Concept Development

Digital Storytelling : Office Jam
Pretty much, this mobile movie/skit will be based in a typical office space. The entire skit will be captured on my funky Nokia N95, then downloaded and edited using Adobe AfterEffects CS3 and or Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. The final edit will hopefully be in a shareable format such as .3gp or .mpeg4, otherwise in Quicktime format.

Character: Robby – Mortgages Assessment Officer

Robby is a regular guy, in a regular job, with regular hours. He loves his coke, doughnuts, slinky and stress ball. It gets him through his day quicker. Robby doesn’t generally socialise at work, but simply comes in and drudges through his work, then leaves at 4:25pm.

Synopsis: It’s Monday, and Robby is the only person in at 8:00am. Robby strolls in and dumps his bag and jacket at his desk and lets out a long sigh of drudgery. Robby pretty much does what he does best. Starts his work , eats cookies, sips at coke, and slinkies it up. The boss comes in and hands Robby the last weeks numbers for a 9am report to the managers. All goes well until a computer error tips Robby over the edge. Frustration kicks in, and Robby runs out for a smoko. He returns to the office, and continues his work at the printers. All goes well until a printer jam, and that’s when it all goes wrong …

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Office Jam : Concept Development
The short mobile story Office Jam, is based on the satirical movie Office Space, which is about a handful of employees who are fed up with their jobs. Office Jam captures Robby, a ‘day in – day out’ employee, who has all the perks of starting work early, but at the same time all the possible catastrophes of an office job.

I guess the feelings and emotions trying to be portrayed are ones of bland, repetitive, unimaginable boredom. The sort of feelings that come from someone stuck in a rut in a job, with no desire to move onto bigger and better things. Someone happy to conform to the tasks of any work place, so long as there are smoke breaks every 30 minutes.

Below are some pics taken from the movie Office Space, and are images that portray the ideal character of Office Jam…

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Working With Mobile Media
After working with my Nokia N95 to film Office Jam, there were quality and resolution considerations, as well as working with angle limitations. In terms of resolution and phone quality, all footage was captured at a 640 x 480 resolution in a TV quality format. The quality of the footage was sharp and crisp. Taking the resolution into consideration, factors such as landscaping and camera angles needed to be worked around. Due to the fact that a mobile phone was my main form of video capturing, I couldn’t use any wide or long shots. So a series of close and semi close-ups were used. This technique in capturing the scenes still proved effective, as the scene and it’s surroundings were captured, just at a more close up view.
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Making Mobile Film Movies
As mobile media has a general audience on the move, it was challenging to find an engaging narrative that would fixate the viewer to their mobile device. This was evident after receiving my marks for the first project ‘Office Jam – Episode 1’. The biggest issue I faced was my lack of a recognisable narrative and structure. I think looking back at my initial proposal, I did have too many ideals plotted for the episode, with a lot of them being more personal ‘in-joke’ type plots. I was confident that I would be able to put across all these ideals, but after feedback from viewers, the general questions raised were “So what’s it about?” and “What’s Robby doing?”. With this feedback on board, the next episode will need to be much clearer in the narrative.

Elements that did work though was the fast movement of the actions, the shots and transitions worked best using short, close up angles, with the quality being appropriate for mobile media. The time duration of approximately two minutes fit well, keeping the interest of the viewer for long enough. The Nokia N95 was the model I worked with in terms of resolution and end quality, but could still be viewed on any .3gp or QuickTime compatible device.

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Office Space, The Office, Terry Tate & Black Books
The above sources all have a cutting edge comedy sense of humour.
I found that Office Space had great use of gags improvised with office materials. The characters have little personality, but are still so engaging. Viewers who work in an office or cubicle office environment, can easily relate to the stupid memos, the so called corporate cutbacks, and the stale conversations had with consultants.
The Office is a stupid spin off on the ‘Worlds Best Boss’ and his team. The entire series is based on the individuals of the workplace, and how each has a story which all relate to the boss or to the office. The crude hilarity and twisted humour of some of the jokes isn’t the sort of thing I aim to capture in my episodes, but on a much softer note. The cast are very bland and somewhat lifeless, and have limited characteristics. The cast of The Office are aware of the camera, and this creates a sense of self documentation. The camera technique used often captures the facial expressions of the cast, which I similarly aim to adapt into my episodes also.
Terry Tate Office Line Backer is one episode of a series of commercials for Reebok. Terry Tate is a work judicator, ensuring all employees are all working within workplace ethics. Everything from lunch breaks, stealing office utensils, and even using the speakerphone, all make up skits for the episode. This particular episode explores similar ideals of varying issues within the office space, as well as using crude violence. This particular episode inspired the initial concept of using an office space as the ideal setting.
Black Books was another great source of comedic inspiration. Bernard Black owns a bookstore and is a terrible example in running the bookstore. Black has no motivation to sell any books, closes at random hours of the day, abuses and belittles his customers verbally, or is passed out as his desk. The catchy pieces of comedy from this series are more so actions than verbal, like the blunt use of post it notes saying “On the phone” or “sorry we are closed”.
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Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
A source of inspiration did come from watching ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ earlier that week. Lock Stock used a combination of tight and close up camera angles to really give a fast paced feel to the film, as well as captured the mood of the narrative through expressions. Office Jam: For Forks Sake used these similar ideals using more close ups, as well as capturing more body and facial expressions. The shots were taken at a much tighter angle, and didn’t have a lot of foreground in them. The comedy in the film is funny but gritty, upbeat and pounding, and has a razor sharp slickness to it, as quoted by various film critiques. This episode of Office Jam needed to have the same appeal and overall effect by it’s viewers. With this in mind, I was told not to hold back, but be more revolting, more cunning, and much more cruel and inconsiderate. These ideals did make a considerable difference, as it simply sells. I guess with because the targeted medium is mobile / portable media, capturing a viewer’s interest is the hardest part, with keeping the viewer interested for two minutes even more challenging. In comparison to my first attempt ‘Office Jam – Episode 1’, there is a clearer structure in the narrative, and with the use of revolting and crude humour, should make ‘Office Jam: For Forks Sake!’ a successful episode.

Below are some pics taken from the movie Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, which illustrate emotion and action by using close ups..

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Interactive Website – Networked Performance: Interactive Cinema
http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2004/09/30/interactive-cinema/
The above website is a blog home to some creative experimental pursuits submitted by professors and artists alike. I found valuable the concepts behind telling a story with only a single line of text accompanying a still image. This ideal was useful to carry on board, as mobile films need to educate the viewer quickly, without having time to build anything but interest. The below links are a few that caught my attention.
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/nothingHappens/ – Nothing Happens
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/HyperMonument/index_pc.php – Hand Held History
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