GW: ANDREA LUI: THE USE OF NARRATIVE WITHIN INSTALLATION ART

I was looking for some interesting articles about the use of narrative in interactive art and came across an piece by Anrea Lui in the NY Arts magazine. In it she posed lots of questions about the nature of narrative in installation art.

She noticed the increased prevalence of exhibitions set up as installations in the form of a narrative, whereby each part of the story was broken up into “stations” that the viewer was to view, and in a certain chronology in many more galleries and museums in her home town of New York.

She states "In its inception and original phase in the 70s, installation art engaged questions such as the collapse of the boundaries between art and audience, creating experiential immersive environments rather than a hierarchically composed work (i.e. painting), creating direct bodily experience rather than merely a representation of such, and de-centering the viewer from a singular focal point, etc."

Following on from this she asks the following very interesting questions and underneath are my own thoughts related to these areas from the perspective of my own practice. This really made me address my thoughts of working in this area.

Does the execution of narrative—a close-ended, linear entity broken into parts, proceeding in a fixed order—circumscribe or detract from the efficacy of a work of installation art and its capacity to break boundaries or foster a perceptually inclusive totality?
I feel the question is wrong as it assumes the narrative is close ended and linear and narrative does not have to be that. Fractured playful narratives are possible and whilst there is a narrative in there the audience can build their own narrative. This will allow the breaking of boundaries and foster perceptive totality as everyone can access the narrative their own way. The issue here is to keep the artists preferred reading or even a negotiated or oppositional one possibly. What is not wanted is a subversive reading which can be trickier if the door is wide open to interpretation. In my work I want a very clear narrative but this does not mean it is linear or has to be close ended.

How are narratives reconfigured or transformed, opened up or transgressed, within the context of installation art?
Installation art will allow a more playful quality to all of these. In a feature film for instance the story has to be neatly wrapped up in 120 minutes and is by and large linear and follows the 3 act paradigm. In an installation it allows this to be broken up with video pieces. These can be fractured, segmented, happen on multiple screens and therefore reconfigured or transformed, opened up or transgressed. This is what I am seeking to do on my GW piece, there is a narrative but it can be pieced together from different parts in different ways but it does all lead to a similar result.

Do video and film (within the context of installation) bear a more amenable relationship to narrative, being time-based entities; or not necessarily?
I can only speak from my own point of view but largely in my opinion yes due to their time-based nature. It is much easier to manipulate time and be constant in video installation work. However time based performance art could also work well.

How does one define “narrative” within the context of installation, or even within visual art itself? As narratives about the artist and the progression of his/her work, as narratives of the location where the installation is set, as narratives of things/people/events/sensations pictorially represented in the work, etc? Can we make a distinction between implied narrative (i.e. of artist or site) as opposed to narrative that is actively unfolded or created by the work itself?
This is due to the artist in question in my opinion and how hard they want to hang onto the reins of the narrative. I feel all of these are fair game so the definition is indeed hard. the narrative could be the artists own, site specific narratives of the environment or narratives based on the things/people/events represented in the work. As for the last question I feel that distinctions can be made between the implied narrative of the site and the narrative in the work. However those boundaries can be blurred.

How much elasticity is there in the concept of narrative—can it mean almost anything and take any form, in our postmodern era, or do there have to be certain components in place for it to qualify as narrative: temporality, causality, discrete events?
A big question this one but there is some elasticity in my opinion. However i feel that there has to be some sense of structure however fractured even if temporality, casually or discreetly. It needs to have some shape or form.

Can narrative be abstract or purely conceptual, even phenomenological, or must it relate to tangible things/events/people? Do narratives yoke us into a more conservative investment in representation, even realism, being a convention and a formal structure involving suspension of disbelief, continuity and resolution? 
As above I feel it does need to be grounded in some sense of the codes and conventions of narrative so I guess this does yoke a little into representation and realism. However as long as there is some sense of this the abstract and conceptual can fit within this but a really interesting one this.

Are narratives depoliticizing by virtue of their retrograde schema of ordering the world, as opposed to questioning the conventions of representation, perception and even communication? 
I feel that yes they by they very nature are depoliticizing by their nature. However I feel that within this they can question representation, perception and communication. My GW piece seeks to do just that and questions representation, perception and communication to an audience. The piece will be accessible but asks questions of all of the above as well as ideologies through it's form, construction and narrative and characters.

Are narratives neutral and it just depends on how they are used, or are they predisposed to expressing or supporting certain elements, sensibilities and ideologies in installation art and not others?
This is totally beholden to the creator and how they pitch their work. Yes they can be neutral but can also be used to support certain elements, sensibilities and ideologies. This is what I am doing in my piece. I like to work with ideologies and create messages and discussion in my work

Finally, can narratives render art discursive?
Again a yes and no. They can provide too open ended ideologies and themes but that is dependent on the art itself and the creator. they do not have to be this way, although sometimes a wandering and open to interpretation argument or arguments are more interesting than a hard focussed point in my opinion.

http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/?p=4180

GW: OFF-GRID RESEARCH

The following are all links that I used for research into my off grid idea. I wanted to find stories and images for background of where and what Ben Wright may have been doing and living during his 40 year disappearnce. All of these provided interesting background to help me flesh out possible details. Also how he would live sustainably today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-37561938

http://www.liveoffgrid.net/

https://www.off-grid.net/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/11/power-energy-companies

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/08/gave-it-all-up-live-land-simple-good-life

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/09/into-the-wild-the-rebels-living-off-grid-all-over-europe-in-pictures

https://www.e-architect.co.uk/england/black-barn-in-Suffolk

http://oldhall.org.uk/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/green/10425218/Eco-living-a-well-insulated-home-in-Suffolk.html

https://www.workaway.info/839688751978-en.html

https://www.workaway.info/538349741925-en.html

http://www.the-oak-tree.co.uk/virtual-farm-tour/

GW: FAKE REGIONAL TV NEWS ELEMENT

My initial aim is to create a regional TV News piece for the installation. There are many reasons for this the first of which being that even though people are suspicious of it they do tend to trust the news. This will be great for sewing the seeds of my fictional story by dressing it up in a media texts that people trust as the truth. TV News is also excellent as it can do a lot of story telling or exposition in a short amount of time. So it will act as a great shorthand for giving the audience the skinny on the story. I aim for the piece to be no longer that 4 minutes overall.

I have in the past worked a tiny bit for TV news and also taught the subject to degree level students so I do understand the codes and conventions. However here is an excellent Charlie Brooker deconstruction of language of the news as a refresher for me to make sure I capture the authenticity.



The clip above pushes news to the extreme but it does focus on the key elements that and the codes and conventions and stylistics of the news genre that I need to be aware of are. I may use vox-pops sound bites but I do not think they will be needed

• Initial PTC from the news reporter.
• Hand gestures and key words emphasised in punctuated sentences.
• GV's tenuously linked to the news reports topic over a voice over by the reporter.
• Very short interviews with "experts" or those close to the story.
• Lower thirds to say who is commenting on-screen.
• On screen graphics highlighting any key facts, figures or statistics.
• A final summary and an often whimsical and wry send off from the reporter.

I will need to develop the idea for my news package but using these repertoire of elements I will consider what content needs to be communicated and then to deliver it in the news package. Currently I am playing with the following elements and format.

• PTC by a news reporter. saying Ben Wright may have re-appeared and his importance in the global warming history and fight.
• Continues into a VO with images of Ben Wright and Joseph Griffiths, photos footage and their disappearance.
• IV with a professor of climatology saying how advanced their work was and how they accurately predicted the global warming issue we are struggling to deal with today.
• Possibly graphics showing how their research and predictions was very accurate.
• IV with someone who knew them personally and was involved in the global warmning movement. personal touch perhaps a female who was very close to them. Be good to see him back, always had a crazy sense of humour angle.
• IV with son who he never knew he had. Reason for Ben coming back from the dead.
• VO mention of the re-appearnce in the form of a blogger claiming to be him. Shots of the blog and someone looking at it online.
• PTC outro by news reporter doing a summary and stating their importance and the severity of heeding their warning.

GW: TRANSMEDIA!

After floundering for a name for the style of multi strand and possibly platform narrative that I was trying to do for my Global Warmning project it seems I have discovered that the genre that I am closest to working in tis that of TRANSMEDIA.

From carrying out some research into the area I discovered that the Producers Guild of America defines that “a Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe.” The storylines can be on the same platform or across many different platforms. In her book A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling, Andrea Phillips does not agree with this however stating that transmedia is more about fragmentation where “the story has been broken into pieces”. Therefore rather than being about three storylines it might just be one storyline told across different platforms. I agree with Phillips interpretation as all it has really done is expand upon the Producers Guild of America definition. This is really in keeping with what i am trying to do in my Global Warmning piece.

