Category: Cinema-Writing

Pry Part 2

0alloldusers

The final three chapters in Pry really stood out to me because these three chapters really took the effects work and psychological aspect up to 11. The work done in the first 4 chapters did a good job of building up James’ character, and from chapter 5 onwards you start to see his psyche grow more and more chaotic and confusing.

One of my favorite parts of Chapter 5 was the fact that there is actually a bit of multilinearity involved. Chapter 5 opens up where Chapter 4 left off. James gets up to go to a new job, Luke was fired from the last one. During the drive to the new job, he continues to have self-hating thoughts that he isn’t good enough, that Luke doesn’t trust James, etc. When he arrives on site he walks across a railroad. At this point two things can happen. Either you keep James’ eyes open to the point where his vision blurs and he falls off the railway track, or you open and close periodically and make it all the way to the end, only to transition into his thoughts. In both instances, his subconscious is brought to the forefront, while reality is placed where the subconscious has been since the start of the story. I think it represents his continual descent into his own mind, and how he is starting to lose his grasp on what is real and what isn’t. Chapter 7 really brings this home with the constant back and forth between different moments in time, blurring the line between reality and memory.

Pry Part 2

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jredman17

The second half of Pry mixes up the format even more with new ways to tell its story. Something that happened earlier but occurred again during chapter 5 was the protagonist’s eyesight briefly going numb. During this the moment, the user can’t see what is going on either, so they have no choice but to look at one of the other two perspectives until he puts in eye drops. This doesn’t necessarily limit how the story is told, but only how some of it appears. In chapter 7 the story takes on an entirely different form. Only a paragraph appears on the screen and the user can continually stretch it out, revealing more text. I found this one of the most difficult parts of the story to follow. Having to jump back and forth to different lines and figuring out how they are connected made the experience a bit frustrating. This exemplifies how involved the form is when it comes to the content. In Chapter 7, there is purely video that can swap in and out, creating multiple montages mixed together. I think the author made a creative connection between having the presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush in the same chapter to illustrate that the world conflict represented in the story lasted several generations. I think the general theme of the story is redemption. The protagonist is trying to save himself from his own PTSD of war, but also clear up and make light of his understanding with his friend. Him going blind gives him more anxiety. As we saw, where people are the most anxious is deep inside.

Concluding Pry

Mariah Gwin

It is still difficult to discern which memories are true and which memories are in James’ head. He imagined Luke being there when he really was not.

He says one thing where he saw Jessie before they went to play poker, but the story also seems to imply that James and Jessie got into a fight in the janitorial closet at which point he may have accidentally killed her?

In chapter 5, he explains the process of how he ended up on the bridge. His conversation with Luke, the shooting of the airsoft rifle at the statue and braille bible, his vision almost gone, and their fight. He keeps repeating that he needs to prove himself. That he’s getting replaced and he’s dead weight. Up to the point where he falls off the bridge into the water. Chapter 6 begins with the folding and unfolding of text until the reader unfolds it enough to split the screen open and see the video beneath. That video however, after reaching a certain climax forcefully shuts. Continuing to try and pry it open, it will force itself shut a number of times. In this sense, it is almost as though James is trying to block out that memory, shutting it away, while the reader is trying instead to pry it open and uncover it.

Then in chapter 7, there is almost a seemingly unending loop and wormhole of video clips, until the reader reaches an ‘inner’ clip where James and Luke are building a fire together and talking. At this point, it will shift perspectives by featuring either Luke, James, or the two of them together when the screen is pinched or expanded, before continuing further on. In a way, this chapter and chapter 6 both clarify a lot and also add to much of the confusion in what is going on, or at least, what actually happened to Jessie.

Everything is relatively unclear and it is incredibly difficult to know for sure which is the truth between the images that are shown and the text that appears. All that is truly clear in the end is that Jessie died and James, one way or the other, blames himself for her death. Whether it truly was his fault, or he killed her, or it was simply an accident, he blames himself for what happened to her.

Only right at the end of the final chapter does the user not have to pry his eyes open. His vision is clear, and the sun is shining as he pulled himself from the water and back onto the bridge.

