Summary of the week: We have started building! We are finalizing our design and working on documenting what we want it to look like. Charlie has been working on figuring out our solution to create directional speakers. We also worked on our team’s branding and updating our website.
Team Meeting
We held a team meeting once Angie came back from the Adventure Module. This was done with the intention of creating a clear task list for the next several weeks on who would be working on what. Charlie is researching the lobby floor to figure out how we will set up the speakers, learning FMOD, and understanding sequencing tools. Aldora is working on the mood board for the experience as well as finishing up the team logo. Lauren is figuring out what clouds we should order so we can start building them right away. Jiaxin is working on finishing the poster and half sheet and will begin working on concept art once she is completed with them. Angie is working on a full schedule and task list, as well as reaching out to Eliot.
The team wants to have a “vertical slice” of the experience completed by the end of Week 6, ready for halves to show to the faculty.
Process Grades
On Wednesday, we had process grades with our faculty advisors. They gave us advice moving forward and we will keep it in mind as the week progresses. With this advice, Angie created a new schedule to be displayed in the project office, with more space to write specific tasks and notes on it.
Moodboard
Aldora worked on a mood board to show what sorts of colors and shapes we could create with the clouds. It was a strong source of inspiration for how we want to organize our set design.
Meeting with Garry Walton
On Friday, we spoke with Jonathan Walton’s father, Garry Walton. He is a retired Shakespeare professor, so we were interested in asking him about the storm in King Lear and how we could recreate it for our audience. We asked about what key elements in King Lear could we pull for our installation, and he suggested using repetition and echoing to our advantage, as King Lear is full of it. Since we are working with a mostly audio platform, we felt that this was a strong suggestion.
Here’s a few other points he told us:
- We need to make sure the storm isn’t too distracting to the guests at the box office, so the audio can’t be overwhelming.
- We also can use lighting, perhaps some sort of patterns on the floor, that can help us lead guests around the space.
- Since storms are very fluid, we could hang up cloth to give the illusion of rain or movement.
- We should encourage interaction between guests and let their audio add to the storm
- In King Lear, there is a part of the show where Lear is brought into a cave, we could localize the screaming into an opening like the cave
- We could have guests act like the characters, prompting them with lines on cards that they could act out.
We appreciate Jonathan for introducing us to his father! It was a productive conversation.
Team Bonding
For our team bonding activity, we decided to order lunch from a nearby restaurant called Green Pepper. As we ate our meal, we chatted about career paths, interests, and the video game industry. It was very nice getting to sit down with the team without talking about the project. With this team bonding activity, we realized that we should order team shirts. We ordered them right after eating so they could arrive by Halves.
Conclusion
This week, we started making strides in our “storm of voices” concept. We are very happy to have a direction and will keep pushing forward. Next week, we set out to complete concept art, begin testing clouds, and start building our directional speakers.