The first instances of split screen as we know it can be seen in films produced around the turn of the 20^th century by filmmakers such as George Albert Smith (Santa Claus, 1898) and Edwin S. Porter (Life of an American Fireman, 1903), however the origins of multiscreen media can be traced back as far as the 6^th century in the form of Roman Diptychs—a hinged pair of plates bearing the carvings of artists. This was followed later by triptychs, paintings typically divided into three sections on which stories can be told in more than just a single frame. Fast forward to the present day, and the use of split screen montages can be seen working to great effect in popular television series’ such as Fargo (2015) and Better Call Saul (2018).

Once we had some understanding on what the makings of good split screen video are and why they are used when they are, we formed groups in class with the objective of coming up with something for ourselves lasting around one minute in length. Initially we came up with the idea of filming multiple time lapses in different locations and having something, for example the sun, passing from setting into another, which would then maybe turn into a different object of a similar shape moving at the same pace and trajectory. We decided this may be too difficult to achieve in just a few days with no real time to practice though and decided against this.

Our next idea was to ‘throw’ items from different segments of the screen and for them all to land in the place on screen. Again, after some deliberation this wasn’t something we decided to pursue, as we felt it would be too boring to have objects being thrown from one frame to another for a minute.

Our next idea was the one we settled on for our video, however it changed slightly from its origins. Initially we thought it may be a good idea to pass things from screen to screen with the item changing each time. For example, screen 1 would have someone brushing their teeth with the toothbrush being passed to screen 2. Screen 2 would receive the item just out of shot and, when carried into shot would be a mug of tea, which would then be swigged and passed along to screen 3. Screen 3 would receive an apple instead of a mug, which they would then take a bite out of and pass across to screen 4, and so on. We then decided this would be better if we made the item the same in each shot. Our reasoning for this was because we felt it would actually have somewhat of a narrative to it, and could be showing the journey of this item over time rather than a random montage of shots which was initially proposed.

The item we eventually settled on was a cigarette. This was rolled, lit, smoked, passed along and stubbed out across three different shots by three different characters. Each character was partaking in their own in individual activities in each shot while even when the cigarette was not in their shot. The audio however was only heard from the shot the cigarette was in and this audio moved from one shot to the next along with the cigarette. This meant each shot held some interest for the viewer, but their attention was always going to be naturally drawn to the shot with the cigarette.

Our split screen video can be viewed at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnwgguBBxPI

Projection mapping refers to the projection of images onto 3D objects to create optical illusions, the sense of added depth, movement of static objects, and more. Disney were the first mainstream business to experiment with this technique, projecting singing human heads onto marble busts in the Disneyland theme park in 1969. Although the physical object was a fixed stationary item, the projection of moving people gave the illusion that these busts were moving. This is projection mapping in a relatively basic form. Since then, the technology has evolved a considerable amount. Nowadays, projectors are portable and the variety of projections has increased in complexity.

Unfortunately, as I missed some time in class I was unable to try out projection mapping for myself, so I do not have any first-hand experience with setting up a display or using the specialist software. Having seen the work of my peers though, I can fully appreciate the effort they put into their attempts. This is probably considered to be the most alternative technology introduced to us in this module when compared to the technologies we are used to working with, so I understand that it may not have been an easy concept to grasp in such a short space of time. From the examples I’ve seen from my classmates though, it seems they were able to create some experimental and striking visual artefacts.

Social media as we know it today is a relatively new media platform. While it can be argued that it has existed for several decades, it is only since the invention of the smartphone in the past decade that social media has really taken off as a worldwide phenomenon. Since then, the popularity of sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and latterly Instagram and Snapchat are growing by the day. Thanks in part to mobile applications allowing you to access their services at the touch of a screen, there are now an estimated two billion social media users across the globe. Never has it been easier for small businesses and multinational corporations alike to market their services or products to their audiences. Campaigns in recent years such as Kony 2012, The Ice Bucket Challenge and more recently #Breaking2 by Nike have proven just how effective social media campaigns can be when directed at the correct demographic via the correct mediums.

In our lecture for the social media stories unit, we were split into groups and told to come up with an idea for an Instagram account that could be viewed as a story, rather than just for photos.