The use of transmedia seems to fall between using it for business or for creative vision I can understand the uses for both of these but for the purposes of my project I want to stick with the creative vision side. However looking into the future it is something that I may be able to exploit commercially too.

Phillips also says that a media producer has four main purposes to using transmedia narratives these are;
1: Worldbuilding.
2: Characterisation.
3: Backstory.
4: Exposition.

 My idea plays into all of these and will utilise all of these ideas. Building a world and story for my characters and narrative to inhabit, characterise the protagonist, provide a backstory (40 years worth!) and also to fill in the gaps and find a shorthand way of dealing with the exposition in a very short time.

Good case studies for looking at all of these are pretty plentiful and I looked at few to help me flesh out my concept and to learn from them. The Lost TV show used the Lost Experience to explain the Dharma Initiative. Also the TV show Mad Men had their characters on Twitter where the tweets explained their motives on the show and the Alien prequel Prometheus even created a fake TED talk to fill in the background of the character behind the Guy Pearce character Peter Weyland. Phillips states that these other additional content is created because it can be done cheaply and only involve one additional media platform, for example a website to compliment a film. An early example of this was The Blair Witch Project, where the website built the world of the film before it was released in the cinema.

However I feel that there should and could be more to transmedia narratives then just world-building and simply creating new stories around the edges of an existing story. Whilst these new narratives could be told on different media platforms and, for example, tell the stories of minor characters or the events that lead to the beginning of a film why stop there. Why not use them to create new worlds rather than to just provide back up and stretch narratives of other content.

I feel the ultimate purpose of transmedia narratives could be as Phillips states to create "a work that is meant to be entirely and natively transmedia from start to finish, and not a single-medium work at all – an experience that you give to your audience, not just a story you are telling them.” I agree and feel that transmedia narratives should be an immersive experience in their nature. Frank Rose although coming at it from a business perspective goes a step further and tries to pinpoint the elements that make up a transmedia narrative. He feels they are “told through many media at once in a way that’s nonlinear, that’s participatory and often gamelike, and that’s designed above all to be immersive”. He goes on to explain that this creates deep media that can take audiences further than a film or a TV programme could. Effectively creating an experience for the audience. This is exactly what I am intending to do with my piece by using multiple formats and platforms and even possibly including physical artefacts and even performance alongside the multi platform video content in a gallery installation environment.

This leads neatly into theatre where many productions productions have combined audience participation and gaming along with multi media elements to create immersive experiences. One example is the USC School of Cinematic Arts World Building Media Lab’s Leviathan project. Audiences use tablet computers to engage with the Leviathan, a flying whale created by author Scott Westerfield, and create their own narratives inside a physical and digital world. Another example of immersive storytelling is Punchdrunk’s (2014) production of Crash Of The Elysium, an immersive Doctor Who theatre production, which puts the audience in the action and gives them 60 minutes to save the world. During the adventure, the audience has to solve puzzles and stop the Weeping Angels. At the end of the production each member of the audience is given a letter from The Doctor thanking them for saving the world. The limitation to these immersive productions is that the audience has to physically visit a venue whereas other immersive examples can be experienced anywhere in the world using an Internet connection.

My initial idea with the piece was to make it totally online and weave a thread of video, text, images, web-sites, games and articles to create a linked narrative. This would not be obvious but spread far and wide but interconnected through hubs such as message boards, a blog or even social media. Internet transmedia narratives would not be possible without hyperlinks changing the possibilities and the way we think about narrative. In an online version of my idea hyperlinks would be needed but for the installation version I am providing the links in the space but the audience can relate to them however they wish. The Video content could possibly be screened on several screens computers, TV and projection space allowing. Or one screen but the content represented on there as online. TV and film which would allow a greater control of the order of the narrative. The introduction of physical content such as the props, ephemera and artefacts allows another link and these items and especially the photos link back to the video content and relate to that. Add in the potential presence of actors going around in character and it extends the world and links to the venue.

The idea of linked texts and stories has been around for years but the internet and hyperlinks have just made it more possible. Roland Barthes in his book, The Pleasure of the Text stated that “what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface; I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again.” By disrupting the linear structure of a book, the reader creates joins between two surfaces (for example the book and world around the reader). These joins give pleasure to the reader because they create their own connections with the author’s work. What Barthes was describing though was what happens inside one person’s mind when they read whereas hyperlinks allow connections to spread from one person to another, or from a source to another text creating a hyper-connectivity. Barthes sums this up well “in this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds, it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach”.

There is lots of thinking about if the text is alive on line and being created, subverted, adhered to and developed by others who is the author. I want to try and maintain control of the audience and to get them to accept my preferred reading. Whilst this is possible to a greater extent in the confines of a gallery installation it is obviously much trickier online. Lorenzo Cantoni and Stefano Tardini stated that “hypertext authors do not design actual texts or dialogues, but only sets of syntactic rules and basic elements, i.e. they produce a sort of grammar.” This grammar provides the rules in which the hypertext system can respond to a reader. “In other words, hypertext authors design potential dialogues, which will become an actual communication…only when one reader navigates through the hypertext’s structure”.

This makes creating the text hugely difficult because each reader can choose or even create their own path through the hypertext, so an author needs to design the rules of all potential paths that a reader could take. Therefore Cantoni and Tardini are correct about hyperlinks if you analyse them in isolation; they are the rules that link everything together. I however think that you need to look at the complete process and that narratives are told when one piece of media is linked to another not the links that others create. If creating the work online hyperlinks are tools an author can use to create a narrative and build a world, much the same way that a director uses editing to create a film narrative.

Transmedia content and co-creation with the audience online becomes complicated if the author starts the story and the audience develops or even completes it. I want o remain a tight grip on my own work as the content is just a Trojan Horse for selling the idealogy of waking up to the global warmning issue. Also i am trying to sell it as real, with real characters and a real situation and I am unsure how audiences will react to this. Will they want to develop the story or hopefully research around it and find the digital footprints or trail of breadcrumbs I will hope to leave out in cyberspace. I want to remain the author and create the characters and the situation they find themselves in but I do want the the audience to respond but not to make it their own.

Henry Jenkins’ in his book Convergence Culture thinks along similar lines. He points out that “transmedia storytelling is the art of world making,” and because of this fans are “actively reshaping [these worlds] to satisfy their own fantasies and desires.” For immersive narratives the author has to create a fully realised world that can sustain multimedia content and be deep enough to satisfy the audiences’ desires. This means that the author has to create a fictional framework that is rich with content and characters. Therefore fans have more to engage with, compared to a story told on a single medium, and can tell their own stories around the author’s original content. I like Jenkins arguments and interpretation that fans become more invested in the story because “to fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gathers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience”. I am not too sure i will have fans BUT as long as I regain control I am excited about the idea of a fictional world and want to explore if not desperate for them to build it further. My aim is to get them to be puzzled by the enigmatic characters, narrative and world that I create and for it to get them talking about the global warming issue through a backchannel of being interested in the story. My fear is that the facts and the issue will get lost and enveloped by the fiction and drama so I need to make the ideology and message integral and to maintain control of this.

Star Wars is a great example of immersive storytelling. The films provide the story that is the framework for the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which has created books, comics, toys, games and TV programmes. Star Wars set the precedent for creating new worlds, spin offs and content as well as related commodities and merchandising. It has proved to be the roadmap for success for many a franchise that Lucas did see coming and grossed him $4 billion pounds as he took less to direct Star wars but instead took the rights to the characters and merchandising. The Star Wars franchise with it's numerous film, TV, animation, book and toy spin offs and merchandiding is not just a money spinner but perhaps the best example of transmedia.

So if transmedia immersive storytelling is the future, what will happen to the old media? Jenkins explains that “cinema did not kill theatre. Television did not kill radio. Each old medium was forced to co-exist with emerging media… Old media are not being displaced. Rather their functions and status are shifted by the introduction of new technologies. i agree with this and that trans-media can embrace old media connecting elements such as the novel, film, featurette, Web site, and digital reading device. This will give the audience an enriched experience of a narrative, by engaging with more then one medium. This is what I aim to do in my piece and to combine old and new technology. this creates a richer experience and will open the piece up to a huge variety of audiences. Also my aim is to convince the audience that the stroy and characters may be real and the more clues to back this up from all areas of the media old and new, hi-tech and lo-tech.

