Storyline

I finally made a breakthrough with the storyline for the interactive narrative.  I had an outline, but it was too vague for my liking and made it very difficult to plan the branching narrative.  All I had for the basis of the story was that a woman was in a room and would not or could not get out - but yesterday was well spent plotting the story together.  It is often the most difficult part for me, (even with the most simple animation) - the story!  It  looms over me and becomes an enourmous hurdle!  I forsook a family day out yesterday, on a beautiful sunny day and spent time compiling a more effective story and drawing some characters.  It does not sound much for a days work, but 'the story is king' and I needed to develop the initial idea into something more concrete.  Without a decent plot, the user would not be interested in making a journey into the interactive narrative.... why would they bother!  I need to grab their interest in order for them to want to make the jouney and interact with it.  Meadows (2003), discusses the 'Generation of Meaning' and says:

'The foundations of a narrative image should include some sense of the opinion of the author (some moral).  Likewise, a context needs to be offered so that there is some kind of internal conflict, problem, or series of events.  The decisions of how to solve these problems are part of the art of narrative - part of the sensitivity that an author of narrative needs to bring to plot to make it an actual story.'

Here, Meadows highlights the importance of the plot within the story, as this encourages participation.

I have discussed the storyline with some friends and family who fall within a wide age range (25 - 75) and who fit within the lifestyle descriptors of my audience:

Life cycle stage: Single, newly married, empty nest and solitary survivor.

Lifestyle classification (Young & Rubican, Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation: 4C’s): The Aspirer – visual, materialistic, image, appearance. The Succeeder – confident, organised, aggressive attitude to life means they need to relax occasionally, in need of stress relief. The Explorer – indulgent, first to try new ideas, likes new experiences. The Reformer – independent, curious & enquiring.   

.... and I have had no negative viewpoints, which pleasantly surprised me and has made me feel more confident to go ahead with the storyline.

I have been gathering a wide range of images for inspiration, and now need to concentrate on the art direction to form an overall style.  I have a beautiful and inspirational book called Dream Worlds by Hans Bacher, based on production design for animation. According to Bacher; during the early stages of film/animation, the Production Designer is part of the visual development team, who explore all visual possibilites and this is what I have been gatheirng my inspirational images for - to explore and develop the visual. I have also been reading sections within a book called Inspired 3D Short Film Production by Jeremy Cantor & Pepe Valencia.  Although this book is based on 3D animation, I have found some chapters helpful and am currently dipping into the Chapter on Art Direction.  I still wish to incorporate mixed media and will focus on using photography with hand drawn and animated elements, and may include a small amount of video.

Interactivity

The concept of the word interactivity is often being questioned. Aarseth (1997) rejects its use and utilises - ergodicity, a term derived from the Greek words ergon and hodos, meaning work and path respectively. Ergodic texts are categorised as texts where ‘nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text’. Aarseth thinks that the term interactivity carries with it ideological implications of an equality between the user and interactive text, while at the same time, remaining rather vaguely defined. The word interactivity, when broken down into two parts means, inter: between and active: participating, doing something. It does suggest participation in action, in contrast to being passively involved. Traditional storytelling/films will usually necessitate passive observation, but interactive content requires more than passive observation - it will require interaction from an audience/user and also provide an element of choice and control. This is where problems can begin to occur as the more choice and control that is given by interactivity, the more the narrative structure can begin to fragment and the framework can become enormous and confusing.

I have been researching narrative structures and will go into more detail regarding these in my next entry; but I have decided that it will be best to use some kind of branching narrative for the overall structure. Currently I am thinking of using a branching narrative that has parallel paths where the story reconnects at specific key storyline points. This should stop the narrative becoming too huge and ultimately fragmenting any specific structure and aims within the storyline.

Branching narrative with parallel paths