Tune in to check out mockumentary and other New Media student creations

New Media students premiere a mockumentary and other new media projects, showcasing their creativity and technical skills.

A mockumentary and a video game inspired by competition for parking spots at the FLCC main campus are among the projects to be presented by New Media students during a virtual livestream event planned for 5 p.m. Monday, May 11.

The New Media and Game Programming and Design capstone exhibition and presentations would have been held on campus this past Friday, had it not been for the pandemic. Organizer Paul Engin, assistant professor, decided the show must go on – the only way it can – and got to work coordinating the livestream with the help of some colleagues like Jeff Kidd.

New Media students met at the Geneva Campus Center before the COVID pandemic to discuss a group project.

Four class projects will be presented by their student creators and the class will offer a group presentation on the development process. Presenters will use Webex, and viewers will be able to watch via YouTube.

The New Media capstone course is a collaborative development of several, semester-long group projects. Students in the class begin by pitching their ideas to a panel of faculty and staff that this year included Margaret Pence, Rick Cook, Dave Ghidiu and Jeff Kidd.

Members of the New Media capstone class are shown during a visit this past winter to the Geneva Campus Center to plan the Park Shark project.

One of the projects, a mockumentary called “Room 2420,” began with last year’s New Media capstone class. Student Sam Bailey is the project lead for this year’s Season 2. Paul said it was off to a good start “but quickly changed when we could no longer be together for the production.”

“At that point,” he added, “the class had to decide if we were to continue production or not. The class accepted that it would be different and storylines had to change a little, but everyone adapted to the change and was up for the challenge.”

Staffer Jim Perri joined Webex meetings in recent weeks to help guide students through the script change process. “Although not an ideal situation being remote, I think it presented opportunities to think about story and approaches differently,” said Paul, noting that the first three episodes will be shown during today’s capstone presentations.

Another project to be aired is a game called Park Shark that was inspired by the success of the Project Rock and Holo-Pong games, also created by last year’s capstone class and still available at the main campus for public use.

“The idea evolved from trying to Park in A lot on main campus and having others sneak into the spot you were pulling into – park sharking,” said Paul. “The plan was to develop an upright arcade style game with webcams allowing head-to-head competition with different campus centers, bringing  a different level of collaborative play across all our campuses.”

The move to virtual forced a change, and the student developers got to work creating an app-style game instead.

Watch the presentation about Park Shark, “Room 2420,” and two additional projects, “Will of the Wisps” and MILK.