Sburke42's Blog

Final Project: Author’s Statement and Analysis/Reflection May 14, 2010

Our South Park/Facebook Mashup

Authors Statement

I think our final project piece turned out very well.  I think it effectively combined digital networked media with mashup aspects while telling a digital story.  It also used as well as criticized emerging digital networked tools.

Facebook has become synonymous with the relationships that we have with other people.  You write on your closest friend’s walls and comment on their pictures.  It also creates pseudo-relationships between people that would not otherwise have them.  I say ‘pseudo’ because these relationships are based solely on the interaction that you have time for in your online social life.  As Danah Boyd says, “Social networks provide valuable insight into people’s practices and interactions, but they do not confer meaning…I would love to find the strangers that I regularly share space with as I traverse Boston. But we cannot assume that these are my friends or acquaintances. Yet, there seems to be a tendency to overlay meaning-laden terms on top of these networks, to assume that high connectivity means friendship.”  This is one aspect that we were trying to show in our video.  Some of the relationships that you make on Facebook are not even real, physical relationships, yet we apply meaning to them as if they are just as important.  Most people would not share their own, personal space with a complete stranger, yet that is exactly what many of us do on Facebook and other online social networking places.  In our video, Stan is stopped on the street by a man whose friend request he denied.  When asked why this was, he replied that he did not know him.  This is the response that you would think most people would have in this situation but that is not always the case on-line.

We also wanted to show the immersion aspect of Facebook and other social networking devices.  I myself have been immersed in the world of Facebook and let it distract me from things occurring in my immediate, physical world.  I have even gotten involved in and spent hours playing stupid Facebook games that don’t even matter (maybe our video made me realize the inanity of these games).  This is one of the points where the virtual and physical worlds meet.  Jane McGonial discusses this when she says, “The increasing convergence and mobility of digital network technologies have given rise to new, massively-scaled modes of social interaction where the physical and virtual worlds meet.”  I hope our video, much like the original South Park episode, can convey the meaninglessness of some parts of this virtual world and put some things in perspective.

I hope that you enjoy our South Park/Facebook mashup and can take away some new ideas about social networking.

Analysis and Reflection

There have been numerous songs made about social networks.  Some of these are meant to make fun of and criticize the importance of social networking like Rhett and Link’s Facebook Song, but some of these are real songs that show how much this aspect of their social life means to them.  I may not be able to understand what they are saying in this song, but it is obviously about Facebook and obviously serious on some level.  It also shows how universal social networking can be.  We wanted to use a song that discussed specific things that can and do occur in the world of Facebook.  The song we used, Facebook by Kle Shay featuring Ryan Andrew and Basil Amer, uses the beat of a popular rap song while talking about aspects of Facebook.  This song is a mix of serious Facebook use and making fun of it.  The song is about a guy asking a girl to get on Facebook so he can talk to her with the main chorus line, “Why don’t you get on Facebook?”  In the South Park episode the we took from, the characters are trying to convince Stan to get a Facbook and become immersed in that world.

There is also a part in our video where Cartman is impersonating Jim Cramer from the Mad Money show.  Where Jim Cramer guides you through Wall Street to help you make money, Cartman guides you through Facebook so that you can have the most Facebook value which is friends.  This is a funny spoof and effectively shows how much importance some people place upon these digital network technologies.  There have been other parodies that have used Mad Money to convey how much importance some people place on things or in an attempt to create fake importance for something, such as in this car dealership commercial.  Also, the technique that Cartman uses to spread his Mad Money-esque show is through a blog in Facebook, another digital media tool that we have used and discussed throughout this semester.

