A New Beginning...

The beginning of third year and it already seems like there aren't enough hours in the day!

Over the summer, I've had time to reflect on my project... Not as much as I'd hope but still it's progress! My idea for Independent Production is based on critiquing Chomsky's theory of media control as well as addressing my fascination in the relationship between the media and its audience i.e. contemporary society and how media democracy can shape/influence the information (mass media) that society receives. We feed off and are reliant upon the information that is given to us whether it be the news, what's trending on yahoo or even feeds or updates on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

The society in which my motion comic will be set, will be a very pessimistic and bleak one, where media control has gone to the extreme. The question I want the user to leave with after viewing my piece is to ask themselves can they relate the now to the fictional world that I create and are we already living in this mixed up world??

From reading Chomsky's media control (2nd edition), the following stood out:

'The role of the media in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of a society we want to live in, and in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society'. (p9)


'The United States pioneered the public relations industry. Its commitment was 'to control' the public mind'. (p22)

I started to think how this project could be realized in a poignant yet challenging way. After scouring the Internet and hours laid awake in bed thinking about it... the idea of presenting my project through the medium of a motion comic came to mind.

An example that influenced my decision was the work of  Stephen King:

Work of Stephen King Motion Comics


Comic Motion Trailer (Stephen King)

The mix of animation techniques, visual effects, sound and narrative used is exceptional. The motion comic as a form addresses the idea of remediation. The traditional comic is being reinvented where conventions are being played with and explored using new techniques that are changing and adapting the definition of the 'comic'. Motion comics are relatively new to the media scene, and have arrived at a time where they are becoming increasingly popular amongst media producers and the audience alike as Albrecht article addresses entitled The Rise of the Motion Comic.

Another influence was that of the Watchmen series:

The style acknowledges the traditional style of the comic through the conventions of speech bubbles in particular, yet brings the narrative and characters to 'life' in terms of voice overs and movement for example that contributes to a cinematic approach in remediating the traditional comic form.

I am yet to decide on whether I will use photography or video to portray each scene, so over the next few weeks I aim to experiment with both to acknowledge which form is more suitable to work with. I'm aiming to use After Effects in order to animate my production piece using a posterized/animated effect, which will quite challenging yet creative in itself!

Currently, I'm toying with the idea of presenting the motion comic in the traditional comic style and creating an online motion comic with a page turning effect:

Comic book cells

Example of a page-turning effect

My only concern with this is that, within each cell, there will be different things going on i.e. movement and sound. Realistically, this wouldn't work as the pages would look too busy and almost messy. The user would not be able to make sense of the narrative... This could possibly be beneficial and I could use this to my advantage to reflect the notion of media control and its effect on contemporary society. Nonetheless, I feel that the motion comic would be best presented in a film sequence to get the best audience reaction as well as creating a visually creative piece. 

For my Birthday, I asked for this book , so I'm looking forward to reading it over the course of the next month!