What I’ve done since Monday:

I haven’t done too much since Monday, but I have been thinking about the story I have chosen. I’m trying to think of ways to remix the story of Spider-Man. It’s a pretty straight forward story with not much wiggle room, so I’m trying to think of ways to make it my own and entertaining. I’m thinking of doing a news cast about Spider-Man sightings and his stories, as well as using twitter to tweet like I’m Spider-Man.

What I have done

Since Monday, I have thought more in depth about my project and what I want to do. I decided to go with Finding Nemo. I am still figuring out what I am doing exactly but I have a general idea. I have made a timeline of the key events from Finding Nemo that I want to use for my video clip. I am going to take the different clips and put them together. And then at the end, there will be an alternate ending. I have started to lay the ground work. If the video doesn’t pan out then I will take screenshots and add message bubbles and create a presentation that way. Hopefully the video works out but I have an alternative plan if needed.

Why I did what I did

So the main reason I want to do Finding Nemo is because, first of all, I love the movie and second, I think it would be a great story to remix. I think there is a lot of potential here and I can really make it work. The reason I want to make a video is because I want to challenge myself. I am not very good with video and video editing so this would expand my skills. I really do want to learn video and this would help greatly.

What I Did: I brainstormed more ideas for my project — I feel like I want to do a video type of project or one with pictures and images. I was thinking about doing a real-life interpretation of Beauty and the Beast on Virginia Tech’s campus.

What I Need To Do: I need to work on creating more concrete ideas in the future and planning out exactly how I want to execute the project. I will definitely work on looking into other example projects like this so I can get inspiration from other works.

So far on this project I’ve done such research on Hamlet by reading through both Shakespeare’s original play and also the play by Tom Stoppard.  I’ve also looked at sites such as thewallmachine.com to generate a fake Facebook news feed.  I’m thinking about doing a chronological sequence of events, with the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the main characters and Hamlet commenting occasionally.  I’ve also been doing some research on the movie version of Tom Stoppard’s play, and I think I would use that as a primary source, rather than the production of Hamlet on stage.  One difficult thing would be gathering assets, as I think it would be difficult to get images or graphics for this story.

I’ve also thought about changing the story that I remix.  I’m thinking about remixing the story of Finding Nemo, with the sources being the movie and the musical production of it.  I’m looking to do some more research into that, and looking at if it would be a better idea than Hamlet/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Depending on the research I do, I might switch to remixing Finding Nemo.

I’m still in planning mode, so really I’m trying to figure out what I want to include in my articles. I was also considering actually making the story about the journalist’s career, including “I’m stuck on obituaries,” “I got my first hard news story,” and “Why do I have to cover the society page?” Perhaps I would create a book, like a diary, chronicling the journalist’s career.

What I Did

I honestly haven’t done much more with my project this week. I’ve mostly been thinking of ways that I could present my information. I decided a while ago that I wanted to do my project in InDesign, and I’m thinking about doing an infographic or a magazine, but I’m not entirely set on either yet.

Why I Did It

I want to use InDesign for my project because it’s been two years since I took Designing Documents for Print, so my skills are rusty, and they were moderate at best. I want to have as much skill as possible with InDesign, because my current top choice for a job this May requires lots of InDesign skill. I like the idea of an infographic because it’s simple, they’re fun to read, and I would have lots of creative freedom. I like the idea of a magazine because the aforementioned job involves designing stuff for catalogs, and I think this would be a great way to get that kind of experience and the final product would be an excellent addition to my portfolio. I’d go with a magazine instead of a catalog because it’s obviously a more story-friendly format.

What I did

I decided what story I am going to remix: beauty and the beast. I collected sources such as the original text, the original movie, and modern adaptations. I watched a few clips from the modern adaptations. I researched other clips that I want to use in my video and brainstormed other movies or tv shows that I could use.

Why I did it

I wanted to do beauty and the beast because I had an idea about it. When I was brainstorming which story to do, I was thinking about some of my favorite movies and stories, and beauty and the beast has always been my favorite disney princess movie. When thinking about how to remix it, I thought about how universal the theme in beauty and the beast is. The common thread in beauty and the beast is applicable in a lot of other situations in modern movies and tv shows and I want to show this through splicing these clips that I researched together in one message. This is where my idea came from. I watched some of the modern adaptations to see a different perspective than the original.

The only thing I’ve really done since last class is that I began looking up stats and facts to try to decide which ones to focus on.

I’ve looked up things such as the job market, graduation rates from college, how many students stay a fifth year, and things like that.

I also began researching the characters of the story a little more to see who else I could include in my new plot.