Source:
Pry by Tender Claws LLC

Pry

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Elaina Sundwall

The traversal method of Pry quickly becomes intuitive. Zooming in and out on a touch screen is already natural enough for a traverser, so zooming out to see the subconscious and zooming in to see what the main character sees is easy to understand and easy to figure out if the traverser misses the instructions. This work is significantly easier to traverse than more complicated or nested pieces of E-lit, and is presumably more palatable to a traverser who has not spent much time with E-lit, while still having controls that will intrigue traversers familiar with more complicated E-lit. The basic structure, zoom out to see subconscious, zoom in to see sight, and the base level being the conscious thoughts, the text that is the thrust of the story, could be a structure that other electronic works could use. The traversal method seems so versatile and something that could be applied in many different stories to create many different effects that build the main character that it could create its own genre if enough authors mimicked this traversal style. The separation of thoughts, sight, and the subconscious are used in Pry to illustrate the experience of PTSD. I could see this traversal method translating to other mental health disorders in interesting ways, such as making the sight and thoughts more difficult to access over time and the subconscious become overpowering or taking control from the traverser and switching between perspectives rapidly.

The three perspectives combine to create a constant montage, that the traverser controls. During my first traversal through the first four chapters, I tried to switch perspectives as thoroughly and regularly as possible, cycling through conscious, subconscious, conscious, sight, repeatedly in the same order. The conscious is between the subconscious and sight and by opening the subconscious or looking at what the character sees you progress the conscious text, so it is presumably impossible to see both the sight and subconscious that corresponds to one conscious thought, unless the visuals and subconscious last longer than a single conscious thought. It was difficult to traverse this way though, and I found myself switching between just the conscious thought and sight during the demolition chapter and switching mostly between the conscious thought and the subconscious during the first chapter, as the main characters sight is of his perspective in bed. The traversal method and the many montage combinations that can be created with it mean this work is best understood by being traversed multiple times.

Cinema- Writing

dsmith19

The prologue for Pry was interesting. I thought this piece of fiction was going to be a feature film. I knew James was going to enlist in the military because of the things he put in his pack. In addition, he took a piece of dog hair with him to keep as a memento. I cannot help but to think that Tarzan has a meaning. I assume the book could be some sort of foreshadowing for events that happens later. Luke and Jessie are important characters in this interactive fiction. It’s unfortunate that we see so little of Jessie in the first for chapters; I really want to know more about her. It’s interesting that we see a vision of her stabbing James. I did not see that part coming. I am also trying to figure out if Luke and Jessie tried to murder James, or if these visions related to James’s PTSD. It’s hinted that James is losing his sight. This is interesting because we do not know what cause the ailment. Ultimately, I think the story is about James dealing with PTSD.

I like the interface and navigation. It was like I was playing a game; I pulled me into the work. Cinema can not achieve such a thing. I initially had to ask a peer how to navigate from segment to another. I missed somethings because my hand covered some of the screen when I had pinch and spread my fingers across the iPad. I did miss some of the kinetic text in some of James’s visions. I can not wait to finish this interactive fiction.

Pry

Mallory

Overall, I really enjoyed Pry. It was cinematic, atmospheric, and really drew me into the character and his story. From the beginning, I liked how it seemed to be divided into clear sections of narrative–reality, lucid thoughts, and intrusive thoughts–but that quickly became blurred with the imagined Jessie appearing and looming over his bed, and continued bleeding into each other as the story progressed…until even you, the reader, is uncertain as to what exactly is James’ memories or imagination and what is actually happening (or has happened). The mechanics of opening James’ eyes, or ‘pinching’ them further shut and retreating into memories and intrusive thoughts, was both visually compelling as well as helped to build James as a character.

I also liked the metaphor of his current career. As a construction worker, he is literally trying to build something of his life, but all he is able to do is tear it (buildings, his life) all down in explosions both literally and metaphoric. The braille motif was very interesting as well. I liked the mechanics behind it, running your finger over the images of the dots to see what it means to James, as well as the symbolic nature of the motif. I took it as foreshadowing concerning his vision: as James’ mental health deteriorates, he is unable to ‘see’ what is actually happening in his life and what is his own intrusive thoughts and flashbacks…and so he’s becoming literally unable to see as well, relying on braille and memories to find his way through the world.

Finally, I thought that the overall story was really intriguing. I thought the author did a great job of crafting a realistic world and characters, immersing the reader into James’ state of mind and being. The cinematography helped to portray James’ mental state as well, from the clear, steady camerawork of the prologue, to later scenes with off coloring or tilted cameras as James’ view of the world around him grows more skewed and distorted. I can’t wait to keep reading and find out what happens next.

PRY

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jcook19

Part 1’s five chapters are multimedia dreamscapes that tell the story of James, a demolition consultant six years out from his return from the first Gulf War. He’s slowly going blind, and he’s an unreliable narrator; those factors affect the way the story unfolds. The narrative is fragmented, the visuals atmospheric: Charlie Kaufman by way of an acid trip. Pry is greater than the sum of its parts. Multimedia content isn’t just embedded and integrated. It incorporates the iPad’s haptic gestures: the pinch, the drag and the pry.

