Interactive Narrative - Week 2

When discussing the interactivity a game possesses, I personally believe that it should be judged by how much a person's decisions impact the narrative of the game. The interactive story game "Façade"

(M. Mateas, A. Stern. (2005). Façade (1.1) [PC game]. Procedural Arts. Retrieved from: http://www.interactivestory.net/) is one which allows the player to construct their own traditional Three Act Narrative Structure for their play session. The game achieves this by direct interaction being available through typing sentences to communicate with the characters, as well as interacting with various objects through the click of the mouse. Because of these elements, despite players being given same beginnings of being invited to the house of Trip and Grace, the events which occur will differ depending on their actions and choices when speaking to the characters, causing various middles and endings to the set Three Act structure (examples being one of Trip or Grace leaving). Therefore, the player is uncertain with what to expect as a consequence from their actions. Game designers Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen mentioned: "If a game is certain, if the outcome is known in advance, there is no reason to play in the first place." (Zimmerman, Salen, 2003). Facade's interactivity clearly makes use of this factor because of the multiple scenarios the player can generate. However, the only flaw to this mechanic would be the clear limitations of the AIs within the game. There will be times when Trip and Grace don't take into account what the player says, and an ending is mainly decided on a "yes or no" question by one of the characters. 

Resources

M. Mateas, A. Stern. (2005). Façade (1.1) [PC game]. Procedural Arts. Retrieved from: http://www.interactivestory.net/

E. Zimmerman, K. Salen. (Game Designers). (2003). Rules of Play [Book]. United States: MIT Press

Group discussion - What idea did we decide on?

Today's session was spent deciding on everyone briefly pitching their ideas and discussing some strengths and weaknesses of each one in order to decide which one our group would animate.
My feedback was that the montage was well thought out to reduce time spent, but the character would be quite hard to construct and animate.
We ended up deciding on the idea that Mikayla pitched called "Butter Up": the tragic love story of a stick of butter who can't seem to impress a female love interest with his flirtatious lines.

I'm REALLY excited to work on that idea, and I actually think the entire group is because we were all hyped up about it last week x'D
Because it was Mikayla's idea, we had all decided that it was only natural for her to be the Director, as she would have what she wanted exactly in her head, and we intend to follow it for most part unless we all decide something seems "better".
Jerwin was the most confident regarding 3D skills so he was given the position Head of 3D while Michelle Zhen was given the role of Producer: none of us who were left over felt really comfortable with the role >.>;

My main job has become helping the Head of 3D with most of the 3D aspects of the film while lending a hand to others (e.g. helping Mikayla with editing). I took this as an opportunity to gain better knowledge of defeating the monster named Maya and because I don't feel 100% confident right now, I have planned to counter this by brushing up on everything I remember while reading guides over the Google God T_T;

Regarding schedule, we all thought that making one together would provide the best possible outcome of managing time altogether. Everyone pitched in their own thoughts while I typed our thoughts in. This is what it looked like in the end:

On a side note, we also decided our team motto to be "Always stay positive" :3

Script Ideas

I thought a montage of still images would be better because that meant we wouldn't have to film in all the different places. Rather, we'd only have to take simple pictures and include the character afterwards.

This part was thought to be cut down shorter because I was worried about the 30-40 second time limit.

Thought process of when I was deciding a script. I thought that the strengths of my scenario was that it showed very good interaction between the live action and animated characters because they were actually considered to be in a relationship. The montage would also be less time consuming also. However, a flaw I see within my idea is the process of actually animating the character: it has to be a full grown human, meaning it would be harder to animate compared to other simpler characters.

Thinking about Character

After discussing my idea with lecturers, I was given feedback on how I should
-develop the animated character
-decided why the story was being told/the message


I was also suggested that I should try doing some research regarding why some people actually fell "in love" with fictional characters. I had read many stories of people walking around with...hug pillows (>.>) and acting like a couple with the characters drawn on them.


First, because many of my friends were people who loved watching animations, I decided to ask the question: Name an animated character you like. What makes you feel this way?

From asking my friends, I realised that they liked the characters either because they had traits that would be strange if actual humans had them/ traits humans couldn't have, while also the other reason being that the characters were found to be relatable and were rather "human".


