Conspiracy... NOT

Reading the headlines last week and I came across this article in The Guardian:

How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses

An example of controlling the masses through fear. In this all too real example, the fear is embedded within sexual humiliation. Evoke enough fear... you get the public to behave as you want and effectively control the masses...

TESTING OF OUTPUTS- IMAGE TEST ONLY!

Here's a test looking at the difference in quality in exporting in FCP and Flash. I've treated the files with transition effects and image effects (Line Art only). These tests are WITHOUT sound.


MOV FILE

FLASH FILE

Conclusions

• Line art effect is working well. The images could benefit from colour 
• I'm going to work with FCP to create individual .mov files for each of the chapters. Looking at tutorials for Action Script 2.0 and 3.0, it seems it would be a lot of hassle to animate in flash for more or less the same quality. 
• I will however, transfer the finished .mov files into flash files for the website for the playback components.
• Bring on the rendering!

Script

As any media creative, things can constantly change... So I've completely done a revamp of the narrative, here's the script below:

SCRIPT- Despotism: The Blind Road to Media Control

Chapter 1: In The Beginning

[Opening image- Private Property]

Car is heard, ambient noise

Smith: This must be the place. Not as bad as I was expecting. Don’t see why everyone working for Medicorp has to live in the same place though... [Drifts off]

Smith: I’ve been in this job for 18 months now, started off as a hard nut but now I’m not so sure. I mean it’s hard to miss something you haven’t experienced, but if you have experienced the ‘before’, then this is pretty tough going, having to relocate, be away from family and friends. You know the usual. I always wanted to become a spin doctor, probably the cocky arrogance residing in me since my days at University. I started my training with political government but I was soon commandeered by Medicorp.  I mean, my job as a spin-doctor was safe, it was an already established tradition of government propaganda; spin. It’s what makes the governmental world go round (no pun intended). 

Smith: I’d better get a move on and have a look around, see if I can find someone. This place looks dead. [Smith walks away out of shot].

Chapter 2: Economical Consent [Office Location- end with shot looking out of window]

[Opening image-Exterior Building Shot]

Smith: Controlling the public mind, getting under their skin, learning how they operate, what they want to hear is public relations to a tee. Covert control, highly effective, just my speciality in fact. What have we got here?... Nice headline. Bit late for that now though!

[Phone rings]

Smith: Yep

Smith: Sure

Smith: Okay

Smith: I’ll be watching it

Smith: I'll give you a call later. Keep your phone on.

Chapter 3: Media Control and I

[Opening image- Office]

Smith: ‘He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you’. –Nietzsche. Good quote that and so very true...

Smith: Manipulating public opinion that was what I was brought in to do. It seems quite stupid now getting a conscience. I didn’t get into this role for the moral good, it just paid extremely well. Yeah well it’s a bit late now isn’t it?! When I started out working for Medicorp was fun, we used to put on bets, see what we could get the public to do... I was a very rich man that year... It beggars belief how screwed up society is, they’d believe anything and react more or less the same; social pressure I can tell you has made my job a little easier. I mean, thinking back to only a few years ago when Government was still political not media, course you remember the PM Cameron.  Announced a potential petrol strike you know nothing set in stone but the whole country went ape shit panic buying, petrol stations running out, massive queues, the lot. True scaremongering tactics that, a great way to get the generally subdued into the palm of your hands where you want them. I remember when I was brought in not long after for my spin doctor training, that was the pinnacle success story-pure genius. Not long after that fiasco, politicians started going to the dogs and by dogs I mean the major media moguls. Wanting to learn even better tactics for getting the public to hang on to their every word. The politicians soon realized that the media moguls could teach them a thing or two. A big scandal emerged, something to do with corrupt politicians. The media went all hush-hush about it- which looking back is quite ironic.  Anyway, long story short the PM had to stand down, elections were had, the usual business but in a weird turn of events, political influence was not on the government’s side. Media moguls were running for power, I didn’t think it was possible but I’m sure some deal was made when the Media Moguls went in. So then Medicorp become in power, abolished political government and made it their own, Putin would’ve been proud! Changed the whole government structure. At first, the public thought was for the better… They were only told on a need to know basis so didn’t really know the extent to what was going on. Power was in the selective few at the top of Medicorp and that’s how it all started...

Smith: The public need to be leaded, they need a leader that tells them what they should think, act, behave and do. Without it, many people are lost, chaos would begin. One where the government haven’t orchestrated that chaos (there is a significant difference). We like the public to be in the palm of our hands, being able to manipulate them like puppets with invisible strings. We want them to do something, then we’ll bring in a law, if we don’t want them to do something, then we make it illegal. We called it ‘intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves’. Simple. Medicorp have made the public more reliant on the Media than ever before, society 'feeds' off the Media to survive, to know what’s going on in the world around them. In doing so, every citizen surrenders their personal information and privacy; without them even knowing their doing it. If only they knew...