Chapter 1 opens with two lines of white text on a black background. Readers can pry — yes, that word again — those open into four lines of still-coherent text. Repeat the gesture above and below any line: Text expands until it reveals video footage, delving deeper into the main character’s psyche.

“The storyline transitions back and forth from the perspective of the main character, James, a veteran from the Gulf War six years later, and the perspective of the reader. With sometimes smooth, and sometimes jolting, disorientating flashbacks between the past and present, interspersed with video clips, rapidly flashing sets of words, and audio make Pry constantly moving, and kinesthetic, stimulating.”

I think that the mechanic of the story is a real unique way to progress throughout the story by having us to swipe or touch or pinch and I thought that was a good change into the storytelling part of the piece. The story itself, to me, was lacking in a way that it didn’t really pull me into the story. I didn’t feel like I wanted to continue reading other than to see how to progress in the story.

Source:

PRY Review – “https://diglit.community.uaf.edu/tag/pry-a-novella/”

Pry Open Diverse Storytelling and a Beautiful Cinematic Experience

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Katya Farinsky
Image result for pry tender claws
A screenshot of Pry by Tender Claws where the reader must trace braille characters to make the story progress similarly to a blind person reading.

Farinsky Blog 10: Cinema Writing

Pry is an incredibly engaging work about a young man returning stateside after serving in the Gulf War. The prologue immediately pulls the reader’s curiosity through it’s setting, and powerful cinematography. Pry’s visuals do not feel like video game cut scenes, the user gets an impression that this novella purposely created a movie to embed throughout each chapter. The quality of production is high and contributes to the feeling the user is “playing a movie” instead of “playing a game”.

My personal favorite part was the braille chapter. I thoroughly appreciated the mechanics of using fingers on the touch screen of an iPad in the same way blind individuals use raised braille characters and fingers to trace each line. I immediately felt like I was learning to read- mirroring the narrative where the main character’s mother is teaching her son to read the braille characters.

The video playing on screen (similar to the image above) behind the braille characters and one’s finger is often the same quality/style of a home-movie or “found footage” which makes the scene incredibly intimate. During my experience I found having part of my hand covering the screen unobtrusive compared to other sections “prying” open the main character’s eyes. Perhaps this is due to my lack of familiarity with iPads since I have never owned one personally, and I was borrowing from WSUV’s collection to view this work. However I specifically recall several moments during the second chapter where I was trying to get a grasp of maneuvering the environment and felt I missed pieces of plot because my hand was covering part of the screen that had a small yet critical detail.

Pry is an impressive work that really captures a perfect synchronous environment of iPad and E-Lit. My only complaint for the beginning half is the gem system which makes little sense to me in context of narrative or function- but is driving my completionist tenancies absolutely bananas.

Blog 10: Pry

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Christine

I believe this occurred during the first chapter (?). Pry likes to drop hints very quickly on the readers. This one included. In the beginning, Pry rapidly tells us something about “symptoms”, “common”, and “violence” when we close the protagonists’ eyes. This led me to believe that he is probably suffering from PTSD. If that’s true what is this image doing in Pry? I believe it is hinting at not only is the main character suffering from PTSD (which also tells us he was a soldier at one point which is supported by flashbacks and the prologue) but also that he is starting to go blind. We see this when Josh, in the second chapter, to gets blurry and closing his eyes simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

Here is an image of Josh, our protagonist’s friend, when his blindness was at it’s worst. Looking at this is almost trippy. It made me want to look away and blink my eyes several times to try and clear away the fog.

I find these images to be the most interesting because it tells me that the main character has more than one subconscious. If you adjust the pinch of your fingers on the screen, you get different levels of his subconscious. He has one that is on the surface level and is meant to distract his mind from not remembering the horrific things that he has seen. The other levels are hallucinations and memories of his subconscious. Jessie killing him, the coffee stain messing around on the ceiling. Those are all hallucinations that never actually happen. The memories are the GameBoy, hanging with Jessie, and possibly even the night vision video of a missile launch. This tells me that by the next chapter he might actually go blind and may even go crazy. In the second chapter, he spoke about how he depends on his job and Josh. With his sight gone it may be impossible for him to keep going. We will most likely see more of his memories and illusions of his memories as well while the real world might only be represented with sound and inner monologue.

Cinema Writing – Pry

Jarid Schoenlein

Pry is an engaging story about a man named James who is a demolition consultant that comes back from the gulf war and experiences vision failure throughout the story. This grants the reader the opportunity to explore not only what James experiences in reality, but his thoughts as well. This creates a story that is linear in the sense that it moves from chapter to chapter, yet can be engaged with and explored in a plethora of ways, as the reader gets to choose whether to explore James’ thoughts or the reality in front of him.

