NCLC375: Writing for Multimedia
Assignments Fall 2003

Mini-Assignment #1: News Story

The Assignment
To write a 250 - 300 word news story based on ONE of the two scenarios included below.

Objectives of the assignment:

• to judge how to present a story to your chosen audience
  
• to practice writing a gripping lead that will grab your readers' interest
  
• to choose the most evocative and newsworthy aspects of the story for emphasis
  
• to use precise, relevant detail to convey your story to your chosen audience
  
• to create closure for your reader at the end of the story

What you need to do

1) Here are two scenarios from which you may choose the subject matter for your story. Choose ONE.

Scenario A: The Mountain Lion Story
(from the Writing Across the Media web site:
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/mediawriting/ch6/assign.htm)

The people involved are Troy and Robin Smith and Chuck and Kathleen Jones, all of San Francisco, Calif. The location is a remote cabin near DOS Rios in Mendocino County in northern California. The incident is a mountain lion attack.

Troy Smith's thumb is bitten off by a mountain lion or cougar. He was treated and released from Frank Howard Memorial Hospital, as was Kathleen Jones. The cat bit her on the left forearm.

The animal is dead. The Smiths and Jones' husband managed to subdue the cat and Mrs. Smith stabbed it.

The four people are awakened when the Smith's collie started barking about 4:30 a.m. today. All four go outside with weapons — a shovel, hatchet, kitchen knife and a length of lead pipe — and the cougar runs under the cabin. The collie has several bites on his muzzle — none serious. The four then build a fire to keep warm. While they are standing next to it, the cougar emerges from under the cabin and lunges at Kathleen Jones. Then the Smiths and Jones' husband jump the cat and Mrs. Smith stabs it to death with a kitchen knife. The California Department of Natural Resources (DNR) takes the carcass of the female mountain lion to Sacramento for an autopsy, to check for rabies.

Robin Smith has this to say in an interview: "We were having a wilderness weekend. We just love the country. There are such rugged foothills and mysterious creek beds. It's like the Old West out here. I thought the cougar killed my dog. I was stabbing him like it did. I'm just glad we're alive because it was a close call. That cat was big, it was strong and it was aggressive."

The DNR reports another encounter with a mountain lion four months earlier. This one happened near Placerville, Calif., on a frequently used hiking trail. A jogger, Barbara Schoener, was attacked and killed by the cougar. It ate part of her body. Authorities later tracked down and killed the 80-pound cat.

Scenario 2: Kidnapped Child
(adapted from The Missouri Group, Telling the Story: Writing for Print, Broadcast and Online Media (Boston & New York, 2001), p.134)

A seven-year-old boy, Chris Howard, missing for three years, has just been found in the house of his maternal grandmother. A neighbor recognized the child's picture after it was shown at the end of the NBC movie, Adam: The Song Continues and called the police.

The boy was found in Brick Township, NJ. He had been living in Alabama with his father, Joel Harrison, when he was kidnapped. Harrison had been awarded custody of the boy when he and his wife divorced, on the grounds that his wife was, at the time, an unfit parent. Father and son were reunited yesterday under the auspices of a local church. They will soon be joined by Harrison's parents, Jane and Peter Howard, of Miami, Florida.

Harrison gave up his job as a clerk in the state government soon after the kidnapping to search for the boy. He contacted local and state representatives regularly and posted thousands of fliers throughout the state. The appearance of the boy's photograph on a brief segment of true crime show, Inside Investigation, brought the story to the attention of NBC reporter, Even Howard.

Howard said, "Harrison was so dedicated to finding his child, so distraught, even a year after the kidnapping, that I couldn't help becoming interested in his story. He suspected right from the beginning that his former wife had snatched the boy and these types of spousal kidnappings are growing so common in the US now, I wanted to cover the story."

The story was aired first on a news magazine show, and was then developed into a full-length TV movie.

The father has nothing to say to the public or the press, but a spokesman for Harrison and his family said, "Joel Harrison and his family want to thank the police and the journalists at NBC who helped them find Chris." Harrison also pledged that he would maintain Chris' contact with his mother and his maternal grandmother. According to his spokesman, he said that he did not wish to put his ex-wife through the anguish he had suffered.

Police arrested the boy's mother, Ellen Lynn Conner. She faces charges of kidnapping and interference with a custody warrant in Alabama.

