Written on Sunday, March 23, 2014 by Unknown
Most thesis/theses require a literature review. This is when you look for readings that are relevant to your project and then write a paper about your findings. You do not add any new information. Or at least, this is what I have been told, as I've never actually needed to do one before.
So maybe I should make mine more fun? I mean, this isn't a traditional thesis, and my posts certainly aren't in standard paper format. But I still need to do something similar to a lit review. Maybe mine will just have more pictures? I'm still working on the finer details.
One thing that is both a blessing and a curse is the major lack of literature on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It is a blessing because it gives me more freedom to come up with my own ideas, and it is a curse because it gives me more freedom than I actually need. A the moment I'm feeling more of the effects of the curse half.
"Lack of literature? What are you talking about? I've read tons of articles about LBD."
Yes, there are plenty of reviews and blog posts out there, but technically those aren't the sources I'm supposed to be relying on. I need some books or peer reviewed academic journals. And unfortunately, not enough people have recognized the genius that is LBD yet. I am positive that they will one day, but as of this post there really isn't much for me to use.
When I can find them, I will use articles directly about LBD, but in the mean time I will focus on works about transmedia and other similar projects.
Time to investigate.
Jeez that camera is huge.
-Danny
"A long time ago, we used to be friends but I haven't thought of you lately at all. If ever again a greeting I send to you, short and sweet to the soul I intend. Ah ah ah ahh ahh. Ah ah ah ahh ahh..."
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Written on Monday, March 10, 2014 by Unknown
Having a thesis blog is really cool. And very exciting because it's new and different. I love it.
Legendary, huh? Well then. I guess I need one more gif to round this out...
BAM. Blogging. It's legen-waitforit-dary.
But there are some occasional drawbacks.
One drawback is the fact that I do not write sections and then turn in draft after draft to my advisor for editing/revising until it is perfect. I just write it, post it, and hope I don't screw up. That isn't to say I don't edit after I hit "Publish," but I can't make any huge changes without completely changing a post, which kind of defeats the purpose of it being available instantaneously. So I only edit for clarity and accuracy, and no changes are that huge or noticeable to anyone other than myself.
So what does this have to do with my analysis section? A lot actually. Because I can't turn in drafts, I will have to work out a lot of this online. This means that not all of my posts will be perfect and sometimes it could just be me being confused about stuff. Like right now. But the only way to reach any kind of conclusion is to ask a lot of questions.
First question: How do I analyze transmedia that is all over the place? (Actually, how do I analyze transmedia at all?)
This is a rhetoric thesis so I need to be looking at things as a rhetorical critic. My advisor suggested the concept of kernels and satellites. I was somewhat familiar with this concept already, but after reading an article called Re(de)fining Narrative Events: Examining Television and Narrative Structure (see Bibliography for citation), I decided I liked the concept a lot and wanted to use it. For those who have no idea what kernels and satellites are, I made a video. But if you won't click that then here is the most basic definition I can give. Kernels are the parts of a story that move it along, and the story wouldn't make sense if you removed them. Satellites are the parts of the story that add dimension, but can be removed while the story stays intact. Okay? Okay.
And that is all great. A little vague, but the article I read adds more specific criteria which makes it easier to identify kernel and satellite scenes (which they call The Scene Function Model). But this theory is meant for television. Not for a webseries that incorporates social media. How the hell do I categorize what is and is not important and why, when there are waaaaay too many outlets to look at? I was making a timeline (but luckily I found this better one) and I found that I could look at the show in a variety of different ways. What if Lizzie's videos are the kernel of the series and the spin-offs (i.e. Lydia, Maria, Domino) are all satellites? Or maybe only some of Lizzie's videos are kernels. Or maybe the videos are all kernels and the extra stuff (twitter, facebook, pinterest) is all satellites. What do I separate? Do I separate? What do I look at? What is important? There are just too many factors. I can barely keep any of it straight.
This leads me to my second question...
