The story in 12 steps

On Monday we started with some video clips on editing. The message was that editing is what makes or brakes a video. It is the editing which gives a movie a certain atmosphere. An example was the Americans taking down the statue of Saddam Hussein. Due to the close-up shots of cheering people, the viewer perceives that the Iraqi people are very happy with this "act of liberation". When wide-angle shots would have been used for this news item instead, the viewer would have gotten a totally different impression, because most of the people watching the action weren't cheering at all, just watching silently. This proves how strong editing is, and how big the influence of the media is.

In the afternoon we had to present our story in a 12-step format, our version can be found here. This provided everybody with a different way of looking at their own story and theme. We all learned a lot from the way the different groups tackled the assignment, as well as how they presented themselves. One group had one or two members read from the computer screen, while the others just stood there. Another group just told their story, without really sticking to the 12-step format. Some groups had all people telling some steps, while others even used a powerpoint presentation to bring their ideas across. We decided to let everyone in the group present a few steps, with Isa introducing our group and the characters in the story. We decided against using a powerpoint presentation, because we didn't have enough time to create a suitable presentation, and Eliens had told us that he thought it wasn't really necessary to use one anyway.

Most groups created a linear story especially for the 12-step format, based on their theme. We, on the other hand, used our story as a basis for this format and added some things where necessary. This resulted in some steps of the 12-step format being rather vague, because the actual end result (the interactive video) isn't linear, as opposed to the 12-step format. For example, the 7th step, approach to inmost cave, was the 1st choice in our interactive video. When we got comments on the fact that we didn't come up with a linear story for the 12-step format, but used our interactive video as a basis instead, Eliens remarked that if someone was to judge whether we completed the assignment satisfactorily or not, it would be him, and he said that our approach was also OK. He also liked the fact that we combined the virtual world (farmville) with the real world (the server of farmville is located in the park).

This example proves that the Creative Technology is set up in a way that doesn't limit people in the way they cope with the provided assignments, but instead stimulates them to approach a problem in their own way. The result of this is that everyone will handle an assignment in a different way, giving material for a discussion on which way works best, and what can be learned from others.