Meeting With Lecturer

I organised a meeting with one of my lecturers today as I was having difficulty with what I was meant to be doing for my pre-production portfolio hand in. After this meeting I feel much better about what I needed to do and even with some changes applied to my project aim, I feel more comfortable with what I am doing. This is an overview:

Immersion or Environmental Storytelling?

It was mentioned that immersion is a very difficult subject to tackle, mainly because it's very difficult too measure. A simple question was raised to me: "How are you going to measure how immersed the player is?" I had no idea. My lecturer knew this would be the case and helped me to find a more suitable path.

After having a discussion of what I wanted to be doing and why I picked immersion it was clear that my project was fundamentally looking into environmental storytelling. Relating this to immersion it came apparent that I could research the impact of environmental storytelling and how to successfully achieve this. Without ignoring immersion completely I can still discuss the importance of immersion and how environmental storytelling can help immerse a player.

Pre-Production Portfolio

The discussion we had regarding the portfolio helped out a lot. It was clear I was on the right lines but I needed to really home-in on my project and begin tests relating to ideas I have for my project. So far I have already created a few 3D environment scenes and I was told it's perfectly alright to re-use these scenes as part of testing. With this in mind I can attempt to perhaps tell a story within these environments as part of testing 'environmental storytelling'. There was a really good blog post I had a while back which showed different aspects of environmental storytelling. It would be good if I used the headers used in this article to begin my next set of media tests.

This Blog

As for my blog, I have been doing a good job although there are some pointers. One would be to start tagging each blog with suitable tags in order for easier navigation and a proper 'file system'. In relation to my practical work posts, it was made apparent that if something goes wrong I state it and show what it was however I don't seem to say or explain how I will avoid this issue or fix it for any future pieces. This is a common error made in blogs and is definitely something I can amend in future.

Where To Go From Here?

This meeting has definitely helped to shape what I will be tackling these next few weeks, ready for my hand-ins. I have my research proposal to edit up in relation to my project aim change. That is a simple task which I can sort over the weekend. As for my pre-production portfolio I just need to start creating pieces that show what I will be doing next semester. Simple things like; how I am going to change the scene from hotel to asylum? What rooms am I going too need? How will I be conveying the story? All these aspects must be covered and with careful consideration and thought, I can apply useful and relevant media tests to the environments I have already created.