Destination Audience

We will be proposing our project to the Copyright Office here on campus. We decided that that was the best outlet for our project. Our hope was that they will see the importance in teaching copyright in a new and modern way rather than simply text information. We would love if they could see it fitting into the goals of the office and find use in adapting our project whether they post it on their website or use it in presentations or some other way. We have an appointment with Carl Johnson tomorrow to discuss it all!

Group Project Overview

PROJECT OVERVIEW:
 Twenty years ago, getting published was a major undertaking.  One had to go through tens of gate keepers: editors and publishers, producers and managers.  It took weeks to go from creation to execution and even still, there was little guarantee anyone would have access to it.  Today, we publish things several times every day.  Everything that goes from our brains to the internet is considered published.  With such power at our finger tips, the world of copyright has never before been so controversial.
 The purpose of our project was to present copyright issues in an interesting and creative way that would interest a target audience of 13-30 years old.  Despite the ease at which copyright is broken, very little education is given to these ages.  In truth, copyright is more than under attack, but under change.  One side sees a world where the elite create and the public watch.  The other side believes in a society where creativity builds upon each creation.  The world of fan fiction and remix.  The price of such creativity, however, is the violation of copyright laws.
 Our Frankenstein project metaphorically presents these two sides in a way we hope will allow the users themselves to develop their own opinion.


REMIX:

Remix is a growing industry that doesn't always have a good reputation with higher institutions of learning or with copyright issues. We wanted to address both of these issues in our group project. We created a remix of a classic novel (Frankenstein) that is inviting, educational, and entertaining. In the flash animation video the player gets to choose different remix genres to put together their own monster. The very last thing the player can choose to do is to kill the misunderstood (remix) monster or to allow the creation to run free. This ending is paired with a blog that gives insight and information on remix and copyright to inform the player about the complexities of the issues facing remix creativity. Our purpose in using remix is to renew interest in literature and to inform about the issues surrounding the remix culture.



COPYRIGHT/ FAIR USE:
Often working against the idea of remix is copyright. Copyright is a law that gives the original creator of a work the exclusive rights to reproduce that work, and determine who else may use and reproduce that work. Imagine that you work for hours on a paper for school and post it on Digital Dialogue. When you gather together as a class to critique each others' work, you find that other students in the class have taken parts of your paper and put them into their own paper, some changing it slightly, some using it word for word, but not citing your paper in any way. How would you feel? Most of us seem to agree situations such as this or plagiarism are wrong, so why do we often forget copyright?  Though these two things aren't exactly the same, they do both involve the same principles: using someone else's work--and legally protected work, in the case of copyright--without permission. So to hardcore copyright believers, remix is often an abomination.

The mediator between these two words is fair use. Fair use puts some restriction and limitation on the exclusivity of copyright, allowing for people to have a limited use on things that are copyrighted. This includes uses such as for news reporting, education, research, criticism, and other things. However, just because your use falls into one of these categories doesn't mean you're automatically given free-reigns to pull the fair use card. To fall under fair use, your purpose of using the content must match four categories: 1) Is it being used to make money or any other forms of business or not? 2) It sometimes depends on the kind of copyrighted material actually is. 3) How much/what portion of the work you're actually using. 4) How/how much your use of the copyrighted material will affect its value or how much the owner could potentially make on it.
If your purpose checks out okay with all of these points, then you're most likely good to go. And as we discuss here and portray in our interactive remix of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you can potentially use or remix certain materials for good, even educational purposes--even to educate about copyright.


OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE:

Remix has the potential to be a powerful tool for educators. Remix can present a subject matter that might otherwise be uninteresting to a student. It can generate interest in a topic in a flashy and interesting way. It can serve as a tool for summary, parody, or analysis. Our original goal was to remix the original story of Frankenstein with the goal of generating interest in Mary Shelly's original classic novel. By doing this we hoped to show a positive use for remix.

Another post from the evolution of the project

Monster Mash







I am so crazy excited for our project that we just launched the proposal for. I feel like it will be great to collaborate with all of the people that are in the group to turn out an amazing project. I've been looking at remix projects of Frankenstein online and found a review for the app that Dr. Burton showed in class: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/frankenstein_remixed_salpart/. Laura Miller hit home when she said, "The app is a creative, subtle and sensitive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novella, and it has singlehandedly renewed this critic’s hopes for interactive fiction."


I also found a website that lists every appearence that Frankenstein has made in today's films, commercials, cartoons, songs: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/19810. It is incredible detailed question and answer sequence where I learned a ton of very interesting facts. One of the remixes of Frankenstein caught my attention in particular.







"Q: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was spurred on by a natural disaster. Dean Koontz updated the story in a series that began in 2004. What natural disaster served to stall his Frankenstein series at Book Two?


A: Hurricane Katrina. In the book, Dr. Frankenstein is a present-day New Orleans resident. Koontz had to start over on Book Three after the flood, and has apparently struggled in his attempts to incorporate the real-life tragedy into the story. The third book was initially due in 2006, and fans are hopeful that the revised publication date of this third book – sometime in 2009 – will hold true."


There is a whole fan fiction side to Frankenstein that I had no idea about. Now I am more excited to start working on the project to give a more fleshed out and true to lit form of Frankenstein that hasn't been seen in a while. Read through some of the articles I've posted and watch the monster mash up video. It will be a scream.

