Below you will find notes outlining the different forms that your Storyelling assignments will take this semester.
1 interactive treatment
Interactive Overview and Treatment
This document should be made up of three parts, the Overview, Explanation and Treatment, as laid out below.
Overview: You should provide an overview of the goals and intentions of your interactive at the start of your document . This overview
helps to give context to the treatment that follows on from it. For example; Mindmess is a purely experiential,
real time space, that aims to represent the landscape of a cluttered mind. The space will be populated with piles of boxes and abandoned objects obscured beneath dust covers. Users wil explore the space, uncovering hidden fears, lost memories and stray thoughts, bringing their own experiences and interpretation to the scraps of someone else's mind. Or Karma Bank is game that challenges the user to keep their Karma in positive balance, whilst negotiating a range of typical daily choices. Users will undertake simple tasks; traveling to work, going to a party or shopping at the market and during each of these tasks, be presented with a range of decisions. For example, do they tell the green grocer that he undercharged or do they give their seat up for the old lady on the train? Each decision will either deposit or subtract Karma from the users 'account, when the bank reaches capacity, the user has won.
Explanation: Once you've completed your overview, you would then go on to an Explanation that lays out the internal logic or rules that underpin the space, it should describe mechanics and navigation and through these descriptions, illustrate how interactive works. The treatment then follows on from overview and explanation, demonstrating how the different elements of the interacive come together to create the user experience.
Treatment: The Treatment portion of your document is extremely important to the clear communication of your concept. It works a little like a script in that it is written in the present tense and describes the intercactive in term sof what can be seen and heard. Your interactive should be described in terms of what the user sees, hears, does and experiences as they move through the spaces that you've created. For example and following on from the Mindmess example above:
The user finds themselves in a large, silent, dimly lit room. The centre of the room is pooled with yellow light that falls away into darkness. At the edges of the room, dark shapes can be seen. As the user moves closer, they seethat the shapes are boxes, piles of paper and objects obscured by dust sheets. The user can open the boxes and examine the contents. As each object is handled, it emits a shadowy soundscape that suggests its' history. A pair of dancing shoes plays a tango, with clicking heels and applause heard beneath the music...
Following these conventions allows you to create the best approximation in text of the anticipated audiovisual experience.
You may add any further information to the treatment that you feel will help to communicate your interactive concept.
2 script form
We will be using the AFC Script Form as our template this year (please find a pdf version of the template at the link below).
You will find a set of comprehensive notes on script form within the template. As with the treatment forms
outlined above, script form is structured to create the best approximation in text of the eventual audiovisual experience.
A simple formula to follow with script form is to describe what we see in the present tense and in the following order,
-Where are we (description of location)
-Who is there (description of character)
-What are they doing/saying (description of action/interaction)
Remember, in script form it is always now, we write in the present tense. This means that problems around shifting through time are dealt with in the written version of your concept. Location is described in terms of time and place (eg. EXT/Orchard/Sunset ) in your scene headings and through the descriptions of location and environment in your the body text of your script that follows on from the scene headings.
Actions and events are described in terms of what can be observed or heard. Your narrative will eventually be communicated through sound and image only and your script should largely use these devices to communicate also. This means that as much as possible, you show us the story-through a character's actions, reactions, interactions, gestures, dialogue and through events rather than tell the story through an internal monlogue.
Try to avoid referring to the 'camera' but rather describe the world in terms of what 'we see'. Interrupting of the narrative flow of your script with too much technical detail pulls us out of the world of the story and can disengage us from the characters and actions your script is describing.
Some Conventions for Script Form
For examples of all of these conventions within a Script Format, please refer to the Screen Australia template linked below.
Information about location, action and character sits in the body text and dialogue appears in a centred, indented block below the name of the character. Brief directions about the delivery of dialogue can be made in parenthesis after the character name and before the dilaogue, like so (whispering).
When a character is first introduced, their name appears in capital letters, FREDERICK, this draws our attention to the fact that a new character has entered the scene. Subsequent references to the character revert to the standard convention, Frederick. A brief description of the character can appear as they are introduced, for example, a very old man, FREDERICK, is moving slowly across the bridge.