Presently there is no and hard definitions on the grammar of transmedia narratives and this may be why currently there are few successful transmedia examples. Rose highlights this fact by stating that “at this point in history, it’s impossible to say how immersive these story worlds we’re building will actually become.” It seems likely that the reason why immersive transmedia narratives are not common on the Internet is because the grammar of these narratives has not fully been established. There is no blue print or road map to success. I however like this and that the field is still being explored, defined, developed and that the fronteers are unknown and it is an area for experimentation. There are clear elements that need to be included in transmedia narratives like hyperlinks, multi-media, non-linear, participatory and immersive, but each element’s role has not been fully defined. This could be linked back to the invention of storytelling in early cinema. In 1903, Edwin S. Porter invented editing by intercutting two pieces of film together to create a story. However it wasn’t until 1915 when D.W. Griffith defined the grammar of editing which created a unique cinematic experience. Therefore transmedia narratives could be in the same transition period. We have are beginning to discover the elements that allow creators to tell stories in a transmedia environment, but the grammar of those elements is still being refined and defined. It is a really interesting area and I am looking forward to being part of that process.

GW: TV NEWS ANALYSIS: STYLE AND FORM

As well as understanding how news works and stories are chosen by whom and why? I wanted to do some analysis of TV news packages and extract the codes and conventions to make sure mine followed the genre stylistically as well as editorially and content wise.

I did some research online and from books alongside analysing lots of TV news packages both national and local. What was really surprising was how they were all structurally very similar but also how emotive and subjective some of them could be using really really subtle techniques and stylistics used. I am going to outline the areas for consideration moving forward that I will have to incorporate into my TV News piece.

• News package: A single news feature linked to from the TV studio. These are pre-recorded and edited together beforehand. 
• Outside broadcast (OB): Live feed to a field reporter at the location of the story. Gives appearance of capturing news as it happens. Piece to camera (PTC): Reporter addresses the audience straight down the lens. Could be in a live feed or part of news package.
• Voice Over (VO): Reporters voice tells us the story and the facts with GV’s as wallpaper. 
• General Views (GV’s): Shots used to illustrate a story. Visuals important in TV. 
• Interviews: Interviews with key people involved or experts about the story. 
•  Vox Pops: Short interviews canvassing the opinion of the public. Voice of the people.
• Astons: Graphics in the bottom third of the screen that give the name and title of the interviewees or reporters. Adds kudos to them if experts or special Royal Correspondents etc. 
• Graphics: Displayed on screen to give facts and figures about a story or graphical representation . 
•  Re-enactments: Sometimes used to show what happened in a situation if no footage exists. Must always state they are re-enactments and not real.
• Links to studio: Field reporters on location link back to the studio and the news anchor often signing off with their name and location. 
•  Library footage: Archive footage used as GV’s for a story when no other footage is available. This may from own archives or news agency. 
• Idents: Brand is important in TV news and the idents of the news programme are important in a multi channel, multi-platform age.

While developing my idea I will make sure I wrap the TV news package up in all of these techniques for authenticity and to deceive the audience. 

GW: TV NEWS ANALYSIS: CONTENT

I decided that part of the Global Warmning project would be a fake news piece. It would be a local TV news piece that would give the backstory of the movement, Ben's disappearance and possible re-appearance. It would also be really useful in contextualising the importance and correctness of the Global Warmning movement in predicting the future crisis we are in today as far as global warming goes 40 years after their warnings.

In order to do this I thought I had better do some research into TV news to make sure that what I created would qualify as actual news. How do stories get chosen? Other than a hunch would the news package ever make it to air in the real world? I also wanted to make sure it looked correct and followed the codes, conventions, stylistics and formula of the genre so it really worked as a news piece and was authentic.

News Agencies
News comes from a lot of different sources in-house but also form external agencies. These organisations sell their stories to news producers worldwide. Each agency has their own reporters, photographers and broadcast crews. The Press Association transmits an average of 1500 stories and 100 pictures every day. They sell both footage and edited packages ready for transmission. Associated Press (International organisation) Reuters (International organisation) United Press International (International organisation) Press Association (Main British News Agency).

I have decided that I wanted my piece to have a regional news feel and to tie one of the characters to a region in this case Anglia or the East. I want the package to be created by the station themselves so no news agencies are likely to be needed unless archive footage is needed.

News Agenda
This is how news producers construct and prioritise their stories and decide which stories will run on their news programmes. The producers act as gatekeepers and filter hundreds of potential stories down to the 5-6 that are actually covered in the programme. These are divided into two main catagories, hard and soft news. Hard news is the more serious side to the news and such issues as politics, economy, foriegn affairs, home affairs and disasters and generally makes up the first stories and large proportion of the news. Soft news is the human interest, entertainment and sport.

I feel by news story would not make the national news hence the regional news slant. It does incorporate a bit of politics and home affairs but really it is a human interest story of someone from our region and a mystery. As such it would come towards the end of the programme possible as an "and finally" news report. I do want to make sure the issue of global warming is  not lost in the piece though.

News Values
This is really  a way of deciding what makes the news agenda and eventually makes it into the news programme. Johan Galtung and Marie Ruge were researchers and media commentators and developed these catagories for defining the newsworthiness of stories in a 1973 paper.

• Immediacy: Has it happened recently? 
• Familiarity: Is it culturally close to us in Britain? 
• Amplitude: Is it a big event that affects large numbers? 
• Frequency: Does the event happen often? 
• Unambiguity: Is it clear and definite? 
• Predictability: Did we expect it to happen? 
• Surprise: Is it rare or unexpected event? 
• Continuity: Has it previously been defined as news? 
• Elite Nations/People: Big countries or celebrities? 
• Personalisation: Is it a human interest story? 
• Negativity: Is it bad news? 
• Balance: ”and finally” fun story to balance bad news…

As far as my piece goes whilst certainly not being national news regionally it does tick a lot of these boxes. I need to make it immediate so I could possibly tie the news piece into Ben Wrights re-appearance. I will build a familiarity of the story and refresher to the audience. The global warming issue effects us all and the events of his appearance is new. The story itself is definite and clear but the event of his possible re-appearance is was unpredicted. There is ambiguity to if he is back or not and his disappearance 40 years before but this is the enigma and hook of the piece. It was news previously and whilst not a celebrity now 40 years ago he was supposedly in the public consciousness. The story can be personalised, and it is good news possibly and is a fun story to run against the bad news.

Other media commentators, researchers and academics expanded their own ideas and built on Galtung and Ruges work. Jeremy Tunstall adapted their model to TV News. He argued that in TV News:

• The visual is given more pre-eminence. If footage is available the story may be given more prominence – the visual imperative. 
• News stories with ‘our own reporters’ conducting interviews or commentating on a story are preferred. 
• TV News covers far fewer stories than newspapers. Even the top stories are short in comparison with newspaper coverage .
• Hard news or actuality is preferred.

This again gives me something of a blueprint for my TV news package. I can certainly create the our reporters aspect and whilst not hard news as such it would sit well as I have mentioned in a local news package. One thing I will have to consider is the visuals. A lot of the story will be in dealing with the past so I will need to find or manufacture stills, moving image footage to bring the news piece to life.

Dennis McShane (1979) again expanded on the study of TV news identifying five criteria used by journalists in their selection of news stories.

• Conflict
• Hardship and danger to community
• The unusual
• Scandal
• Individualism

McShanes list is interesting because I feel the narrative I am creating ticks all of his boxes or is flexible enough that I can make it. It does cover the conflict between the movement and the owers that be. There is hardship (what did happen to Ben?) and obvious danger murder, possible suicide etc. A 40 year disappearance is unusual, there is certainly individualism and possible scandal in who did kill Joseph and what dirt did they have on the oil industry.

The process of investigating news really helped me to solidify and crystallise my idea and show me the way forward giving some excellent ideas of how to spice up the narrative It has also given me lots of guidance as to how I can make my TV News package more authentic and newsworthy.

GW: NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT 2

Having fleshed out the basics of the narrative structure I firstly wanted to test it against the monomyth or the Heros Journey. The Hero's Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It was developed into The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Christopher Vogler. The Hero's Journey Outline.

It has series of steps that through huge amounts of study were revealed to be in a huge amount of stories, films, plays etc and provided a formula or road map for how stories were told. Other theorists such as Todorov, Labov, David Leaming , Phil Cousineau and Syd Field all have similar if shorter versions of these stages. The stages are listed below and alongside them how I feel my narrative structure and hero's journey fits with them. Campbels version had 17 stages but Volger revised the stages with 12 and it is Volgers version I will use.

