Yeah, falling behind…

It’s been a month since my last update.  Have gotten busy with rewriting a spec w/ sis and other projects.  Will be returning to this as soon as possible.

Don’t give up on me yet.

Quick Update - 3/25

Not much to report - had a great conversation with a friend last night bouncing some new ideas for the story and possibly some new characters.  Originally I had limited the scope to just Cassia, thinking I couldn’t really do much with other characters, but now I’m rethinking that.  Besides, I need multiple access points to the story for people, and having additional characters would help with that.

So, there’s still a lot to think about.  Now that I’ve put off shooting any videos until I’m really ready, I feel I have a little more breathing room to figure this all out.  Moving fast is good, but if the scenery is a complete blur, you might want to slow down a bit…

Second thoughts.

I think I’m gonna dump the whole ‘terminal illness’ storyline.  Cassia is just gonna be kinda insane and want to put herself into stasis.  While I like that she would have a reason to do it, I fear the consequences of people not realizing that this is fiction who somehow feel ‘betrayed’ thinking Cassia/I have an illness when she/I do(es) not.

And after all the cookies I ate today, I really don’t want to do the ‘pre-weight loss videos.’  I’d rather go on my frickin’ diet, shoot the videos when I’m damn good and ready and stop trying to rush everything.  The rushing worries me.

So, that’s what I’m thinking today.  No illness, no fattening up to get skinny…just get skinny.

Slow and steady wins the transmedia race.

Project Update: 3/24

Cassia’s twitter is live and she’s already linking to some articles which interest her.  She’s also stated that her website cassianicchi.com is being rebuilt.  As much as I like tumblr for the project updates, I think Cassia will use WP for her blog.  She hopes to get the blog installed and up and running by the weekend.

Should Cassia use other social media tools?

Foursquare is a possibility, at least for Phase One.

I don’t think she’ll be using Facebook, though at some point I might try to set up a fan page in her honor.  That’s gonna be awhile though.

For now, I welcome Cassia to Twitter.  Feel free to interact with her.  If you start chatting with her, I’m sure she’ll start chatting back…although, beware. She’s kind of an anarchist.

Cassia’s current Avatar.

Rockin it! →

Cassia is ALIVE! She’s alive!!! Now for the website…

Idea dump 3/22

Video log thoughts:

The first x number of videos (tbd) will need to shot ASAP, and then held for launch.  Will need lead time to lose some weight between the ‘before’ vids and the ‘after’ so the weight loss ‘looks’ dramatic in real time.  This is a risk factor for success, of course.

That means, I need to have the character’s look figured out STAT.  I may do some test videos so I can show the 1 or 2 people who help me with the real ones understand what I’m trying to achieve.  So, things I need to hunt down:

A camera - what am I gonna shoot the vlogs with?

Makeup/hair/wardrobe - all part of the ‘look’ question

Crew - Do I have one?  Do I need one?

And then there’s the issue of who the heck is Cassia!!

Breakdown of first videos:

Video #1 - It’s the ‘relaunch’ video.  Cassia explains that the old site was ‘lost’ to a fire which destroyed the host server and most of the backups.  The offsite backup was too old, so she’s starting from scratch.  Right now it’s only the blog and the videos, but eventually we’ll get the site fixed so “you guys can interact with me again.  For now, I look forward to reading your comments on the blog, where I bring you up to speed on everything happening…”

Video #2 - Diet Kick-off.  Cassia decides she’s had enough of being overweight and tired all the time so she’s going on a diet and to the gym.  The videos will help keep her honest and on track.

Video #3 - First Diet/Exercise update - not much change yet, but expecting this to really stick as a lifestyle change this time.

Video #4 - Project video #1.  Cassia gives an update on where she is with Project Neo.  She hopes to have the Project Neo site up ‘soon’ so people can help her with the testing.  She’ll publish the specs on Project Neo soon too.

I see things changing with Video #5 (my thought is to publish one video a week, though that may not be enough…this requires some evaluation).  Fortunately, the daily content will also come from blog posts, photos, etc that Cassia posts to her site, so that will help feed the beast and the story stuff.  Especially if we play it as some of the content is ‘recovered’ data from her laptop and such that she’s putting back on the site finally.

So…what does Cassia look like (besides a lot like me)?

Idea dump 3/21

I love showers.  All of the best thinking is done in the shower.

Cassia’s blog ‘appears’ because she suffered a catastrophic data loss — a fire in her house destroyed her server with her old website and most of her backups. Fortunately, she wasn’t home when the fire broke out, and she had her laptop and her iPhone on her, so she retained all of her project work and most of her photos.  But she’s rebuilding her site, so ta-dah! http://cassianicchi.com (which i will reserve as soon as humanly possible). [Update: I have purchased the domain! W00t!]

She’ll open the site with a blog to start, and i need to start mapping out what the entries are like.

