Midterm Leitv

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I have two ideas and I can’t seem to be able to choose so I am describing both briefly…

1) Reality TV show controlled by twitter. The audience would send a bunch of twits with suggestions of what they wanted to see the reality stars doing. The reality stars themselves would choose two suggestions from the public  and two twits suggested by the audience would be chosen by the editors as finalists and then the power gets back to the audience that has to vote which of the twits they want to see in action. ((E.g. like I want to see Kim Kardashian eating shit or I want her to attend a symposium on Schopenhauer))

2) Moth on TV – each program would have a theme (eg. troublemakers or struggle or jokes) and there would be content previously prepared with some cool stories  - 2 minutes max each – really well edited and funny. In the mean time the show would encourage the audience to send their personal stories via twitter or 1 minute youtube video and after some curation the editors would play the contributions in the final block and three different people would react to the contributions live: a graffiti artist, a comedian and a therapist. Of course, a super multitask and eclectic host is needed.

Here are the user experience wireframe for both shows…

leitv_userExperience

And I guess I’ll just do the script for one of the shows. The second one it is.

[MOTH-ON-TV SCRIPT]

fade in music intro- video intro – fade out music

Host in the studio:

CAM1 – TAKE COMING FROM ABOVE AND GETTING THE WHOLE STUDIO AND ZOOMING IN REALLY SLOWLY ON THE HOST – “Welcome to the Moth on TV. Today we are talking about betrayal. Now you are going to watch unbelievable stories of people that were stabbed in the back”.

CAM 2 – CLOSE UP - “Some are sad, some are funny, all of them a-ma-zing”.

PLAY VIDEOS 2 MIN EACH OF STORIES PERVIOUSLY AND SMARTLY EDITED

CAM 2 – close up - Host: OMG. If I had made this up you would not believe me, right?! Well, well, right now we want know about your betrayal story.(((www.mothOnTv.com appears on screen scrolling))) You choose the way to tell us. Send us a twitter or a youtube video or a facebook message on our page or skype in during the break and talk to our staff.

CAM 1 – wider angle, showing studio , take get full body figure of people in camera… Host: At the end of the show we will have some experts working on your tale. A graffiti artist, a comedian and a therapist will give their unique take on the matter because by now all of you must have already discover there is just very few ways out in life and they are all represented here – love and laugh and- of course – art!

CAM 3 - mmmmmmmm – So hurry up and share your story with us. Get in our website to check all your options again. I complement you for you braveness in advance. This show is not for pussies man. (((fade in music - announcing the break))) See you in a couple of minutes. You know what is coming… The f. break (((fade out music)))

BREAK

++vignette+++

CAM 1 – CLOSE UP -Host: We are back with the Moth on TV where there is not such a thing as TMI (too much information). (((www.mothOnTv.com appears on screen scrolling))) If you haven’t already go to our website and tell us your story on betrayal. This is just like ass, everyone has one.  At the end of the show we will have the coolest people working, reacting, creating from your words. I am already curious to see what’s coming up.

CAM 3 - Host: If you need some inspiration check out what happened with this people…

PLAY VIDEOS 2 MIN EACH OF STORIES PERVIOUSLY  AND SMARTLY EDITED

CAM 2 – host- Make a comment on what he just saw in one of the stories

CAM 3 – host - Last chance to take it out of your chest. Next we are having our A team here on stage reacting to the story you guys sent us. (((fade in music - announcing the break))) I bet we can add a surprising take on your already outstanding story. If not a graffiti artist, a comedian will leave their mark. If not a comedian a therapist. That is next on MOTH ON TV… (((fade out music)))

BREAK

+++vignette+++

CAM 2- host – As you guys know on MOTH on TV there is no such a thing as over-sharing. You shared and we develop… Here are our three magicians for the day

CAM 3 – graffiti artist / therapist / comedian

??????????????

CAM 1 – host – Next week we will be talking stories about Wisdom. You can already send us you words through twitter, facebook, skype, email. Choose your poison.

Bold people

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I believe our group had a lot of fun trying to put together a 5 minutes live TV show that had SMS interaction. Per se this previous sentence says a lot why we couldn’t deliver our ambitious plans. Our goal was not only to deal with the php stuff and make it happen, but to put together a much more complex scene. Basically, being audacious is what I loved and what I hated about the end result.

Totally loved the fact that we had to think the show all the way through and there was a LOT of cool work in there – visuals, music, intro, commercials, script, cameras, lights, sound, switcher, concept. Living in a time where tech things are much more achievable with less people and less work gives us the impression we can always be in control if we really want to and also that we can do anything we dream of. Beyond that I can say we enjoyed thinking the show conceptually and ideas seemed to come naturally and easily when we got together to discuss next steps and the content of the show.

But there was also a lot of frustration. Matt T. worked his ass off to put together a switcher with the webcams and I felt terrible when we had to go for the “plain” version of ourselves – no streaming, people inside the room. Also, all the awesome contribution of our classmates didn’t make in to the show what – for me- it was our main flaw since the interaction was the very purpose of the exercise.