The story’s prologue provides some useful insight that assists in the understanding of the rest of the story. The prologue is not interactive like the remainder of the story; it is simply a video of a young man who goes off to what is apparently the beginning of his military career. We are also introduced with some brief imagery of some individuals from his military past that appear throughout the rest of the story.

Moving into the main part of the story, we can see that James is constantly struggling with both his reality and his perception of reality, both in regards to his thoughts and his hallucinations. In chapter 1, we noticed that as James is attempting to wake up, he is experiencing a hallucination/sleep paralysis of a woman from his past who is appearing to be trying to harm him. Along with this, his thoughts also provide an extra layer of insight which adds to the overall narrative of the story.

As the story progresses, the reader gains further insights as to how his past is affecting his present through his thoughts and reality. The interactive elements of Pry allow the reader to acquire a vast amount of different perspectives on this matter, and the reader can choose how in-depth they want to explore each chapter. Definitely an interesting and engaging work!

Introducing Pry

Mariah Gwin

Pry creates and tells a story in a way hardly seen in other forms of storytelling. It uses the touch-screen environment to its fullest, having the reader both pinch and expand in order to experience the work in a variety of ways.

While the content itself may not appear linearly, it seems that there is only one path through in which the reader can experience. The story is separated into clearly defined chapters as though to emphasize that point, while also mimicking the format of a book despite being composed of both text and video.

The story itself does carry through at a relatively quick pace. When it begins, it brings forth questions of what’s going on, quickly followed by questions of time–what is past or present in these sequence of events? The reader is given the task of unraveling that, while also determining what is true and what is not. There seem to be these sort of ‘false memories’ incorporated where he imagines his own murder by both a female character by the name of Jessie, as well as the protagonist’s brother.

The protagonist whom the reader seems to peer through the eyes of, and often times Pry open, is introduced as James. He appears to be suffering from PTSD due to his time in the military, as is indicated both by flashbacks to when he was in uniform, as well as his difficult focusing. There will be times when his vision will blur and his ears will ring, or when he sees the face of a girl even when his eyes are closed. If the reader pinches the screen together, words or images will flash by, expressing the hurriedness and chaos of his inner thoughts, perhaps.

He has moments, increasingly frequent the further into the story the reader travels, where he overlaps memories. His past and present collide as though he’s struggling to tell the difference. He also takes some time to delve into his past which is when we learn of his brother.

The screen itself forces the reader into a landscape reading mode for chapter 3, horizontal instead of vertical. Braille begins to populate the screen, and as the reader runs their finger over it, the protagonist speaks and images appear like old home videos. Depending on the speed the reader goes over the braille, they may see one quick clip or a different clip of video for each word or key term in the sentence. The braille is an interesting feature, and certainly the most notable in my opinion, that again takes full advantage of touch screen’s built-in features.

Source:
Pry by Tender Claws LLC

Cinema Writing

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Megan

One of the main sections of Pry that intrigued me would be Chapter 3 with the read-aloud braille. I found this intriguing because in a digital-screen setting, braille seems to be essentially useless. However, I feel that this portion worked well with the main character reading aloud as the user ran their finger across the screen.

Another section that I found intriguing was Chapter 4, where the main character is paranoid that his friend is going to try to kill him. I liked how Pry shows this paranoia by blurring the main characters normal vision, thus encouraging the user to see his subconscious, which ends up being riddled with possible murder weapons and different deaths. I feel like this connected well with the introductory portion of the app, where the main characters girlfriend attempts to kill him in a jump-scare as well.

These two moments in the app both contribute small details to the constantly growing story, hinting at different key factors that the user should take note of. One of these especially being that the main character has a fear of being murdered by those he cares about.

I feel that the combination of text and video in this app works very well, and the exploratory method of “prying” between video and text and a combination of both makes it very intuitive for the user to traverse whichever of the main three narrative structures that they want to, whenever they want to (within the allowance of the narrative).

I think that this work is about a person with PTSD and/or schizophrenia. I believe this because the way the narrative plays out and provides us with both reality and subconscious fears is very similar and accurate how it feels to have real-life anxiety. It becomes hard to distinguish between what’s actually happening and what is a fear, and I think the constant switching between conscious and subconscious helps to blur the separation and make the truth even more indistinguishable. The flashbacks and worst-case-scenario subconscious beliefs definitely hint towards this work focusing on a character that has some sort of mental illness.