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  I'm Lauren Rae Orsini, a graduate student, journalist, infographic designer, anime convention reporter, and documentarian. Welcome.

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29 January 2010

I recently had the privilege to meet and befriend the illustrious Danny Ledonne. A filmmaker and MFA candidate at my school, Danny is best known for his controversial game, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, which is regarded as one of the first influential interactive narratives. (And as I’ve said before, I’m very interested in the emerging form of interactive narratives, probably because I’m a fan both of video games and good journalism.)

Danny was nice enough to agree to an interview with me in late December. From his ranch in Colorado, he offered me insight on the junction between video games, violence, and the media. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing the transcript in parts.

Q: Are video games still an emerging medium?

A: Yeah, I guess you could ask yourself what benchmark one would have to set to say that video games have come into their own and that they’re no longer emerging… Just last, no Friday night, Avatar screened in theaters and people were saying, “Oh this is this new direction that film is going in,” and you know the question is, “So is film still emerging?” and in some ways probably. So I think that the real definition that people talk about when they say that video games are an emerging medium is that they, unlike film, have a very restrictive understand based on what audiences expect them to do and what the general public thinks they are capable of. And so a game like ‘Columbine’ really revealed that games aren’t there yet because films and books and other contemporary forms of discourse were able to look at a subject like Columbine and video games just weren’t, at least in this case.

That doesn’t mean that ‘Columbine’ was the best game that could made about this subject, but given that so many people who never played it or really looked at it reacted negatively tells you something about where video games are at and that they haven’t emerged in the sense of being a socially relevant art form. No one would discount the- even Jack Thompson says that video games are art, that video games contain technical and artistic merit and that they can contain stories and ideas and depict the human condition. So video games are probably art. They’re not art like the Venus de Milo, but they’re art in a kind of contemporary digital form. But they haven’t yet emerged in the sense that video games still have a fairly narrow expectation of what we’re supposed to do with them. They’re generally toys that we use to spend a few hours entertaining ourselves. Video games are rarely seen as a way to engage in a socially relevant issue or look at a topic of contemporary importance.

Q: Do you think interactive narratives have become mainstream, or are they still an edgy or unusual way of telling a story? Read more

27 January 2010

Photo by Flickr user Son of Groucho.

I’ve been meaning to write and tell you all about how my new internship is going. I’m happy to say it’s going pretty well.

My position title is Multimedia/Web intern, so everything I do involves the Newseum’s Web site or interactive kiosks. That includes blogging, site building, learning the CMS (content management system for the non-techies), and plenty of video game testing.

Have you heard about The Tester? It’s a reality show where people compete to become a video game tester for PlayStation. Now, this is just my opinion, but after spending a few mornings testing a video game for bugs at the Newseum, why would people risk their dignity for a job like that? Having “video game” in the title does not make it cool. I’m fine doing it as an intern since it’s helping me learn the basics of game building, but it’s not exactly something I’d compete on television for the privilege to do. Basically, I’ve spent at least ten hours so far playing a game over and over and over, searching for bugs, finding bugs, and writing up exactly what triggers them. Penny Arcade was right on the money.

The coolest part of my internship so far is the actual writing part. I’m writing posts for the Newseum’s Future of News blog, which was created to promote their new TV series, The Future of News. None of my posts are up yet, but you can bet I’ll post when they are. My next entry will be about the history of photo doctoring.

Photo by Flickr user Son of Groucho.

I really like my coworkers (do I call the employees that?), my internship supervisor, and my co-intern, Andrea. While in response to the Newseum’s recent troubles, you’d think it would be a gloomy place to intern, it’s the people that make the experience so rewarding. I love the staff meetings because people are always cracking jokes.

In sum, things are going great. I’m sure that plenty of my future posts here are about things I accomplish at the Newseum.

27 January 2010

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, I had to dip into an earlier backup and lost all comments on this post. Feel free to rewrite your comment… or write something entirely new!

Welcome to a new weekly feature on my blog. In preparation for my latest documentary on fandom, I am watching (at least) one documentary on the subject every week.

