A Different Hoax...?

The tutorial had confirmed worries that we were being too brash with the idea, and there wasn't enough subtlety behind it. We decided that it might be more effective to move away from the idea of hoaxing an act of terrorism. The following our other possible hoax's that we considered:

* A Music Festival: This would be similar to Czech Dream in terms of the large campaign before the actual event. Several different articles would be released before hand, on the internet, in poster form, articles and also stickers. The date would remain a secret until a couple of days before hand. This idea is too similar to Czech Dream, although would be effect it has already been done and is not as innovate as we would like.

* A Serial Killer: This would include articles across the web, maybe cordoning off roads, fake police outfits etc.

* A Kidnapping: Try to create a fake kidnapping either a famous person, so that an official statement has to be made, or something similiar to the madeline disapperance, obviously not to suh a large scale, but a missing person campaign.

Czech Dream:

Amy had encouraged us in the tutorial to watch a film called 'Czech Dream', which is about the hoaxing of new super cheap hypermarket opening in the Czech Republic. This obviously has direct links with our project as it is making the public believe something that isn't real and utilizes the media as a tool to do so. The film follows a fictitious, and fraudulent, ad campaign around the opening of a new store called Czech Dream- the Hypermarket for a Better Life. When thousands of people turn up to the grand opening they soon realize that it is no more than a field with a huge shop facade!

The film was extremely interesting as it gave a useful insight into how to con the public. Obviously, the film deals with a different type of hoax, but we liked the gradual build up of the campaign and how effective it turned out to be. A lot of attention was given to every aspect of the campaign, and the organisers even managed to remain truthful throughout, using slogans such as 'Don't Come' and 'Don't Buy', although the public actually did go, the organisers had told them not to.

The film reiterated our previous idea of having a build up before the actual event, but again we could not see a way around this whilst we were hoaxing terrorism. The film highlighted the power of the media and how easily people can be manipulated by it.

Tutorial Two:

The main issue that was raised during the second tutorial was how we would present the footage to the public. The point was stressed that we should avoid the 'Beadle's about' idea, of simply showing the footage to the audience then coming out and saying that wasn't real and you've been caught on camera, which is something that we had become aware of, this simple approach does seem too obvious! However, the tutorial did give us a further nudge to start thinking of other ways that we could show the footage to the public. As previously mentioned we like the idea of doing a web campaign, but obviously due to the nature of the idea this wouldn't be possible. At this point we became stuck with how we would be able to pull the idea off but maintaining a level of subtlety.

It was now time to reconsider the idea, and maybe even move away from the idea of terrorism, and instead hoax something else, something that could be built up over time.

More than just a hoax:

Although at this stage we are mainly concentrating on what we want to hoax and how we will do it, we don't want to move away from the concept behind the idea, how the public will react to the hoax and if we really do believe everything that we see. Obviously, we need the hoax to be extremely realistic in order to be believable, we need to constantly be thinking about how we can present it to the public. After all this is what we want to illustrate with the idea!

Preparation for tutorial two:

Since the last tutorial, we have looked into what we actually need to be able to try to pull off our idea effectively. Obviously we need some sort of model of a landmark, and some sort of explosive. We are thinking along the lines of fireworks and a smoke machine to help create an effect. We need to create consent forms for the public when they are caught on our hidden camera, and we need to find out about how we can display the project in a shop window, and also where will be most effective in comparisoon to where the stunt is taking place. For example, we could not display in a shop near to where te stunt is filmed as it would clearly not be believable. We have basically discussed the implications and limitations of what and where we can film whilst making it believable, because if it is not believable then we will have technically failed our objective.

Gherkin Hoax

Following our search for suitable locations to hoax an act of terrorism around london and the feedback that we received in the tutorial we decided that Battersea power station wouldn't be suitable. Although it is a very iconic building and everybody would recognize it, it wouldn't be suitable in terms of filming, and the fact that it is derelict it could just be mistaken for a controlled destruction. We decided to look into other possible scenario's as well as just moving the location.

Other possibilites that we discussed where:

- hoaxing a beheading
- blowing up buildings (as above) maybe just in london, somewhere further a field, potentially more believable?
- flying planes into buildings, obviously extremely poignant after 9/11

We put together a quick mock up of what this could look like using the Gherkin tower as the public building. It flickers with slightly different photos because we used 4 different stills, obviously this is just a rough example but conveys the look that we would want to achieve in terms of a handheld appearance moving eratically around.



We decided we could feasibly create the hoax using the gherkin because we could use a camera from quite a distance and make it collapse behind other buildings also in the distance. Also, we decided to use the Gherkin plane crash as our preliminary experiment on paper. We will make a mock-up of the Metro paper with the attack and explosion on the front page with a grabbing headline. We will also make up a story for the back sports page too for realism.

Our response to the tutorial comments:

We generally thought that the comments that we received from the rest of the group in the tutorial was positive, although it quickly came apparent that we hadn't been clear enough in our explanation of what we were planning on doing and how we would actually be doing it. A lot of the comments that we had received asked how we would hoax a building being blown up and how this would fulfill the brief, how is it an example of convergent media etc?

As a result we decided that we needed to be much clearer in our plans, not just to satisfy the questions that we could face in tutorials etc, but to strengthen the idea, and to provide a firm base for us to build on.

How would we hoax a building being blown up? We had previously thought that we would use a small model of the chosen building and using slow filming we would be able to control the explosion, then put the model footage on to the 'real' recording replacing the building with the model. This is obviously very adventurous and would be technically very difficult, especially as we don't know anything about explosives. We consequently agreed that it would be easier to manipulate the footage frame by frame using photoshop and flash. This will be a huge task, as we will need to do 24 frames per second, so if we have a ten second long piece of footage, we will need to manipulate 240 frames to how we won't them. This is obviously a lot of work but we are confident that if we manage our time properly we can produce a high standard.

How does our idea fulfill the brief and how is this an example of convergent media? The project is going to be an example for convergent media throughout the production and in the final presentation of the piece. The production process will include the use of video, new media software, photography and print. Although we're not 100% sure of how we will present the piece in a crit situation we are sure that it will involve at least two mediums.