Pros/Cons of our Brainstorming...

Brainstorming...I can hear the thunder claps and see light flashes going off already. *boom bang fizzle snort jumpstart boom!* Actually I happened to be pretty tired that day. I'll try to write what I recall from it. This is going to be hard to do with my cat draped on the back of the computer chair snoring. LOL

One major benefit I feel to brainstorming is to let loose while reigning in. Think. Dream. Whatever first comes to mind, write it down and edit things out later. It's like a haircut, better to take off less vs. more at first in case you change your mind - it might be too late. I can only imagine how much people might miss out on if they do not incorporate the fun, whimsical, outrageous ideas in with the totally rational, affordable, and toned down ideas. So many factors go into your planning that you should keep them in mind but try not to dwell yet until you've had a chance to explore.

As far as the group's parade idea - Shutting down Michigan Street for a giant parade. It was chock full of mechanical elephants, pants cannons, projector floats, nude people that had something to do with spraying on new media related designs somewhere on them, green screen setups, synthesizer marching bands, moon and cloud advertising using high powered projectors and lasers, mascot that is a digital pirate, and so on and so forth. I know I did a great deal of listening, as I was having fun trying to imagine it all before I could spout out a ton of ideas. Okay cat is still snoring this is hilarious, I didn't know cats could snore this long! Anyway where was I...oh.

Ah yes, now as to the pros and cons of this brainstorm session. I think it was important for us to go above the stars and blow up the moon while we're at it, if we've got the time because we need to sort out all the possible options to get people's attention, what's not been done before (or at least if it has, not to overkill point), or what could be right down the alley of New Media, and how do we incorporate that into raising it's awareness. I think every avenue of the field was explored from sound to video to illustration, etc...

Well, now we enter into the cons...*dun dun dunnnn* such as if it's legal or budgets or time allotted to do it. Parade costs could be hundreds or thousand of dollars+, who knows for sure! Maybe some students for capstone could even do a documentary about it, (ooo that'd be fun) hell the sky's the limit on cutting out some of the too expensive ideas. I think utilizing all the students around us would be key to this parade, because everyone would want the experience so cost would go way down to some degree.

To sum up: (because despite tons of editing I can't seem to condense myself at this point) I think this idea had a great deal of potential, but ultimately you must take into account budget and timing and what is of course legal mumbo jumbos and even what the companies and clients want. If the parade was maybe a smaller scale, legal so no lawsuits, and still had an edge of some kind, it would be viable. But even more so, I think this would make a great film/video short done digitally and that solves so many problems we would encounter. :)