Final Thesis Proposal - Anastasia Shepherd

Anastasia Shepherd
IML Final Thesis Proposal

Title: Night Watch

Abstract:
I would like to explore the subject of imagined realities and mysterious memory fragments in disobedience of social constructs in my thesis project. An interactive web-based art piece that combines flash animation with video and traditional animation would be an optimal presentation for the piece. I would like the project to go hand in hand with a film I will be making next year. Here is the synopsis of the film:

A mother walks out on her teenage daughter, taking only a suitcase. She sticks her thumb in the air and is picked up by a car as her daughter watches. Later, the daughter, who works as a night maid in a hotel, is cleaning when she sees the same suitcase. Inside is a cassette tape, which she listens to on her walkman. It tells her to go into a specific room in the hotel. Inside is a group of people watching slides of her mother walking out on her. They turn to her. Suddenly, she has a tray of slides in her hands, and when she puts them in the projector, she is shocked to find that they show pictures of herself, leaving her job and hitchhiking. She turns on the light and the room is empty. Her headphones go back to the music she was listening to before. She walks out of the building, puts her thumb in the air, and is picked up by a car. It brings her to an abandoned lot, where her mother is sitting at a table. She goes and sits down next to her, in the same position they were in right before her mother left.

The film will only have a short segment in the hotel, but I want the interactive project to explore many other themes of the film within the hotel scenario. The guidelines will be similar to this:

You can choose to either watch or participate in what is encountered on the maid’s shift. You can choose to follow routine or stray from responsibility. There will be odd objects or disturbances: If you explore them, the world gets stranger. If you ignore them, things stay the same. The more risks you take, the more you may get in trouble. You have the ability to discover many mysteries.
For each scenario, there will be an obvious or traditional decision (link) to make and a more offbeat or strange, less noticeable decision to make. There are ways to go through the project without a large disturbance of the real, but if the viewers pay close attention and follow a stranger path, more information and more bizarre events will be revealed to them.

Description:
Genre: My project will fuse the interactive and experiential genres to make an interactive art piece that mixes the genres of documentary film, animation, gaming, and expressionistic/symbolic fine arts.

Research Methodology: My primary objective is to research films, art, games, and interactive websites that deal with the same themes that I am interested in, and to use what I have learned from that work to inform my own. Research will not be direct and cited like in a paper, but will have a more intuitive effect on the project.

Delivery Format: A Flash-based interactive website, coded and designed to match the project’s concept.

Project Goals: To encourage the growth of innate curiosity, which is often stifled.
To allow the user/player/viewer to get lost in a world built out of their own decisions.
To show that there are many levels to reality, and everyone has the choice of whether to pursue them or not.

Project Significance: I want the research I do to fit seamlessly into the creative construction of the project. Namely, I do not want this to be a nonfiction account of the creative work of others, but I want it to be a creative work in dialogue with previous creative works, which feels more appropriate to me than dry research. The project will be about the drive to explore the world and one’s own mind, which is the main theme that I have found resonant in so many previous works of art. Through interactivity, I hope to spread that message to the viewer in a more visceral way.

Timeline:
Summer:
- Perfect proposal
- Plan basic design of the site
- Storyboard all scenarios
- Develop a shooting schedule in conjunction with the film’s shooting schedule
- Location scouting
- Develop conceptual relevancy
- Learn Flash, HTML, and CSS

Fall:

August 27 Classes begin.
9/10 – 9/14/07 Proposal confirmation. Meet with advisor to present re-evaluated proposal and plan (timeline) .
- Shoot video and film of scenarios.
- Meet with advisor to determine animation styles.
- Complete as much animation as possible.
- Begin template of the website.
November 26-30 Prototype/Draft Presentation

Spring:

- Design sound for scenarios
- Program the interface design of the website
- Unify the project through editing/arranging
- Final touches (titles, etc.)
March 24-28th Formal Presentation/Paper Due
May 7th – 14th Show
- Look for ways to get the project seen: festivals, galleries, etc.

Budget:

Around $200 dollars for small expenses such as DV tapes, animation materials, domain hosting, an external hard drive, and festival fees. I may also take some community college classes in scripting or Flash this summer, and the tuition for those is less than $90 a course.

Confirmed Advisors:

Dr. Kathy Smith
Chair
John C. Hench
Division of Animation and Digital Arts
(213) 821-1348
kates@usc.edu

Dr. Steve Anderson
Associate Director
Institute for Multimedia Literacy

Presentation and/or Distribution Plans/Venues:
Since it will be a website, it will be accessible to anyone. However, I’d also like to see if I could distribute it as a sister piece with the film I will be making in CTPR 310 in Fall ’07. I would like to submit it to online contests and festivals, as well. I think it would also be a great interactive piece for an art gallery.

Production Resources:
Hardware Needs: An external hard drive, my own laptop and the computers at the IML should be sufficient.
Software Needs: Flash, Final Cut, After Effects, Frame Thief, and various traditional animation media.

Prior Related Work:
I’m currently taking CTAN 448, which is an introduction to traditional animation. I also have experience in building interactive pieces from several classes where I received permission to substitute multimedia projects for papers.

Research Bibliography/Inspiration:
www.99rooms.com
www.samorost.net
The animated films of Jan Svankmajor
The films of David Lynch
Interactive puzzle games such as Myst
The Ambassador Hotel interactive project