Week 5/6

The presentation is closer than I first thought- well it's gone quite quickly! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's working progress but I'm also quite nervous about presenting ours so fingers crossed it goes to plan! These 2 weeks, my group have been working on the presentation and bringing all the prep we have done to date together into a coherent PowerPoint as we felt this was the best way to present our idea and also give our presentation some visuals to look at whilst we explain our idea and thoughts.

Whilst looking over the footage we have shot to date, I realised that we don't need to heavily rely on Flash as I'd first thought i.e. not taking everything from a video game to make it recognizable. I wanted the 'look' to be subtle and recognizable through maybe one or two iconic factors of each game and not the whole interface. Like the example of Scott Pilgrim, the uses of video gaming iconography such as 'extra lives' etc replicate/ transform into a representation of reality to an extent without being too OTT or blurring with an actual video game. From doing research about game theory, to some extent there are many similarities between video and video-gaming, i.e. the emphasis on a narrative/ the restoration of the equilibrium.  I think video-gaming is very much personal as you indeed become the controller and character within the game (POV shots for example) you cannot help but become the first person rather than controlling through the third person which in fact is what you're actually doing- the third person being an avatar. Steven Poole in Game On: The history and culture of video games argues, ' a video game character is the game's star: the central figure that you control and, to some extent perhaps, become'.

We intended our project to have a narrative or have a point at least. Within our brief film we wanted to portray and emphasis  the blurring of reality and virtual reality through the idea that maybe the game world IS the world. Arguably, narratives have a beginning and an ending- in which video games also adhere to and an interesting middle part. To some extent, reality follows the same structure, beginning- birth and ending- death yet we play games or involve our selves with similar media to escape reality and unlike games our lives aren't as dramatic or continuously interesting. Video-gaming is play, as Eugene Provenzo JR  argues in video games: a popular culture phenomenon, 'we can't stop 'playing' life when we get bored with it. This matter of having a beginning and endings is also found in fictional narratives in all media...'.


Here's some tidbits  of working progress and tests;