Her first set of videos will be her starting a diet/exercise journal.  She realized after the fire that she’s in terrible shape (too many late night coding sessions with pizza) so she’s going straight - and the videos are to keep her honest.

Then we start weaving in some project videos.  As she starts to test her Matrix software and building the hardware for it.  She’ll talk about her sleep trial runs, but they are pretty unsuccessful for awhile.

Then, the first significant story video - she drops a lot of weight very quickly.  She’s excited, but surprised how fast the weight is coming off.  She’s also more tired and it’s getting harder to get through her workouts.  She makes an appointment to see her doctor.

Video about the dr. appointment, they’re running a few tests, nothing major.  She’s taking multivitamins.

Next significant story video - test results.  Gotta figure out what is going to indicate there’s a problem and more tests are required (cancer? something else)

Inciting incident video - Cassia has [terminal illness] and it is pretty advanced.  She’s not being given much time and her options are pretty limited.  Devastating to her.

A few vids as she copes with the news…

Then, she ‘discovers’ Doctor [nametobedetermined] website and lecture video about cryonics.  She’s fascinated with his assertion that given today’s technology it is possible to place someone into stasis and re-awaken them at another point in time.  She gets her crazy idea to pursue the cryogenics and reaches out to him.

Video after she meets the doctor, she’s in and wants to figure out how to do this…

One night she gets the epiphany - if she can figure out how to make Matrix work, she could hook it up to her brain while she’s in stasis.  She won’t miss out on the world while she’s asleep.  She could be asleep a year or two or more until they figure out how to cure her, so she needs to keep up on things.  But it isn’t working as intended…yet.  More work and testing needed.  She gets a little mad scientist-y.

Finally, a video where she thinks she has had some success.  Her random sleep input didn’t work overnight, but after 2 or 3 nights, she woke up able to access data in her mind that she had no prior knowledge of except through her data input.  It’s fuzzy and not entirely coherent, but it’s definitely been fed in, and not from her reading or seeing or taking in the information from her physical senses in any way.

I think that’s a pretty good start.  Whew.  Need some Cassia personality profile/backstory.  Also need to timeline out the whole weightloss thing so it will coincide with my personal transformation (the things i do for my art).

Update for 3/19

Project Plan has been created!  You can find it at http://projectram.timetask.com.

So planning is going well — the Twitter account for this project has been created too: http://twitter.com/ProjectRAM.  I will link this blog up to that twitter account and also do future project backchannel chatter from there.  That will be my ‘live’ feedback loop.

Our Protagonist has a name!  Per the random sampling done on Twitter, best name result seems to be CASSIA NICCHI, which roughly translates to ‘empty basket’.  After all, she will be an ‘empty basket’ to be filled with the stuff others feed into her brain during the FROZEN phase of the project, and will become the elements that inform the story in UNFROZEN.

Some other thoughts I’ve had today.  I think Cassia (gotta get used to her having a name now) will be building Project Neo when she discovers she has [incurable disease].  Project Neo of course, will be my hattip to “The Matrix”, since that’s kinda sorta what she envisions she is plugging herself into during stasis.

So, I made a note today that I’ll need a website for Project Neo and her personal tech company, a twitter account for her and for that project.  Add this to the requirements for the Cryo company website, the doctor’s site and blog and twitter account.  Ultimately the Project Neo site will need to become the portal for the social network where people upload content and vote on it.  I also think I’ll need a fake tech news site from which to link articles on Cassia’s employer, the cryo company and the doctor she sees for her cryo.  That will help to inform some story points, especially with the potential instability of the cryogenics methodology.

Still haven’t had much thought about any ancillary characters in ‘Frozen’.  Also wondering if I shouldn’t recategorize the project into 3 phases, because right now ‘Frozen’ also includes the pre-Frozen activities…should that be its own phase?  I rather like having only 2 phases, but I’ll consider this for the future.

So, next step: work on the Cassia character bio.  Lots of work to do there…

Welcome to the project blog

This is really intended for an audience of one - me.  It’s a way to track my progress on setting up this crazy thing I’m doing.

The first task is complete - the project blog has been setup.  Always good to be able to mark tasks completed.

The second task is to create my project plan, which i will start doing today and will post as soon as i have it started.  I’ll then post updates to the plan.

The first milestone is ‘character creation.’  I have a character to create - name, bio, look, etc.  The character will be “played” for lack of a better term, by me.

So that’s easy. Part is already cast!

But I need a look for the character.  A voice.  A life.  That will inform so much going forward - story, etc.

Then we’ll start on all that other stuff.

If you are looking in on my little world, welcome.  All I ask is you don’t tell anybody about what I’m doing.  If you have some feedback for me on this, email me.  If you don’t know how to do that…well, I’m all over the friggin web, so I’m sure you’ll find a way.

Let’s go break some new ground.