Excuse my absence. Life, health and a new employer called.
For anyone interested, there are all kinds of creative and technical areas where you can work in training, mentoring or assessing apprentices. Searchable if you click on The Institute for Apprenticeships. We generally work under an associates contract with the creative media assessment organisations. The pay is not bad, but it does appear to fluctuate seasonally. Hence the need to sign with a new agency.
I got into Digital Arts and Technology as a postgraduate by chance, coming from a background of a Film and Commercials editor working in the U.S. and Near East.
Flowcharting Linear v Nonlinear Stories
The main difference between new media and linear storytelling lies firstly in the area of interactivity. Due to additional ‘drop in and out’ story points , there is a need to be even clearer about layout and modelling.
No longer working from a linear storyboard or cards alone, this need for clear modelling of story and flow soon becomes apparent.
In figures 1 and 2 beloow are two flowcharts. First read the text and then, if you need to access the originals in higher resolution, double click the images on the Miro Boards. (Use mouse dial to zoom and right click to move page).
Modelling Linear Projects
Miro or Figma Jam Boards – the place to lay out all of your project elements.
This traditional process for writing a book should not be too complicated and if you were prepping for a film you’d add visual storyboard scenes or shot sketches, or other illustrations, like animatics – if you’re an agency – or actual location shots, taken either personally or by accessing Google Earth images (which I use a lot. More on that and on extracting ‘flyover’ videos later).
Linear Story with Limited Added Interactivity
What happens to the flow charts of a story if we add a limited number of interactive narrative choices: towards the end of the chart are three choices based on the reality of the reconstruction and two other slight variations. Does the protagonist act with integrity and compassion, or perhaps disregards all of that. And what are the outcomes of making one of those three story choices?
In the course I go over the advantages and disadvantages of analogue vs digital media, as well as examining the different software, like Miro, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and DaVinci, systems you will be using in the course.
However, I encourage anyone interested in modern approaches to storytelling and this kind of work to sign up and explore the Miro and Figma Jam boards and explore the different processes for modelling different nedia, like prototyping apps and websites, storyboarding film and interactive systems, which you can do with a free account.
Charleys Core Creative 