Grimm Tales group project.

Role/Roles

I was the Project manager of the group. I had overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project. I also took on the role of Head researcher, which allowed me to research numerous different articles and journals which helped emphasise our research question. This research also allowed me to make the survey questions. The responses from the survey helped form dialogue within the narrative. I took charge of ensuring the layout of our documentation fit with our project. i.e used the correct fonts throughout the documentation, fonts which we are using within our game. I wrote the script for our narrative. For the script I ensured that the narrative would be engaging to our demographic of 18-25 year olds but also to the wider demographic of adolescents and older adults. Near the end of the project, I made a list of the scenes in the script that would need to be mad. I took on making a few of the scenes to help move the production along.

Introduction

Grimm Tales is a user-driven interactive narrative based on modernised fantasy characters in a crime scene/murder mystery scenario. The project investigates how the evolution of the Brothers Grimm story world has influenced the expected standards of beauty among 18-25-year olds in image based social platforms. Characters in the narrative reflect this theme. This adventure relies on the user’s actions and decisions to formulate both the ongoing story and a final outcome. The project challenges the user and encourage their interactivity with the story and characters. The project is intended to investigate how a detective interaction can be modernised and how popular fantasy characters can be reimagined and incorporated into the narrative.

Research for Role/Project

I have done the research for the project. I used a number of online journals and other literary sources for the research although some books were sourced from the DkIT library like Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling, by Kelly McErlean.

I laid out the research under 3 headings:

1. Social Media Use

2. Brothers Grimm Storyworld

3. Expected Beauty Standards

Social Media Use

Social media has become much more popular over the last decade. People are more online then they were a few years ago. More than 3 billion people around the world now use social media each month. (Global Digital Report 2018) Social media has changed how we communicate with each other and the world around us. According to the Pew Research Centre (2018) 18-28 year olds are the most frequent users. This age group were among the earliest adopters of social media and still continue to use social media at a high rate. Facebook is the most widely used out of the major social platforms with 2.32 billion monthly active users on Facebook as of December 31, 2018. (Facebook Newsroom, 2018). Instagram is another hugely popular platform with 1 billion active users as of June 2018. (Statista 2018). Snapchat has 186 million active users in the 3rd quarter of 2018. (Statista 2018).

Social media is so popular because it allows people to manage their activities, stay in touch with friends, find information, look for events, find stores and brands and even find the weather. We are Social (2018) found that the number of social media users worldwide in 2018 was 3.196 billion. According to a study done by The Manifest 86% of people use social media at least once a day, including 72% who use it multiple times a day. (Herhold 2018). A study done by Pew research Center (2018) shows that young adults between the ages of 18 - 24 use social platforms like Snapchat and Instagram more than others.

Studies by Radovic et al (2016) and Koutamanis et al (2014) looked at adolescents and online behavior. Koutamanis et al (2014) noted that their results indicated that negative feedback comes from ‘adolescents tendency to engage in online social exploration and risky online self-presentation. Adolescents when posting pictures of themselves were more concerned with their physical attractiveness, which as Koutamanis et al note may be important to adolescents developing their goals.Radovic et al (2016) mentions “Oversharing” among adolescents. Oversharing is a common problem on most social media platforms. Oversharing can be posting about ‘trivial events, suggestive photos (i.e. sexy outfit, drinking), or exaggerating positive events.’

Brothers Grimm Storyworld

The Brothers Grimm Storyworld is the basis for this research. The reasoning behind choosing the Brothers Grimm storyworld is mainly due to the fact that since the stories/fairy tales have all been published before 1923, meaning that they are part of the public domain and copyright free. (Stanford University Libraries).

I also research all the Brothers Grimm fairytales that would be well known today. Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel were some of the more popular ones which I placed within the narrative. I used other fairytales like Doctor Knowall which would not be as commonly known and placed them within the narrative as well.

Expected Beauty Standards

An article by Majella Votta (2018) talks about the role of fairy tales and how beauty standards have been shaped by them. They raise a very interesting question. “How did our nightly bedtime stories shape and influence our perception of beauty?”. Looking at fairy tales

throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were mainly focused on the domestic role of women in society, and how they had a role to serve their husbands. The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 2003) emphasizes how feminine beauty ideal has been a prominent message represented in many children’s fairy tales. Like Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz(2003), Neikirk (n.d) and Hanafy (2004) are more concerned with beauty in relation to girls and women. Most research in fact was more centered to women. According to the study done by Baker- Sperry and Grauerholz (2003) 94% of the Grimm fairy tales referred to Beauty or ugliness, with ugly being used to describe evil characters. In ‘Cinderella’ women were referred 114 in terms of beauty. Less than 35 references were made to male characters in the stories.

Beauty standards have been emphasised more now with the ever growing popularity of social media platforms. Popular mass media is often criticized for objectifying women and men. Vandenbosch and Eggermont (2012) explain how ‘women and girls are often expected to learn from the media what the expected beauty ideals are and how they should embody these standards.’ For men, the media has shaped society to think that muscular, toned bodies is what the ‘ideal’ shape is for men. This stereotype is often seen through the likes of Instagram where male influencers take pictures of them at the gym with no top on etc.

