Tools For Prototyping A Narrative

Another of the things I'm mulling is how to research and prototype a narrative of some sorts, for a student project. In the past we've used Pinterest as a gathering research tool, to collect sources of inspiration and, kind of importantly, the visual clichés to avoid. We're not sure if Pinterest is the best tool to use.

Some tools you should simply take a look at for the sake of it are:

Amazon StoryBuilder to create a script or screenplay. This is like a corkboard of notes with which you develop your "story".

And then there's Amazon StoryTeller that lets you create a visual storyboard from your script. Interestingly, the tool seems to recognise "people" and places. It has a huge library of people, and scenes and props with which you can create your storyboard pages, like the one shown below where Dr Cutie gets incredibly jealous of Greg's acrobatic cows. Ahem.

The tools themselves are interesting enough, but the really interesting part about them is how, this being Amazon of course, once you have created your storyboard it you can publish it and people can vote on how much they like it, and suggest that a real video advert should be made for it.

Once your video advert is made, people can watch it and vote on how much they'd like to watch the real show. And then, if you're lucky, the show gets commissioned and it's shown on Amazon Prime Videos. Amazon have thought about the process, from noting down sketchy ideas to actually making a movie or TV show. Wow...

Google Gallery. Look at this gallery of art installations or the way this gallery zooms in to images and text and has audio attachments.

Comments

Inserting A Google Doc link into a Google Spreadsheet (UPDATED 6/12/2017)

This article looks at using Apps Script to add new features to a Google Spreadsheet. At the University of York, various people have been using Google spreadsheets to collect together various project related information. We've found that when collecting lots of different collaborative information from lots of different people that a spreadsheet can work much better than a regular Google Form. Spreadsheets can be better than Forms for data collection because: The spreadsheet data saves as you are editing. If you want to fill in half the data and come back later, your data will still be there. The data in a spreadsheet is versioned, so you can see who added what and when and undo it if necessary The commenting features are brilliant - especially the "Resolve" button in comments. One feature we needed was to be able to "attach" Google Docs to certain cells in a spreadsheet. It's easy to just paste in a URL into a spreadsheet cell, but they can often...

Writing a Simple QR Code Stock Control Spreadsheet

At Theatre, Film & TV they have lots of equipment they loan to students, cameras, microphone, tripod etc. Keeping track of what goes out and what comes back is a difficult job. I have seen a few other departments struggling with the similar "equipment inventory" problems. A solution I have prototyped uses QR codes, a Google Spreadsheet and a small web application written in Apps Script. The idea is, that each piece of equipment ( or maybe collection of items ) has a QR code on it. Using a standard and free smartphone application to read QR codes, the technician swipes the item and is shown a screen that lets them either check the item out or return it. The QR app looks like this. The spreadsheet contains a list of cameras. It has links to images and uses Google Visualisation tools to generate its QR codes. The spreadsheet looks like this. The Web Application The web application, which only checks items in or out and should be used on a phone in conjunctio...

The Apps Script and Google Spreadsheet Room Booking System

BETTER VERSION HERE You may remember my previous posts about attempts to create a room booking system with Apps Script. This system uses Apps Script to populate a spreadsheet with weekly sheets, that contain lots of "Book me" links ( see below ). The "Book me" links open a very small web application that is essentially a confirmation screen with a "Book" button. When a student books a room, the web application says "Booked" and adds the booking to a central calendar and invites the student as guest, so that it appears in their calendar. One very important aspect of this booking system was the booking quotas that student are given. Each student can only book 3 hours a day in each room. The student is allocated a colour, not just because it looks nice, but because, as you can imagine when a large amount of students are wanting to finish their projects with a finite resource, it can get quite busy. The admin team previously has be...

Collaborative Tools Project

Search This Blog