What is this?

Written on Monday, June 02, 2014 by Unknown

Hello there reader!

My name is Danny and you have somehow stumbled upon my senior thesis project.

It's nice to meet you.

Well, since you're here, allow me to explain what you'll find on this blog.

For starters, you may have noticed that all of the posts are in reverse order. This is not unusual for blogs, as people tend to want to read the most recent post first. But if you want to start from the beginning I have listed all relevant posts on this page (which I've also linked to on the right). There is also another "what is this" page on the side as well, but I wanted some kind of introduction on the homepage too.

This thesis is about transmedia and webseries. I had a few goals when I first started. Whether or not I completed them successfully is up to you. In my personal opinion, I think I completed them all to the best of my ability. Especially number six.
1. Explore the topics of transmedia storytelling and web series in a unique way.
2. Write about transmedia while also creating transmedia.
3. Come up with some of my own theories about said topics.
4. Learn and try new things which will hopefully lead to an interesting end result.
5. Embark on the difficult but rewarding task of being the first student at my school to create an entire thesis online that won't ever be bound in printed form (at least not by me). 
6. Have fun!

My artifact for the thesis was the web show The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I am a big fan, and it was a lot of fun to examine.

In general I found that there was not a lot of research already done on these topics, so you'll probably see a lot of posts where I postulate (and ramble a bit) about he implications of transmedia storytelling and web shows. So there is a lot of my own opinion in here and a lot of unanswered questions. Hopefully there will be a time where there will be endless amounts of articles, books, videos, and any other academic work about the topics, but for now I just had to wing it.

I also had to wing a lot of this thesis, because a project like this had never been done before. So my advisor and I had to make up a lot of the rules as we went. In the future, when someone else does a project like this (and I'm sure they will) I hope my time spent as guinea pig no. 1 can be beneficial.

Because this project is online, it is highly likely that links, gifs, memes, and other pieces of media will expire. I will attempt to salvage as much of it as possible (by saving the photos and re-uploading them so they wont go away, for example), but I can't make any promises. They say that once things are on the internet they stay there forever, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they stay in the same place.

Also, due to the unconventional nature of my written work it was not all proofed, graded, and returned to me like everyone else. So there are bound to be spelling and grammatical mistakes, and maybe even some incorrect facts or something. I am doing my best to comb through it all again, but that takes time and I don't always catch my own mistakes. But please, feel free to comment on any post if you find an error and I will correct it as soon as I can.

And yea, I know. I use way to many commas. And I hyperlink too much. So sue me.

Even though my thesis is over and I have graduated, I still want to retain the integrity of this blog so I will be checking it periodically.

I hope you enjoy what you read/see here and that it may inspire some people to do some of their own research and come to some of their own conclusions about transmedia and web shows. I am always interested in what people think about this stuff and I can't wait for new authors to create more literature (and other media!) about it.

Thanks for stopping by!
Feel free to contact me with any questions/comments/concerns/hypotheses/epiphanies/absurdities.
-Danny

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 comments

A Phone Call

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

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 0 comments