Clue

"What's Going on Here?"

by Kate Palermini

Welcome to the home of Clue, a re-imagining of the 1985 cult classic film of the same name. Six guests have been invited to the home of Mr. Boddy for a night of entertainment. During the evening, Mr. Boddy is murdered, and other strange events begin to happen all over the manor.

Visit the areas of the site to experience the crime scene reconstruction, follow the events of the evening through twitter, peruse the files of the police investigation, and read an article written about the murder.

Project Summary

The final project for the spring semester of DTC 375: Language, Texts, and Technology was to "collaborate with a 4 or 5 person group to create a networked document that either tells a story, analyzes one of the readings from the class, or describes a digital technology using concepts discussed over the course of the semester." Our group of 5 decided to take on the classic cult film Clue and retell it using four different mediums. Kenny Marshall chose to reconstruct the crime using SET, a program that allows theater directors to lay out the blocking for a show. Alyssa Korinke decided to utilize her social media skills by creating a twitter account for each of the seven major characters and schedule tweets to happen before, during and after the house party. Randi Higbie used her experience in the legal sector to create detailed case files for each of the seven major characters including folder, police reports, and investigation notes. Hannah Smith utilized her love of writing to create a newspaper account of the events of the evening from an outside perspective. I was nominated to serve as the project manager of the team, and in that role, I created the website which collects all of the pieces of the project together.

This project, for the most part, went very smoothly with the exception of a couple of challenges. Kenny, after fighting with SET for a couple of weeks, was unable to make it work without crashing, so he had to nix that idea. Instead, he decided to create a cartoon reconstruction of the events of the crime using Toondoo, a comic creation site. The other major challenge we had was communication. Our class only met once a week, and some of the members of the group missed class due to illness. This caused for a confusion on the dates of the event, although this was ultimately fixed when the group chose to meet outside of class to work as a team on the necessary details.

The major lesson learned from the project was that it is necessary to fully plan out and communicate to the entire team the sequence of events. This includes mapping out a plan with dates, times, etc. This allows for less confusion between team members, especially when members miss class because of illness. Another lesson learned, was that it takes thought and planning to link different mediums to tell a story, but when it is done well, the result is amazingly effective and allows the user to access the story in multiple ways that aren't always available in "traditional' entertainment media like movies and television.

Ultimately, this project was a different and interesting way to tell a story that all of the group members loved. We had a lot of fun creating this intermedia story based on a great movie from the 1980s. We tried to create all of our media with the feel and mood of the movie in mind, understanding that it's a send up to the murder mystery. We hope you enjoy the experience!