Despite being in a group of five, each of us struggled to come up with a solid idea that was both interesting and feasible to accomplish within the four hour time limit given to complete the task. As this project was carried out in the latter half of October, the idea we landed on was a fictional Halloween character who hated the holiday and just wanted to get on with his life as normal. To do this, we bought a scary Halloween mask and got one of the members of our group to dress up in the mask and black clothing. We then filmed him going through the mundane tasks in his everyday life, which also happened to look Halloween-like, such as cutting an apple with the biggest knife he could find and making a watermelon smoothie that could be mistaken for human flesh.

I think this was a decent novelty idea that was also topical, as it played up to the Halloween holiday which was just around the corner. Beyond this, I think the overall idea and execution was poor. The character lacked imagination, the filming and acting was amateurish, there was nothing in terms of branding or graphics that would suggest some sort of professionalism, and the videos were not even edited to crop out the headroom before they were uploaded to Instagram. I believe this was a good learning experience though, as I know many things I would do differently in future if I was given more time and greater control over the content being uploaded. I think if I was to redo this project I could make it look a lot more professional than our first attempt at creating a social media story.

Our social media story can be viewed at the following link: https://www.instagram.com/villain20189/

While the technology of virtual reality can be seen in some devices such as the View-Master and the Sensorama—two inventions created in the mid-1900s—it has taken until the 2010s for the concept to take off. Now devices such as the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive offer consumers the chance to watch, learn, interact and play with countless forms of media at ease for an affordable price. Someone’s bedroom can be instantly transformed into a different universe in a matter of seconds.

After we had the chance to watch some 360 videos first hand while wearing a virtual reality headset, we were split into groups and given the task to come up with an idea for a 360 VR video, which we would then go on to shoot and show off to the class at the end of the day. We came up with a few ideas that were quite ambitious, such as a mass brawl fight sequence taking place around the camera, and for the camera to move from place to place.

The idea we decided to go with was to make the camera the point of view of a static person. This idea is something much simpler, but also something that can be very effective. After some discussions, we decided we would use our environment to our advantage and put the camera in the metaphorical shoes of a student who is sitting at their computer and minding their own business, when all of a sudden the rest of the class begins to bully them by throwing items at them, standing up and surrounding them and shouting insults at them. Our reason for going with this idea was because we believed it would give the viewer the impression of feeling trapped and trigger a sense of claustrophobia as they are being surrounded and intimidated by bigger, more imposing figures and they can move or get away from the incident. This also uses up almost all of the surrounding areas, so there is always going to be something to look at if the viewer was to look around with the VR headset on, and there are no huge gaps in the frame or in action.

I think the idea for our video was something that could be developed further and turned into a really powerful piece of media. Our limited time with the hardware meant we were not able to practice much and the plotting of our scene was rough and basic. I certainly think that, when viewing the finished article, you can understand and appreciate to a degree what we were trying to accomplish, however I don’t believe this looked anywhere near a professional standard. I do believe though, considering our restraints and inexperience with this form of media, that we did a good job at devising a creative concept that could be expanded upon and showing that it is possible to create something based around this idea in the 360 video format.

Our 360VR video can be viewed at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebFXfF28Hks

For my assessed piece of work for the creative media practice module, I decided to go down the route of social media. The reason I chose to do this was down to recognising how big the medium of apps such as Snapchat and Instagram are in today’s world, and I saw this as an opportunity to create something that I will be able to put on a CV and show reel. With a good idea, a little creativity and some technical knowhow, I knew I could create something that looks professional and could have—at worst—been recognised as an innovative way of digital storytelling, and—at best—something that could go viral and gain a following if marketed correctly.

Once I had decided on the medium for my project, I had a look at several social media pages of popular social media “influencers” and brands that used these online platforms to sell their product. My reason for doing this was to gain more knowledge on how they used the layout of Instagram pages to their advantage in creating an aesthetically pleasing look for their profile and what type of content, audially and visually, they preferred to post. I did this so I could grasp the average ratio of stills-to-videos they seemed to upload and why their content proved to be popular with their audience. I discovered that short videos with small chunks of text and light-hearted, happy-go-lucky music complimented each other well and was most popular in terms of likes, comments, and shares. Instagram accounts that I found useful in terms of helping me gain an understanding of how to set up my Instagram page were mysimplegram, joi.knows.how and personaljournalapp. With regards to the content I would create, satirical news page Clickhole along with more factual media and news sites OMGFacts, The Dodo and BuzzFeed have given me a good idea of how I’ll create my bite-sized video content.

