Schedule | Syllabus | Projects | Moodle | Handouts and Assignments | Email Professor

Dramatic Modularity Project

In this project, you will create a complex character and a sense of tension and story using multple computer/software interfaces as a stage.

(Note that you can use a character from a book, movie, TV series, etc., as long as your script's situation, monologue, and presentation are original)

Consider this example of dramatic modularity: You Suck at Photoshop, Episode 1: Distort, Warp, and Layer Effects.

Final Products

For credit on this project, you will

Details will be provided on the course schedule.

Purpose and Genre

Imagine a fictional character (who is not you) recording a screencast video with voiceover audio on a computer for some purpose (also a fiction): for example,

The character's apparent purpose might be public, professional, avocational, political, civic, or personal. This purpose is then created in a particular genre of screencast (indicated in the list above in the bolded terms).

Your Purpose: Create a Complex Character and a Sense of Story

As your character talks, clicks, navigates, points, and/or plays through software and documents in the screencast video, have the character unintentionally reveal more about the situation and him/herself than the character intends or realizes.

In the gap between the ostensible purpose and what is unintentionally revealed lies your story and character.

Make your character complex, individalized, or "round": see Jerome Stern's model of a character's "position" to see more on making a complex character and how character relates to the sense of story.

How the Character and Story are Revealed

This story is revealed NOT through direct statements, confessions, or obvious mistakes, but through the implications of what is shown:

It is not necessary to have your character try to lie or deceive. You only want to make your character's words and what is seen in the video to suggest more than what is stated or intended.

Creating and controling that extra dimension of understandings and effects experienced by your viewer is the art of telling a story in the Dramatic Modularity screencast.

The techniques used in this piece are drawn from traditional literary forms such as the dramatic monologue or the unreliable narrator as taught in Jerome Stern's creative-writing exercise "Facade."

Process

  1. Write the script on paper

  2. Set up your computer with the needed documents and software, changing the computer's wallpaper, etc. as appropriate

  3. Record the screencast with no audio. The screencast may be recorded and saved in multiple files or takes.

  4. Download and save the screencast(s) as an .mp4 file(s)

  5. Revise the script to take advantage of any serendipitous developments that you see in the screencast recording

  6. Record the audio portions in Audacity, timed to the video. The audio may be recorded in several different takes or files.

  7. Use iMovie to edit together the audio and video files into an apparently seamless one-take performance

  8. Export the iMovie as an mp4 file

 

Resources