Where's Ray?

     For our last project in e-Comm of the year (besides the Get Real), we were tasked with creating a mini documentary.  We were to choose a subject or topic we found interesting, and, well, document it. We had to have interviews and a plot. With that, our team got to work.

     While brainstorming for topics, my friend Abby came up with a bit of a nonconventional idea. What if we, took to social media and it's influential abilities?

     We took that idea and ran with it.

     I wish I had a copy to show, but team has had some personal problems come up and we do not have it exported yet.

    So, we had our idea. But how were we to actually apply it, and how were we going to document it while we ran around praying that it actually worked? We were lucky that Abby had already had some experience growing an account fast, so we stuck her with posting and growing duties. Most of my work was in pre-production, getting logistics figured out, planning posts. The idea behind the account was that someone had "kidnapped" our school's mascot, Ray the Raven. Players had to decipher clues and codes to figure out where and how to get him back.

    We had one major filming day. We are all friends with the girl who plays our mascots we borrowed the suit for a day. In an old video my friends made, they used this cool trick to get a silhouette on a colored background fast. We staged our friend Mario as the kidnapper and had another friend wear the head and crouch next to him. Then, we went outside and filmed a little video of the raven actually getting kidnapped. The whole time, Abby and I filmed behind the scenes. We also did a little photoshoot in the basement so we had some more content for the page.

     Most of our class time earlier on went to figuring out posts and clues. The idea was there, but we didn't know how to accomplish it. I came up with the idea to hide the main clue throughout the entire project, so we took each letter of our final clue and had the capital letters spell it out. We also did a little clue at the end where A=1. One post would go up daily over the span of two weeks with all the clues leading to real life.

     Abby really took the leadership role with this project since she was in charge of the account itself, but we all worked together to make sure the whole thing ran smoothly. Project management was extremely important to the success of our documentary. If we missed a day or two of posting and weren't always checking up on the account's stats. If we were lacking anywhere it was technical skills. Our documentary itself was pretty simple since the majority of our work went into pulling it off.

     Our last day came as a bit of a surprise. We posted our final clue and could only hope some people would show up. Lucky for us and the success of our project, they did. People participated! We had a large group show up all at once. One student followed it very closely and another had found a program to try and take off the voice changer we put on our original video. The account at its peak probably had about 145 followers.

     If I could go back, I would have been a bit more diligent about making sure all the posts got out on time and tried to get more footage during class of posts and updates along the way, making the whole thing a bit more cinematic.  I really liked our idea for the project, though. It felt different than what is normally expected and we stepped out of our comfort zones with the uncertainty of the fate of our project. I wouldn't change that. When it comes to the next project, I want to focus more on cinematography and making sure the visual aspect is there.
 
     I really enjoyed watching this project unfold from beginning to end and I'm really glad we stuck with this idea in the first place. Our school tends to be a little lazy when it comes to things like this so the odds were stacked a bit against us, but I'm glad our worked paid off the way it did.