The Future of Meida.

The future of media, literature, comic and game.

In this post I want to talk a little about my personal view on the future of media, literature, comic and game. Personally I can’t really separate any of them with others, as they all have part of each other. Video game, or even paper top game normally has a story which drives the plot of imagination, and that’s literature. Comic, especially graphic comic is basically literature with fancy images, and they are all form of media.

I believe that in the future the different between each of them will be less and less noticeable. Student will be playing game for its greatly written story, and people will be reading more and more books with images. I think today’s world is full of information, data and knowledge, and it will be harder and harder for people to accept information without any visual help. Voice, sound and music will become more and more popular in form of media. Comic, especially online comic will likely to have sound effects or even theme sound to enhance the reader’s experience.

I believe in the future the goal of media will no longer be to deliver the message, but how to make people to accept that message. It will be like trying to read a 3,000 words paper in 5 sec; you can only get that much out of it. People are going to live in a world that they will see lots of advertisement, commercial, shots and images every day. The goal of the media artists will be to create things that people can get it as fast as possible. Shorter the better and faster the viewer can get the message the faster he can move on to the next 3,000 words.

As a game design major student, I can see gaming and net working is moving closer and closer. It’s all about connecting people together, and playing game is one of the easiest way to build friendship with others. I also see the potential of advertising and gaming working side by side. Video game can create a perfect digital market that concentrates all the same type of people together, and this will be create for any marketing or advertisement that’s designed to aim for a specific group of consumers.

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is one of those games you will play it once and never pick it up again. However, that one play through will rock your world, and make you question the future of gaming and movie. Heavy Rain has one of the best stories in my gaming history, and I think it can also be one of the best stories ever written. Heavy Rain will still be a great novel or movie on its own, but it’s the interactive of gaming that really brings out the greatness of it better than anything else. Heavy Rain is not the first of its kind; however it’s the first that does it so perfectly. The graphic, music and gameplay all work perfectly together to tell this great detective story set in this none distance future.  

You played as four different characters living totally unrelated life, and slowly throughout the story it brings them all together to the big picture. In a way I think Heavy Rain it’s more like a interactive movie than a game as you can only do it once. There are things that you can change and the ending will change base on your path of actions, but once the big mystery is out there it’s just not that interesting anymore.

Player spend a lot of time doing normal daily things with the main characters, like taking a bath, watching TV, making dinner and driving, but it’s those little things that really connect the player to those characters. We start to act like those characters, and we care and worry for their business. However is those little boring things that prevents me from playing it the second time.

Personally I believe this will become a great example for people making game heavily base on narrative, and those are going to be the alternate movie and novel in the future. This can also be great for educational purpose…imagine in the future we learn things through experiencing different situation and digital environment?  I think those will a more effective way of learning than anything else.

COSMIX 2011

The talk from the 1 person immersive was an interesting one. I went to the morning talk on Friday, and had some thoughts after the talk about the future of our media. The technology part of the dome was really cool as it’s the first time I had ever really got to know about such media. I can totally see in the near future we will be going in to fully digital environment, and there will be no more frame in a movie or a game. People will be able to just walk and look around freely in that environment, and even interact to it. Imagine creating the world of Avatar in a fully realistic 3D dome and allow the audiences just walk around the environment, and touch the strange alien plants. I didn’t went to the Saturday show so I don’t know how the actual work looks like, but from what they show us on Friday I can tell it going to be really realistic watching that in a fulldome.

The part about story writing for the dome is really interesting too; I like how she talks about her own personal experience. I had so many classes about storytelling before, but doing story telling for a fulldome it something else. How do you fully use what you have? And as there is no actual frame, it’s hard to stage what’s going to be where. I believe that in the future story writing is going to be more about the environment and the situation as a whole instead of focusing on the story itself. Audience will be able to experience the situation for themselves instead of seeing other characters doing it, which means that script and story writing will be totally different from today. Writer will need to work even closer to technician and artists in order to actually create the perfect experience for the audiences. The progression of the story will be depends on the audiences, and everyone will have a different story of their own. This will make it worth re-visiting the experience again and again, and each time the audience will experience something different due to his personal experience and knowledge of the story. Video games had done this for a while now, but not for movies or novels. Imagine in the future we will be able to watch a movie again and again and base on our interaction to the movie we got different ending and different story happens inside the world of that story. Writer will need to create a more fully develop world before focusing on the main story, and in the end what’s more important to the audiences will be the small things that they experienced differently than others.

