Our final project, “Questionurcommunity.com” is based on the theories in Nessim Watson’s article, “Why We Argue About Virtual Community: A Case Study of the Phish.Net Fan Community.” Watson’s article investigates and analyzes the debate surrounding the definition of community (i.e. whether an online forum can actually be dubbed a ‘community’), examines how virtual communities function (what is their purpose, how do people use them and why, etc.), and explores the roles of virtual communities within society. To achieve this, Watson researched the website Phish.com, a forum devoted to the band, Phish, created by its loyal fans. Watson argues how this forum functions as a community (same hierarchies, same personalities, same problems as a real-life physical community).
In order to integrate Watson’s theory we originally had an idea to create a melodrama about four co-workers who barely talk to each other at work but then, unbeknownst to them, are actually all members of the same online forum on which they talk to each other daily under pseudonyms. However, this turned out to be playing on more stereotypical views of online communities (socially challenged people looking to internet to fill that void) instead of reality (regular socially-competent people connecting to other regular socially-competent people about normal interests, hobbies, goals, etc). We knew we wanted to retain a comical aspect to the video because of our success with that in our last video (Ghost in the English Building). So we then concentrated on how we could bring out the similarities between online communities and real-world communities (versus the differences that we were highlighting in our initial idea) by using some key elements Watson revealed in online communities and projecting those into a real-life environment. In order to accomplish this we thought of the idea of casting typical ‘online’ characters (newbie, lurker, troll/spammer, and moderator) as real-life characters in our video. These character types are present both online and in real life as there is always someone new to the community who doesn’t know the local trends, slang, customs, etc (newbie); someone who sits back and observes everything without contributing anything of their own and is just sort of a background presence (lurker); someone who’s always riling people up, causing fights, soliciting, and just annoying for the sake of annoying (troll/spammer), and someone who feels they should be in charge, makes all the plans, makes sure everyone is on-task or obeying the rules, makes sure everyone is ok and knows what’s going on, etc. (moderator). We showcased each of these personalities through actions and words: the newbie sat in the wrong seat, didn’t know any of the online speak, always had question; the lurker sat in the back and just took notes without speaking; the troll/spammer was always causing distractions like pop-up adds and always fighting – making fun of the newbie, defying the moderator; and the moderator tried to keep the peace while keeping the group focused and on-track. The same personalities and hierarchies are present both online and in real-life. We wanted to illustrate the true similarity between online interaction and real-life interaction – people can and will be the same whether they’re online or not.
We still needed a more defined way of connecting our film to the article, and so we decided our real-life characters should be students working as a group to define the idea of community and how online communities fit into that definition. By discussing online communities, it would lead the fictional group to discuss and analyze their own community (group dynamics), which would then serve as a parallel to an analysis of real-life virtual communities and physical (geographical) communities – very Meta! The group in the film debated whether or not online forums (virtual communities) are the same as geographical communities – the newbie, being very closed-minded and naïve, argues that they are not the same until the moderator brought up the points that they really are the same, just presented differently (coffee-shop analogy). Our goal was to have the characters themselves personify the debate and come to realize their own erroneous beliefs in order to reveal our message of challenging common misconceptions; the fact is that different people join online communities for different reasons and they all can have different levels of involvement – its not some socially challenged nerd who sits in the dark staring at his/her computer screen laughing to him/herself. We also addressed issues within communities that occur both online and in real-life including sharing similarities while embracing differences, working together for a common cause, and levels of involvement (everyone is a newbie at some point, the troll needs to chill out, the moderator can’t be a dictator, and the lurker really should contribute at some point). We also wanted to connect to Watson’s point that these online forums actually accomplish things in real-life and affect people outside of the forum (Phish.net changed the music industry by coming together and creating a new genre of music) by having our fictional group band together for something they all believed in (the assignment was too vague) and work to have it changed.
As far as the process went, it was really hard for us to come up with inspiration for presenting Watson’s theory in a fun and creative way – we wanted it to be humorous and spoofy like our last film, but that didn’t quite fit with this assignment. We also had filming issues in that we had 4 characters and 4 group members and a lot of our scenes required all of us to be in the shot (so no camera-operator). But after viewing long segments of the single-angle tripod camera setup of us sitting and talking, we realized how boring that was, so we decided we needed different camera angles to spice it up and make it more visually interesting. After watching a mini “Scrubs’ marathon the night before, I thought it would be a good idea to have these thought-bubble segments in which the characters’ internal thoughts would be displayed on-screen (like JD does ALL the time on Scrubs). We wanted to incorporate the on-line experience in these and so we decided to make them like hyper-links (blue underlined font headlines to click on). Unfortunately due to our semi-limited knowledge of IMovie and film-editing, I’m not sure all of our ideas got across. I think the class would all have to be members of online communities (or at least to have all read Watson’s article) to understand all the things we were talking about and for them to be funny. I know I personally had no clue what a troll, lurker, or moderator was and had never heard of things like a “rick roll” – so I’m sure some of the class was in the same boat as me and didn’t really get all of our allusions. I think a lot of the projects in this class depended on a trial-and-error method – you don’t know exactly what you’re final product is going to be when you start the project, and many factors (inspiration/motivation, knowledge of the tools required, technological issues, group dynamics, group schedules, material/footage accumulated, etc.) can all influence the direction the project takes, the shifting of ideas to fit that direction, and what the actual finished product turns out to be.
