Lecture: Prequel Sequel

The main intention of the lecture was to focus on the idea that nothing is in fact original, everything comes from inspiration and that you'd be very lucky to find something that has not already been done, in some shape or form, before. Furthermore, when we begin our creative process to communicate, we have to rely on what we already understand and know, and have seen before, to create this communication otherwise we wouldn't be able to make this write and connect it to our intention.

         "Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." 

                                                                                                   - Salvador Dali

A lot of the lecture looked at the different intents of work that was created online - internet memes, for example, are funny to look at, but lacks value and actual intent because of the superficialness of the work. We also looked at the fine line between association with an previous work, and plagiarism - is intent not the breaking point for this?

The film 'Everything is a Remix' was the exact reasoning behind this. In the first part of this film, 'The Song Remains the Same', was showing different songs throughout the years that sound similar and the lawsuits (or not) they had to face for a few notes of song that could have made the exact likeness out of another. Although some people argue plagiarism, does it not just mean they've had the same creative output and come up with something similar out of pure chance? A lot of older, rock songs seem to all sound the same and have such come up in the first section of the film.

"Legal remixing is fine, illegal copying is not - if your work fails to distinguish itself enough then you must attribute!"

Looking at our audience type, we learned that having a pre-defined idea about the intent of the audience and what our audience is about allows us to create sort of a narrative about our work, and making an assumption, although sometimes a negative thing, allows a much more deeper understanding and the work to have a lot more meaning behind it.
The Marvel Cinematic Timeline, for example, have worked on this over numerous years which links most of their films together and in a continuous way. It has been presented commercially, with many characters starring in different films and having a set timeline of events which worked well as this is what the audience wanted to see - something that all connects together.

"Don't try to be original. Just try to be good. That sounds sort of naive, but it's true." 

                                                 - Paul Rand

The point behind the lecture was that, although tools and practice of the trade are extremely useful, an idea is the most important thing and can set you forward the most. This is what I wanted to create in my final project, research was the key, and something that was responsive to the audience was overall what I intended to do - as my skills in the software weren't the best.