creativecoderidmnyu-blog

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After meeting with my advisor, I was able to gain a lot of insight about the intricacies of casting. The process goes beyond artistry and logistics of getting people into a room, there is also a financial component that drives a lot of these decisions (at least in the case of film). The actors are used almost as bargaining chips to determine the success of a film and the weight of their reputation doubles as marketing currency. In order to avoid the complexity of the selection process in film for this particular process, my primary focus will remain on theatre. I believe that while theatre can fall into the same traps, there is opportunity for young and novice directors that isn’t being provided because they aren’t meeting with the right artists.

Here are some notes from our meeting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fVUFuGfKEL8Boiy14cuh-B3ogBNj7vcfwDnKUYrBgqg/edit

With my accountability partner, Akshay, I created a detailed plan this week to hash out all of the components I needed to create in order to have a successful Science Fair.

Question: How can I ease the tension of novice theatre directors in finding the right performer that will help them actualize their vision?

Revised Claim:  By creating a digital platform to address the lack of access and resources for theatre directors, AUDITION will make auditions effective and efficient. Guided with better tools, novice directors will be able to focus on the artistry of the craft, rather than be hindered by the logistics of casting.

I was able to sculpt a userflow from the 3 user interviews I did this week, combined with the information I gathered from the 4 I did last week. And from here I am proud to have created a rudimentary prototype. Next steps involve creating a userflow from the perspective of the actor and building out wireframes, testing the product, and writing the paper.

Here is a link to my presentation for the science fair: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bx6iP6p_YHtdV1BVRGpYUXBqMUE

Here is a link to my working prototype: https://invis.io/9YARQH3PM

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Week 6

This past week, I’ve been validating my hypothesis and building out the wireframes. I conducted 4 user interviews, constructed a user journey based off of the research I conducted and found that I needed to revise the screens I had designed. I ultimately wanted to create an app to conduct just the audition, but I’m also finding from the interviews that seeking a space and finding talent are integral to the process. I plan on building out portions of the prototype by the demo day to test and see what processes are necessary to the overall aim of the product. I have 3 more interviews scheduled for this week and my advisor has suggested that I explore how the advent of video cassettes and DVD’s have disrupted the casting industry, in order to predict future patterns. 

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Week 4

This week I gained much more insight from the field. I began with understanding the logistics of what I need to find and the methodology to achieve the goal. At first I wanted to find out the importance of casting directors and how impactful the right cast can make. I found many many articles online (sadly non were academic) of how miscasting a character can lead to the box office failure and beyond that the failure of being honest to the story telling process.

http://www.answers.com/article/1212907/10-casting-decisions-that-may-have-ruined-the-movie

I’ve found it difficult to find academic papers and credible sources that are rooted in the film industry surrounding the casting process. The bulk of my research will come from my primary sources in the next week, I have 5 interviews set up next week with directors and casting agents from small independent to major production house films. However, I did end up finding a patent that is dangerously close to my topic and a book outlining the audition process for people who are self producing.

First the patent:

https://www.google.com/patents/US20050261955

“A system for generating, storing, retrieving and updating performer related information for a plurality of performers and entities involved in a broadcast production, wherein said performers and entities are connected to a digital computer network carrying and routing digital data between said system and said entities over a communication link”

I followed the source and the company the patent inventors made is no longer in existence. I still need to read the details to find a way that I can claim my product is a diversion from this process. I plan on talking to a lawyer this upcoming week. 

Second pertinent information sources I found was Casting revealed: a guide for film directors by H Schell.

It laid out a good ground work for the landscape of filmmaking. An important aspect for me to understand the financial impact of films. The book suggested that the directors skim through websites and calling for web submissions. This kind of relays that there also issues in finding the talent to come in the first place. There are open calls, private appointments, cold readings, call backs. And on a broader scale there is principal casting and background casting. These two operations work in very different facts. Principal casting is divided into lead, supporting, recurring, day players, under fives, and bit parts.  

I found in DeMystifying Disruption a journal article by Ashish Sood and Gerard J. Tellis

that there are major pitfalls in trying to disrupt technologies for the sake of distruption. They categorize four points of failure for many of these technologies. “(1) are introduced as frequently by incumbents as by entrants, (2) are not cheaper than older technologies, and (3) rarely disrupt firms; and (4) both entrants and lower attacks significantly reduce the hazard of disruption.”

