Mini Assignments #5

The Assignment

Extra Credit
Proposal (compulsory): 7 points
Treatment (optional): 13 points

To write a script for a short narrative multimedia production in which your reader/viewer/actor experiences meaningful interaction Or you may outline a larger narrative production, and script a discrete, coherent section of it (c. 6 - 8 pages). You may choose any subject you like for your script.

You should integrate at least four of the following elements: sound (for example, sound effects, music, spoken word), moving and/or still pictures, text, graphics and animation. You may integrate any additional elements that you choose.

You must write a narrative, fiction or non-fiction, of whatever genre (for example, mystery, love story, shoot 'em up, thriller, comedy, melodrama, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) you choose. Or you might want to think of adapting TV formats (soap opera, sit-com, cop show, ensemble drama like ER, etc.) to an interactive narrative format, or create an interactive version of one of your favorite shows.

Be as inventive as you like!

• to blend coherently and constructively multiple media elements
• to undertake the construction of interactive narrative plots
• to maintain high-quality, active, precise writing in both the descriptive and active elements of your script.
• to practice the use of the single-column screenplay scripting format and adapt it to the scripting of interactive informational multimedia
• to continue your practice of the scripting of reader/viewer/actor interaction

Remember:

1) Define your target audience at the beginning of your script.

2) You need a plot - remember our discussion of the basic styles of conflict and the shape of individual narratives building to a climax. In narrative's ability to arouse in us the constant question, "What next?" and to subvert dramatically our expectations (based on our reading of the plot so far, on our expectations of a particular genre, for example) of what will happen next lies its fundamental power.

3) Narrative multimedia is primarily about pleasure, even if those pleasures have educational or developmental by-products. Think about those pleasures for yourself: the pleasures of anticipation, of unpredictability, of fear enjoyed in safety, of voyeurism, of marveling at beauty, of shock, of being surprised by emotion, etc. Imagine ways in which you can inject such multiple pleasures into your own production.