1: The ordinary world. Ben and Joe at university.
2: The call to adventure. Discover global warming will be a huge issue in the future.
3: Refusal of the call. Set up GW movement but
4: Meeting the mentor. Not too sure but could add another character or for ben it could be Joe.
5: Crossing the first threshold into the special world. Disappears from view to regroup and wait.
6: Tests allies enemies. Coming back and the furore that creates and demons to deal with.
7: Apporach the innermost cave. Agrees to the interview.
8: The ordeal. The interview.
9: Reward. The realisation of what now has to be done the only option.
10: The road back. Goes public with the evidence.
11: The resurrection. Reverse really but he is finally free of the weight of the incriminating evidence.
12: Return with elixir. Well we will have to see if he really is dead but I feel he is not!

So I feel the narrative holds up to this. Another area that needs researching and looking at is character in the piece. whilst there are not that many in the small universe being created for the installation piece it would be good to see who the characters are and the roles that they will play on the larger canvas. This will allow decisions to be made on a smaller scale too. I also wanted to make sure that Ben carter had a good character arc and by applying the monomyth this naturally occurs. We see him change and develop throughout the piece and at the end he is not the man who started out.

Vladimir Propp was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. He wrote widely on lots of aspects of narrative structure and his findings on folklore and fairy tales hold up against narratives of most forms. Propp identified 7 character types who crop up again and again in narratives and these I have found can be a useful tool to apply to my own narrative. Every story has tmost of these and some characters can serve more than one role.It will see what characters are there and which could possibly be utilised in the script to move it along and to create drama and conflict. the seven types are and I have applied them to my script and narrative idea.

PROTAGONIST: The hero whose journey we follow.
This will obviously be Ben.

ANTAGONIST: The bad guy, unrequited love, beast, monster, element that thwarts our hero.
This will be the fossil fuel companies, governments and also global warming itself.

HELPERS: Helps our hero. Wisdom or magic instruments.
Presently none in my installation short version. There will need to be some in the full length version but possibly key followers of the movement who can help and resource the cause.

PRINCESS: The beautiful woman to be desired/saved.
Originally Fleur, Joes wife who ben is close to. Is she still alive?

FALSE HERO: Bad guy who buddys up to protagonist but cannot be trusted.
In my instalation piece the interviewer in the documentary.

PARTNER/MATE: Lover, partner in buddy movies etc.
Could possibly be Fleur or maybe we ad in a son in the long version who is a child he did not know he had with Fleur and thought he was Joes son. They could possibly team up.

DISPATCHER: Sends our hero on their mission/quest.
Could be his old MI5 friend who leaked the incriminating documents to Ben and Joe.

It has also been argued that there are only seven stories in the world. There have been arguments over this with the Irish playright Denis Johnston adding an eighth. However they are really good for seeing where there are areas that could possibly be exploited in my story and even expanded upon. Star Wars  (1977) George Lucas is a good example where it manages to encompass most of these plots in one film. he was also a real subscriber to the monomyth and reworked Star Wars after discovering Joseph Campbells writings.

I have outlined the eight stories below and where i have met them and where there may be opportunities.

1. Cinderella - or unrecognised virtue at last recognised. It's the same story as the Tortoise and the Hare. Cinderella doesn't have to be a girl, nor does it even have to be a love story. What is essential is that the Good is despised, but is recognised in the end, something that we all want to believe.
Ben having to come out into the open and take up the reigns left by Joe.

2. Achilles - the Fatal Flaw that is the groundwork for practically all classical tragedy, although it can be made comedy too, as in the old standard Aldwych farce. Lennox Robinson's The Whiteheaded Boy is the Fatal Flaw in reverse.
Bens temper and being riled into action.

3. Faust - the Debt that Must be Paid, the fate that catches up with all of us sooner or later. This is found in all its purity as the chase in O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. And in a completely different mood, what else is The Cherry Orchard?
Bens having to use the incriminating evidence.

4. Tristan - that standard triangular plot of two women and one man, or two men and one woman. The Constant Nymph or almost any French farce.
Ben, Joe and Fleur triangle.

5. Circe - the Spider and the Fly. One character out to catch another
ben and the fossil fiel companies and governments out to get him.

6. Romeo and Juliet - Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy either finds or does not find Girl - it doesn't matter which.
Ben and Fleur.

7. Orpheus - The Gift taken Away. This may take two forms: either the tragedy of the loss itself, as in Juno and the Paycock, or it may be about the search that follows the loss, as in Jason and the Golden Fleece.
Ben and the movement or Fleur or his son for drama possibly.

8. The Hero Who Cannot Be Kept Down. The best example of this is that splendid play Harvey , made into a film with James Stewart.
Bens attitude to keep on fighting in the face of adversity.

GW: : NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT 1

Narrative is one of the areas that interests me the most as I love developing the structure of story and character. What I need to do is develop a structure for the piece. This is made more important and trickier due to the fact that I want it to be a multi strand narrative. As I am a little rusty i wanted to find a crutch to lean on in terms of structure and character development so I got out lots of books and resources and narratives and looked to the theorists to aid me in developing my idea.

The development of the narrative for the Global Warmning piece is two fold. Firstly I am looking to create the set up for what could be a much longer possibly a feature film project. In the time I have left o the course this is an impossibility so it will become a long term project. However the development of the storyline and the set-up of this I feel can be achieved in the time that I have left so this is the second element. I can carry out the research for the whole piece and storyline it but deal specifically with the set-up in the piece that I will create for the course and final Exhibition piece.

I have broken the process of creating the narrative down into the main areas I need to consider and given my reasons for the choices I have made here. I remember watching a great documentary about Paul Abbott the scriptwriter who wrote Shameless and State of Play and someone whose work I greatly admire. He said of State of Play a real political thriller that the story had to come first, the drama, characters and conflict as that was what would grip the audience. he said that a rudimentary knowledge of the political system law etc was important in the story but if it was introduced too early could override the drama. So he wrote the story first and then manipulated it a little to fit the facts and to make sure that the details were correct. I am going to apply this same philosophy to developing the narrative for my piece story, characters and conflict first and then details and facts later.

The aim of the piece is to create a fictional "movement" and two characters who existed in the late 60's early 70's who "predicted" that global warming would happen. Then by mirroring today when for 20-30 years there have been naysayers and sceptics of the organisation. However by jumping in a time machine and going back to "create" this fictional version of them predicting what would happen to the planet real irrefutable facts can be used to show that they did get it right. So using and fiction to sell a real fact. This could then be used as a lesson to show how it may possible go into the future and people may sit up and notice. I am looking for the installation piece to be no longer the 15 minutes for the gallery audience .

To re-cap the areas I am considering to tell my story in a multimedia multi stranded way in the installation are as follows. These will all be dependent on having an overarching narrative though and that is what I am setting out to do here.

• Real (faked) TV News package on Ben Wrights reappearance. Also quick was to do back-story and exposition.
• A documentary/IV with someone who claims to be Ben Wright. Style and mood and tone currently not 100% clear.
• Ephemera from the early days of the movement. Photos, posters, film, tapes, books, newspapers, badges, letters, documents etc.
• Wikipedia presence/entry.
• A blog supposedly by Ben Wright.
• A website collating all of this possibly by the film production team working on the documentary on the back from the dead Wright.
• Possible performance piece with the actors/cast walking around the exhibition in and around the audience in character if anyone spots them.

STRUCTURE

This will deal with the flow and key conflicts and action will be considered. Most film and TV drama and a lot of narrative deals in a three act structure and I feel this will suit my piece. This is usually has been defined as the following by various academics and theorists. I have looked into some theorists and applied their findings to developing a structure of my own. What I am going to do here is outline the narrative structure of the piece I am making for the exhibition but say how it will all fit into the idea for a bigger more expansive possibly feature film script.

ACT 1:
This is what generally happens in generally the first quarter of a screenplay. So if we say a standard screenplay is 120 minutes this is what happens in the first 30 minutes. Within the structure of the whole piece this is what narrative theorists and academics Tzvten Todorov calls the equilibrium and William Labov orientation. Screenwriting guru Syd Field calls them the set-up. this is where all of the details of the character and their everyday life are set up BEFORE they are launched into a big adventure it is their ordinary world and sows the seeds for what may come next.

In my installation I need a fast and easy way to set-up the story. In my mind the story is the here and now and the return of Ben Wright from the dead. However this does not make any sense unless we have the backstory as to why he was thought to be dead, what is his character all about, motivations etc etc. There will be lots of exposition and storytelling here as I contextualise his story to the audience.

