Project B Rationale

For project B i had two choices to choose from. Either a datavisualisation or a google maps geo-narrative. I chose the geo-narrative because i instantly had an idea which i thought i could pull off. My idea was to retell the popular story of The Lord of the Rings. I created a map which followed many of the characters through this tale and it showed their paths they took and major events they were involved in. I started off to draw the lines indicating the paths they took to each point and placed markers for important events. At first i thought that this was going to take no time at all but in the end it was a long process. On each marker I wrote part of the story to keep the flow of the story going and explain many things that were going on.
As a main twist of the story i decided to make my version a parody of the original Lord of the Rings. I chose to write the story using modern elements of our society and original elements of the fictional story to hopefully create some humour.
I decided I would use Canberra and the setting for Middle Earth and place the main areas in the story around suburbs and regions of Canberra to try and correspond with the real location in the original story. I also set Mordor as the area of Queanbeyan as another effort to create humour to some.
I decided to take all the images myself to keep consistency between them. I also used photoshop to change the appearance of the pictures to look more like it was out of a book or concept art of a movie.
For example this one:

I also did the same kind of this for the videos to make it look like sketches of a proposal video before it was created for real. The images do however look much better seen as a larger image so i decided to make a link in the description of the geo-narrative to my flickr where the images can be viewed separately. I also chose to include some videos in to make the feel more realistic and also make a parody of some of the scenes which i found amusing.

There were many problems that i encountered during the production of this project. As i needed lots of actors for the images and videos i needed to get them together all at once. This proved very difficult as many of them were either working or at uni or doing assignments. The only day i had to get as many pictures as I could was on a sunday which was also mothers day. So people would come round and others would leave and it was a very frustrating day. At first i wanted to go to each location to take the pictures to make them more realistic to the location but this proved impossible due to these problems. I was a bit skeptical about running around parks on mothers day with an axe, katana and a bow. I did however manage to go to the exact location of some of the pictures and the others i had to take the pictures in a way where you couldn't tell where it was taken. Most of the videos were rushed because of not enough time with the actors, low battery or the sun was going down.
If i had more time or did this assignment again i would definitely organise my time better with my actors. I would also start much earlier so i could get the pictures i wanted without any dilemmas. I would also write a script for the videos as some of the actors couldn't act very well and kept forgetting their lines. One of the videos however was shot at night and looked terrible with the effect on so i decided to leave it as normal so people could actually understand what was going on.
To promote networking through my story i decided to make links under some of the pictures under the title of Hobbit Hints. In this section i would create a link to something related in the picture or story whether it advertises Subway or new cars. I also linked my blog to the geo-narrative in hope to draw more traffic through it or if people were wondering why i created this story.

After using google maps for this assignment i found it to be a pretty good source of networked media. On it i learn how to upload images and videos. Many people would probably stumble upon my assignment while looking for things through Canberra. You can also make it so pictures other people have taken have appeared in Canberra. It was easy enough to use too but on a slow computer it was a bit tedious because of it lagging. The videos i used were embedded off youtube so that is also another piece of networking included in the story. However a problem i had and am still having was that uploading videos onto youtube took forever. Some of them may not even be ready before this is due which is very frustrating. I know one is currently working but its up to technology now whether it will be ready in time not me. I have spent a great deal of my week uploading things its ridiculous so technology isn't exactly on my side at the moment. The video i put on it just before decided to delete itself so im hoping it will work when it needs to. Even all the images for my flickr set will take a while because of this slow internet. However i will make sure it all gets up there eventually to complete the story. I think my geo-narrative might be a little different from others because i included videos (or they are still processing) and i chose to do a large amount of characters and follow each of their paths.

After all this i found this assignment rather amusing and enjoyable to do. Being able to take pictures and make a parody about something with your friends and laughing half the time beats essays on politics or the environment. If i had more time i probably would have made this story longer and more in depth with other parts of the movie that i wanted to make my own version of. Even myself and my friends want to do a serious remake which goes for over half an hour.

The link to my geo-narrative is here - The Lord of the Rings Parody