I’m a video producer and editor who is at a point in my career where I want to focus more on my fictional writing abilities. I’m also an adjunct instructor at the University of Colorado and I’m reminded every day as both a teacher and as a working professional that we should never stop learning. This next phase of my career and growth has brought me incredible excitement and passion as I begin working on these new skills. I’m so excited to be on this journey. I’ve had chances to work in promo and commercial over the past twenty years. This has given me exposure to a number of industries and creative perspectives, while advancing my technical skills. No matter what growth I’ve made, I’m constantly reminded that there is still so much more to learn and so much growth to attain. Samples of my work can be seen on my company site http://www.postinteractive.net Samples of my students' work can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/comm2250. I'm very proud to have had the opportunity to help them develop their skills and creative processes.
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This has been an incredible experience. I’m extremely grateful for the instruction that I’ve received at Full Sail. It was a great decision to choose this program and take this path to becoming a better writer and storyteller.
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Congratulations to everyone on the CWMFA! We’ve got exciting futures ahead of us.
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Production is complete on The Protectors. Every week brought important changes to the edit, but week four really feels like it brought everything together and created a polished and more coherent story.
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Putting together the rough cut in week three of AVS was a very challenging and rewarding process. I’m excited to get more feedback and make revisions next week.
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Week two brought me some great feedback from my peers who were able to catch important details that I had left out from my Director’s Treatment.
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This week’s first assignment for Advanced Visual Storytelling was very helpful. I’m looking forward to advancing the scene into production in the coming weeks.
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Here’s a look at the opening scene that I’m producing for AVS.
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Multimedia Adaptation - Mastery Journal
Image Credit: Eclipse Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash
The adaptation screenwriting project was one of the most satisfying and successful projects for me during the master's program. I chose the adaptation process because I wanted to start on a fresh story concept and I wanted the challenge of applying that story to the rules of adaptation.
Using "Gift of the Magi" as our source for adaptation presented me with a clear model of three act structure. Other sources used in the master's program hadn't provided this clear of a context. I feel I have a much better sense of Act One's introduction of conflict, Act Two's building up of the conflict and stakes, and Act Three's climax and resolution.
When I set out to write my adaptation, I wanted to show that I could adapt "Gift of the Magi" in a way that wasn't obvious, with an overt giving of gifts. Additionally, I wanted to try something where the two principle characters shared a similar sacrifice. To me, this was a way to show advanced skill as a writer and not just have two people buying something for one another. My choice to make the characters offer up their freedom and (depending upon one's interpretation) their lives was as profound an offering as I could imagine. The gift they give is to one another, but also to the greater world around them. During the beat sheet phase, I didn't have as strong an outline for this as I'd hoped, but the beat sheet process offered me a chance to start pulling my idea out of my mind and organize it on paper. That, along with the first draft, really allowed me to process the idea further and clarify what I was going for. The feedback that I received from both my peers and instructor were helpful to polish the work as a whole and prove that I was achieving the goals that I'd set out to accomplish with this story.
What I'm left with is a story that I could continue editing and improving upon. I feel that I could also expand it into a feature length script, which is very exciting. Ultimately, I'm really happy with what I created and it's the first script that I've written in the master's program that I've felt this confident about. That shows me that I'm getting better at the process, but I think it also reflects on how good of an assignment this was in how much it helped me to learn about the writing process and improve my skill.
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Examples of Gamification and Media Convergence
1. Fitness Applications
Gamification has made its way into the fitness application industry and helped to reshape the way consumers use and process information for health-related activities. From data-entry and tracking to workout routines that use live tracking and real-time statistics, users have a more immersive and engaging experience when it comes to their health and fitness.
I was first made aware of this when my girlfriend realized how much money I was spending on gadgets to track real-time data when running. I was purchasing accessories ranging from heart monitors, to GPS tracking and mapping applications, to dietary logs that track nutritional data from meals and snacks, and she made me take note of how all of this was effecting me when she said, “Do you realize how much your workouts are gamified?” She was right and it made me think how much of a good thing this was. I was motivated to do more, to track and map my miles and where I was going on runs with real-time interactive maps and data. I wasn’t getting obsessed with the tools, but I was simply having more fun with my fitness routines and this made the process all that much more engaging for me.
2. GamecastTMand Game CenterTM
Growing up there were a few ways to enjoy professional sports when not being present: watching on television or listening to the game on the radio. Today, these choices are still available, but many times, people will find they still do not have access to these options at all times. I recently cut the cable and have left my cable subscription service. I found that I was missing live sports events for my favorite teams and had to rely on websites like ESPN.com and NHL.com to follow the games in real-time if I wanted to follow the action and this past year, I noticed an evolution in how those entities process real-time action.