The story will be about two friends and who met at Cambridge university in the late 60's who will be our central characters and hero's. These will be quiet Ben Wright who studied climatology and the charismatic Joseph Griffiths studying sociology they shared ideas and research and concluded that consumerism and population "Baby Boom" would lead to more energy, fossil fuels and consumerism and that the knock on effect of this was that it would seriously affect CO2 emissions and lead to the global warming of the plant. They graduate and start the GLOBAL WARMNING movement late 1960's and their research exactly predicts the global warming crisis the world is in we have today. However all good stories have conflicts and twists and turns and this will be no different. Early 70's as the movement is getting larger Wright becomes disillusioned with simply campaigning and starts some directs action getting him in more and more trouble with the powers that be and ever more fanatical. Add in a love triangle between the two men and Fleur a campaigner who marries Joe but as their marriage falls apart seeks support from Ben. Joe's mysterious murder following threats from the fossil fuel establishment/government and we have some real conflicts.  Finally threatened documents leaked to the movement by a former friend now also within MI5 and Bens vanishing presumed suicide and we have some real intrigue and enigmas to engage the audience.

There is obviously a lot of storytelling and set up going on in here and I feel that all of it does not need to be explicitly communicated and some can be implicit if you read between the lines. What I need is a device to get this story told quickly and entertainingly but simply to an audience. This is where the fake TV news piece will come in. These generally run to about 3-4 minutes and cover a huge amount of ground and feel that within it I could cover the whole of the set up and act 1. I have sen these used i other films to get audiences up to speed such as 28 Days Later (2002) by Danny Doyle which uses a montage of such clips to get audiences up to speed after the virus is released.

In my set up I need to cover the following.

• Contextualise the setting late 1960's early 1970's.
• Introduce Ben Wright (protagonist) and his friendhip Joe Griffiths.
• Say about their academic credentials climatologist and sociologist credibly. Get across the point that together they were pioneers in global warming research. Set up 40 years later we can see that they were right!
• Mention the global warmning movement being founded at university and growing.
• Introduce the antagonist the fossil fuel companies and governments.
• Let them know about Joes increasing move to direct action, and threat to go public with dirt on fossil fuel companies. Perhaps communicate Bens displeasure at this confrontational approach.
• Joes horrific murder after threats to go public and conspiracy theories. 
• Bens apparent suicide a few months after and more on conspiracy theories.

Now Syd Field argues that in the set-up at the end of act 1 you have a plot point that takes the action so far in act 1 and spins it off in another completely different direction taking our hero out of their ordinary world. This would also add a hook in the piece. So lastly...

• In the case of Ben Wright this would be the fact that he may be back.

The role of the fake TV local news section will serve is a good set up for the video content that I am assembling. In about 3 minutes it does a really good catch up of the story so far, gets out of the way lots of exposition and back story and also has the sense of enigma I am after.

ACT 2: 
Field called this middle section of a screenplay the confrontations and generally it was the longest act taking up 50% of the stroy. Todorov problems/enigmas and Labov complications and once again they are really saying the same thing. We need conflict to generate interest and hurdles to jump over and hoops for our hero to jump through to create drama.

I think for this section we need evidence that Ben Wright may be about or may not. By creating a sense of enigma we can keep the audience guessing and create some conflict. Eventually though we will need to see Wright and to find out why he is back? What he is planning to do? Why and how?

I feel he has to have had a reason for going into hiding for 40 years and the conflict is finding this out. He is obviously conflicted about his having to disappear and that the global warming issue is 40 years later still not being taken seriously and acted upon. I want to give him a god reason for disappearing and feel this should be linked to Joes mysterious murder. The link to his threats from the fossil fuel establishment/government and the alleged incriminating evidence in documents leaked to the movement by a former friend now also within MI5. If they were threatening Joe then they would have been threatening Ben too.

I want it to feel as if Ben has run away faking his own suicide scared due to pressure and leaning on from the powerful organisations. However he really did not run because he was scared for his own life but the lives of his nearest and dearest were being threatened so he left to save them. Now they are not around any more and the path is clear for him to return. However he does not want to dwell on this but fight for the cause that is dear to his heart and has not really moved on in 40 years. there will be real conflict as his reappearance IS the story but he wants global warming to be.

In the pieces that follow we now need to try and create some drama for the audience. The character whose journey we follow is Ben Wright and even though he is not playing out all of the drama in these his story and character arc is what takes the audience through the installation. Drama comes from conflict and for Ben this is in the form of not being acknowledged, conflict with governments and the fossil fuel companies, his past having faked his own death and run away. There are also the larger less personal and overriding conflict against the climate change issue he is fighting and creating awareness and change.

The middle section of a narrative (Act 2) needs lots of conflicts and episodes then. On my budget of very little a large scale conflict will be tricky so I need to create some smaller more personal conflicts and battles. Hoops for Wright to jump through and obstacles to cross.

The areas I need to cover in act 2 are.

• Where was he for the last 40 years and how did he stay in touch with the global warming issue.
• Why come back now? No threat any more or no-one else to concern himself about.
• Trouble establishing himself again in the public. he is still in hiding for his safety.
• The antagonist of global warmning is still there and at it's tipping point. 
• The antagonist of the governments who allegedly threatened Joe and possibly killed him and led to Ben going into hiding are still threatening him.
• The alleged secret documents exposing wrong doing by the fossil fuel giants and governments.
• The general public are still apathetic and making no ground

The end of this piece of content will be what Syd Field calls the second plot and Labov the climax. This is where something happens that moves us towards act three and a conclusion. 

• In this piece I feel it will be ben right finally exploding due to frustration at his cause not being heard and threatening direct action and to go public with his evidence of corruption and cover ups by the fossil fuel companies and governments.

The blog and website will be useful tools for announcing his reappearance and if we combine these with possible video elements we can let him address the public about some of these issues and re-establish him and his message. the drama could be through his denouncement as an imposter and also pressure from the powers that be as mentioned in here. We will have set up the Vlog in the TV news piece and what it is so we can get straight to business here. Ben will protest against apathy, fossil fuel spin, governments being bought and use this as a real call to arms. As of yet the enigma will still be there as to if it is actually Ben or not at this stage.

However he also needs to fight a visible threat in the piece to create drama and conflict and this is where the documentary interview could work. If we set up a filmed documentary we could get Ben to answer some of the trickier questions and be grilled by a journalist/reporter/filmmaker. This could create real conflict in the style of a game of chess ben wanting to push his agenda of global warming and use the interview as a platform to do this. BUT the interviewer wanting to get the dirt, scandal and conspiracy theory stuff that ben does not want to reveal. Frost Nixon (2008) by Ron Howard is a good example of this. This could create real drama if their is such a battle of wits between the interviewer and Ben. This could also cover all of the areas mentioned each one being atopic raised in the interview. The IV would have to be arranged on the premise of Bens wishes but then he finds himself ambushed and conflict ensues. It may be good to add intrigue to the set up of the interview too by making it cloak and dagger the film crew being blindfolded and taken to a secret location for the interview.

This will be the audience also finally getting to see Ben in the flesh. The piece will be a sit down interview with a film-maker (myself) which he has been led to believe will act as a platform for his cause. However the film-maker whilst interested in the issue is really after the big expose and stories behind Joes murder, Bens faked suicide, and all of the conspiracy theories and dirt that surround this story. A game of cat and mouse ensues as I try to get him onto this topic and he dodges the issue before finally exploding at the end as mentioned and storming out of the interview.

Act 3:

This will be the final act and what Field and Labov both call the resolution and Todorov the new equilibrium. It is not really a happy ending and itself has a sense of enigma as it is basically Ben's war cry for action "by any means necessary" to fight global warming. He will set out his manifesto for change and motivate the public behind the cause and he is running very thin on patience. He will also make threat to the fossil fuel companies and governments making them very aware that he is about to go public with the incriminating evidence he has on them. The information that needs to be communicated here is.

• A last ditch chance for fossil fuel companies to do the right thing.
• How we need to rise up and penalise them and make the governments react.
• Common sense solutions.
• Last chance for the public to react and get involved in the issue.
• Lastly a full on threat to go public with his dirt on the fossil fuel companies and governments unless they start to act.
• Lastly possibly he disappears again.

The web-site, blog or a video diary could do all of this except the last part. This may need an onscreen disclaimer saying that this is the case and that Ben has disappeared again leaving the audience with a sense of Enigma at the end. has he gone the same way as Joe? Has he vanished again? And why? to both of these.

This takes us to a really climactic ending. In the bigger picture if this was a 120 minute screenplay all of the above would be the first act but here it has been played out on a variety of platforms in hopefully no more than 15 minutes.

SLOW CINEMA

Following my enjoyment of Ben Rivers two Years at Sea and its classification as slow cinemaI I read around the subject using these sources listed here. Slow cinema is a movement of film is encapsulated by a type of contemplative, observational movie where image and soundtrack takes precedence over conventional narrative. Other filmmakers operating within slow cinema are auteurs such as Béla Tarr and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, possibly with Tarkovsky and Antonioni the movement's godfathers.