This past week I watched Manga Mad, a 2008 documentary by Ray Castle that you can watch on Hulu. I hate to start this column on a negtive note, but if you’ve watched at least five minutes into the film, you can see what I mean when I say that the film was an excellent example of what not to do.

Just one of the unsettling captions in Manga Mad.

The first thing that struck me about the film was the jarring cinematography. In what must have taken ages in a video editor, the screen seems to switch from one manga cover to the next every few seconds. The camera is shaky and pans in, out and side to side in a way that made me nauseous. The same footage was reused over and over- something I learned in my basic film making class never to do.

Sound was poorly executed in this documentary. The nature of the subject involved a lot of interviews with Japanese native speakers, but the voice over translation was barely understandable. The translator was himself a native speaker and his accent was difficult for Western ears to comprehend. The interviews needed subtitles. The music was no better. With the same repetitive clips used over and over during the jarring visual montages of one second shots, I felt dizzy.

What disappointed me most about this film was the content, which was not only difficult to follow but, to me, insulting. Castle’s assertions that manga is all about sexuality (more than half of the film consisted of unnecessary and unsavory stills of cartoon porn) and its readers are social outcasts were short sighted and poorly defended. Shame on Castle, who should know very well that manga genres and readers are far more varied than that.

I have taken out a still from the film that particularly bothered me (above.) Yes, it’s true that manga fans in Japan are still considered on the fringe. The Japanese media nervously reports on violent criminals who watch anime the same way the American media reports on violent criminals who play video games. However, by the time this film was made, it was long established that the otaku stereotype does not truly reflect today’s otaku, who are usually ordinary individuals who happen to enjoy anime and manga (and yes, I consider myself one). I think that Castle is mistaking his portrayal of otaku for hikikomori, or shut-ins (Link goes to a great story on the subject from The New York Times).

For a far more in depth analysis of the otaku stereotype problem, I highly reccomend otaku scholar Lawrence Eng’s academic paper, “The current status of “otaku” and Japan’s latest youth crisis.” But as for Manga Mad, don’t expect to get any insight into fandom here.

Lauren’s Rating (out of five stars)

Cinematography: ★

Content: ★

19 January 2010

I’m glad my last post on Googlezon generated such fervor. Everyone had some very good points on the issue, some which I do agree with. Brendan’s point that the mainstream news has an editing problem is certainly true by my book. However, I think I should definitely follow up to crystallize my thoughts on the issue. Here’s why I still don’t think Googlezon is a good idea:

1) No one is held accountable in the Googlezon scenario. In the fictional world of Googlezon, the search engine would grab bits and pieces from all the blogs and information sources in the world in order to piece together news stories. It’s not entirely clear from whom each bit comes. As a result, if a fact were deemed to be faulty, it would be hard to trace back from whence it came. Meanwhile, right now in the highly flawed mainstream media, we at least know who to blame when something goes wrong.

2) Questions of accuracy are still a problem with Googlezon. How do we know what we read on the Internet is true? This is a question Adam Gurri tackled shortly after my post. In the end, we have come to the same conclusion- it’s a judgment call based on one’s own instincts and experience. Unfortunately, as Gurri points out, this is no different than how we receive mainstream news right now- we have to be conscientious news consumers and not trust that everything given to us is accurate. Once again, Googlezon would not solve this current media problem.

3) People will get a false sense of security about their news. I’ve written before about how people are more likely to listen to their friends as a news source than the mainstream news. So if people buy into Googlezon, where they (and people they know) are both producers and consumers of the news, they will naturally be more trusting of it. And given my second point, this trust is not earned- news consumers need to continue to be wary with this new medium.

This doesn’t mean I disagree with all new media concepts of news- I wouldn’t be blogging/publicly disagreeing with some media practices if I did! I just think that Googlezon  would not be a successful or reliable method.

If you don’t agree, which is likely, definitely comment respectfully about why not. On the off chance that you do agree, I’d love to hear why, too. In this emerging new form of media, we’re all more or less beginners.