Looking around the internet, I found that many other people thought fictional characters were more attractive because in sources like novels, their imperfections are usually never talked about. Same could go for films, unless some comedic situations arise, things like the character going to the toilet never really appear.
Reading more, I saw articles saying that liking fictional characters could be considered "healthy" to a certain extent. As soon as the person got obsessed to the point where they thought the character was "the only being for them", then things would start getting messy and some people could also be considered to be in early stages of depression.

After a bit of research, I decided to craft the animated character around the information.

Initial Ideas

These were just the first ideas I had thought of on the day. The first was a romantic horror while the second was a somewhat Western comedy(?). The third "thought" was from watching the famous Youtuber Ryan Higa >.>;;;;

The next day, I ended up trying to write different story ideas where they included full narratives of a scenario. A classmate (GRACE!) suggested a little touch to the setting for the first idea: maybe having a big bunch of energy drinks in the last shot. The third idea was a bit hard to use because I couldn't really think of a second genre aside from the comedy aspect of it.

After much thought, I decided to go with the first idea of having a fictional love interest. I thought this would be easier to work with because I had read many articles regarding people who have actually gotten "married" to animated characters. ._.
This page was filled with thinking about what types of problems I'd have to take into consideration, such as how the character would be animated. There were also little bits of how the story would play out.

Brief and Initial Thoughts

WELCOME BACK TO UNI FRIENDS

Going straight into the brief for cinematic project, our animation has to...
-Have at least one live-action character
-Have one animated character (can be 3D or 2D or a mix of both)
                 *The animation has to include a 3D element somewhere: character or no character
-Be a hybrid of two different genres: hybrid dramatic scene
-Somewhere between 30 to 40 seconds long

Well this makes things interesting...
First things first, I had to make a list of some film genres
~action
~romance
~comedy
~western
~scifi
~horror

...and from this, I already ran into my first problem: I never watched enough movies to have a wider range to choose from. However, I believed that I would be able to mix and match quite a few of these genres.

Comedy was something that was easy enough to define, so it was probably going to be included the most within my ideas.

Final Script - personal idea

Ahhhh I finished my script...Hope it shows up fine because I typed it up on my phone OTL 
Scanner at home isn't working for some reason so I've decided to upload planning and stuff later QAQ


Final Script
By Michelle Choi

Ext. A sunny morning in a park filled with bright flowers, a bench and a water fountain. 

Establishing shot of the setting along with a lone figure(male) standing in the distance in front of a park bench.

Close up of the male's back profile when a voice calls him from off the screen, causing him to look towards the source - it is revealed he is a handsome individual.

Girlfriend: Sorry I'm late!

Over the should shot from the male as he sees his girlfriend running towards him.

Girlfriend: Hope you didn't wait too long!

Twoshot of the characters conversing with eachother.  

Boyfriend: (chuckles) Nah, don't worry about it, its okay if its you. You want to get going now?

Girlfriend: Of course! What have you planned for us today? 

Boyfriend: Well you'll have to wait and see won't you? 

Camera gets an extreme close up of the boyfriend grabbing his girlfriend's hand. It soon goes to a close up of the male smiling and another with the female replying with a blushing face.

Camera goes back to a two shot as the character walk out of the screen to the right. A montage filled with images of the couple appear with events of their date. As each image shows up, the voice overs of the characters are heard.

Image of couple walking in the park
Boyfriend: By the way, don't you look very nice today! 

Girlfriend: Huh? Oh, th-thanks!

Image of couple at a calm cafe
Boyfriend: Hm? God, you got cream all over your face!

Image of couple at an arcade
Boyfriend: (laughs) I win again! W-wait, don't cry! 

Montage ends and scene fades into a new setting.
Int. A small room in a flat with the couple sitting in front of television on a couch.

Two shot of the couple and the boyfriend taps the girl's shoulder.A slow zoom as they lean in for a kiss. Girlfriend looks nervous.

Boyfriend: I really lo-

Boyfriend is cut short as camera is directed at the girlfriend's flatmate in a full body shot. 

Flatmate: Hey Sonia, you alright with pizza tonigh-

Point of view shot from the flatmate as the "girlfriend is seen with a cardboard cutout of her fictional boyfriend. Camera returns to the flatmate.

Flatmate: ...Never mind actually... (closes door slowly)

Screen goes black and a smooch is heard.