I am toying with the idea of developing my own slow cinema piece centred around my elusive global warming movement founder and scientist in my narrative. However after reading around I feel it is not the best way to go. I am looking to grab my audience, captivate them through drama and enigmas and conflict and all of these are not natural bedfellow with slow cinema.

It is something to look forward to in the future though as Ben Rivers and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's work I find really interesting. I love the mood and there are definitely techniques I can borrow for my own work to develop my practice moving forward.

https://theartsofslowcinema.com/category/papers/

https://theartsofslowcinema.com/2014/04/02/slow-cinema-at-the-museum-paper/

Mark Cousins
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/widescreen-slow-cinema

http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49591

Slowly does it

Though his films occasionally test the audience’s patience, Haneke plays little part in what for the sake of this issue we are calling Slow Cinema. Its key progenitor was probably Tarkovsky, but Béla Tarr, a film-maker who could hardly be more different to Haneke, has undoubtedly been a central figure too. If Tarr’s epic seven-hour Sátántangó (1994) remains the biggest beast of an achievement in this area, Werckmeister Harmonies, his adaptation of László Krasznahorkai’s novel The Melancholy of Resistance, is a worthy companion. A strange allegory that brings a stuffed whale in a truck to the centre of a small town, its strain of middle European weirdness puts it in stark contrast to much of the Slow Cinema Jonathan Romney discusses.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady, for instance, is mysterious in a completely different way. Offering, among many other treats, a sincere belief in shamanism, this portrait of a romance stands here for a more delicate form of experimentation than Tarr’s or Haneke’s – and also for those film-makers who have found crossover opportunities in gallery-based work, another phenomenon which gained ground in the last decade. Weerasethakul (or ‘Joe’, as his friends and colleagues call him) has benefited, too, from the kind of world cinema curation that exemplifies the new influence of festival funds, and of special projects like Vienna’s very successful New Crowned Hope commissions

Guardian discussion on Nick James Slow Cinema Boring?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/may/21/film-philistine

GW: INSTALLATION IDEA GROUP CRIT

A tricky one today and possibly the least useful crit so far as my work is in a state of flux and I had nothing really to show my peers. I have only just started fully evolving the Global Warmning multi strand narrative idea which aims to bring together lots of elements. The aim is that when these seeming disparate elements are all curated in a space they will hopefully work together harmoniously creating one piece , narrative and idea and create meaning and message.

For the crit I had no real work to show so all that my peers got was an explanation of my intentions in terms of dealing with the topic of climate change but weaving a fictional narrative through the hard facts of the issue. I am 90% sure that it will be an installation but as I have mentioned I am also interested to see if the work can live online and re-use and recycle the elements for other audiences. Also all of this is provides good foundations and background for possibly developing it into a film script somewhere down the line.

To re-cap the piece see the post dated the 21/06/2017 for the full details but for the skinny it is weaving the conflicts of 2 scientists who predicted global warming and then set up a movement to warn the public. They found incriminating evidence of cover ups and conspiracy and one was found murdered and the other one disappeared and assumed suicide only to reappear 40 years late with scores to settle.

To date I have been researching the global warming key dates and then creating my story around this. I am if you like story-lining the piece and developing the characters and backstory making sure it is water-tight and the facts are all solid.

The installation piece would chart this story with a variety of the elements listed below as possible exhibits/artefacts.

• Real (faked) TV News package on Ben Wrights reappearance. Also quick was to do back-story and exposition.
• A documentary/IV with someone who claims to be Ben Wright. Style and mood and tone currently not 100% clear.
• Ephemera from the early days of the movement. Photos, posters, film, tapes, books, newspapers, badges, letters, documents etc.
• Wikipedia presence/entry.
• A blog supposedly by Ben Wright.
• A website collating all of this possibly by the film production team working on the documentary on the back from the dead Wright.
• Possible performance piece with the actors/cast walking around the exhibition in and around the audience in character if anyone spots them.

I aim to inform and educate about the issue of climate control BUT in an entertaining way. The piece will blur real hard global warming facts spun into a fictional narrative and characters (ever-present themes in my work) to hopefully grab the audiences attention and take them on a journey so they do not even realise that they are being informed and educated as they experience the piece. I like to call this "stealth education". Being a teacher it is amazing how much information and education you can do under the guise of making something fun, entertaining and with enigmas and questions to ask of the material as it unfolds.

Below are comments From The Crit and my thoughts on these underneath as to how I can take these forward. As I mentioned my peers seemed a little confused by the idea and as it is still very in-flux it may have been my communication of it that made it ricky to understand so feedback was not great from peers and tutors alike but here it is.

Scaling the project.
It does seem quite overwhelming and I need to scale it down. The feature film script can wait and I will concentrate on the installation and decide on key elements and possibly not create/make them all.

Truths: More truthful than the truth?
More exploration of the truth in factual and fictional works and especially art, film and installations. Liked the comments that it makes the truth more entertaining and digestible and less brow beating though.

How will it be presented? Who is the audience? How is it working?
I feel the installation is the best way currently working towards the show. This will also help to define the type of audience and their dissemination of the piece. I will need to rest the elements on the unsuspecting more to get feedback.

What EXACTLY is the concept? Who are you provoking/teasing? From that position you can create a responsibility/sensibility.
Communicating the global warming message in an engaging, entertaining way and making the informing and educating happen within this Trojan Horse style. I like the idea of hidden clues and a sense of knowing if you spot them too though.

Amy mentioned a "faked" doco where characters created by police from deceased children. Chase Amy about more details about it.

Dorothea Bryard? Certain truthfulness.
Need to follow up on this as not 100% sure why mentioned.

Carolines relative book "On Thin Ice". early scientist working in Antarctica on climate change. Book.
Mention this to her and see if I can borrow.

Liked the idea of digital footprints left and deleted files. Wikipedia page?
Less important for the installation idea but could be developed into the future.

Performance? How will it perform? Philosphical or political?
Need to consider this. My head says political with the issue but there are so many philosophical and ethical undertones about notions of the truth, fake news, spin and the media to play with. I feel these are side issues though and the performance will be primarily political.

What do we bring to it? Our assumptions.
Really interesting this and i need to consider the baggage people bring to the issue. My aim is to breath some life and entertainment over what has become a very stale and unsexy issue as far as the media and general public are concerned. There is no immediate event or crisis it is a slow burning one that human beings cannot see and find it hard to rally against. My aim is to approach the issue a different way, to a different audience in a different venue.

Peter Watkins: War Game 1965. Also Threads. Fictionalised accounts in a doco style.
Get these out and look at them for ideas and inspiration.

Damien Hirst: Venice exhibition.
Deals with real artefacts salvaged from the sea. Research this for ideas.

A Follow on email from Emily mentioned the need to create tests and work for the big crit in a couple of weeks time and to chart this. The idea needs testing in front of an audience.
I agree and this will be my focus over the next 2 weeks. Firstly nail the narrative and timeline then create possibly the TV news piece.

GW: MULTI STRAND IDEA DEVELOPMENT (GROUP CRIT PREPARATION)

I have only just started evolving the Global Warmning multi strand narrative idea which aims to bring together lots of elements. The aim is that when these seeming disparate elements are all curated in a space hopefully not only give an overview of the piece but all work harmoniously to create a meaning and message. The aim is to inform and educate about the issue of climate control BUT in an entertaining way. The piece will blur real hard global warming facts spun into a fictional narrative and characters (ever-present themes in my work) to hopefully grab the audiences attention and take them on a journey so they do not even realise that they are being informed and educated as they experience the piece. I like to call this "stealth education". Being a teacher it is amazing how much information and education you can do under the guise of making something fun, entertaining and with enigmas and questions to ask of the material as it unfolds.

I have been working on a list of the areas that interest me  (below) and they are all areas I am interested in exploring. I have been unpacking these to see how they can be integrated into my work and idea.

• Character and narrative to tell story.
• A multimedia approach to telling story and communicating ideas.
• Climate change and pieces of work that are a warning and a call to arms.
• Highlight the media, spin, "fake news" and manipulation of facts and data on global warming debate. Both mainstream media and online.
• Playing with the notion of "the truth" and the Werner Hertzogs "ecstatic truth".
• Inform educate AND perhaps most importantlyentertain.
• Experimenting with different media, materials and technologies to create pieces and extend my skill base.
• Investigate different methods of delivery, dissemination, exhibition and platforms for my work.
• Consider the notion of audience for the work. Targeting individual content at specific audiences whilst also working as a whole campaign.

