Interactive Filmmaking for Peace in Boston

The Interactive Filmmaking studio maintained a public blog documenting their collaborative work with the Center for Teen Empowerment. We've included a few excerpts below, but you can 

YOUTH CALLING FOR CHANGE,
from a blog post by Tamenech Meneghini

In April, the Studio took a trip to Teen Empowerment's Roxbury site, where youth and adults work together to lead social change, discuss the community's prioritized issues, and empower one another through self organized initiatives. Our class joined TE to play “Piece or Peace,” an interactive gave created by a previous Social Impact Studio to challenge people to discuss and chose between multiple story outcomes. After playing the game, we discussed the severity of the story's outcome, and how there was not much room for a positive resolution. Similarly, in real life, youth are often put in positions that don’t allow them to see a positive outcome. Major issues like violence, substance abuse, housing, mental health, and school systems affect young people daily.

“What is one belief that people have that you believe needs to change?”

After hearing these responses, sharing our own ideas, and collaborating with the youth, we seem to have a better understanding of what major issues are most visible for youth in these neighborhoods. 

LOGISTICS FOR AN INTERACTIVE VIDEO,
from a blog post by Max Eberle

Logistically planning for an interactive media piece requires in-depth preparation. There were many moving elements involved within the pre-production process of Crossovers & Connections.

The types of coordination that went into the process include:

Coordination is collaborative in nature so communication in this process was essential. Our collective had face-times and text chats almost daily regarding the project to ensure that all the proper steps were taken to create the outcome we desired.

In the end, lots of work behind the scenes went into this project. Much of this work might not be initially evident when first viewing Crossovers & Connections. Hopefully, this blog post gives a little more insight into our production planning process.

DEVELOPING A STORY COLLABORATIVELY,
from a blog post by Taryn Noonan

Our story took a long time to develop. We began in our storyboarding prototype workshop, where we got an idea of how our script would eventually pan out on screen. Then, we had to get to work on writing the script. I began the first page and a half or two in Final Draft and pasted them into a Google Doc, as not everyone had access to the software and we needed to make sure they did. Linnea, Saskia, and I co-brainstormed the script together after Murk had laid out some visual beats for us to write out. We all discussed and I typed. I periodically asked other peers to check on the script and see if it felt natural/true to the nature of youth at Teen Empowerment. Tomo and Murk offered revisions in terms of dialogue and actions, and overall the class worked together to sort out the nature of how the script would go.

After that class session, Saskia and Linnea took over the script writing aspects and finished up the script. There were a few gaps Linnea asked me to check and fill, and I did. After we had our first two production days, we had to adapt the script in order to accommodate an actor who could no longer take part. Luckily, Deandre filled in for him, and we were able to adapt the script. We all agreed that we could film the back of Deandre and cheat camera angles, to make it appear as if he was really Ty. I think we did a good job and the added challenge really emphasized our problem-solving capabilities. I’m glad it all worked out in the end. 

CODING AN INTERACTIVE MUSIC VIDEO,
from a blog post by Linnea Downs

For the interactivity portion of our final film, we wanted the audience to have the option to select between the main two narratives of our music video. In order to do this, we used a program created in JSON to process the parallel tracks of the music videos and allow a viewer to switch between perspectives. Learning JSON was a little bit of a challenge because we only had enough time to learn what was relevant to the program. This meant that any bugs that came from parsing errors or definition errors would be a little more difficult to work around.

We experienced this when the videos were initially uploaded to the wrong folder and the code was running as programmed, but no video was showing. Because I didn’t know how to resolve errors in the code, only how to input what we needed into the modified version of the program, it took a long time to figure out what was causing the issue. Through this however, I learned how to troubleshoot issues by comparing strings and files of the working code to the ones that were having issues, and finally was able to input a product that we were proud of at the exhibition.

Though time posed a barrier for the coding portion of the project (without the clips needed, we couldn’t test a working version of the program), the intense collaboration that we’ve seen throughout the production culminated during the final moments before the presentation when our group members finished clip editing and they were put into the program with a short turnaround. I think this organization effort to make sure that each person worked on a node for the program, and each node was properly named and functioning in the program represented how quickly and efficiently we were able to work as a team in a concentrated effort.

Going forward, while the code presented at the exhibition is representative of the work we’ve put into the project, I think some timing tweaks and further adjustments to the style to make the options more visually appealing would make a strong addition to the piece in terms of putting out a polished product.

David Kelleher

Senior Affiliated Faculty, Visual & Media Arts

Tamenech Meneghini

Program Coordinator, Teen Empowerment

Learning Partner

Nate McLean-Nichols

Program Director, Teen Empowerment

Tomo Singh

Teen Empowerment

Marley Christopher

Spring 2024 - Interactive Filmmaking for Peace in Boston

Crossovers & Connections

An interactive music video collaboration between Emerson College students and youth from The Center for Teen Empowerment

This Website Is An Archive, As Of October 2024.

The Engagement Lab at Emerson College has closed its doors. Read the report detailing the ELab’s final chapter, read testimonials from our extended community, or dismiss this message to explore the archive.

Interactive Filmmaking for Peace in Boston