. Spinning .

It’s interesting to analyze the flow of creative ideas.  You have a need, you ponder a while on how to fulfill that need, you hop around in research, you come up with a better idea–often through the process of elimination–of what you’re looking for as a tool, and then you hit upon something.  Or so you think.

Just this morning I e-mailed a friend about a software program I’m seeking, and particularly what I want it to do for me and how I’d like it to work.  It’s one of those Ahah! moments, and yet something doesn’t feel right about it.  A couple hours later you find out why.  It’s nothing new; what I came up with as a solution was a workspace environment based upon my own learned comfort zone.  Work left to right, allow for up and down–in other words, a writing and working area that I’ve used all my life.

Amazing how we often come full circle.  In creating the new we depend upon the old, while still seeking to go beyond it by breaking the barriers that restrict us.  Yet there’s something to be said, I suppose, for what has taken centuries to come to that point. 

I feel I want to pick up threads and unravel them; fan them out in new directions.  Yet the thread must be there to go on. 

Okay, so this project is likely going to be a running theme here, so if you’re not into it, just avoid the NEW MEDIA postings.

Solved one of the previous problems of the way Premiere didn’t work within the program according to the tutorial.  For some mysterious reason the project called up under "Lesson 1" wasn’t the right one, and thus files were missing and it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.

Something exciting here though; the screen brings with it the discomfort of suddenly finding oneself in a strange environment.  Left alone long enough, one tends to start looking around, opening drawers and closets

But new things are coming up to think about.  I’m not sure yet if hyperlinking ability is available in Premiere (didn’t think it was in Powerpoint at the time I used it for a project once but it was), and that means several options are open and new directions for the piece I’m working on.  I could avoid Premiere and do it in Flash where the hyperlinking ability is available, or…

…I could decide to make the piece authorly and screw the interactive idea.  The author lives!  Seriously, I can see the piece as managed by the sequencing between the stories, transitions being a big part of the moves between the four stories. It’s mighty tempting.  Mainly because it’s challenging.

But, hypertext is what I’m trying to learn, to break the code that transforms a static story into an open-ended experience for the reader, and that’s a challenge for me too.

Then again, being a control freak, wouldn’t the biggest challenge of all be to manipulate readers into believing they’re in control?

Usually I can teach myself any software by just playing around in it.  I feel it’s the best way to learn (for me anyway) because often a course teaches you in a structured manner, and you’re bombarded with information that you won’t be using much and when you do go to use it, it’s been a year and you’ve forgotten anyway.  It just seems that when you learn because of a need, it sticks with you.

However, facing the opening screen of something like Flash 8 or Premiere is scary–there’s just so much there.  So I figured that downloading the first three lessons straight from the Adobe tutorial site made sense.  Or so I figured.

Two things have gone wrong already.  First this, straight from the Adobe site:

Copy the P Pro 2.0 CIB Workspace.layout file to your My Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\2.0\Layouts folder.

The only problem is is that I can’t find this file anywhere in the unzipped tutorial files, or anywhere else on my hard drive.  Where was I supposed to copy it from?  Seeking help from the site search box brought me only to this same spot above.

Second, once I opened the project and started following the tutorial, the first thing I’m supposed to do is:

To place a clip in the Source Monitor, double-click Video 1a in the Project panel. 

I did.  It didn’t. 

This is frustrating; I’m not normally a follow directions type of person, but when I dedicate myself to doing so, it’s annoying as hell not to have an easier time of it than had I messed around and finally stumbled across it myself.

While I’m slowly learning how to move around a bit in Adobe Premiere, I’m thinking ahead to the four-story project and how it would need to be arranged to suit this format.

While I can see stills, movies and some form of audio–likely music (though I have to check on copyrights, etc.) rather than reading, I’m beginning to see that my original doubts about whether I was setting it up properly has some basis of truth. 

The premise is simple, a couple who either did or didn’t stay together after a college relationship and summer cross-country trip; the stories relate in that they are different viewpoints and different paths–the what if’s we all wonder about.  But where they intersect–the hyperlink–doesn’t completely make sense as I have it, based upon words alone.  The reader may well wander about forever and not come to the end of the story.  There’s also a flow that doesn’t always necessarily represent a logical storyline when links are clicked.

Much to think about, and I can’t seem to find the solution.

Laid out a four-story group in Word just to show the story flow and connections between each.  Well, it’s not impressive, but it is a map of sorts.  I was only able to use the words that I’ve considered as what will become hyperlinks between the stories.  I was hoping to have text boxes so that I could see the flow–which really has to be based on more that just these words, more like one random thought leading to another as in natural thought patterns–but Word just didn’t really allow for it unless I took pages and pages to get it all in there.

Storyspace is still a bit too pricey for my purposes, so I’m looking for an alternate authoring tool, and there are a few that are possibilities.

After all the cryin’ and moanin’ I’ve done about learning Flash 8, it’s possible for me to perhaps more easily learn Adobe Premiere Pro instead.  The basic tutorials appear more easily comprehensible, and I’ve already imported some stuff from the poem I laid out in Windows Movie Maker.  I’m using this as a test, rather than a new story or poem because most of the work is already done, planned out and set, so that I can concentrate instead on the technical aspects of learning the program.

If this works well, the story grouping may be tried out in Premiere.  Oh yeah, as soon as I learn to use the camcorder and can get some movies as well as stills of cornfields.