Implementation of your research

Below are examples of the project’s previous iterations.

• Evolution of subcultures - documentary.

• Interactive comic book-style Robin Hood story - Hacker.

• Predictive text fairy-tale.

• You are introduced to a group of people and presented with choices to either reward or hurt them in some way. When you take action, you gain tokens which can be spent to learn about a character’s life.

• Plain video, showing a fairy tale transitioning to be a tale told around a fire, to cave paintings, to shadow puppets, to theatre, to cinema, further and further forward in time until we speculate on the future.

• Story pre-defined by asking masses how to proceed with story.

• Interactive narrative investigating a fairytale murder mystery.

Although our question could be answered mainly off the journals and articles which I found, as a group we decided that doing a survey would also be beneficial. It would mean that we would get answers from our demographic of 18-25 year olds, making the information more valuable to the project. With the help of our supervisor and the other members of the group I made up the survey. Initially I made the survey up in JotForm but after a few days I decided that Google Forms would be better as it would allow for unlimited responses and would make charts and graphs from the responses. Jotform only allowed for 30 responses per link. Below are some of the responses we got back.

Discussions and Conclusions

I have implemented the research into parts of the script. As I am trying to not be too “in your face” about the research I have it subtly placed within the script, in different sections.

Twine was the program which I used to write the script. I used twine as it allowed me to see how many different choices there was, and to make sure that people were not choosing the same scene twice in their decision flow. There is a total of 18 different scenes throughout the entire script. Some of these scenes are very similar in appearance with a slight change with the dialogue. Below is the size of the script. Most sections are the exact same scene but just in a different place.

The final 2 choices have been taken out, as the game would be too long otherwise.

For the final scenes we are using Premiere Pro to put them in sequence. Small movements of certain pieces within the scene are implemented in order to keep users engaged. Below is an example of one scene that I have made up.

We used Eko Studio to host our game as it is built to run interactive movies.

To play the game, please click the here.

Bibliography of research

Baker-Sperry, L and Grauerholz, L. (2003). The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales. Gender and Society [online]. 17(5). Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3594706?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents [accessed 11 February 2019].

Facebook Newsroom (2018). Stats [online]. Available from: https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ [accessed 2 February 2019].

Hanafy, E. (2004). Scholars say fairy tales stress beauty [online]. Available from: https://www.csun.edu/~bashforth/305_PDF/305_FinalProj/305FP_Gender/ScholarsSayFairy TalesStressBeauty_14Jan04_MSP.pdf [accessed 11 February 2019].

Herhold, K. (2018). How People Use Social Media in 2018 [online]. Available from: https://themanifest.com/social-media/how-people-use-social-media-2018 [accessed 10 February 2019]

Koutamanis, M, Vossen, H and Valkenburg, P. (2015). Adolescents’ comments in social media: Why do adolescents receive negative feedback and who is most at risk?. Computers in Human Behavior. [online] December 2015, pp. 486-494. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215300297 [accessed 10 February 2019].

McErlean, K. (2018). Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling. NY: Taylor & Francis.

Neikirk, A. (n.d). Happily Ever After (or What Fairytales Teach Girls About Being Women) [online]. Available from: https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/documents/Vol07x07HappilyEverAfter .pdf [accessed 11 February 2019].

Pew Research Centre. (2018). Social Media Fact Sheet [online]. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ [accessed 2 February 2019].

Radovic, A, Gmelin, T, D.Stein, B and Miller, E. (2017). Depressed adolescents' positive and negative use of social media. Journal of Adolescence. [online]. February 2017, pp. 5-15. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197116301713 [accessed 10 February 2019] Stanford University Libraries. (n.d). Welcome to the Public Domain [online]. Available from: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/ [accessed 10 February 2019].

Statista. (2018). Number of daily active Snapchat users from 1st quarter 2014 to 3rd quarter 2018 (in millions) [online]. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ [accessed 2 February 2019].

Statista. (2018). Instagram - Statistics & Facts [online]. Available from: https://www.statista.com/topics/1882/instagram/ [accessed 2 February 2019].

Vandenbosch, L and Eggermont, S. (2012). Understanding sexual objectification: A comprehensive approach toward media exposure and girl’s internalization of beauty ideals, self-objectification and body surveillance. Journal of Communication [online], 27 August 2012. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.14602466.2012.01667.x [accessed 12 February 2019].

Votta, M. (2018). The Role of Fairytales in Modern Beauty Ideals [online]. Available from: http://affinitymagazine.us/2018/01/21/the-role-of-fairytales-in-modern-beauty-ideals/ [accessed 11 February 2019].

We are Social. (2018) DIGITAL IN 2018: WORLD’S INTERNET USERS PASS THE 4 BILLION MARK [online]. Available from: https://wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2018/01/globaldigital-report-2018 [accessed 10 February 2019].