The Struggle Within & Resolution

I was, note was, having a MAJOR conniption over my genre essay, due this weekend.
I had picked Superheroes as my genre and have to admit I wasnt even really sure if that was a genre. So I sent Cathie a request to clarify and she was a bit aloof and wouldnt really say yes or no but that she thought the genre would be more comic book action genre. This got me starting to think that I didnt even really know what a bloody genre was!


I spent hours, almost a whole weekend fine tuning my 200 word synopsis and managed to pin point some more finite areas to concentrate on looking at green screening and how effects in general have affected the believability of superheroes. I know... pretty fine tuned!


So hitting the research again started to become very frustrating and not turning up much good reference material. You cant rely soley on some user generated content wiki right?


And this is when it came to me: FLASH! Pow! Just like an old comic superhero - look at Social Media as a genre! I madly started jotting down points of interest, paragraphs of loose thoughts, headings and quotes, references and topics to discuss an before I knew it I had 1500 jumbled words and thoughts down on the page.
This is it I told myself, this will be an interesting essay.

I quickly wrote to Cathie again seeking permission to go off topic and change the focus of my essay and just got the reply now so I am thrilled! Here is the reply:


Dan, that sounds terrific - you could focus on a specific genre that uses social media. Social media itself isn't a genre they are social networks and distributed platforms, but they are doing exactly what you're saying impacting on traditional genres and methods of exhibition and distribution. You could clarify this in your essay and site examples of developing genres & programs that are developing through social media networks. For example 'The Matrix' and sci-fi genres were one of the first to use 'fan culture' and distribute aspects of their story across the internet. ARGs and Cross-media productions use social networks for both drama and documentary and have created hybrids such as ficto-documentaries or factual-dramas and reality games which blurr factual content with dramatic structures. You may have to search the website for conference papers and articles on this one and develop your essay through a key example of a program.

cheers, Cathie


So that has fired me up and I can hardly wait to get home and get these thoughts out of my head, so much to get down and done so that I can start to really focus on the final assignment, going to look at how mobile content is also affecting and develping genres.


ughh... the final assignement...I cant decide for the life of me what, who, when, how I will do it. I think I want to do the Imaginery World concept but havent got one single lucid original thought in my entire vapid brain at the moment... it's KILLING ME!