Taking my favorite NHL team, the Colorado Avalanche as an example, when I follow GamecastTM, a service providided by ESPN, or Game CenterTM, a comparable service offered at NHL.com, I not only get text-based data in (nearly) real-time, but now these game trackers, which offer a simulated, game-like animation, show me a virtual representation of the game as it’s happening. The older method of text-entry data is now coupled with this virtual model that animates as a variety of events take place. Not only are just shots and goals illustrated, but hits and penalties can be illustrated, as well, offering a more immersive experience beyond the text-only data. Admittedly, this isn’t nearly as fun as watching or even listening to the game, but I am grateful to have this kind of interactive data when I don’t have the opportunity to follow along as closely as I’d prefer.
3. Pymetrics
Brain training science and online staff recruiting has made its way into industrial-organizational psychology. The testing that corporation’s HR departments can have their work-force undertake to improve job function, work roles, and even the enjoyment of the worker’s day-to-day activities. Pymetrics (pymetrics.com) is an example of a corporation that is using neuroscience games and tracking algorithms to help employers find the best employees for their organization and improve the work being done by those already on staff.
Pymetrics explains this process in four easy steps: Existing employees play Pymetrics neuroscience games, Pymetrics analyzes trait data and trends, Pymetrics builds custom algorithms representing success and audits for bias, and lastly, candidates play games and match to opportunities.
This process isn’t just a win-lose for prospective candidates who don’t match up with the variables their prospective employers are looking for. After playing Pymetric’s games, if I were to be told I didn’t fit what the company was looking for, Pymetrics would have my data profile and can recommend jobs and employers that I’m a better fit for.
I guarantee there are nay-sayers around the world who will say “No, this is a game. This isn’t serious business,” but they’re wrong and they’ll be left in the rear-view mirror by advancing corporations and an advancing work force that embrace the integration of gaming and gaming technology into work-force development recruiting, testing, and training.
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It’s been a great ride so far with Full Sail. I’m excited to see what the next six months brings.
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Master’s Journey Thus Far
The course, “Episodic and Serial Writing,” has been one of the most rewarding components of the master’s program yet, because it offered us the opportunity to piece together everything that we’ve learned up to this point into a single, self-contained screenwriting project. The web series format was also a fresh start, allowing us to take a step back and create something from scratch. Both of these opportunities were highly satisfying to me as a writer because I needed to step away from some of the other characters and scenarios that I had been developing in other courses, and I needed to see how much progress I was making in all of the skills that we’ve been learning. This made the assignments engaging and, as I noted previously, very rewarding for me, personally.
Before starting the master’s program, one of my goals was to develop an understanding for character development and how to fit this into the larger structure of conflict and plot development. Going through this webisode assignment demonstrated that I was moving forward in this process and achieving those goals. I was able to create characters that I had strong feelings for and my peer feedback indicated that readers were developing those same interests and connections with he characters, too.
I don’t yet know how much I will focus on screenwriting fictional scripts after this course, but I absolutely have a strong desire to do so. Currently, my employer is already asking me to take over all of the company’s scriptwriting for our video productions in 2019, but most of the project are non-fiction. Still, this is encouraging knowing that I can have real-world practice that has a purpose and will keep me writing. It will be up to me to find avenues where I can write the kind of creative fictional stories that we’re developing skills for in this program. In my other job teaching at the University of Colorado, I will be able to bring these lessons into immediate use in my production courses. My strong suits have always been production and editorial, and now I see myself being able to help students focus more on their screenwriting in my courses that are outside of their dedicated screenwriting classes. This will make my teaching that much more valuable to my students as they develop the stories they will be filming.
As we move forward in the master’s program, I look forward to going back to the scripts and characters that we’ve already developed and improve upon them with the skills I’ve developed in “Episodic and Serial Writing”.
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These are the three visual triggers that I’ll use to develop ideas for my creative writing concepts.
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Our future will be defined by our ideas and imagination. This creativity will fuel our advances in arts, science, politics and culture and ultimately shape our evolutionary path.
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Inspiration Post 3
As I venture into the creative writing program, I’m looking for inspiration to meet my goal of writing every day, and I just found some in Scott Myers series called Keys to Screenwriting Craft: Think Concepts. Think Concepts is the first in a five-part series that encourages writers to incorporate five steps into their daily life that will help them thrive as a writer. The steps are: Think Concepts, Watch Movies, Read Scripts, Write Pages, and Live Life.
In order to come up with good ideas, Myers says that “we, as writers, should be generating lots of ideas” and his recommendation for the best way to do that is “two simple words: What if?” (Myers, 2012).
Myers goes on to provide four anecdotes from writers who did just that and this began the creative burst for their new stories. This is a reminder to me to go back and look at my idea sheets and re-frame the way I’m looking at them. I need to see if I was doing just that, and if not, I’ll ask myself “What if?” in order to see if I’m capturing the right motivation for my stories.
References
Myers, S. (2012, September 17). Keys to the Screenwriting Craft: Think Concept [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/keys-to-the-screenwriting-craft-think-concepts-c306f6755ac0
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