Want to share your work? Send me a link to your presentations and I will post them here! -Doc

We had a few people out today so if you are one of them, be sure to click through the links below and watch the three seminal videos if you have not seen them by Locke and Ettinghausen, Schell, and McGonigal!

**Update: For those who wanted to play the interactive movie from infiniti: 
http://www.infinitiusa.com/deja-view/

I promised no more mention of LotR. -- I lied.

More than 15 years ago Russian scientist Kirill Yeskov tried to settle certain geographical problems in Tolkien's fantasy world. One thing led to another, and he tackled a bigger project - what if we assumed that it's no less real than our world? His conclusion was that in such a case, the story of the Ring of Power is most likely a much-altered heroic retelling of a major war - but what was that war really about? The result of this re-appraisal was the publication in 1999 of "The Last Ring-bearer" - a re-thinking of Tolkien's story in real-world terms. Which has now been translated (however roughly) into English by livejournal user "ymarkov": http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html. Tolkien would have hated or loved this - hard to know which. Have a look and comment here!

Fun fact: this Prezi went viral in 2012. At the time of this posting is sits at just under 60,000 views. 

Thanks again to Dr. Fred Turner for guest speaking in class to us about EPICS and how we "storytold ourselves" into human existence. A most enjoyable way to complete the circle of discussion about depth of context, elements of Epic story, and Epic meaning. Want more? Get his book and read it! 

We also began the process of looking at interactive (aka non-linear) narrative forms, which we will come back to soon. Below are the visualizations for the forms. We will talk about each of them in turn (and briefly again) in 2 weeks after a brief detour into SETTING and NARRATIVE MODE also which will best equip you for the D2. 

Plot is the organized pattern or sequence of events in a story. Knowing this, it becomes relatively easy to visualize these events. A popular method is to use y/x where y=dramatic tension and x=time. It would be impossible to cover every visualization in one session, but by understanding the fundamental elements underlying the visual vocabulary of plot visualization we can very quickly develop our own.

Discussed the Four types of Depth of Context:
Historical/Cultural - World Building - Extended Universe - Existing Universe

"Star Wars" was our case study.

Be sure your D4/D5 writing journal is current for next time (cough, cough!) and finish out Red Letter Media's Star Wars reviews if you have the time (and the stomach). D1 is due in two weeks! The assignment sheet is in the Week 0. Post below if you have misplaced your hard copy.

Need something fresh to discuss in context? How about MST3K/Rifftrax or The Animatrix.

EDIT: Here is the information about Kal Bashir's monomyth work that we briefly looked at. I recommend you all spend some time on his very informative (if slightly hard to navigate) website - and if really interested in going all in be sure to subscribe to his daily email! http://www.kalbashir.com/

Below is the main monomyth video similar to the first part of the one watched in class, but with more information and a very clear summary of the theory as he has updated it for modern storytelling. Great stuff!