that the space could have been a homeless persons living space and that each of the items represented a significant part of their life.

We then had to think about a way of presentating this, our initial idea as a group was to put each image [of a significant part of their life] on a tv screen and have the tv's against one wall, but seen as we had no budget and no time we settled to make A4 versions of their life. Until next time!

Time flies....

So, I'm now into my second week of the course, and I have no idea where the last week went, at all! Suppose thats what you get from 'freshers flu' really, bugger...

My main task/s are to now catch up with what I've missed, according to other narrative groups we are been told to produce a short film on narrative's, which seems like fun, except I can't seem to get hold of my narrative group (So, if you're reading this and are in Seminar Group B, Narrative Group 9 let me know please).

The course has been alot to take in all at once, but with the early mornings and the lack of education for near enough 5 months I'm sure its just me.

Update [with media] soon, when I can find my head!

Initial Presentation

Oh really, thrown in at the deep end now, excellent!

We [as a course/tutorial group] have been asked to produce a 3 page presentation on ourselves to present in our Tutorial slot [mine, hopefully, been Thursday 9am-10am] to include the following information:

- Name
- Interests (Work & Play)
- Favourite Bands
- Favourite Designers
- Favourite beer

...good thing is, you can lie, is it a good thing? who knows?!

Anyway, thats a nice little ice breaker to get us started for the year! Excellent