Week 14 - Final Project

Reflective Blog

My Cross-Media Experience :

This experience of Cross-Media was a brand new experience to me. Although I'm a graphic designer, I had some experience in the advertising world and got to work on "guerilla" and "alternative" marketing projects, the Transmedia Storyworld was a first.

It was a little hard for me to understand the whole transmedia storyworld through an engaged audience process, it was all very confusing to me since I also had to adapt to the Australian accent, but by viewing some examples and inspiration, I ended up being pretty clear.
After reading the briefing "How Might We use Cross-media to inspire a culture of sustainability on the UC Campus" I already knew I would target the students. I had to find a storyworld they could recognise themselves into, and participate in, something that would be close to their own storyworld. So Uyen Tran and myself formed a group and together, we create our character. We had the same overall idea but our two characters evolved quite differently in their own storyworld, which I think is very interesting.

The Character :

So our character is a douchebag. And mine is called Nate (got the name inspired from my real life frequentations). Nate is a architecture student at UC in his 3rd year. He is 22 years old and he believes he's incredible and amazing. Of course this is far from the truth.
Nate is self centred and totally irresponsable, all he loves to talk about is parties, girls and sports. A classic student douchebag.
Without quite realising it, Nate is a bad character, but because of his attitude, he helps people realise their own and ends up making some good around him, hopefully !
Nate will have to work on a assignment about sustainability, but he would hate it, intentionally botch it. When he realises it's imperative that he passes this unit, he will have to interview people, do research and learn about sustainability, green buildings and environmental issues. Nate would have all the bad attitudes regarding sustainability and that's when I hope it will have an impact on the audiance. 
They would realise they might have the same attitude and would have to change their actions. 

Indeed, during my research on sustainability during the tutorials, I realised that the first step to a more sustainable world is first to make people realise what they are doing is wrong. It's showing them the impact of their actions that would make them change, so I hope that is what is going to be the reaction when watching Douchebag Nate.

The Audience: 

I truly believe that Douchebag Nate is a character that UC students can relate to : First of all he's also a student, that has assignments and classes, so their storyworld would match and the could interact. Also, Nate would not just be a pain in the a**, he would also be funny and sometimes sweet, but mainly a jerk.

The audience will be following Douchebag Nate thanks to the many rabbitholes and advertisement on campus. He would be active on two platforms mainly : Facebook and Youtube. Of course youtube would be the platform where we would post the videos and there will be areas to comment and the audience will be able to subscribe to the channel.
The second platform will be Facebook. There, the audience will be able to follows Nate's every move. He will post live statuses on his activites, post pictures, and the audience can interact by asking his questions, dare him to do all kinds of things and decide on his future actions. He would also be available on intagram, twitter. After a while, some t-shirt will be distributed with Nate's quotes to make his popularity increase.

The Platforms :

About the Facebook Page, I got 3 likes on my page (it think) by posting a poster on the UC campus, (People from UC I don't know) others are just people from the same unit.
Here is the poster I created : 

I placed it in 3 different places in campus : 

- The architecture area in building 7

- The refectory doors

- The entrance doors of building 9

I think the big name and the illustrations captured the attention of the students and a couple might have scanned the QR code on their way to class.

I also had happened to walk by it when people where looking at it and laughing, but they didn't bother to go any further. At least I got some attention.

Once you liked the faceboook page, I put some basic content for people to like and interact. Some links to videos and a couple of Nate's statuses. I put a link to a question, I put on a picture of Nate playing Beer Pong, and I also interacted with other characters that I found out about during the tutorials :
Franco the Fair Trade Farmer 

I also interacted with Daniel the Dead Tasmanian Tiger, which was pretty fun :

I think the best content I have on facebook is just the frequency of the posts. Stupid posts, just the kind of stuff that makes Douchebag Nate's Storyworld.
I particularly liked the instagram picture Nate posted :

About the Youtube Page, I think the best I have is the 1min trailer I shot to introduce the Web Series. It's basically showing what to expect on the first season of Douchebag Nate without saying too much.

->  Douchebag Nate Trailer <-

To make my audience surf from one platform to another, I simply use links on my facebook page to my youtube page, and liks from my Youtube to my facebook ! Pretty simple on those two platforms to make them connect.
On the Youtube channel, the fan will be able to see all the videos from the webseries posted, he will be able to comment them, like them, share them, then he will be able to visit Douchebag Nate's facebook page to find all the additional content : Nate's impressions, "behind the scenes" footage, react, ask questions, tell his opinion, decide of the character's future and more !

For now on my two platforms the audience knows Nate is a architecture student that has a assignment and that's it's a real douchebag. They will have to wait to see more !

Experimentations : 

Since I launched my Douchebag Nate to the real world, i've learned some interesting things about the subject. First of all, since I'm not a media student, I never did any "real" project that got as far as this one. In general if I have a marketing idea I just present it into slides but never experienced it for real. 