Polyp

Asterios Polyp is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. The story is good, but what makes it GREAT is the art. There are countless different art style going on in Asterios, and they are there not only for the visual, but for the story telling as well. Different style means different personality, condition, feeling, emotion and situation. Polyp himself is mostly a poly constructed person, which representing he is all about function, logic and close to “emotionless”. His world is all about making sense and everything need to function in the way that they are suppose to. (That’s why when his house got burn down by lighting he take it rather hard as none of those things are suppose to happen)

There are a range of different type of storytelling using different types of element, lines, colors, shapes, facial, word and more. One of the most interesting things I found it’s the mix of style when Polyp first meets Hana. They were drawn in two totally different art style (representing personality), and when they start to talk they both has taken the other’s art style and mix within their own. It is visual story telling at its best; not even the best facial emotion drawing can tell a person’s emotion that clear. Polpy’s dialog bubble is always squire and Hana is circle, again, its visual story telling using every element that’s on the page. There in a scene where Polyp visit Hava in the classroom where she is teaching some students, and when they meet the box around that shot become circle to represent they are now a whole instead of individual.

 The use of flashback and what could have been is another great element of the book. Having the “DEAD” twin brother to tell the story of Polyp is a really interesting and fresh style. I realize there is no black ink at all in the whole book, and I think that’s really unique for a graphic novel. I am not sure what was the reason or purpose behind it, but it’s sure interesting to see that. In the end I think Asterios Polyp is more about the icon, shape, lines and color that’s connecting to the reader instead of reading the story itself.

Snowman, tell us please about the deeds of Crake.

Oryx and Crake

First, I have to say this is one of my favored read so far because of its theme and the way the writer tell the story. The plot and dialogues are clear and easy to understand (which is great for someone with English as a second language), and there is a scenes of realism due to its person story telling. There are many things in Oryx and Crake that interested me, such as the media of the future and the beginning of an origin story of the creator “god” Crake. There are some factional elements that can become real in the near future, such as the suicide-LIVE online site and those genetic creatures…

All the main characters feel real and somehow related to me, as the writer brings us in a journey of their childhood, teenage and adult. It’s like reading the entire Harry Potter book in one concentrated book. The events that happen (besides the ending which killed everyone) to the characters feel like something that could happen to me or one of my friends. And the two main characters have such a strong bond due to they both admire the other’s trait…Jimmy see Crake is the brilliant, and Crake sees Jimmy as the normal guy who can get girls. I can relate to those two characters easily as we all have friends that we see as the “brilliant” and some we see as “the guy who get the girls”. I think one of the reasons why this book is so good is because something big and extreme happened to two that’s normal, and we never question about the plot as somehow it all makes sense.

The book has a interesting way to telling the story take reminded you that Jimmy is the Snowman, but somehow Snowman see Jimmy as a third person. With all those voice in his head, perhaps it’s hard for him to think of himself as first person anymore, and he is still living in the cage that he created when he killed Crake. It has a sad but interesting ending, especially with “Crake’s children”. A perfect human race created by Crake, and in a way Crake is the god of the new world as he destroy and create everything in it. Perhaps it will be interesting to see how that world will become in the future, seeing Crake and Oryx as god and goddess of the world…the first time that human take the world in his own hand and create the Origin tale of a brand new world. Imagine growing up in that world and learn this story as like the Bible, and live and pray to our creator god Crake, for everything he had done for us.

Kool Kool

So what is cool? Or perhaps it’s cooler to say “what is kool?” Yours parent may tell you to be the best you, you can be, or everyone is unique in a way that makes us cool. But what is it to most of the people in a nowadays society? Cool isn’t something that you can see it for yourself, as cool is something that can only be tagged by someone else but yourself. If you just walk around and tell everyone you meet how cool you are, you will surly see that it isn’t cool to put the cool title on yourself.

Cool also change through time and through different group of people, and there is a pattern that everyone will agree to be “cool” in side that specific group of people. One group of people may think that the creator of Dungeon and Dragon (D&D) is the coolest thing ever, but everyone else may consider that to be very nerdy. Fashion on the hand can be cool in a way but if a guy that’s into fashion can be consider “gay” to the other people. So basically what I am trying to say here is that cool isn’t something we can say for sure of what it is or what it takes to be cool.

Cool is like marketing, in marketing you can only get a specific group of people and you need to aim for that. If your advertisement is aiming to too large of a range of people in the end it may make that advertisement weak to all. A good advertisement is to aim to a specific of people, and making something they can all relate and all enjoy…and therefore is cool.