To book or not to book?
Continued in part 2.
-Danny
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Written on Wednesday, February 05, 2014 by Unknown
A show would be nothing without the people behind the scenes. Maybe you'll never see their faces or know their names, but they are just as important as the the people on camera.
A prime example of this is the recurring joke, "Who the eff is Hank?" A first reaction might be, "What the eff does that mean?" Hank Green, co-creator of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD), is, as previously stated, one half of the duo known as the vlogbrothers. John Green is the other, more famous half. At the beginning of each video both brothers greet each other. And in the comments section of John's videos, people frequently post "Who the eff is Hank?" This has occurred so often that John (and even occasionally Hank himself) has taken to answering this question in a myriad of ways, as can be seen here...
The point of all this is that Hank is responsible for just as much of the Vlogbrothers as John, but the fan's of John's books have no idea who Hank is and are only interested in John's videos.
The same goes for almost all creators. It doesn't matter if they are responsible for most or even all of what you are seeing, no one cares.
But today, I care and I will be providing a brief background on the team behind LBD.
First and foremost, let's list them off. Lists are always good. This comes directly from the official website.
Le team:
Hank Green – Co-Creator, Executive Producer, Editor, Post Supervisor
Bernie Su – Co-Creator, Executive Producer, Director, Head Writer, Show-runner
Stuart Davis – Assistant Director
Jason Raswant – Cinematographer
Alexandra Edwards – Transmedia Editor
Rachel Kiley – Writer
Anne Toole – Writer
Katie Moest – Production Designer
Adam Levermore – Graphic Designer
Heather Begley – Makeup Artist
Michael Aranda – Composer, Editor
Sam Mollo – Editor
Hank has already been mentioned and discussed ad nauseam and will likely be continuously brought up in the future. So I won't be discussing him any further in this particular post.
For the sake of length I have a second post about the remainder of the team, as I can only fit one more in here.
So lets turn to Bernie Su.
Co-creator, show-runner, head writer, I mean just look at all of those titles. Seriously, this man is involved in almost everything that goes on during the production of the show. It is relatively safe to assume that all decisions must go through Bernie. This man probably deserves a very long post dedicated to him, but for now I will just go over the basics.
Why Bernie is the god of scripted web shows, take one...
Maybe I should make another list? Might as well. Just like Lydia's but much less mean.
1. He co-created LBD. This should also be all of the other reasons, but I won't go there.
2. Pre-Lizzie, Bernie also created and wrote a few other web shows, one of which is called Compulsions. This particular series is the exact opposite of Lizzie. Craig Frank plays the lead (and yes, he is also on LBD so there is a small connection there) as a man who is a professional sadist. Creepy right? But kind of addicting. The show was nominated for four Streamys and won two. It also won four Indie Soap Awards our of 11 nominations and five Stay Tuned TV awards. So basically, this guy knows what he's doing. LBD won an Emmy. Seriously.
3. Bernie tumbles. About EVERYTHING. You have a question? He probably wrote a post about it. Want to know why they changed Charles Bingley's name to Bing Lee? He wrote about it. Want to know why Darcy won't ever vlog? He wrote about it. And he doesn't just write about the show (or any other show he's doing at he time). Bernie gives advice about promoting a web show and writing episodic themes. Like I said, he tumbles (and blogs) about everything you may ever want to know from him.
4. If he doesn't have an immediate answer via blog, Bernie is well connected through social media and you can probably get a hold of him somehow.
5. Speaking of which, he does epically long live video chats with fans. Some of them even top four hours. That is true dedication.
6. He isn't leaving any time soon (hopefully I didn't just jinx that). Bernie was also the head of Welcome to Sanditon and is currently running Emma Approved, two other Pemberley Digital Jane Austen spin-off web shows. And yes, Pemberley Digital is actually a company based on the fake one created for LBD.