A numbered scene heading tells us when and where the action is located. Generally a new scene is required if there's a change of time or location. A character can move in and out of a room, or from inside to outside, if the space is contiguous, without requiring a new scene, this simply needs a an INT/EXT note in the scene heading indicating that the action commenced inside but moved outside as the scene played out. If the audience does not witness the characters movement from interior to exterior, then a new scene can commence when the character arrives outside.
Screen Australia, What is a Synopsis, Outline, Treatment?
Suggested Script Layout
You may wish to use the script formatting softward (Celtx) that is available on the AIM computers.
3 character profile
A character profile helps you to establish the internal world of your character. I'ts this internal world that informs and motivates the outward, observable actions, reactions and interactions through which your character communicates. These external behaviours should also be described . Your character profile may incorporate a succinct back-story that could lay out the motivations and intentions behind your character’s behaviour within the story. The character profile should be a separate and stand alone document. Any script that you write should be also stand alone. Do not rely on the Character Profile to inform your script, your script must contain all of the story information required to fully commuincate your concept.
Example
Gary is a librarian in his mid sixties. Gary is short and fat and moves with an agility unexpected in somebody so overweight. Gary is very loud and noisy but believes that he’s very quiet as he is quite deaf. Gary’s colleagues haven’t told him that he makes a lot of noise; they are afraid of hurting his feelings and as he’s near retirement age, they figure they’ll wait it out and live with the noise. Gary believes that his capacity to move ‘soundlessly’ around his environment would make him a great spy and he spends many hours daydreaming about spy scenarios in which he stars. Gary likes to observe the patrons of the library and pretend that they are secret agents or terrorists planning acts of espionage that he, in the role of Super Spy, prevents through his heroic actions.
4 DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
The Director’s Statement lays out your vision and intention for the concept you are have presented as a response the storytelling writing assigment.
The statement will explain the main thrust of your concept and identify the themes and ideas that drive it. You will explain why you are drawn to this concept and what you wish to achieve through making it. You should also discuss how and why this concept is suited to the medium you have chosen to work within (animation, interaction, installation, mobile game platform etc).
You will identify the tone or genre of your work and situate it within the field of practice through giving examples of existing works or practitioners, from whom you have drawn reference or inspiration. You will also give a sense of ‘who’ the work is for by identifying your intended audience.
The statement should also give an idea of your intended approach to the visual and sound components of your work. The vision you have for sound and image should be related back to the driving themes and ideas identified earlier in your document.
5 EXPERIMENTAL PROPOSAL
This document should contain the following six sections.
Project Outline: A one-sentence synopsis.
Project Overview/Scope: This section lays out your intentions. What does the project seek to do or to say? What would it like to achieve? What concepts are you investigating and experimenting with? This covers the what of your project, what do you want to do?
Rationale: Why is the work the way it is? What is the purpose of its invention? How is the work valuable? To what does it contribute? Does it ask us to look at the world differently? Does it open up possibilities for interaction? What are the guiding principles? Your rationale covers the why of your project, why do you want to make this?
Outputs/Treatment: The Output section of the document describes what the object is that you will create, and situating it in a field of practice. What is it that we are going to see and hear? How is it going to be displayed? How are we to interact or engage with it? For example, you might describe “An interactive work using the touch sensor of an iphone”. “A winter installation for Federation Square in Melbourne using LED projectors.” “An experimentation with under camera collage to create three dimensional pictorial depth and perspective in combination with spatialised sound.”
The Treatment section covers the how of your project - what tools will you use and what methods will you employ in its creation? How are these material considerations relevant to your concept? For an experimental form, you might consider describing similar works, juxtaposed works, source works, publications, organizations, or arguments.
Image Reference Please include three still reference images that provide context for your output description. Please detail the images’ relevance to your work, and how you are using them as a visual reference. These images do not need to be your own; they can be well-selected reference images, appropriately credited.