I realised it's very difficult to make people care about your project. It was hard for me to engage people and ask them for feedback since I was not used to this kind of work. I felt really uncomfortable while shooting because I didn't know how people would react. For the rabbithole, I realised how hard it is to grab their attention since they only go on with their own routine, never getting any interest in something new. I thing my "Douchebag Nate" title might have captured the attention of some since it's quite unusual, but without more inerest.
I realise if I want to make this project work I will need to put a lot of effort into getting an audience, after that It's the easier part about the story flow and making it happend.

I also realised it's very hard to keep the people interested, they have to have a reason to stay, that's why I need to make my transmedia as wide and flourished as possible. 

So to wrap up I would say that next time I would definitely try to engage my audience way more effectively and once I have their attention try to provide them with the best content possible. 
If I ever had funding to make it happend, I would gather a group of the best camera crew and make a memorable pilot episode. And I would spend that money into creating events that would develop my character into the story : Parties, Sport events, etc...

The Conclusion:

To conclude with my work overall, I would say that I succeeded into answering the briefing. I'm pretty sure that people would change their attitude if they had seen what Douchebag Nate did to the poor future generations... My character is effective and promising, I just needed to dig deeper into the actual media that I need to provide.

Most importantly, it changed my own behaviour for sure. Not only about being more sustainable, but it made me realise how much we can achieve if everybody just changed tiny simple things in life : from turning the heater down to building green buildings. My research in the area made me realise some things that I will change in my life for now on.

Week 13

Tutorial - Evolution

This was the last tutorial for Cross-Media for this semester. We went through the documents and slides that explained how the assessment would be going and what was our progress in our feedback and evolution of our character.

I finished my "trailer" for Douchebag Nate, a short 1min trailer that would introduce my character and his storyworld. It shows that Nate is a Architecture student that he got an assignment but wouldn't really tell what it's about. The main goal is to attract my audience : UC students, into watching the Web Series. It has to stay young and fun so that they would actually learn about sustainability and bad behaviours while being entertained.
I uploaded my video on the Youtube platform and told the viewers to enter Nate's storyworld by liking his facebook page. That is basically where all the interaction will occur. They will be then able to enter his storyworld by deciding some of his future actions, etc...

Here is the link to my video : Douchebag Nate Trailer

To try to develop my storyworld, I thought of some ideas that would help my character's popularity and fan attraction : Cool Tshirts with funny quotes is really appreciated by stidents and the more absurd, the better :

Week 12

Workshop 4 - Evolution

As the semester comes to an end, as does the workshops. This was the last workshop, Evolution, that brought us one step closer to the finalisation and evolution of our project, our character, and our storyworld.

During this workshop, we listened to the very interesting presentations of Emma Keltie, director of the Newtown Girls, who explained the process in which she created the series, and where it is at today.
Witnessing a young media student achieving quite brilliantly and getting back from the audience really motivates me in making my character work.


After that, we got to listen to the very interesting presentation of Karla Conway, about her "reality game": 35° 17 South. That makes players live a real life experience through a digital platform.
I think all these presentations just made me realise that the feedback provided by the people, their interest to the story and their involvement in the activities is the best reward you could get from this kind of production. And it makes me want to make my character as fun as possible, so that the students at UC can rely to him and be involved.

After these enlightening presentations, Emma did a recap about the sustainability projects at UC, talking about the UC garden development, the "Winter is coming" phrase to make people aware they have to dress for the weather, and we had to form groups and choose one of these subjects, find a quick idea and make a pitch about the subject we chose.

After these 10min reflexion, we had to present our ideas to the "jury" composed by the professionals of cross media.

Our group picked "winter is coming" came up with the idea of selling our body warmth, as a personal snuggle buddy ! You can book you buddie online, share him/her with your friends on social media and never get cold ! Just another silly idea we had fun coming up with. I guess it's a good thing we didn't get to present that in front of a jury ! :)

Week 11

Tutorial - Experimentation

As a Rabbit Hole I finally decided to use the poster I posted in a few places around campus.
I thought of a funny poster that would encourage people to check my facebook page :

It's posted in 4 different spots around campus while I am getting ready to shoot my Web Series Pilot.
I put it on the Sustainability Panoramio Page : Building 9 and 7 and in the refectory.

Week 10

Tutorial - Experimentation

In this class, we where supposed to have found two platforms for our characters to be active on.

My character has a facebook page : Douchebag Nate
And obviously a Youtube page where the videos will be posted : Douchebag Nate

Now, we had to mix our characters in different story worlds, so we had to talk to people around and see how our characters could interact with others.
The three girls I was with had different characters. One had a rubbish bin, so she switched to a different group where they all had objects as characters. 

Lakyn had "Franco the farmer" which was a farmer coming to UC to talk about sustainability and Fair Trade. I guess her character could interact with mine in a bunch of ways : First, my character would have to do some research and interviews about sustainability for his assignment, so he could probably see Franco, and ask him to do all his research for him, since he would never do it himself. He could probably also make jokes about Franco the farmer to his friends and play smartass in front of girls by making fun of Franco.