Okay, this is getting long so I shall continue with Bernie another day. But this is a great start to a potentially long list. Oh, and here's his face courtesy of his current tumblr and twitter profile pictures:
-Danny
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Written on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 by Unknown
At the moment this blog is going to be used as a live, interactive version of an undergraduate senior thesis project. The idea is that it will incorporate transmedia elements and be immersive in a way that a normal typed and printed thesis can't be. It is an experiment, and hopefully one that might work. Feedback is always welcome.
Edit: To clarify, the thesis is the blog. All posts pertaining to the thesis are cataloged here. This has never been done before (at least at my school) so we are making things up as we go along. Any radical changes will be publicly addressed in order to avoid confusion.
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Written on Friday, December 20, 2013 by Unknown
Today I spoke with my thesis advisor via the telephone. She's also my regular advisor. And maybe also my irregular advisor? Hmm...
We spoke about how we need to find a way to approach the transmedia aspect of my thesis. And guess what! We got nowhere. Surprise, surprise. All we discovered is that we need to figure it out. Which is something we both already knew. So maybe the phone call was a tad redundant? But still, it was necessary.
Here are some thoughts so far...
1. Blog
I've already preemptively started that part just in case. This may end up being totally useless, or a very important aspect of my thesis. Who knows. Her thoughts were "Well you don't want to blog about how you're sitting in the library writing and annotated bibliography and then linking it in." But actually, if I can manage to do that in an interesting manner, then I don't see why not? Although, I see her point. That's not really a help to my (currently lacking) argument.
2. Video Essay
This one is both too easy and too difficult. Yes, I can do what a friend of mine did and make my history chapter into a video essay or something, but that's too easy. And also too hard, because it is incredibly time consuming. And would it really help me or just add some possibly unnecessary flashiness? That is yet to be seen.
3. Web Show
Even more difficult. Because I need so many things. 1. An idea for the show; 2. Possible cast and crew because I can't do it all by myself; 3. Lots of time to write, direct, edit, etc.; 4. Actual skill and preferably some experience too; 5. A way for it to tie into the thesis in a this-supports-my-argument kind of way rather than a this-was-really-cool-and-also-useless-but-I-did-it-because-I-like-web-series kind of way.
4. Game
Haha, no.
5. Something Else?
Like what? Help me out here! I have no ideas.
And then after I make a decision on what to do, we need to set a schedule. This needs to be done by this time and so on. I'm not very good about doing tons of homework in general, so if I divide it up into small pieces and then meet with my advisor every week for her to check on it then I'll actually do it and do it well. Yes, I know I'm in college but sometimes you need to be treated like a 5th grader in order to get things done properly. It will help, is all I'm saying.
After the phone call I also looked into some other thesis online. They look very long (as mine will also be) so that will take some time to go though. I also found a blog by another person who did a transmedia-esque thesis so that was promising. I'll go through it and see what kinds of things they did that might work for me too. Don't worry, I won't steal their ideas. And I'll cite them if I need to.
Finally we discussed the almighty transmedia god Henry Jenkins. He is a fantastic writer and professor (well I've never had him, but it would be cool if I did!) who is well-known in the world of academia and on le interwebs as the ultimate transmedia guru. Ok, he's probably not as fabulous as I'm making him out to be, but he will be SUPER useful for my thesis so I'm going to exaggerate a bit. I have one of his books and am about to order another, I've perused his blog a bit, and most importantly he published his class syllabus in an academic journal which was very, very useful to me. He discussed some assignments that he had his students do that look very promising. More on that later. Or you can just look it up yourself (maybe? it is in a journal and I needed to use my magical school website to get access to it. but he tends to put a lot of this stuff on his blog "Confessions of an Aca-Fan" too.).
Time to go, but I once again accept any and all suggestions from the world. Reading suggestions too. I have a handful of books and articles already but I can always use more.
Oh, side-note, one of my main artifacts (if I chose to go this route) will likely be my favorite webseries The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It is a prime example of transmedia in action. I highly recommend it to everyone.
-Danny
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