Chapter 4: Alone

[Opening image- Inside of home]

Smith:  feel like a sitting duck in this place, the more isolated I become, the more cynical I feel. Everything I read, or watch I see in a different light. The more I think about it, the more I think political government was as corrupt as ours, but not as effective. I mean, just look at the unbalanced relationship between media and the public before all this.  I will always remember the one thing from my very first briefing with Medicorp. ‘We will remake the world. Create the future through fear’. As you and I both know, fear is the most powerful weapon of all. If only the public saw this coming, being led down the blind road of media control. Then maybe just maybe they’d realise how heavily reliant they are on the media to understand the world, and how manipulated and inculcated they are by the media saturated world around them. Still this monologue inside my head is making me go crazy, no one can hear me, no one is listening, no one is there but me.

Frustration with technology and other things...

Experimenting to decide whether to use flv or mov was much more harder than first thought. I swear the computers in University know when I'm trying to do something important because they never work!!!!

I'm swaying with using mov files at the moment as using Flash would cause more unnecessary and unwanted problems. In the meantime, I will attempt to experiment again, hopefully it will successful this time and will post the results in the next week or so!

Moving on from technical issues, I've secured a voice-over for the motion comic. I believe the motion comic will need a voice over to engage the audience instead of text and images on screen. This will be recorded over the next week or so, and I will post the script on the blog, once finished!

Looking back to the days of producing the pilot and things have changed drastically (but for the good!)

Here's the image I've created in Photoshop for the Homepage of the website:

I'm really pleased with the design as it's enigmatic, bold and intriguing especially the text 'The blind road to Media Control'. I found the below images through a search engine as I had an idea of what I wanted to create; a symbolism of being silenced and not heard...

To create the image for the Homepage, I experimented in Photoshop with the following filters:

Filters> Artistic> Cutout

Filters> Sharpen



And came up with this:

It reminds me of the image used in The Corporation:



Again this week, I've been thinking about the layout of the website and how the motion comic will be displayed within it. I wanted to include an element of user interactivity within the website as again, this will engage the user. The interactivity will be introduced through a second navigation bar which will allow the user to move through the motion comic chapters. I've incorporated 2 ways that the user can choose to do this:

Either

• Go to the navigation bar at the top of the page and choose the chapter from the drop down list
• Or click on the links 'go back' or 'next' which will then load a new webpage with the next chapter in a mov file.

Thinking again about the layout of chapters, I've decided on using a mov file for each chapter. Currently, I'm planning on using 4 chapters within the motion comic, each chapter averaging about 2 minutes in length each. Altogether providing 8 minutes or so of motion comic and around 10 minutes or so in user experience.

Currently my chapter titles are:

• Chapter 1: In the Beginning
• Chapter 2: Economical Consent
• Chapter 3: Media Control and I
• Chapter 4: Alone

I'm currently working on the background sound of the Homepage, as the sound I used for the Pilot (although I liked it) needs some work and improvement.

Critical and Challenging Engagement...

A few weeks ago, I began to think critically about my production piece and what it is I am trying to achieve and understanding where my project sits on a media scale:

This is what I came up with:

My project acts as a social commentary/ critique on media control and the influences of, it in this I mean PR, advertising and more prominantly the News within contemporary society, through the form of a motion comic.

So what is my critical and challenging approach to theme and method?

Firstly, I'm challenging my own practical skills in:

• Dreamweaver
• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop
• Flash

By deciding to present my production piece through the form of a motion comic, I'm incorporating a playful interpretation which I would not have been able to achieve if I had chosen film. Using motion comic conventions, I will incorporate a ficitional narrative which can loosely be related to Western society today where the user will hopefully recognise the extremities of media control, as it is quite prevelant in our contemporary society.  Similar to A Scanner Darkly, it will have capabilities that would surpass the medium of film. To use the form of a motion comic, it removes a certain level of realism that film would have. Challenging the idea of Media Control, is one stemmed from cynicism and reading the work of Noam Chomsky and Edward Bernays and of course watching such documentaries like The Corporation (not intiarlley related but close enough) and Adam Curtis' Century of the Self series. I find the term Media Control fitting for the purpose of my production piece as personally, I find the term stems from certain feelings of what we as society know or learn; the majority of what we know and learn is through the media. We learn about the world through the News. Which I find increasingly worrying, as there is an element of manipulation that enables the media to have the upper hand, they can make what they like up about the world we inhabit, and you know what, the majority of us wouldn't question it; we take it as truth.   

'Having media moguls dominate the British media is deeply unhelpful'

An extremely useful piece of news media which I plan on incorporating into my project.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14266696

Photo shoot Images

Here's a few of my favoured images I took during 2 photo shoots. Extremely pleased with the outcome as compared to my pilot where I greenscreened my images together, taking my own images I was able to manipulate the space to encorporate depth of field, different shots so that it is visually interesting too!

However, I'm aware that the photos I took are not all landscape (I had this in mind throughout). I chose to take horizontal images as I felt that some photos looked much better horizontally than in landscape. To tackle this when I come to importing into Final Cut Pro is to either crop them to size or my preferred plan of action is to add in 2 black strips (bars) into Final Cut Pro so that the visual is consistent throughout and the images aren't jumping between a landscape, then horizontal etc and changing the composition.


Here's some of my images;

I'm also going to experiment with Flash and Final Cut Pro to compare the quality of a selection of exported images (experiment page to come!).



Future POA in the next week;

• Finalize script (to be uploaded)
• Finalize layout of website (to be uploaded)
• Finalize sound for homepage
• Be organized and prioritize!