Friday, February 3, 2012
The Chronicles of Zero: Web Presence
If I were to launch The Chronicles of Zero to create an actual web presence, I’d want to expand his reach. (I certainly would want searchable text!) Let’s pretend that Zero’s story gained national attention. How would his “resume” appear in a Google search? Here is a draft.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Zero,
ReplyDeleteI love the ambitious scale of your web presence. Great job, I definitely get the feeling of a "cat story gone big" here. The resume is geared heavily to the visual over the written (there's the website and Facebook, but not the original blog), but I think that would be an accurate portrayal with a huge hit movie and TV show, so it's a minor criticism.
The one question on everyone's mind is: Does Zero play himself in the movie?!
I suppose I saw thechroniclesofzero.com as the blog. (He would fork over the cash to purchase a domain name once famous, haha.)
DeleteIt's funny: There is a cat at work (at the humane society) that I connect to Zero. His name is Dorren, and he is currently being treated for an upper respiratory infection, but he'll be up for adoption soon. His big, polydactyl paw is the one that serves as Zero's twitter icon. :)
--Zero's Narrator
I value concise and structured communications, and while your subject permits you as author a stage virtually free of creative constraint it is impressive that you deliver according to familiar and accessible rules.
ReplyDeleteDrawing one antithesis, perhaps your delivery is too familiar. Have you considered the possibility of the appearance of fan sites, tribute music compositions, or other emergent fandom consistent with your popular culture?
Yes. I wasn't sure how to continue the list. Perhaps I could've added a second document with more obscure sites.
DeleteDvosara has already made my point.
ReplyDeleteAn A for effort Zero. I appreciate you trying this and putting so much work into the design. I was surprised at the content at first, but I guess it makes sense. You want to raise awareness through your narrative, so why not go Hollywood?
It’s just that Hollywood is tough to get into. I know. I was a film student. It’s good to shoot for the stars, but I really want these assignments to help you move forward practically. As a film student, I learned to think YouTube before YouTube. Start small and build to the larger project. Make a short. Make a photo stream. More important than making a photo stream is the concept behind it.
You could just say, duh, it will be a photostream of a cat.
But you should say it better be more than a photostream of a cat because we already have enough of those.
The how and the why behind these snippets are what matters.
I know you already have another feline website and that this is something of a lab for your other work. Working with snippets or a profile like this gives you the opportunity to come up with concrete, low budget directions to take this in.
I appreciate your ability with the narrative. I just read Zero’s entry about his restless night with his owner. You say a lot with a sentence. You easily relay the owner’s character. It’s an engaging, charming story.
But if I can go wide here for a second… does a narrative really reach your audience? If you want to raise awareness, isn’t anyone seeking and or reading this column already a cat lover? Again, I like your narrative, but think about your goals. Do you want to mobilize cat lovers further or do you want to reach outside that group? How could Chronicles expand its audience?
Even the name Chronicles of Zero isn’t going to catch as many feline fans as Brunel’s Ghost is going to catch random engineers searching bridge history.
I like what you have, but this is an opportunity to make it stickier, broader, clever as a cat in its ability to live nine lives and hold the curious. Should Zero have a Facebook page? Why? Is there anyway to make it more than just another Facebook fan page?
You are thinking somewhat conventionally. Movie > IMDB. Facebook and Twitter, check. Maybe Zero should be a t-shirt line on Etsy or Threadless. Can you tweet a slogan clever enough for that crowd that would also raise adoption numbers? Are there arguments to be made for having feral cats in a neighborhood?
Think about that with the midterm this week. Think about that in your idea pitches. Be a little more creative. Specifically be creative by coming up with innovative ideas that are also relatively achievable.
Good work.
It's hard for me to think beyond this seven week experiment. When I read that the assignment was to "fabricate this document for your web presence," I created a mockup of a search. Having a popular media presence is not something I would ever hope to aim for, it's just my response to the assignment. I did a few search queries for other terms, like the ones you showed as examples, and followed that format. I see what you're saying, though: I could think beyond the box and create something unexpected.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are tons of arguments for having feral cats in the neighborhood! Playing DA on this topic was difficult. I had to pretend to support genocide (feline-cide?).
I've already completed my "elevator pitches" assignment, but haven't gotten too far into my midterm proposal. I suppose I'm not really sure who my audience is, as this is just an experiment with a character.
I suppose my goal for this class is to play with my writing style and tell a story. The goal I'd create for this hypothetical project, if it truly existed, would be to use it to create awareness about homeless animals and humane societies within the community.