I need to address these issues in order to validate my initial hypothesis.

 http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.1100.0617

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Blog Post 2

What do you know now?

The Idea

The only successful and impactful theatre tech is backstage.com, which helps to find and organize a fraction of daily auditions according to what companies need in their breakdown of scenes and shows. While they aren’t open about their KPI’s, they have indicated that their monthly members are in the millions.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of auditions happening on a daily basis all across the globe and there hasn’t been an exploration in easing the audition process itself.

The User

busy casting directors who don’t have time to organize auditions

users who need more analytics to decide on a performer and enjoy the process of filtering large data

Possible Features

ranking ability

timer for audition

headshot and resume review

rating per actor

ability to comment

ability to suggest actors to other audition holders

swiping at the end of an audition to tighten pool

side-by-side comparison tool

recording and filing with actor profile

measurements filtering

Do you need to know?

The processes casting directors in different mediums.

What different mediums can this application apply to?

How can I reach these users?

What are their attitudes? What do the ideal participants feel?

What is my sample size for user testing? Is it homogenous?

Where does this product live? Is it mobile, or a web platform?

What other industries had successful tech interventions and how were implemented?

Why hasn’t hasn’t theatre embraced technology?

How has your question evolved as you’ve encountered work and information?

How has your question evolved as you’ve encountered more information?

I think the complexity of the process in casting didn’t dawn on me. I’m learning about different methodology in different fields, so this app can’t be a one stop solution for all auditions.

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Research from this week

Article 1: Who benefits from public funding of the performing arts? Comparing the art provision and the hegemony–distinction approaches

T Feder, T Katz-Gerro - Poetics, 2012 - Elsevier

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30436298/POETIC1094.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1474461329&Signature=jWob5dks3%2F9J5UwhiiXrNh9%2F3BI%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DWho_Benefits_from_Public_Funding_of_the.pdf

This paper tests the applicability of two approaches. One approach emphasizes the role of cultural policy in making the arts accessible to the wider public. The second approach emphasizes how cultural policy facilitates processes of hegemony–distinction.

Article 2:The Effects of Organizational Theatre on Empowerment and Control

RJ Badham, WR Carter, LJ Matula… - The Journal of …, 2016 - jab.sagepub.com

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46088891/Beyond_Hope_and_Fear-_The_Effects_of_Organizational_Theatre_on_Empowerment_and_Control._.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1474461632&Signature=GOkSHDixRBIl4ObY0GSTsT2XIYM%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DBeyond_Hope_and_Fear_The_Effects_of_Orga.pdf

The results of the field study not only indicate that organizational theatre interventions may increase both empowerment and control but also suggest that the outcomes may be more lightweight than supporters have hoped and critics have feared.

Article 3: Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes

M MacArthur - Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes, 2016 - books.google.com

The dominance of the internet has led to a growing trend of selfappointed theatre critics and bloggers who are changing the focus and purpose of the discussion around live performance. Even though the blogosphere has garnered suspicion and hostility from some mainstream newspaper critics, it has also provided significant intellectual and ideological challenges to the increasingly conservative profile of the professional critic.

Article 4:The Futures of Theatre Criticism

www.utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/ctr.163.010

by K Fricker - 2015

Fricker considers the ethics and practicalities around new forms of critical engagement, including theatre organizations’ hiring of critics and “embedded” or behind-the-scenes criticism, and exhorts theatre scholars to take a leadership role in shaping Canada’s theatre critical future

News: Are Theatre Critics Critical? An Update

http://howlround.com/are-theatre-critics-critical-an-update

News: Theater: Coming to an app near you?

http://pacificsun.com/theater-coming-to-an-app-near-you/

Article: Criticism So White? Here’s How to Change That

http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/11/criticism-so-white-heres-how-to-change-that/

Talk: The Changing Face of Theatre Criticism in the Digital Age: Embedded Criticismhttps://vimeo.com/98970839

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This Week’s Blog Post

What is your research question?

To answer this question, I’m going to take a few steps back so I can explain where I am and what the context the project is living in.

