Mark30's game idea

Chienworks wrote on 9/8/2003, 4:00 PM
Well, i was trying to reply to Mark30's post, but between the time i started typing and hitting the post button, it disappeared! His idea was based on the kids game of writing a story one sentence at a time, passing the paper from person to person and each person only gets to see the last sentence written. Here's my response anyway.

Mark, rather intriguing idea!

I did something sort of like this with our church's youth group. We had four skits in four scenes, each scene potentially about 30 to 60 seconds long. We split the group into four teams and sent each team to a room with the script for the first act of a skit and a camcorder. They had to act out and tape the scene in 10 minutes. Then the groups rotated to the next room and got the next scene for the next skit without seeing how the previous group had done the previous scene. When they were done taping and having refreshments i spliced the scenes together and we showed the four finished skits at the end of the evening. As you can imagine, the incredible non-sequitors and continuity errors were the major part of the fun!

More on track with your idea, i could see hosting something like this at vegasusers.com. We'd have to get a groups of people to commit to doing scenes, perhaps one group scheduled per day. The first group would have 24 hours to tape and upload a scene. The next group would have the next 24 hours to watch the previous group's scene and add their own next scene. Each group would only be able to see the immediately previous scene and not the whole story up to that point. I suppose if any group missed their deadline then the next group would just pick up and carry on. Perhaps we could get 14 groups to cover a two week period. At the end i could edit the whole together and make it available for viewing to everyone.

Sound doable?

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/8/2003, 6:25 PM
Sounds good to me. We'd just have to decide on a set upload format (ie mpeg-1 @ 500kbs). If we used mpeg-1, you could use TMPGenc at the end to join them all together lickty-split, and download a big file.

How big segments do you think we'd do? 30s? 60s?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/8/2003, 6:27 PM
I just remembered. :) When I ran a BBS, we had something simular: The Never Ending Story. Someone would write a post, then someone else, someone else, etc. Each telling their part of the story. This year I printed out the while story (4 chapters). It's abot 150-200 pages long, single sided.

I'd love to start something like that up again! :)
Luxo wrote on 9/8/2003, 9:39 PM
I'm game.
mark30 wrote on 9/9/2003, 3:00 AM
Wow... I deleted the message 'cause I had the idea nobody thought it was fun..

How about 5 - 10 seconds each?
thanks
Chienworks wrote on 9/9/2003, 6:45 AM
I think 5 - 10 seconds is too short and there won't be enough continuity to follow the story (such as it may (or may not) be). 30 - 60 seconds is probably too long and will take too much effort to produce. Let's aim for a middle ground of 15 to 30. Of course, i wouldn't consider rejecting a piece that fell outside this length unless it was just ridiculously long or short.

To give us some time to get ready, why don't we start this next week on the 16th and run for two weeks? I'll step out on a limb and arbitrarily set the deadline at 11:59pm Greenwich Mean Time (that's about 6:59pm where i am and that works swell for me). In the next couple of days i'll get a sign-up calendar going at vegasusers.com and an upload page. Each participating team will be given a secret link to be able to view only the previous team's entry.

Obviously we want people to start signing up for earlier dates because those will be coming up sooner. As the idea spreads and more people get interested they can take the later dates. If you miss your deadline then your segment will simply be skipped and the next day's team will take over from the previous team.

Some continuity suggestions (please feel free to add or suggest changes):

- Language - English seems to be a rather accepted middle ground here. More people speak English as a first or second language than any other language. Let's try to keep the whole project in English so that the largest number of people can enjoy the result.

- Cast - Two men and two women? Not every scene has to use all four characters. Each scene may also introduce extras, but don't count on them being carried through in subsequent scenes. Note that just because the characters are two of each gender doesn't mean the actors have to be. If you're a group of four guys then either have two of them fill the women's roles (ala Shakespearean theatre tradition) or find some plausible way to account for the women being missing and the presence of two extras.

- Costuming - I think a consistant coloring scheme would be useful here to help recognize the characters from day to day. If no one else has a better idea, then let me suggest that the two men wear blue and red and the two women wear yellow and white.

- Plot - Well, i can't suggest much here. However, no killing off the main characters!

- Format - MPEG is relatively universal and trouble-free. Anyone have a problem with 3Mbps 640x480/720x576 30fps/25fps with 224Kpbs audio? These files should come in at 12MB for 30 seconds. Is that too big for anyone to be able to upload/download? Even a 56K dialup should handle that in half an hour or less.

- Software - Vegas, of course! VideoFactory & Screenblast MovieStudio gladly accepted too. :)

Any other ideas? I'll get an info, signup, and uploading/viewing page set up in a couple of days. I think i'll probably be exempt from participating since i'll obviously have seen all the entries. I suppose i could sign up for the first or second day though. Let me know what y'all think.
mark30 wrote on 9/9/2003, 9:50 AM
Cool Chien..
One thing I hope will be achievable is for everyone to have acces to a camera. I do like the idea of creating a 'human story' instead of associating with more abstract art-like pieces of work chained together, but you'll probably have to use a cam and some actors to film.
So I guess if everyone is ok with putting time and effort in recording it's a cool idea.. otherwise we might have to switch to creating abstract, associative, desinglike, animated or whatsoever stuff.. ?

Mark
Chienworks wrote on 9/9/2003, 10:17 AM
Mark, i don't think that will be a problem. I think just about anyone can get their hands on a camcorder and find a few hams (errrr, friends & family members) willing to act.

Hmmmm. Who's going to start off the story? That's probably the most important part of this project. We'll need some sort of setting and theme, or at least an idea for the initial scene.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/9/2003, 10:29 AM
Good idea's Chien. However, I think the cast should be clarified a little differently. I don't think more then 1 actor is required, as 1 person can take on many roles (green screening themselves in with different costmes on). As long as there is some sort of interaction between them and something (ie them selves and a broom, or something along those lines).

Also, we should set up a scene/theme. When I ran something like this on my BBS, unless someone set up a location/time frame/ appearance, it didn't work out to well. For example:
Location: someone's back yard
Timeperiod: modern day
Physical apearance: we're all 1" tall bugs.

Then everyone will have to stick to that in some way or another.

We should also stick to the NTSC 4:3 frame size/rate, and progressive. We can crop PAL down to that size, and speed it up slightly (or do a pull down). It might also not be a bad idea to just make a TMPGenc template that everyone can frameserve/convert AVI to. Then we're all on the same page (video? :) )

Also, for the first video, it would be a good idea for everyone to setup their character(s). An "intro".

hope i didn't make this sound to hard. :)
mark30 wrote on 9/9/2003, 11:29 AM
Damn... I don't have a backyard.. I live on the 7th floor.. ;)
Chienworks wrote on 9/9/2003, 11:46 AM
Mark, those 1" high bugs will have to go back inside for fresh chips and drinks at some point .;)
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/9/2003, 12:15 PM
Where else would they go when I try to run them over with the lawnmower?