Multimedia Script #2: Narrative Multimedia
 

The Assignment

To write a script for a short narrative multimedia production in which your reader/viewer/actor experiences meaningful interaction Or you may outline a larger narrative production, and script a discrete, coherent section of it (c. 6 - 8 pages). You may choose any subject you like for your script.

You should integrate at least four of the following elements:

  • sound (for example, sound effects, music, spoken word),
  • moving and/or still pictures
  • text
  • graphics
  • animation

You may integrate any additional elements that you choose.

You must write a narrative, fiction or non-fiction, of whatever genre (for example, mystery, love story, shoot 'em up, thriller, comedy, melodrama, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) you choose.

Or you might want to think of adapting TV formats (soap opera, sit-com, cop show, ensemble drama like ER, etc.) to an interactive narrative format, or create an interactive version of one of your favorite shows.

Best of all, create a new genre or a form of narrative we've never before encountered.

Be as inventive as you like

Objectives of the assignment:

  • to blend coherently and constructively multiple media elements
  • to undertake the construction of interactive narrative plots
  • to maintain high-quality, active, precise writing in both the descriptive and active elements of your script
  • to practice the use of the single-column screenplay scripting format and adapt it to the scripting of interactive informational multimedia
  • to continue your practice of the scripting of reader/viewer/actor interaction

Some Tips

1) Define your target audience at the beginning of your script.

2) You need a plot - remember our discussion of the basic styles of conflict and the shape of individual narratives building to a climax. In narrative's ability to arouse in us the constant question, "What next?" and to subvert dramatically our expectations (based on our reading of the plot so far, on our expectations of a particular genre, for example) of what will happen next lies its fundamental power.

3) Narrative multimedia is about pleasure, even if those pleasures have educational or developmental by-products. Think about the pleasures of:

  • anticipation
  • unpredictability
  • fear enjoyed in safety
  • voyeurism
  • marveling at beauty
  • shock
  • being surprised by emotion, etc.

Imagine ways in which you can inject such multiple pleasures into your own production.