Not sure why I keep forgetting something so basic in my own field. When it comes to broadcasting there is jut so much preparation and so little (or none) action time!!!! I tend to really underestimate the prep time. Always. Not sure why.

If I had to do it again I would still be dreaming big, but maybe would be working harder during the 2 weeks we had to pull this off. Maybe I would do less brainstorming and would go for the hands-on approach right in the beginning. At the end of the day I believe we were bold people  with not much time on our hands.

TV: how to make it interactive?

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So, I am not a tennis big lover, but I happened to be in front of the TV on sunday and watched the women’s final game. Since it was literally the first tennis game I stopped to watch in my life, as the ball was kicking in the court, I was wondering about the athletes stories until that moment  and I thought they could let some info rolling in some corner of the screen about their path in this championship / interesting numbers etc. I also felt the need to know more about their stories prior to this very day. Besides, I was wondering that those hundred of thousands of people with cameras behind the players could have some interesting footage / picture in a cool angle that the broadcasting cameras could not catch and I would love to give the audience the possibility of witnessing several perspectives. Thus we could put together a “place” where people could submit videos / pics of both players and at some point during a break the TV could bring this info up after some curation. Not only pics or videos from this day, but also material from all of their career that is relevant. In that way we would be engaging people at home and also people in locco, in the court trougout the whole game.

One particular time of this final game that I loved was a “fight” between Serena Williams – one of the finalists –  and the judge after a point was taken away from Serena because she celebrated loudly before the opponent had the chance to hit the ball back or something like that. TV showed over and over the fight and still I couldn’t get it. Wonder if their is anything we could do also to make things more clear…

Just wondering. Overall I found this exercise to think about a Live TV that has room for interactivity really harsh. I can understand how to make an audience have a moderate interactivity by engaging them, but exchanging info is  a whole different mission and I need help to figure it out :-) ))

The partial glimpse

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Response to Jonathan Harris TED Talk

I just love the idea of the partial glimpse. As I was listening to this talk I couldn’t help remembering my own fixation in information brought to me about the world in this form – compact and effective. I started collecting quotes really early on in life. I used to cut them of the magazine adds or headlines with a scissor and glue them on letters to my mom. Then, I started collecting this pieces of magazine pages in a plastic bag for future letters and my drawers got full of years of doing that. Later in life I started buying cards with sentences. That was my first contact with Oscar Wilde, Albert Camus and Shakespeare and I was just thirteen years old.

Quotes are also short little glimpses of a bigger story that you can borrow to fill in your own personal plot. For instance, what most called my attention on the photo Harris found in a street in NY was the sentence written on the back of it – “have fun in whatever you do”. It is kind of universal. And, for me, never seemed to matter that just the idea of liking quotes was cheese. It was and still is like a library for feelings I just don’t have the words. Nowadays I am still inspired and triggered by quotes.

Then, as Harris described how his interests into stories kept transforming the way he delivered the stories, I started thinking about the evolution of my old quote habits (that got smaller but is still on). When I was 18 I started collecting all my family photos and I built several albums with different narratives correlating to the pictures. Most of the times I was very sarcastic and sometimes very loving. They are still in the center table of my mom’s house. She says that the albums are the best gift she have ever received. But, you know, she is my mom… Anyways, I’m sort of proud of them.

Back to Harris now! His other project, I feel fine, is just so poetic and so well executed. The idea of combining so much data, from so many places but yet keeping the personal artifacts is just amazing. By scanning the worlds feelings the program is able to deliver a small scale personal story. For me is a clear a variation of what he started doing after he found Judith’s photo in NY.

Talking about the narrator figure and discussions surrounding the components of stories, I can say I totally identify with the gap he mention that exists between the way we tell stories and the way they happened. We can’t just live highlights in real live and real life has a bunch of overlapping as well. Is pretty incredible how Harris is able to translate this concept into a cohesive piece. The artist give us all the possibility of selecting which part of the real life we want to be told by choosing characters, concepts, place, colors, context, time, dates, and excitement level. I believe this is a way of making us also co-authors in the process.

Another thing that impresses me is his attention to details and his capacity of associating a task and a feeling. During his description of the wale hunt and the process of documenting the eskimos life he says that every 5 minutes he took a pic from- when he was awake with camera around his neck and when he was sleeping with the camera on the tripod. That is a lot of commitment! Besides, the thought of a “photograph in a heart bit” is just beautiful.

Finally, the work in Bhutan is pretty moving. From the ballon strategy (“even if they have one ballon, well, one ballon is still kind of happy”) till the picture of everybody’s hands and funny faces. He is able to tell really hard stories, keep a friendly environment and a smile in viewers faces. It seems that he is having a lot of fun doing what he loves and that is just inspiring.

By the way, watching this talk made me think about this other talk…