Our video is also similar to my original mashup video that I did for Participatory Cultures.  That is because this South Park mashup also uses a song in the background with different video.  Also, both videos use songs that talk about, describe, and feature a specific thing (vehicles and wheels for my original mashup and Facebook for this one).  We also tried to use one of the same techniques in both videos when we made the video lip sync the song at some parts.  This was also easier than in my first video because lip syncing to cartoons works much better than to real people.  However it is also different from my original mashup because we did leave a couple of the original audio tracks from the South Park episode in the video.  For my first mashup, it was effective to leave all of the rap video’s audio out of the track, but for this project, having a couple of the original video’s audio added to the overall idea that the project was trying to convey.

Digital Story- Tibia Machinima May 13, 2010

My Digital Story involved making a machinima by screen capturing footage from the MMORPG Tibia.  I used to play this game when I was younger so I was already familiar with the concepts and constructs of the game.  There were many parts of the video that I wanted to employ.  Some of these were normal things that you would do in the regular process of playing the game.  However, these became even more interesting since I could add commentary to them.  The rest were things that could only be added in using video and audio editing.  These things like the drug trip and prostituting were also the most fun parts of the video to work on.  This was because it was fun and interesting to do things outside the normal use of the game and put in scenes and ideas that were not even actually possible.  These parts were very similar to the “My Trip to Liberty City” video that we watched in class.

One of the fun things about MMORPG’s is the interaction with other people and other characters.  I was able to use some people in the video without them even knowing it (some may have even been solicited by me as a hooker).  I also did not have control over all aspects of the game so some scenes took very long to create the setting I wanted to and end up with a scene that worked well for the overall video.

Originally, I thought that I would have to use successive screenshots with audio overlaid, but I was able to find a simple (and more importantly, free) screen capture software for Windows, AviScreen Pro.  I had to take some time to learn how this program worked, but eventually got the hang of it.  Screen capturing rather than many screen shots also made the project a lot easier and I think it works a lot better than my original plan would have.  The game of Tibia is also a pretty simple MMORPG which also helped me.

I think this project effectively made something new using emerging digital networked tools.  I think the project was also pretty creative outside of the normal constructs of Tibia.  I also hope that maybe even just a few of the scenes can get a laugh out of viewers.  Games are designed to be played a certain way, but it is when people get creative in these games that I think a lot of fun can occur.  I actually had fun making this project and am pretty happy with how it turned out.  Enjoy!

Sidewinder Part 8…good thing this isnt getting weird.. May 10, 2010

Part VII

“Damn it, Wilde!”, shouted Sidewinder.  “How are we ever going to stop Weishaupt if you keep fucking around?!”  Sidewinder stepped forward in front of Wilde and before he could even open his mouth to argue, Sidewinder  grabbed a steam powered rifle and shot Wilde right between the eyes, killing him instantly.  “What the hell!”, exclaimed the other heroes, as they were splattered with Wilde’s brain matter.  “Relax”, said Sidewinder, “thats not even the real Wilde anyways.  Its just one of my damn clones.  And Ive been waiting to do THAT for a long time anyways!”.  “Well this seems to put a damper on our relationship, doesnt it Sidewinder?”, said the real Wilde as he stepped from inside the zeppelin onto the deck.  “Not hardly, Wilde.  I’d say you have killed me a dozen times or so when I’ve read your ‘novels’”, said Sidewinder.  “But this is no time for sword measuring.  We have got to get to 1776 somehow!”

The heros then looked at each other in unison, and without saying a word, they knew what had to be done.
________________

Our heroes walked up the hill to Mount Vernon with determined looks.  How they had gotten here was not important.  What was important is what they had to do next.  Sidewinder threw open the door to Mount Vernon and our heros gasped as they realized it was too late.  Weishaupt was standing in front of them holding George Washington’s head in one hand and the very same axe that Washington used to chop down that cherry tree in his other hand.  “It seems that he could tell no lie”, said Weishaupt for dramatic effect even though it didn’t seem to make much sense in this context.

“You bastard!”, our heroes exclaimed.  “You will pay for this!”  “But how?” queried Weishaupt.  “Ive already killed the one man that your country had a chance of rallying around.  And now I will be the first president of the United States and as my first official decree:  You all will die!”

Part XI