17 January 2010

Photo by John B.

Hello again! It’s been quite a week for me. Not only did I start a new semester of graduate school and a brand new internship at the Newseum, I also fell extremely ill with the flu. So there’s your explanation for a lack of posts. Need I say more?

Yesterday I began shooting for my documentary response to Washington Post reporter Dan Zak’s less than flattering maid cafe portrait last year. I don’t think I’ve quite explained this: My hypothesis here is that to understand the wonderful and wacky sub-subculture that is the Katsucon maid cafe, one would have to herself become a maid. So So that is exactly what I’m doing: the whole nine yards, costume and all! (See more on Flickr). I’m happy to say that the other maids are proving to be not only great coworkers but genuine interview subjects. Reporting while sick isn’t fun, but the atmosphere of maidly camaraderie did lots to help.

Photo by John B.

Filming while working has brought up a whole new set of challenges for me. When I applied for a maid position, I promised the staff that filming would not get in the way of my waitressing duties. So I have assistants, my colleague Alex Thompson and my friend John Bowers, helping me photograph and film. When editing, I’ll have to lengths to make sure my work isn’t biased- especially since I will be appearing in it as a narrator! I plan to simply do my best to observe and report exactly what I see.

8 January 2010

Hello again! I just got back into the country last night from a vacation in St. Thomas. You might have not noticed because Wordpress’ “schedule publish” option and minimal internet allowed me to keep the blog going as usual. But now I’m back and I’m out of prewritten posts, so let’s do something different today. I’m posting a couple photos from my vacation. Feel free to critique my photography (I’m always looking to improve) or just look at the island seascapes and relax.

Next week stay tuned for:

• The first installment of a multi-part interview with filmmaker Danny Ledonne
• A response to this week’s polarizing Googlezon post
• An overview of my first day at the Newseum!

6 January 2010

Photo by Flickr user Giant Ginkgo.

Ever since I read the article, “Why it’s time to lighten up about weird Japan,” by Boing Boing contributor Lisa Katayama, I’ve been meaning to write about it. It really stuck with me.

I’ve been an incurable Japanophile since my first taste of sushi when I was seven. What started as an appreciation for the country’s food and aesthetic has grown into a larger affinity for anime, pop culture and, yes, the ever fascinating weird stuff. At least for me, it’s hard not to be amazed by a country that built a life sized model of a cartoon robot and brought us this video of an Obama impersonator who does magic tricks by yelling, “Change! Yes we can!”

As you might have guessed, the article is a cautionary tale. Katayama warns us that despite America’s tendency to “fetishize,”– basically, Other– Japan, doing so does us no favors in understanding the culture. We have to realize, she says, that even the Japanese are pretty tongue in cheek about their culture and if we try to take every weird aspect of it (for example, the Japanese man who married his DS girlfriend,) too seriously, we’re missing the point.

Katayama seems to realize that this change in our outlook might take awhile. Our American fascination with those Others in the east has turned stories about weird Japan into feature story staples. And framing these stories in the nonserious way the Japanese intended would take away the shock factor we’re unconsciously seeking. It’s no fun to read that the Japanese also think a man who marries a game avatar is silly.

This also ties in to journalism as a whole. It’d be confusing to read the news as just a bulleted list of facts about a subject. The job of the journalist is to take those facts, sort the ones you need to hear from the irrelevant ones, and tell it to you in a cohesive story. That’s where the problems start. Every journalist will have a slightly different idea of which facts are important and in which angle to report the story. Add that to the difficulty of trying to tell a compelling story, and sometimes we get sensationalism.

This problem is amplified with stories about Japanese culture, since they already make a compelling story for readers. In order to “lighten up about weird Japan,” journalists would need to put the culture in perspective, but how? And whose? No matter how we slice it, we’re (usually) still outsiders. Katayama’s solution: we look at Japanese culture as abstract art “that can be interpreted in many ways…. And whatever meaning you attach to it is more a reflection of who you are than the composition of the art itself.”

