It is safe to say that this semester has been quite a departure from what everyone is used to, which is probably why I am so surprised that my Digital Artefact has managed to stay vaguely on tack. And when I say ‘vaguely’, that’s not an exaggeration – whilst the main idea has remained constant, the specifics of the project have changed a lot over the past weeks and months.
What started off as an attempt to write and produce a fictional podcast series set in the future with a friend, over the semester turned into a wider effort to focus on my writing and build my portfolio. This involved continuing with the research and writing of the original Digital Artefact but expanding to allow time for other writing projects I have been working on. Essentially the focus moved from producing a piece of work that will help develop my skills and career into the future, and to developing multiple pieces with the same aim.
The focus of BCM325 Future Cultures is future studies and is reflected in the Digital Artefact. As I am looking to start my career in film and television, I need to focus on producing portfolios. Whilst my film portfolio is good, my writing portfolio is significantly lacking. As such, my Digital Artefact sought to address the next five years of my future and produce work that will help me achieve my career goals. The subject matter of the main piece of work I produced also sought to address the future, but this time looking into the next 20 to 40 years.
After I had written the beginnings of a script for the podcast, I realised I needed to work on building the world and characters before I could continue with the script. So, following a suggestion from the pitch and beta feedback, I decided to produce a few short blog posts about how I start to develop characters and settings. I ran into a problem after this however, when a new piece of writing I had been working on came to a complete stop and I found myself experiencing complete writers block. Unable to post the writing I needed to have completed, I changed direction slightly and addressed the issue I had run into. Which lead to my third post on suggestions of how to move past roadblocks in writing.
Most of the research I completed for this project revolved around the subject’s focus on Future Cultures, especially for the podcast. This involved spending time reading books such as ‘Putting the Science in Fiction’ by Dan Koboldt, papers such as ‘What Kinds of Writing Have a Future’ by Robert Horn, and of course the lecture material, particularly the Cyberculture Series. Although writing of the script slowed down, the background worldbuilding and research for the blogs about the process still required me to look into the same subjects, so I spent much of my research time looking into possible futures 20 to 40 years from now. More research time was also taken up by reading theory and books on writing, such as ‘Story’ by Robert McKee and ‘Into the Woods’ by John Yorke, which was especially important of building characters and setting.
I think the project actually has good utility in its current structure, especially with the focus on how I develop my writing but will need more consistently delivered content over time to prove this. There are many stories written and posted online, and many blogs on how to write, but I have yet to see one which is focused on a writer simply walking through some of their processes as they work on a project, and I think there is a gap in the market for this kind of approach. Whilst the overall trajectory and somewhat rocky start, make it a project with a few rough edges, given development outside of the confines of a semester, I think this Digital Artefact could prove to be a success.
The Space Between The Sky 