Once I had a solid idea of what my finished product would look like, my first port of call was to find the events I wished to have the mythical dog to been seen at. I decided these events should be a broad as possible, spanning several decades and featuring sporting events, festivals of music and culture, political incidents and technological landmarks. I also attempted to find events of which there was iconic photography. This led me to come up with the following shortlist of events:

• Launching of the Titanic (1912)
• Uruguay crowned first ever FIFA World Cup winners (1930)
• Lunch atop a Skyscraper (1932)
• Hindenburg Disaster (1937)
• Raising the flag on Iwo Jima (1945)
• V-J Day in Times Square (1945)
• Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963)
• Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston II (1965)
• Pele in goals (1966)
• Man on the Moon (1969)
• The Beatles crossing Abbey Road (1969)
• Woodstock festival (1969)
• Brazil win their third FIFA World Cup (1970)
• Live Aid (1986)
• Tank Man at Tiananmen Square
• Fall of the Berlin Wall (1991)
• 9/11 (2001)
• In the present day (2018)

The events that made it into the finished article can be seen in bold. My reasoning for choosing these events was down to a number of reasons. The events that did not make the final cut were either not strong enough visually, too similar to others, too hard to create a realistic composite image, or too distasteful—in my opinion—to be included. I had also created images for some of the events, such as the launching of the Titanic and raising the flag on Iwo Jima, but I felt these did not look good enough to be included in the final piece.

Once I had photoshopped these images I converted them into the square 1:1 picture format, the optimal aspect ratio for Instagram content, added a border and the user handle of the Instagram account I had set up for this project. This gave the images a professional look.

I then created videos for each, also in the 1:1 square format with my bespoke border, featuring a small amount of background information on the event and mentioning at times how the dog managed to find itself at these events. These videos were fairly basic, comprised of 3 or 4 slides in most cases, and featured upbeat instrumental music typically heard in videos of a similar nature to some of my influences such as Clickhole and The Dodo, and lasting around 20 seconds on average. I also mocked up fake quotes and created an image for these quotes to sit on to be uploaded to the Instagram account.

Using a similar format to that shown by a couple of my Instagram inspirations, I decided to have these quotes lined along the centre tile of Instagram’s format of three pictures in each row. I uploaded the images to be seen on the left of the quotes and the videos on the right. This consistent look is one that I believe works well and is visually appealing.

Caption from the August 27, 1945, issue of LIFE. “In the middle of New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.”

I decided to create this project as a bit of light-hearted fun, but also to fashion some quite bizarre images that could look real to the untrained eye when viewed as standalone images. The feedback I have gained upon showing this to my peers and lecturers has been almost unanimously positive. Overall, I am happy with my finished piece. I think, while it is not overly serious, it looks professional and is appealing to the viewer.

To take this one step further if I was to carry on working on this project in the future, I would look to include historic videos as well as just creating more still images. I think this would add an extra layer to the levels of humour and maybe even create an added dimension of confusion, doubt or believability for those engaging with the project. I would also look at expanding this across various social media platforms. From what I gathered when researching similar pieces of media, this seems like the type of thing that could be popular on Facebook and Twitter also. While the format of the project is best suited to the layout of Instagram, it is harder to share the content of others with your peers, and when you do it is usually hidden from your followers. Facebook and Twitter are much more suitable platforms when it comes to simply sharing, retweeting and liking posts. This means I may have to adapt my content somewhat to suit other sites.

Another thing I could do in an effort to get the project to gain some traction and possibly even go viral would be to tag people, companies or places in each photograph, so it has the potential to be seen by a wider audience. Creating a hashtag could also have a similar consequence in that if enough people started using the hashtag or interacting with it, the greater the chance of the page being more visible to a broader audience, which could create some sort of snowball effect.

Because the breed of dog used in this project (the chow chow) isn’t a particularly popular one and it has a very distinct appearance, one other thing I could do to ramp up the audience engagement would be to invite viewers to look out for the dog for themselves, and to tag the Instagram account in any pictures they find or happen to have taken themselves.

My final project can be viewed at the link below: https://www.instagram.com/thefamouspup/