2) Now choose a text news publication for which you would like to write your news story. You may pick anything from a student newspaper like Broadside to one of the major newspapers like The New York Times. Or you might choose a local newspaper in the region where your story takes place. The primary way of conveying information must be through print text, and you must include your choice of publication in your assignment.

3) Both stories include references to wider stories covered quite extensively in the US Press over the last few years: the increasing number of mountain lion attacks in California and the incidence of child kidnappings in disputed custody cases. You should to undertake a little research on the wider story to place your specific story in context (use the Lexis-Nexis (http://library.gmu.edu/databases) database for speedy research). A brief background scene-setter can offer more information, and thus more points of entry, to your reader.

4) You should write as if the story were breaking for the evening deadline, and will appear in the next morning's paper.

5) Include with your assignment an additional two paragraphs which either:
a) analyze the competencies you used most in this assignment (and why you used them)
or
b) analyze the competency (or competencies) which you will need to develop more thoroughly to complete successfully short writing assignments

250 - 300 words (not less and not more)

Mini-Assignment #2: Audio Script

The Assignment
To write a five-minute audio feature for a general interest audience aged 20 - 45 based on one of the interviews linked below. Although this assignment asks you only to integrate commentary and interview material, it still practices valuable skills for enlivening multimedia, particularly informational and educational multimedia, with the spoken word.

On almost all occasions when you need to use the spoken word, you will be integrating those words with other, complementary elements (other sound, images, texts, animations, etc.). This assignment should help you to balance spoken word that carries a narrative line (via a narrator or commentator) with ancillary material that enriches the spoken work.

Objectives of the assignment:

• to apply the basic principles of news writing in a new medium
• to practice writing for the voice
• to understand the function of commentary and interview raw material within an audio feature
• to learn to write into and out of interview material to blend commentary and raw material into a compelling story
• to use precise, relevant detail to convey your story to your chosen audience
• to create closure for your reader at the end of the story

What you need to do

1) Choose the subject of your feature after reading/listening to the interviews linked below.

2) Decide on the theme you are going to follow in the feature (you don't have time to include everything your subject discussed in such a short piece so you must concentrate on one angle ). Then identify your hook, the one idea that will capture your audience's attention and drag it into your report. Note your theme and your hook before you begin your script.

3) Using the traditional radio script format we discussed in class, write your script as if your feature were going to be broadcast on either NPR's All Things Considered or on a commercial radio station that carries shorter news broadcasts and bulletins.

4) Write the script for your own voice, as if you were going to be the reporter/commentator recording it for transmission.

5) Include with your assignment two paragraphs in which you identify which competencies you applied to the execution of this assignment. Why were those competencies important? To what extent did this assignment improve your fluency in a particular competency?

Potential subjects

Mini-Assignment #3: Video Script

The Assignment
To write a short video script (no more than 6 to 7 minutes), using the standard two-column documentary scripting format, in which you integrate at least two voices (one of these voices may be a conventional TV commentary voice telling the story), moving pictures, sound and music.

The assignment begs for two kinds of sparkling writing: the writing (often in abbreviated form) that contextualizes the content (the scripting conventions), and the content itself. As a reader, I should be able to visualize clearly from your script the final product that will be realized from your writing.

I'll thus be looking for:-

a) succinct but dramatic descriptive writing as you use location/scene descriptions, shot descriptions, descriptions of music, etc.
b) succinct but dramatic writing as you 'tell the story' in your script itself

Good Luck!

Objectives of the assignment:

• to understand the relationship between text and moving pictures
• to integrate the clear, concise, dramatic writing already practiced with moving pictures
• to gain command of standard scripting formats for video/screen drama prior to adapting them to the scripting of interactive multimedia
• to understand basic narrative trajectory: hook, story development & closure

What you need to do

You should adhere to the two-column documentary script format and control the length of your assignment very carefully. You must meet time and length limits precisely to write successfully to commission, or to meet your specific assignment within a multi-author project.

Err on the side of too much material initially rather than too little: most writers and script editors (often a role taken by the producer, executive producer or director) find it much easier to cut extra material tha to generate new material to pad a thin script.

Scenario

You will find the raw material for the scenario on the disc that accompanies Writing for Multimedia and the Web. You should follow the link to Chapter 21, and then click on the segment entitled, "Video: The Making of The 11th Hour." You will find seven segments of video.