Mikhaela's older posts on the evolution of the Frankenstein project

I just wanted to flesh out some prospective directions for the project that will give it more clarity and direction.


What if we take Tara's idea about memes and how it is this crazy out of control fad (creation chaos) and then show how memes can actually be good and useful (redeeming qualities). We can create our own meme about Frankenstein (from open source content) and use him as the gateway or lens to look at redeeming qualities of open sources/ place him as our "creation" in our retelling of Frankenstein.














Or we can focus on videos, ie remix videos. So we can talk about how music has been remixed a lot and the redeeming qualities of a good remix for example I hated the original Umbrella song by Rihanna, but then the remix came out and I liked that the first 10 times I heard it.



But now everybody is able to create them and it is getting chaotic. Now remix videos are autotuned, funny, but pointless.






We can also talk about how people are using remixes for political purposes:




We can create our own remixed version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, call that our monster and discuss the problems with open sourcing and the chaos that this remix culture has created. We can discus the redeeming qualities of creating our monster out of open sourced materials.







I just thought up a third option. We can create a picture of Frankenstein using open sourced materials and then retell the story of Frankenstein and discuss the monster as this new open source craze. Where there is so much data available that is not open sourced, but illegally ripe for the picking and the difficulties/redeeming qualities of finding actual available open sources for creating our Frankenstein.




We can imbed which monster we choose into our flash video.




To answer the question I posed on Google + our monster can be our remix creation or the product of open sourced materials. We can create our own monster using remix culture and open sourcing.




I couldn't think of a good way to use minecraft. I think our project should include, making our monster, remixing the story in a video, then embedding all of the information we have gathered in our flash video. That gives our project 3 tiers to work on and we can work in pairs on each level.

What is Remix??

Remix is defined on Wikipedia as "an alternative version . . . made from an original version. Remixing is the adoption, alteration, and recombination of preexisting cultural texts (songs, literature, paintings, etc.) to create something new." Remix can be done professionally by the group that produced the original. For example the original song "Umbrella" by Rhianna was remixed and reproduced to create the "Umbrella Remix". Remix can also be done by third parties, where the original material was used to create a new product. As an example a clip from the news about a bed intruder was remixed into an auto-tuned into an overnight sensation. Remix isn't just limited to music and viral videos. The film industry has been using remix for years. The story lines from plays like Shakespeare's Hamlet have been remixed into films such as including The Lion King. Literature as well has been bitten by the remix bug. A good example would be Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice being remixed into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

To get more information about remix and remix culture read Lawrence Lessig's book Remix. It is a great resource. In his book he discusses how the digital age has created two different cultures. The Read-Only culture, which is information provided by a professional source (traditional book), and the Read/ Write culture, which is a reciprocal process between producer and consumer to enhance the original product (remix). The Read-Only culture is more like passive consumption and the Read/Write culture actively consumes and then takes the original and gives it a new or enhanced purpose. Lessig says that the Read/Write culture is the one expanding capabilities and projecting us  into the future with the technological resources we all have access to. Lawrence Lessig says that good remix isn't stealing other people's work, but using someone else's idea or product to give enhance the meaning, give it new meaning, or as a catapult to produce a new idea.

Gwen: The Success of a Failed Coup

Our group started out with some fabulous ideas. But then we struggled a little bit. When it came to be mid semester and we didn't have a concrete idea of what our "thing" was going to be, I was getting worried. So, I decided to hijack the group project and start working. My hope was that my group would love what I was doing and jump on board, or that they would hate it and come up with a creative alternative. Guess what! It worked. They came up with something far more creative and less ho-hum than what I was working on (I say this in all sincerity- my feelings are not hurt in the least).

So, here is what I came up with.

This was the first step.

Then Curtis sent me the relevant videos, and this is as far as we got before the project was reborn in a more beautiful form:

Mash Up Progress

Tara made a list during class of what we are all working on at this point:

We need to finish the quotes. And start posting everything to the blog. You should all be able to post or have an open invite.

So lets gets the last of the quotes found and all put together for each of the segments

Then lets start working on our static pages on the top of the blog
We changed the URL to match our over all title

http://themonstermashup.blogspot.com/

we have:

What is this all? (about the project and the plans)
Why Frankenstein? (why we chose it)
What is Remix?
Why does it matter? (what is the controversy)
What's the benefit? (why is remix good?)

and we can change or whatever to these

Also we need to make the story opener and closer
to give to Curtis

And we need to talk to these guys:
John Barton --does voice overs
TMA 295 -- Sharolyn Swenson

someone about obtaining the byu.edu to host the flash page

Prototype 2

We decided that the grave scene needed skewed a little bit. We decided to focus on larger genres rather than specific remixes. We also decided to choose things that would make our project lasting rather than dated to the current fads.



Each different element needs something coming from the headstones.

Books- Twilight (all the creepy twilight books that have come out now)
Film- Starwars (wookie), Mary Poppins, LOTR
Music- Elvis, Rebecca Black, Auto-tune guy "they be snatch'en your people up"

Also, a lot of times you can make people more interacted when you add easter eggs, or parts that aren't necessary but are kind of fun. For instance, I've made it so when you click on one of the headstones in the background a zombie pops up moaning "zombie web."