So I've just completed my hybrid media assignment. I call it Viewing the Outsider. It is based on the short story The Outsider, which was written by H.P. Lovecraft. That wasn't something I intended at the start of this assignment.

My initial idea was that I would have single unifying theme within the video, one that each type of media that I used would embody. The theme which I had settled on was 'fear of the unknown'. It was then a matter of determining how I could convey this theme. Now it just so happens that have a paperback collection of H.P. Lovecraft's various short stories. Given that the author is one of the 20th century's most influential horror writer, I figured that I could find a few quotes from one of his stories that would match the theme of my video. Lovecraft's stories often dealt with supernatural creatures, often emphasizing their alien nature and mankind's inability to comprehend them.

I started looking for quotes and ended up rereading the entire story. The tale is told in first-person, and the narrator is someone who has lived his entire life in a dark fortress beneath the ground. His knowledge of the outside world comes from books that he has read. Tried of living in darkness, the narrator departs from his home and stumbles upon a castle. Inside the castle are a variety of individuals having a party. Finding this discovery to be exhilarating our narrator steps into the castle, only to see the party members scream and panic as they begin to flee for their lives. He then sense a presence and turns to see a monster staring right at him. The narrator stumbles and reaches his hand out to the monster, only to have his hand touch a "cold and unyielding surface of polished glass".

I've always liked this story, mostly because I felt that the use of the first-person narrative was very creative. But I was also attracted to the themes of isolation within the story and the more I thought about it, the prospect of using the story as the basis for my video become more appealing.
The idea is quite similar to using film clips in a hybrid media, only I would represent the story through text and mix it with my own footage.

Keeping in mind that the story was written in first-person narrative, the footage in my hybrid media is essentially a series of P.O.V. shots. These shots are very grainy and lighting in each of them has been digitally altered. Again, this was done to reflect on another aspect of the story; that the narrator wasn't  human. The idea is to suggest to the viewer that we are seeing the world through the eyes of something inhuman. I tried to contrast this by inserting unaltered photographs of the landscape between each clip, showing the difference between how the viewer would see the world, and how the creature sees the world. Also, in the story the creature remarks how he cannot seem to remember his past; the photographs are supposed to represent what he can remember. They are fading images within his memory.
Of course I also wanted to convey the sense of isolation that the creature felt, so I chose to record the footage in an more isolated area. The nearby buildings represent human civilization, something that this creature longs to be apart of.

The first quote in the video is the first sentence in the story. The second one that is split up over the course of the video is the last sentence of the first paragraph. The last quote comes from part of the first sentence of the very last paragraph in the story. To me, these quotes embodied the themes of the story and the ideal ones to use for the hybrid media. The last shot in the video is meant to sync up with the preceding quote ("...when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.") in a thematic sense; in this shot the 'reaching beyond' comes in when the creature walks to the end off the path and stops. The video ends here, with him wondering about his next course of action. Is he willing to step off that path and go beyond it?

One thing that is notice able is the lack of sound. I didn't try and record any kind of music or nosies because I felt the silence was more foreboding. I felt that it would give the video a more atmospheric quality that would enhance the sense of isolation and otherworldliness of the P.O.V. shots.

For the next project in my digital media course, I have to create a hybrid media video. Hybrid involves combining multiple forms off media (which encompasses everything from film clips, published text, photographs, etc) into one single clip. For part of the assignment, we have to define a couple of terms that will help us better understand what we have to accomplish with this assignment.

• Haptic Visuality- The term was defined by Laura Marks, who was referring to works by Pipilotti Rist; "..the eyes themselves function like organs of touch". It is when a viewer is trying to discern a tactile texture created by a combination of blured, grainy , low-resolution images. Basically the image deines the viewer a single form to focus on. Instead the viewer has to work to constitute the image, which creates a more multi-sensory experience.
• Variable Media- In this context the term 'variable' refers to all possible forms (whether they be visual, temporal, spatial, interactive, etc.) within design and animation software, which can be modified at any point. Media artists can assign the variable to their own channel on the video's timeline and use that as a jumping point to start animating various dimensions within the scene itself. 

Trying to create this hybrid media project hasn't been easy. I guess that when you have such a board selection of media to work with, you find yourself a bit overwhelmed with all the options available. You need to be able to combine different forms of media and end up with a work of art that conveys a certain idea. 

To me these terms highlight the abstract nature of hybrid media video. Frankly if I had to sum up the examples I have seen in one word I would've said "Abstract". These kinds of works involve some kind of digital manipulation, whether it means playing with an image in photoshop or modifying a film clip. The originals are distorted into something else entirely.