Your task (I feel as if I'm in Mission Impossible) is to write a five-minute video script detailing (in whatever way you wish) the making of The 11th Hour. You may choose your own target audience (from MTV to boring old national news, broadcast or online). Just make sure to include the target audience at the top of the first page.

Remember to use the two-column documentary script format we discussed in class. You may use anything from the interviews and any of the shots in the video segments on the CD-ROM. You may also imagine other shots that you would like to use in creating your script (as long as the new shots don't cover more than 10% of your script).

You may add music, special effects, graphics, etc., always bearing in mind that such additions should be purposeful:

• establishing your personal creative approach to the story
• suggesting a mood or an attitude of mind
• adding specific meaning to that provided by the video, interviews and commentary

Please include all interview comments in full. And don't forget to include additional two paragraphs tracking your use of the competencies.

Some Tips
As with the radio script, try to choose a theme on which you can concentrate throughout the item. And try to find a theme that imparts a little tension to the item, so that it isn't just a straight narration of 'what happened' (although keeping straight exactly what happened is always important). Are there uncertainties that need to be overcome? Are there conflicts that need to be resolved? Is there an obstacle that has to be overcome? And so on...

Multimedia Script #1: Informational Multimedia (assignment still in draft form)

The Assignment
To write a script for a short informational multimedia production in which your reader/viewer/actor experiences meaningful interaction and reaches an objective. You may choose any subject you like for your script. No more prescribed scenarios!

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 should use the two-column script format. List relevant examples here of variations

Some Tips
As this assignment is worth 15% of your final grade, you need to write slightly more than the five pages or so of the video script. As every minute of production time requires quite extensive writing, please choose to inform or teach your reader/viewer/actor about a relatively small, self-contained object or process.

You could select something as simple as interactive instructions for making toast or operating a new version of an ATM or changing a car tire (please, someone help me with this one) or creating an interactive 'Help' section for a tricky computer operation.

Keep the objective simple, and pour your inventiveness into your interactive enactment of the task. Here's the essential reference checklist for this assignment:-

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.

Group Multimedia Project

The Assignment
You should create collaboratively a multimedia production which each group will present to the remainder of the class (as critical audience) at the end of the semester.

You may create any type of multimedia presentation you wish, but its genre (news, information, interactive fiction, narrative multimedia, instructional multimedia, advertising, game, etc.), target audience and purpose must be clear.

Part of this assignment is your ability to choose collectively a project that your group can execute within the time available this semester and in your respective schedules.

I note below two options you may follow:-

• If you have the time and expertise within your group, you may script your complete multimedia production. This option suits best a clear, coherent, relatively short, self-contained production.
• Some multimedia productions require a time commitment far beyond the resources of this class. In this case, you may submit a proposal and treatment for the entire production, but submit a script for only a segment of the production. The segment you write, though, should fulfill all the requirements of the assignment. This option might work best if you want to develop a complex narrative multimedia game, for example.

As the subject matter and style of the group project are so open, you may wish to develop, as a group, a project that will add to your résumé or contribute to a 'show reel' of your work.

Remember, too, that with planning, you may be able to merge this assignment with an assignment for a multimedia production class. For example, you might script the project in this class and execute it in another class.

Objectives of the assignment:

• to practice working collaboratively to develop a coherent production
• to execute with confidence the multiple writing tasks (both in communicating with your client (me) and internally within your group) required in a multimedia production
• to script meaningful interactivity into your production
• to learn from each other new concepts, new perspectives and new skills

Dates and Parameters

Proposal
The proposal constitutes your 'pitch' to me as a potential client. You should convince me through your analysis of your target audience and potential competitors, and your evocation of the originality and dynamism of your project that I should give your endeavors the green light.
Length: one single-spaced page, or two double-spaced pages (no more and no less!)

Treatment
The treatment is your detailed description of your project, outlining 'story' trajectory, the development of the 'story,' the types and levels of interactivity, the goals of the production and its payoffs. (See the models in the Writing for Multimedia.) Length: at least five double-spaced pages

Script
Not many requirements here. You should use a relevant script format for your goal. Remember, however, that scripting takes much longer than the writing of prose or drama, although you often write far fewer words. Start early and exchange texts often.
Length: as long as it takes

Presentation (Exam. Day)
In your hands!

Grading
25% of your individual grade for this project comes from your group members' evaluation of your contribution to the project. It is thus quite possible for the group project to receive one grade and for individual members within the group to receive different grades.