Amy has "Lany the librarian", she is working at the library and is really sustainable.
Nate could probably hit on her, let's keep it fun and distracting, trying to get her to help him for his assignment. She would be a pretty librarian that would never help the douchebag even after several failed attempts to get her attention.

Week 9

Workshop 03 - Transmedia Hackathon

Experimentation.

In this supplementary workshop of an hour, the first step was introducting us to augmented reality, by downloading an app called "aurasma". We had to draw our character on a coffee lid and create a "aura" for the drawing to be recognised.

Then we had to classify our characters in a group. Choices where Bad - Good - Simple - Complicated.

I put my Nate in "Bad" even though he means no harm, it was hard to choose between Bad of Good and Simple or Complicated. I would say Nate is really in between of every one of these criterias.

Finally, we went through the slides and presentation of Tracy Benson.

She talked about how to engage an audience, and specially to engage them to our character. The aim of all of this being, of course, to make them act and change their habits about sustainability.

That is why, this week, we had to find a Rabbit Hole for our character. How are we going to introduce our character to our audience, attract their attention and make them connect to our character ? 

So I had a couple ideas:

Douchebad Nate is a architecture student, he is just like the people in the audience, I would have to find a way for them to identify to him, interact with him, and my audience being the students at UC, what would grab their attention, what would make them want to watch my web-series ?

What if we did some bad things really douchy all around campus so that people would start noticing and already hating the character? Here are a few examples : 

Graffiti where you're not supposed to

Lock bikes together

Block a water fountain



Of course, these are only examples, while I think about something effective and doable around campus.

Week 8 - Mid-Semester Project

"How Might We use Cross-media to inspire a culture of sustainability on the UC Campus"

Nate is a young, funny guy that studies architecture at U.C. He likes cars, blond girls, junk food and anything a 22 year old enjoys in life.
He is very good at what he does, he loves great buildings, beautiful designs and creating all of it from scratch.
But when it comes to sustainability and caring about future generations, Nate doesn't really care. Actually, he doesn't care at all. He is a self-centered douche bag and would always act stupid. Really stupid.

We (a team of cameras/reporters) would follow him on his on-campus life : Just like a reality show or a report about his life at UC. We will create the web-series : Douchebag Nate.
Every episode, he would interact with his friends, go to his classes, attend campus parties. hit on girls, etc… Our team will follow him through every event and eventually ask him questions. He will confess to cameras from time to time, but mostly, he will make us laugh. Because Nate is a funny guy, he would be stupid and reckless and really irresponsible most of the time, but still so entertaining and fun to hang out with.

Here is what will happen : Nate and his classmates will have to work on an architecture project that you are all familiar with : Create a green building to increase sustainability at U.C.
To achieve his ends, we will follow him through every step of his project : his research about sustainability, his interviews with all kinds of people, and all the stuff that would require him to think about future generations. And of course, he would hate it.

DoucheBag Nate will be aired on the internet and U.C. or external students will follow his adventures, laugh at his jokes, love him or hate him, learn about sustainability and green buildings at the same time.
The viewers will be able to interact with him in many ways : comment about the show on the website, ask direct questions to Nate through the reporters, share funny stories and vote for his stupidest quotes. The viewers will also be able to give Nate challenges to keep the story alive and participative !
Cool T-shits will be created in "honor" of the mascot with his face or his famous quotes. Of course he will be very present on social media : He will have a personal facebook page where he would share all his thoughts where viewers can comment, Have a twitter account #douchebagNate and you can follow him on instagram and all sorts of social platforms.
There will even be real "Douchy Nate" parties on campus for all to attend and have a good time.

The link to sustainability at U.C seems quite obvious : Everybody would either make fun of Nate, or hate him even, but it would be clear to all that Nate's attitude is NOT the right way to act. Students would realize how some people are totally insensitive and closed-minded for sustainability and future generations, they would be more careful about their own attitudes on campus.
Plus, on some episodes, Nate would have to find new technologies and design for a more sustainable building and the viewers would learn things through that. We thought of a different approach to inspire sustainability than just sustainable driven ideas !

So basically, it's funny, it's constructive and every student on campus would definitely be a fan of Douchebag Nate !

Week 7

Tutorial - Experimentation

I have been quite sure about the idea I would develop for my project by now so when this tutorial was about making prototypes and taking pictures to finalize our ideas, I was pretty sure where to go. The Architecture rooms in building 09.
It has been a few weeks now and my story to inspire sustainability at UC was forming clearly in my mind. My character would be an architect student.
So I went to take some pictures and draw what I was thinking would look like the character in my story that I decided to call : Douchebag Nate.

I try to get some inspiration by going to the architecture workshops and taking some pictures...

 Architecture Class building 07

Architecture Workshop - Building 07


































These pictures gave me a idea of how my character would look like :
(Please do not make fun of my crappy drawing skills)

(Don't mind the left page)

















Now that we had our inspirations and our drawings, we had to define the two main medias our character would be using. Douchebag Nate would definitely use Facebook and the Internet.