Daddy, whats a narrative?

So we've been set our final brief for this term which is heavily focused on narrative, and after hearing from Jools that our previous 2 projects did not follow the breif in showing a narrative to the pixialation and one shot film i began to ask myself, what is a narrative?

So i looked to find out what the definition of narrative is:-

"A narrative is a construct created in a suitable medium (speech, writing, images) that describes a sequence of real or unreal events. It derives from the Latin verb narrare, which means "to recount" and is related to the adjective gnarus, meaning "knowing" or "skilled".[1] (Ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root gnō-, "to know".[2]) The word "story" may be used as a synonym of "narrative", but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative." - Wikipedia

"Narrative is a specialised form of communication resulting from an attempt to record and transmit information in order to explain" - Benford and Tallyn (2005)

From what i have read and heard from Jools that the basics of a narrative is a series of events that has the whole cause and effect placed in the story.


Interactive Narrative

Our final project given to us by Jools is to do with Interactive Narrative which is mainly to do with the consumer's choice and control of what they want to happen to the object/people in the story. A good example of interactive narrative would be related to role-playing games on computer's, many of which you can choose which path you wish to take or how you wish to act will lead you to different paths in the game and have different endings to it, this may be one of my ideas into making my project but i still need to think of a narratve that will work well.

Visual aesthetics

I have chose to discuss the visual aesthetics of the Wii controller, as a owner of the Nintendo Wii

i must say that this is a very interative entertainment system with it's exciting visual effects and their new family games that have been introduced and targetted to the older generation of the public. The look of it is very simplistic yet amazingly visually pleasing with its clean white look. Also with a well designed grip for the consumers with a strap that has been introduced to prevent the consumers from losing grip of the Wii and hitting their televisions.

The controller can be held upwards like the 1st image or it can be tilted so that you can hold the control on both ends like your original console control. There is a sensor that is to be placed ontop of your television so that it can detect the motion of the control to send the signal to the console on where the gamer is moving their control towards.

One shot film- Plan

As a group we have decided to base our one shot film on a poker game involving 1950's style New york gangsters. We've booked out the studio for our location and have several props our homes which we are going to bring in to increase the realism through the use of mise en scene. Through editing i can filter the color to give a black/white color for our one shot film to make it a film noir, which again will give the audience a clearer image of what the genre is.

Synopsis- so...

So like wheres all the books gone? Been trying to find books in the libary, which to my surprise most books from the reading list has been booked out or on request. Then i march towards our neighbourly bookstore "blackwells" and the 4 books i wish to purchase none are in, so winner -.-;, then finally i go towards what i think is the answer to all my problems, waterstones and again "nope, nope, nope, nope, we don't seem to have any of those in at the moment, would you like to order them in?" So my days going pretty "well" if only you can read sarcasim in text aswell as you could face to face or by the lovely tone in my voice.

So, with apologises i have not got much of a synopsis on a book as i have none to hand but have spent a whopping £73.96 on books incoming soon.

I did manage to borrow a book from a fellow class member, naming no names (thank you dave), on Basics of video production, by Des Lyver & Graham Swainson. The chapter is on "Location lighting".

This chapter details the introduction to the way we should consider our lighting depending on the location in which we choose to shoot our film. It also gives us aid on what tools and equipment would be useful to give us better lighting in certain locations. Such as battery powered lighting, which gives the lighting supervisor indendence from the mains. It does cover the pros and cons of what certain lighting techniques may have on your video production.

The chapter does cover alot of insightful things in which most of us should be paying attention to when considering making a video production. The book itself i have not covered fully but there is a number of techniques and hints of what can help us maximize our quality of work.

There will be more added once I recieve the masses of books i have ordered.

WAHOO!

At last it seems i have finally finished my stop motion project, now i'm not sure if it was just me but this project really did make me go crazy at times. If it wasn't the fact that all my kept on disappearing somehow, it was that i could not open the folder or trying to add tracks to my movie clip. But somehow, with a little patience, alot of keyboard banging and alot walking around aimlessly i have finally completed it... so yeah me *'.'*

It was a fun project shooting it, not so much editing it because i'm not very skilled at using the software, but i managed somehow and it has turned out (in my opinion) alright. A main problem that we had was our location, it wasnt the fact that it was congested with people but it was that the camera man (me) took most the photos in the middle of the road and when cars came by we had to try to re-poistion ourselves.

Anywhooo, enough of my jibba-jabba here it is, hope you enjoy