I began this journey with the idea of changing technology through theatre. It made sense. Theatre was my background and there was no better way to marry my past and present than to connect the two. I also find the current state of theatre to be clinging to archaic cannon that doesn’t really connect with people anymore in the way it has historically. It’s an industry that doesn’t want to try to create new work. And in part, looked through a tech lens, it makes sense. Large organizations can rarely risk their sustaining products. They’re focused on the ROI. They don’t think innovation is necessary once a successful product has been created. Why not put Hello Dolly on stage? People have paid millions for it in the past and it’s proven to be a successful business model.

But what happens when truly innovative work is introduced into the system? You might have heard of a little musical by the name of Hamilton. A rap musical with a mostly non-white cast about Alexander Hamilton? It’s Mike Pence’s favorite show and also happens to have shaken musical theatre to its core. I could go into depth about how this show has impacted culture and how theatre is slowly changing because of it, but my question comes in at why didn’t this happen earlier? Why have white men dominated the world of theatre?

The larger question of why aren’t the disenfranchised audiences given access to creating and watching theatre? How can I empower oppressed communities in the arts to disrupt the creative ecosystem?

The answer lies in how theatre is consumed. Most theatre is reviewed by traditionalists who focus on the sustaining model of theatre I described earlier. New works are hesitantly accepted and old works are revered. This isn’t to say there isn’t new innovative theatre happening, people just don’t know it’s happening. There isn’t a sustaining model within the innovative model. There needs to be a connection between audiences and these small shows.

This is where I introduce BuzzR into the world. It’s a platform that primarily focuses on crowd-sourcing reviews of performances. It allows the masses to give their honest opinion of the work they are seeing and also find work that they might not have been able to access the information to be aware of. In many ways, the aims of BuzzR are mimic the effect YouTube had on the film industry. It’s a platform that will allow smaller shows to shin alongside the giants rather than being hidden in the shadows.

How will you achieve this project by the end of April?

This is a good question. I’m going to assume copious amounts of coffee isn’t a sufficient answer. I have a timeline attached in the presentation notes. Sadly, I am renegade at the moment and have no advisor so I do not know how to plan realistic deliverables in regards to the actual development portion. That said, I know and love UX/UI so I’ll be able to whiz through the creation phase within the next three weeks. The development (ie actual coding) phase will be the uphill battle. Along with that, simultaneously testing, iterating on the prototype and developing will prove to give me an aneurism and hopefully a masters degree.

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Here’s a link to my slides for today’s pesentation

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Thesis Outline

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I then proceeded to narrow down my topics with specific action words to explore particular sections of these broader ideas. 

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Topics

I found from the overarching themes I extracted, these are the three topics that felt were the most representative.

1.Collaborative Digital Spaces

2.Dissemination of Information

3.Race and Theatre 

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I spend too much time on the subway. And now I have these bars to stare at to remind me about last week. 

Click for subway tears

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RITAAAAAAAAA. She’s crazy. But like. Kind of. I had a weird time. Also, the title of this Donald Marquis poem is ‘Nightmare’. Coincidence? 

Original Poem: "LEAGUES before me, leagues behind, Clamor warring wastes of flood, All the streams of all the worlds Flung together, mad of mood; Through the canon beats a sound, Regular of interval,Distant, drumming, muffled, dull, Thunderously rhythmical; Crafts slip by my startled soul-- Soul that cowers, a thing apart-- They are corpuscles of blood! That's the throbbing of a heart! God of terrors!--am I mad?--Through my body, mine own soul, Shrunken to an atom's size,Voyages toward an unguessed goal!"

Click for the journey 

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MAIS QUI WE BECAME FRENCH THIS WEEK 

Just kidding just created lissajour’s curves 

these curves don’t lie...click here for proof

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Week 6: Translation and Rotation with a little lerp fun

Click here for the goods 

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Here’s the second recreation of Joseph Albers’ theme. However this felt sooooo much more painstaking. 

Click here to feel the Bern

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This is from Week 4 when we recreated themes from Joseph Alber’s Interaction of Color. This one was more fun then the next guy 

Click here to see all of the good stuff 

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Week 3 Moire Drawings 

Played with that random life 

Click me to see thingsssss