I was initially going to create a "stealth" advertising campaign that would have ticked all of these boxes. It could be someone who "discovered" some found footage online and resurrected the teaching of the movement online or just excerpts put out into cyberspace from fans etc. The idea had the potential to address all of my concerns and the idea was to to put out into the internet and www and let the material have a life of its own.

Whilst this is still a possibility the idea has changed somewhat and I am moving more towards creating a gallery installation of many different assets that tell the story. Inspired by Paul Kindersley and his repurposing, renewing and recycling philosophy the assets created will as mentioned still be able to be used for this "stealth" advertising campaign for global warmning BUT the aim is now for an installation.

Thinking bigger picture I am going to build a whole narrative around the installation that will provide excellent foundations if I decided to work the story up into a script so it also serves a purpose for this in creating the world that my fictional characters inhabit surrounded by real global warming facts, events and people that played an important role in increasing awareness of global warming.

As mentioned before what I aim to do is to create a fictional "movement" and two characters who existed in the late 60's early 70's who "predicted" that global warming would happen. Then by mirroring today when for 20-30 years there have been naysayers and sceptics of the organisation. However by jumping in a time machine and going back to "create" this fictional version of them predicting what would happen to the planet real irrefutable facts can be used to show that they did get it right. So using and fiction to sell a real fact. This could then be used as a lesson to show how it may possible go into the future and people may sit up and notice. 

So the critique was really just an explanation of the idea as it is at the moment but it has taken lots of time to develop this. There will be two friends and who met at Cambridge university in the late 60's who will be our central characters and hero's. These will be quiet Ben Wright who studied climatology and the charismatic Joseph Griffiths studying sociology they shared ideas and research and concluded that consumerism and population "Baby Boom" would lead to more energy, fossil fuels and consumerism and that the knock on effect of this was that it would seriously affect CO2 emissions and lead to the global warming of the plant. They graduate and start the GLOBAL WARMNING movement late 1960's and their research exactly predicts the global warming crisis the world is in we have today. However all good stories have conflicts and twists and turns and this will be no different. Early 70's as the movement is getting larger Wright becomes disillusioned with simply campaigning and starts some directs action getting him in more and more trouble with the powers that be and ever more fanatical. Add in a love triangle between the two men and Fleur a campaigner who marries Joe but as their marriage falls apart seeks support from Ben. Joes mysterious murder following threats from the fossil fuel establishment/government and we have some real conflicts.  Finally threatened documents leaked to the movement by a former friend now also within MI5 and Bens vanishing presumed suicide and we have some real intrigue and enigmas to engage the audience.

What makes it even more interesting is that someone claiming to be Ben Wright appears 40 years to the day of his disappearance and this brings us up to date and a is he or isn't he? Why is he back? What does he know that could be damaging to the powers that be? Is he here to settle the scores and reiterate the warnings he gave us 40 years ago that we did not heed? What doe he see into the future now?

The installation aims to capture all of the above but not within a standard story framework. The aim is for a multi strand storyline and all of the elements link together to reinforce it to the audience and to sell it to the as the actual truth and fact. It continues to explore my ideas of representation of the truth.

It will also have clues and a sense of the uncanny I want it to fell 98-99% right but not 100%. I want the audience to question the work and to try and piece it together and possibly "work it out" for what it is but also possibly not. I will leave the audience clues as to the authenticity of all the elements in the work.

The type of work I will be creating for the installation are listed below. I refer to the idea above that these elements will be woven together to form a single narrative. The aim is of the triangulation method of research. If three sources say the same thing it is likely to be true and I am hoping that is 4 or more sources say it the audience will be taken in if only temporarily but that it will stick with them and be as well as entertaining educational and informative too. This is not an exhaustive or definitive list but currently ideas some of which will move forward others which may not.

• Real (faked) TV News package on Ben Wrights reappearance. Also quick was to do back-story and exposition.
• A documentary/IV with someone who claims to be ben Wright. Style and mood and ti=one currently not 100% clear.
• Ephemera from the early days of the movement. Photos, posters, film, tapes, books, newspapers, badges, letters, documents etc.
• A blog supposedly by Ben Wright.
• A website collating all of this possibly by the film production team working on the documentary on the back from the dead Wright.
• Possible performance piece with the actors/cast walking around the exhibition in and around the audience in character if anyone spots them.

Below is an action plan I used as project MOT following my last tutorial that I have been working through to help me develop the idea and to solidify the direction I want to move forward in. I have added a few comments under the headings as to where I am currently heading into the crit.

Come up with a list of areas and keywords that are the foundations and building blocks for my Global Warmning campaign raft of work.
Started work on this but from research a lot of it is from the areas below.

Research into myth and truth. Traditional mythology.
Started this and it has diverted me more into hoaxes as I have been developing the idea mentioned.

Find examples of artists, advertisers, writers who have created and spun myths. Blair Witch, Donnie Darko, urban myths, sleeper films.
A work in progress but have made some intitial steps.

Research into Stealth  advertising, sleeper films and advertising campaigns to get messages out.
Have done a little but as the direction of the project changed less relevant. However more investigation would be good.

Look at artists who have dealt with these themes and consider their preoccupations, inspirations and ideologies. Then look for papers on them (Tate papers good starting point) and see what references they have and who influenced them.

Consider and investigate the mood and tone of the project.
Feel I have made real progress here and the installation and collection of elements reflects this. Will need to make sure I do not stray too much into spoof as I want to deliver it straight with very hidden clues.

Consider individual pieces that could be created and look at style and tone of these if going to be re-created archival pieces.
I have considered the individual elements as the list above illustrates.

Make sure outline WHO the piece is for. Narrow targeted audience. Multiple pieces for a vast audience art installation, viral, doco, short film, advert, each one of them targeting a specific audience. Scattergun approach?
Still working on this but moving forward it is an installation piece for a gallery audience. HOWEVER the assets created would allow for them to be re-used and recycled in a variety of other ways too.

Consider ethics if looking to hoodwink the audience.
Need to do this. Especially if for authenticity I use the branding of established organisations and thread real characters into the piece.

Consider WHY anyone should CARE about MY work! What are my influences, ideologies, messages, values and stylistics etc. Narrative, character, storytelling, representation, notions of "the truth", media spin and fake news and communicating a message.
This is till being developed but I feel the piece still sits with my "ecstatic documentary" ideology and does comment on all of these. HOWEVER I want to make sure that the message of global warming is still communicated but hidden in the Trojan horse that is the fictional characters and movement.

BEN RIVERS: GLOBAL WARMNING FICTION

The work of Rivers and his themes continues to resurface in my own work. The idea of the outsider living on the fringes of society and the blurring of reality and fiction to create a hybrid world of myth and actuality are ideas I can apply to my Global Warmning fictional piece. I am toying with the idea of creating a real yet mythologised to be a near fictional character like Rivers has done in some of his work. However I will reverse this to have a fictional character mythologised to feel like they are a real character.


His repertoire became more overtly sci-fi last year with Slow Action, which reimagined four islands in different parts of the world as post-apocalyptic societies created by rising sea levels, described in voiceover by sci-fi writer Mark von Schlegell. "They're looking much more into the future than into the past," Rivers says of his films, admitting to a certain apocalyptic tendency. "I think it's on a lot of people's minds: we live in a seemingly pretty unstable world, with too many people. But I always think of myself of being pessimistic in a short-term way but optimistic in a long-term way. A lot of my films are full of hope, I think."

GW: THE TRUTH, THE UNCANNY, PUZZLES, ENIGMAS, PERFECTION AND LAYERS

The Global Warmning (GW) installation idea will currently comprise of a regional TV news piece, a mini IV/Poetic documentary, blog, website and ephemera from the GW movement. The eventual aim is to put this content on the web and on social media sites and to see if it can have a life of its own outside of the installation too. The objective of the piece is to convince an audience that it is factual, but really only the facts about global warming are the truth. The characters and narrative are fictional composites designed to hook the audience and draw them into the subject matter. However I want the piece working on lots of different levels and I have expanded on these below. The aim is to create discourse form the piece and more importantly the subject matter of global warmning. If you like the installation is a Trojan horse for communicating the facts of the GW issue to the audience that they will take away. Working in education facts can be a bitter pill for students to swallow. However if you dress them up as something else and create stories and entertainment around them they are much more readily consumed. We have been beaten around the head with GW facts, stats and calls to arms for a long time and we are almost apathetic to it. My aim is to dress it up as something else and hopefully educate by character, creativity, narrative and stealth.