As for me, I will continue to read and write about the unusual and wonderful things our Japanese neighbors come up with. That said, I will remember that however I interpret this fascinating culture isn’t really about Japan, but merely a reflection of myself.

4 January 2010

Since we’re easing into 2010, this is an opportune time to share a short video that one of my professors shared last semester: Epic 2014. Framed as a “future history of media,” this clip by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson shares one theory for how the internet might influence the fate of the media, including a very important merger predicted to happen in this upcoming year. I’ve embedded the video from Youtube which, despite being labeled Epic 2015, is the same clip as on the original site:

Could this really happen? I don’t think so. Here’s my reasoning:

1. The fourth estate will fight back. This video’s main premise relies on the traditional news media not offering the least bit of resistance. So far, from dot coms to blogging, traditional news has kept up with every curve the internet has thrown at it. Why would it stop in 2010?
2. News consumers will protest. Sure, people love to indulge in lighter news like celebrity gossip. But after a while, it’ll give people the same feeling as when they’ve eaten too much candy and not enough vegetables. If the news becomes so watered down that all we get is a sensationalized mess, people are intelligent enough that they will demand quality.
3. It’d be against the law. Seriously, if Amazon and Google teamed up and became the only news source in the world, that would constitute a monopoly. It’d be completely illegal. The Supreme Court would not stand by that union if the New York Times brought a case against it.

However, these are just my opinions. After your viewing, do you agree with the clip that the traditional media could be dead within the next five years?

1 January 2010

There’s been quite a bit of buzz on the Internet about the current plight of journalism interns. Many are not paid even when they are doing highly specialized work for newspapers and media. The topic came up more than once at the last CollegeJourn’s last journchat, which had college students and professors enraged that some some organizations treat journalism interns as a type of slave labor. The Christian Science Monitor’s Elizabeth Daley speculated about what would happen if interns went on strike.

But despite all of this, I’m interning for free this spring at the Newseum. And I’m happy to do it. Here’s why I intern for free:

1. I need them more than they need me. I am not so self centered as to think my internship is vital to the fate of the Newseum. If I was sick and couldn’t show up to my internship, would they flounder without me? Probably not. After all, they’ve been intern-free all winter break (they only offer internships during school semesters) and the building is still standing. The Newseum is doing more of a service to me than I am to them; they’re the ones providing me with an experience I couldn’t have elsewhere. And while I will do the best I can while I’m there, I doubt my impact on it will be equal.

2. Supply and demand. Doesn’t everything come down to this? The fact of the matter is that while there is only one Newseum, there are tens of thousands of journalism students who would gladly intern for them. Not to give them any ideas, but they might as well start auctioning off internship positions and making interns pay to work for them– it worked for the Huffington Post. As I said before, internships are about the experience the company provides for you, and that is what makes them so competitive.

3. My work is free; my portfolio will be priceless. Sure I’m working for them, but I’m also building up experience for myself. The content I will be building for the Newseum will be invaluable in my portfolio. Sure I can write, edit, design and code for my student newspaper or on my own, but it won’t look the same to potential employers without that Newseum seal of approval stamped on it. I may not be getting paid now, but I am investing in my future, and the hopes of attracting some great job offers with my internship work.

Evidence: sitting in my cubicle at the Free Lance-Star

In the interest of full disclosure, I have worked a paid internship before. Last spring, the Free Lance-Star paid me slightly less than minimum wage for my hours there. It wasn’t anything I could make a living off of- that’s why then, as well as now, I work a real job to support my internship lifestyle. Even when internships pay, interns rarely make enough to live on. They’re not intended that way. Instead, they are supposed to be a supplement to education during school.

The problem now though is the economy. Some companies are misusing internships as a way around paying qualified workers for free labor. Obviously this is a terrible thing, but it doesn’t change my willingness to intern for free. It just meant I had to be smarter about choosing where to intern.

How do you know you’re in a worthy internship and not being used for free labor? The question to ask yourself is, are you gaining something from your internship, whether it be through college credit or an expansion to your portfolio? Then your unpaid internship just might be worth it.

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