Week 9: Interactive Movie Website 1

This week I am looking at a particular movie website and commentating on its interactivity, design and whether I think it is effective or not. The movie website I am looking at is for the horror movie Saw.



Saw
URL: http://movies.break.com/saw/site.html

The horror movie Saw has a fantastic interactive website. It is made in Flash. It begins with a short animation of the creepy villain giving you instructions then requiring you to enter your name, which is a nice touch. It then asks you what your fear is from three options, 'amputation', 'being left for dead' or 'death of my family'. It then asks you to name someone you love and then all of a sudden you hear people yelling and it is all dark. You have to search around in the dark to find the light by clicking the mouse.

When the light comes on there is a body on the floor of a bathroom and a man staring at you with a drivers license. When you click on 'Where am I?', a voice tells you that you are in a room that you may be killed in. After clicking on the body, text comes up labeled victim. You then see the body up closer and you have to click on the gun in his hand. You hear the gun go off and learn that he shot himself because "When there is that much poison in your blood, the only thing left to do is shoot yourself". Then there is a man in the background that you click on. A voice then asks you if you will kill these people by six o'clock and a bullet comes up with the name you put in when it asked for someone you loved.

It continues on and follows a linear story line. The Flash work is well made and has a typical horror theme but really it is quite simple as you simply click through to advance the story with no other options. So it is interactive but not as interactive as it could be as there aren't really multiple pathways once you choose your fear. With this said however, it is a terrific interactive movie website and one of the more memorable ones I have been to. It is very effective and brings out the true mood of the movie and what it is like. It has no particular shape to it also, so it gives a distorted and creepy type of feel to it.

By Michael Angus (S2587197)

Week 8: Interactive Stories in Public Places

This week I am talking about the possible interactive stories that could be found in public places and possible interactive artworks that could be created from these.



Shopping Centre
Many notes and coins are handed back and forth at a shopping centre. Whether you are buying something and getting change back or if you are working on the registers, you are exchanging money backwards and forwards. We may not know everybody in the shopping centre while we are there, but does our money? We are connected to many people through this money that we don't really think about. The money we use and get back has usually been in the hands of many people. Imagine if the money could tell us where it has been, what is was spent on and who it has been with. We may not interact with everybody in the shopping centre, but the money we use does.

Grocery Store
How could you read a person that you don't know in a grocery store? Someone that you have never seen, talked to or heard of before? Maybe this moment is when you see what they have in their trolly. For example, you could easily tell whether someone was a healthy eater or a junk eater. But what about something deeper? As a checkout worker, you swipe all their food and put it into bags. You are hardly interacting with the person, despite a brief 'hello', but you are interacting with their products, which could tell a great deal about their personalities, traits etc. So you are interacting with these people indirectly rather than directly, a unique experience when you think outside of the box.

ATM Machine
When you visit ATM Machines do you ever notice the statements lying around? Do you ever wonder who they are from or why they have drawn out money? In a way, an ATM Machine is an interactive tool that is shared between all of us for many different reasons. The statements lying around these machines are our contributions to the piece. We are all connected to it for one obvious thing, money. What are the stories behind these transactions? Are they people in desperate need of buying a necessity or someone buying something that they don't really need?

These are three interactive stories I have come up with for potential artworks relating to public places and objects in these areas.

By Michael Angus (S2587197)

Week 7: Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is terrific software that allows you to create animations, games, movies etc. It is great for creating interactive artwork as it is relatively simple to use and the quality is excellent.



I first used Adobe Flash last year in another digital writing course called Cyberstudies. I found the program to be very easy to get used to and the interface very user friendly. Creating basic animations can be very simple in Flash, which allows creating interactive pieces a breeze. What I found useful with Flash is that you can create a high quality piece of work but at the same time keep a relatively small file size.

An important thing I have found when using Flash is that it is best to keep files named with numbers and to have accurate descriptions as having to many with similar names can become confusing. Also, I find it is important to convert images that you import into graphics and use the same ones over and over again as this saves space and will make your flash files much smaller in size.

When I create interactive works with flash, I find that I frequently use the alpha tool, which allows you to choose the transparency of a color or image. This tool allows me to make flashing lights etc. and allows for the creation of basic animations. Another great aspect of Flash is that you are not required to have code knowledge in order to create files, although this is possible.

There are many Flash resource sites out there, such as Flash Files and Flash Kit that allow you to download user submitted flash files to use and modify for free. This is a great feature and allows you to modify files that you may like to fit your theme or story. The coding aspect is a lot more difficult in Flash and I am yet to get into that side of it.

Another great feature with Flash is that you can export the animation etc. you have created into many different files. For example, if you want it as a website, you can export it as a HTML document or if you want it as a short movie, you can export it as a QuickTime file. This is very simple to do, even for beginners.

Adobe Flash is a great piece of software that is for both beginners and the more advanced and is great for creating interactive artwork. It has helped me greatly when creating interactive stories/artworks.

By Michael Angus (S2587197)

Week 6: Media Meshing

This week I am talking about something known as media meshing. Media meshing is "using an independent piece of media, such as a blog or a website, to enhance the experience of another piece, such as a news paper article or a fictional television program" - Wikipedia. I decided to talk about this because it is a form of interactivity that is a relatively new phenomenon.

Media meshing allows you to become more involved with a television show and allows you to become more involved with the story line and make you feel like you are a part of it. This is a relatively new form of interactivity and one that I find to be very interesting and fun. A good example is the with the show Prison Break. On a few episodes from season 2, the main character, Michael Scofield, mentioned a website that the other escaped convicts could post messages on if they were in any trouble down the line. This was called europeangoldfinch.net.



Once this episode was finished, I was curious to see if this site existed and when I searched for it, it came up. It contained the same messages seen on the show and was obviously created by the company that makes the show, 20th Century Fox. It was very cool as it allows the show to feel more real and that I was a part of it.

Another good example was on the show Lost. A phone number was mentioned during one of the add breaks while the show was on where you could ring a number and on the other end was automated messages by some of the characters from the show. There were many options to choose from and it was very interactive. It made me feel like I was investigating the mysteries of the show.



Media meshing allows fictional TV shows to become much more interactive than they once were and allows viewers to engage with the these shows more and feel like they are apart of the experience. It is a fantastic new form of interactivity and brings more fun and authenticity to fictional shows. It has only been around for a while and could develop into something even more interactive, such as a maybe a show one day that is run purely by the options voted on by fans and requires constant visits to different websites etc. for additional information. The possibilities are exciting.

By Michael Angus (S2587197)