The Truth
I want the audience to hopefully address the notion of "the truth" and how it can be false, true and every shade of grey in-between. How important is the truth? Can it educate, entertain and inform? How willing are we to stray from the truth and "not let it get in the way of a good story" as many a tabloid editor is said to have proclaimed. What happens when the audience see through the mask do they feel elated to have solved the puzzle or deflated that they have been misinformed? The truth has been at the centre of all of my work and this is no different. To return to a quote from the Robert Evans biopic The Kid Stays in the Picture “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently”. If the facts are true how much can the characters and narrative be the vessel to carry these to an audience.


Layers
These news piece, a mini IV/Poetic documentary, blog, website and ephemera from the GW movement. will all combine to give the installation a ring of truth. Research is generally based on a minimum of triangulation and cultivation theory is a media theory that the more you are told something the more likely you are to believe it. These are both tricks that I aim to apply in the multi-strand narrative from the elements I create within the installation to try and convince the audience of the truth but constantly re-affirming it with a different piece of evidence.

The Uncanny
However I do not want it to be 100% authentic. I want it to feel 98-99% right but to have a slight unerring quality and sense of the uncanny too. I want there to be an oddness and a not quite right about the piece to make the audience question it and to feel a sense of unease. The balance of this is really tricky but it is something I am striving for. the aim is to make the piece even more interactive to the audience as they try to make sense of why it does not feel quite right. The uncanny is a psychological concept which refers to something that is strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious. It may also describe incidents such as where an everyday object or act is experienced in an unsettling, alienating, or taboo context.
The concept of the uncanny was perhaps first fixed by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche. where he recognised the uncanny's mixture of the familiar and the eerie confronts the subject with their own unconscious, repressed impulses. Expanding on the idea, psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan wrote that the uncanny places us "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure," resulting in an irreducible anxiety gesturing to the Real. The concept has since been taken up by a variety of subsequent thinkers and theorists.
This experience is accompanied by a discomforting effect and often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as in the uncanny valley effect. Examples of this are in robotics, 3D computer animations, and lifelike dolls among others. With the increasing prevalence of virtual reality, augmented reality, and photorealistic computer animation, the 'valley' has been cited in the popular press in reaction to the verisimilitude of the creation as it approaches indistinguishability from reality. This is something I will need to watch in my own work and perhaps flirt with but not cross the line too much.

Puzzles & Enigmas
I want there to be hidden clues within the piece and a sense of being in the know for some of the audience to hopefully make the piece something that is discussed afterwards. The aim is that if they are discussing the piece during their interaction or indeed hopefully afterwards. Is Ben Wright a real character? Was there a Global Warmning movement? Did he really disappear? Is he really back? Was it a government conspiracy?
Also I want to give little clues in the piece for the observant to pick up on and feel a sense of satisfaction by being in on the joke if you like. The surnames of the characters will all be taken from famous hoaxes such as those behind the Alien Autopsy and Cottingley fairies or from of illusionists such as Blaine and Copperifield.
I feel that some audiences derive huge gratification from enigmas, puzzles that need to be solved. It makes the pieces more interactive and engaging as human beings hate loose ends and puzzles left unsolved. One of the things that I want to achieve in the piece is exactly this. I want the elements of the installation as mentioned to be 98-99% right but to leave room for questioning.

Perfection
Life is not perfect, it is full of ideosyncrasies, contradictions, loose ends and peccadillos. Stories do not all happen in 120 minutes of screen-time and there are always threads that cross over as well as inaccuracies. As with the uncanny I do not want everything to be perfect BUT the loose ends and inaccuracies must be small so as to keep up the charade. Minor errors will be fine. As for the TV news piece local news has long been the focus of some ridicule. The ITV local news show in Yorkshire is called Calendar but due to the amount of holes in facts and reporting it acquires the nickname colander. Wikis, blogs and social media are notoriously not always on the money so these allow some scope for this.

DAMIEN HIRST: TREASURES FROM THE WRECK OF THE UNBELIEVABLE

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/06/damien-hirst-treasures-from-the-wreck-of-the-unbelievable-review-titanic-return

GW: MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING

I carried out some research into multi-media storytelling to see how other have used this approach in their work. It started by lots of articles explaining and trying to make clear what multimedia is. From research it seems that multimedia approach to creating content is really more about telling gone story and creating one piece using different techniques rather than telling one story through multiple pieces of content and these all working together .So I am still unsure if calling my work multi-media is the right way to go so I still have research to do.

There are also lots of platforms and software for creating multimedia content. Photos, video and text are the main stalwarts of all of these but I may try some of them out.

https://uncubed.com/daily/11-favorite-multimedia-storytelling-platforms/

https://ijnet.org/en/blog/elements-good-multimedia-storytelling

https://www.interactivenarratives.org/

https://contently.com/strategist/2014/04/02/how-multimedia-storytelling-is-changing-advertising/


I looked at lots of examples of multimedia content and as I mentioned at the start it is not really what I am doing and rather stories with some photography, audio and video to enhance it and make it more interesting. However some interesting and inspiring work.

EXAMPLES

https://elenaplaiter.com/2013/06/05/multimedia-storytelling-examples/

https://medium.com/@jcstearns/the-best-online-journalism-and-storytelling-of-2015-6fe3be80ccd1

http://01storytelling.com/digital-storytelling-example/

http://mashable.com/2012/01/31/digital-storytelling/#9Eu6qmy.PSqE

http://www.jeadigitalmedia.org/2015/09/07/70-interactive-storytelling-examples-for-inspiring-students/

http://blog.visme.co/10-mind-blowing-interactive-stories-that-will-change-the-way-you-see-the-world/

THE AGE OF STUPID: FRANNY ARMSTRONG 2009

The Age of Stupid is a 2009 film by the filmmaker Franny Armstrong about the effects of climate change and global warming on earth. The links to my Global Warmning piece are evident so I decided to analyse it. Franny Armstrong is a politically conscious filmmaker and has made several other campaigning feature documentaries to highlight environmental and political issues such as McDonalds and globalisation in McLibel (2005) and Drowned Out (2003) dealing with an Indian family who are about to be drowned by the Narada Dam which will consume their village. Armstrong's films are generally crowd funded but have accessed huge audiences which have together been seen by 70 million people on TV, cinema, internet and DVD worldwide. Her social conscious spreads through to her work where she has pioneered and championed reducing carbon emissions including the distribution and screening of her works.

The basic conceit of Age Of Stupid is a man (Pete Postlethwaite) on a now melted arctic outpost of earth in the near future (2055). He has archived mankind's downfall  at their own hands due to global warming in his global archive and through looking back at the year 2008 and a mix of real news and documentary footage and archive and created animations weaves a fictional yet factually grounded cautionary tale.

The news footage ranges from the obvious global warning effects and weather etc to the stories of a few spotlighted subjects to show the topic and argument from multiple viewpoints. A environmentally friendly wind farm planner, an Indian man starting up a low cost airline in India and a woman from Nigeria struggling to survive. Also an oil company employee who faced hurricane Katrina, a French mountain guide commenting on the shrinking of the glaciers and an Iraqi boy who was made a refugee due to the allegedly oil inspired Iraqi war. All of these people saw the climate change effects first hand through their own looking glass and it deals with the moral questions, issues and ethics from all of their standpoints..

The techniques employed to tell the story are varied and interesting especially the real news footage of real characters telling their story has a huge amount more kudos given the reflective situation of looking back from a destroyed planet. The irony of the Indian starting up a low cost airline using a private jet to do his "charity work" when the cost to the environment works against this as does the cost where the money the flight cost could have instantly turned around the fortunes of the village he is trying to save. The awkwardness of the "environmental" not in my back yard campaigners who are protesting against having a wind farm near their very middle class village whilst at the same time being challenged at saying they are environmentalists. These arguments work well if at times they are a little heavy handed and obvious. The multi strand story-line did at times make the flow of the film hard to follow however and perhaps too many points were being made at the same time so none made as strongly as they could have been.

The film is a very interesting premise to look back and try to fathom why as a human race we ignored all of the tell tale signs around us with the perspective of hind-sight. However it does not really offer much in the way of solutions rather than just reasons. Greed, oil, ignorance, selfishness and a collective no one else is bothering so why should I to what Postlethwaite calls the suicide of our planet. In terms of solutions the film itself realises it is a hard-sell and other than oil is bad, green energy should be exploited more and hopefully individuals need to be accountable.



THINGS I WILL TAKE FROM THE AGE OF STUPID.

• Using "real" people and doco footage gave it a sense of authenticity.
• Characters within the film worked well BUT multi strand story telling possibly not as effective as one story.
• Use of animation, archive news and doco, CGI and graphics worked really well and gave serious, fun and accessible ways into the topic.
• The conceit is good what would we think of a behaviour and general complacency towards climate change with hindsight.