We can however say in general what is cool to most people using the popular culture and consumer marketing. If you got something that everyone need and have but bigger or better…you are cool. In a country that’s heavy toward materialism, you can basically say what you own is what your are. If I got a bigger tv than everyone I know I am cool, and if I have a house that’s bigger than most people I am cool…or am I? It almost sounds like I am say that being rich is cool, and personally I think it is true most of the time. However you can still be cool by doing things in the popular culture like doing Youtube,  however that’s only going to work if people enjoy your performance and what you have to share, or else it will be the totally opposite of being cool. People need to relate to what you do, and what you are doing need to be better…however there are other way of “cool” that is totally different than what I am talking about now.

In high school there is always this one good looking kid that don’t talk much, he site alone and don’t take part of any group activity and somehow that’s really cool for the girls. The silent type of “cool” may somehow suggest he use his brain more than his mouth, but why is that consider cool? By not doing things with the group he present the counter culture of that specific group’s culture and therefore is cool for young people just like in the 70’s counter culture. Those people are cool because they don’t fallow rules and is unique in a way. Many heroes in a police movie is always the rabble, who don’t play with rules and does thing his own way, and that is cool consider by many. I can keep going on and list out examples of what is cool, but in the end I believe cool is something that’s different with everyone, and can’t be lack in to a special category, as its different between groups, nations, ages, races and time.   

Characters

Character notes on the Graduate

Benjamin Braddock:

Benjamin is a college graduate and most importantly he needs to be around the age of 20 to 24. He is a clean-cut and well-bred young man with some confusion on his face. He needs to be dress like a normal everyday guy as his role should shows that he is just like everyone else who had just graduate from the college. He is not out standing with the look, but shouldn’t be too bad either, and his body type should be median size. Ben is always wondering and thinking about his future, he need to give the audients a feel that he is living in a dreamy world where everything doesn’t matter to him. He is not a good talker, and is a shy guy that’s not comfortable about sex and relationship with female. He is bored of his own life as there is nothing he wants to do or can do about his future, and is secretly hoping something exciting is going to happen. Ben is a good kid to his parents, and mostly do whatever his parent told him to do even he doesn’t want to. In the end I think Ben has a normal level of IQ and a just a little bit below average of EQ due to the why he expresses himself.

Mrs. Robinson:

She is a classic foxy woman. Mrs. Robinson should be about her late 30 or early 40 as she was likely marry really young. She is bored about her life and tired of her husband. As her daughter is in college and her husband is always working or with other women, we can see why she is so lonely. She talk like she is better than others, but in her heart she feel she is nothing. Once the relationship between her and Ben started, she sees Ben as low as she is and there for won’t allow Ben to go out with Elaine. She sees Elaine as herself when she was younger, and was hoping that Elaine will end up like her, marring someone that she doesn’t like. Mrs. Robinson is a selfish character, with the ability to seduce any man with her look.

Elaine Robinson:

She is the counter part of her mother, and she is a character that’s not yet polluted by this world. In the eyes of Ben, Elaine is a hope and a fresh new chapter of his life. Elaine is a beautiful young girl around the age of 20 to 22 perhaps just 1 or 2 years younger than Ben, which allow the relationship to grow easier. She is full of hope and is not afraid to express her love and hate. After she find out what is going on with her mother and Ben, her sadness and hate slowly recover when she move to a new area. This shows that she is still a girl that’s full of hope and looking the good side of everything. She is truly in love with Ben, unlike her mother who is only using Ben as a toy. 

Mr. Braddock and Mrs. Braddock

Ben’s parent is a classic good marry couples, however they care more of how they look as a family more than the reality itself. They are not close to Ben and most of the time they become the background character of Ben’s life. In the film we don’t even need to show their faces as the viewers don’t need to make any emotional connection with them as Ben isn’t as well. The Braddock is a wealthy family and the mother is likely someone that will spend most of her time dressing and doing her hair instant of spending time with her son.

Mr. Robinson and the Others:

Try to keep as few characters as possible, and focus on the mains.  Mr. Robinson is someone that is normally not there when his wife or daughter needed him, and so he should feel the same to the viewers the same way. What he does or what he did isn’t important to the story, as he is like a background character that’s there for the story of Mrs. Robinson and the connection of the two families. He isn’t doing anything unique or interesting during the whole story, and so his character should feel the same. Every other character in the story should be there as the contrast to the main characters, and by do so take their personality and interest.