A reality cooking show



Dion and the boys presents to you

Split Chef…

. . . A fun and engaging reality T.V cooking show hosted by Bryan, Dion, Joel and I. Each game requires one person to draw while the other person shops for groceries and cook, all while communicating through Insta-live! Audience comment, judge and laugh as our participants show us their goofy antics and silly mistakes. May the best team win.

Here is a short clip featuring the sneak peek to our show, featuring team Jacob and Tiffany’s process of buying mushroom and butter. Look out for how our show runs and how the simple process of buying mushroom and butter becomes a chaotic mess. A highlights section features the gag reels of the episode.


Ideation Creation

This show started out with a quick brainstorming session within the team. We were throwing ideas around and we realised we really loved the concept of having hall pantry as our main theme- We all lived in hall. (Note: Bryans my roommate) The initial idea was to have a cooking show, but the cooking show would rely on people getting ingredients from neighbours, and relying on third space communication to get instructions to cook. It was a raw idea.

After further discussion, we finally agreed on the idea of non-verbal communication, which was the method of speed drawing and guessing what it was, similar to pictionary. We finalised the ideas and agreed that the process should entail a pair, where one draws while the other buy ingredients and cook, while broadcasting the process through Insta-live.


Sell the trial, Char kway teow

We began our trial run a week plus after the ideation process, attempting to remove any obstacle before our actual shoot.

A splitchef trial- Final Project Test Run (my perspective)

The trial rundown was important as we found out a lot of problems hidden within the process. We did solve it through an urgent skype meeting, trimming away all the fats.

A week 11 update (SplitChef)


Moving Flow, Cooking Show

Jumping into the enthusiasm of our finalised ideas, we started our process of setting up our show. We arranged for our friends (in order of appearance): Tiffany, Jacob, Alena and Hannah, to be our guest players of the day. Tiffany and Jacob would be the strangers team while Alena and Hannah would be the friends team.

We discussed and decided on our roles for the day, with Dion and Joel going with the drawer’s side (Artist) while Bryan and I would assist the cooker’s side (Chef). Individually, Dion and Bryan would be the moderators liasing with the players while Joel and I would be the filming team. I would eventually edit the clips according to the theme of the show our group have decided to adopt.


Team Noob, Duck Soup

A comedic duo that was suppose to be the team formed with strangers, featuring Tiffany and Jacob. Tiffany did mention that she can cook rice, but was surprised that she has to cook something else other than that. Kudos to her for not chickening out. Jacob’s drawing was hilarious and brought a lot of laughter to the audience that we newly factored in.

Team Pros, Crunchy Toast

The team that made an unbelievably beautiful quesadilla that was picture perfect. This team was made up of friends who we assumed would have no problems communicating, which they have proven with their camaraderie, buying every item and cooking every item to the T.


Setup, Buttercup

Bryan made these beautiful posters that we broadcasted to all our friends a day before the actual shoot to reel in a crowd for the live show. It worked as our friends we really enthusiastic with joining in for the show, helping out the players in making difficult decisions.

 

Also, these professional forms to inform the players what they need to do.


 

 

 

 

 

 


The final screen recording of the live process can be found here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17uHWtycB1Ya8mjii2Mp1j9QG9Kph2dEr/view?usp=sharing


Reflections, Bo jackson

(Team Tiffany and Jacob )

  • Miscommunication – There were a lot of miscommunication for this team as neither of them were good at what they were doing. Jacob wasn’t particular good at illustrating and Tiffany wasn’t particularly good at cooking, this resulted in many miscommunication that started from the beginning of the game play. This snowballed into things like buying peanuts for chicken as well as buying a eggs for butter. (Right: Butter drawing, Left: Chicken mistood for peanut)
butter

 

chicken profile
  • Cooking Inexperience – There weren’t any problems with the instincts of the chef being played here as Tiffany wasn’t adept at cooking at all. This resulted in her having to follow the instructions completely step by step. This created problems like her following instructions to a T, where she placed cheese in a pan without oil, waiting for the next instruction. She also had many dangerous moves that we were forced to assist like burning the surface of the pan as well as her way of chopping the nuts and garlic. She would have known how to cook mushroom or garlic otherwise.
dry frying
messed up pan

 

  • Audience participation – This team was particularly popular with the comments (maybe because it was earlier in the day) as the drawings as well as cooking were humour-inducing. This caused a lot of commotion with the audience, commenting relentlessly, trying to participate in the game. Kudos to Tiffany and Jacob for being cool with the laughter.
banana
  •  Stranger Connection – This team was originally suppose to represent the strangers team, which was the team that were intended to be bad at the game because they lack the kindred communication between friends. However, we soon realise that there were no relations between how bad the gameplay was with the real communication of strangers. This was because Jacob and Tiffany had no problems communicating, it was how inefficient the execution was, mostly deteriorated because of their ability to draw or cook. Hence, we decided to change the experiment hypothesis to how your ability to draw or cook can affect the game drastically.

Final Product

scrambled eggs with semi-cooked mushroom, topped with cocktail peanuts, sausage and garlic with skin

taste test

It was salty.


(Team Alena and Hannah )

  • Skills – Hannah and Alena were definitely better in the skills needed for this game as every aspects  of their game were smooth running.
nugget flipping
  • Communication – Communication within this group was definitely better, although it was more or less inclined towards how good Alena and Hannah were as artists and chefs. With the same drawing of a box representing butter, Hannah could understand that the image meant butter instead of eggs, which Tiffany bought. We could only assume that this was because Hannah had more experience as a chef as no other form of communication was made during this time to Hannah by Alena. Hannah could also understand that Alena was drawing a pack of tortilla wrap instead of an orange.

  • Audience – The gameplay for this team took place later in the night as we wanted all factors of the game to remain similar, thus having the game back to back. However, the audience did not had the patience to sit through a 4 hour cooking show and we loss our audience count through the night, albeit having a loyal few who stayed on and off. However, our players were able to entertain themselves by playing with the Instagram’s filter ability, using the dog filter to joke around through the 3rd space.

Final Product

quesadilla

cutting the final product
eating the food

Fun fact: Alena is a vegetarian.


G!ith Sngap#r3

                            Crowdsource

Crowdsourcing happens when our players utilises the opinions given by our live audience and use this information to their advantage. Sometimes the player might be too overwhelmed with the task at hand and might not be able to comprehend the drawing, even if it is a cuboid like what Tiffany saw. With the information given by a clear head, she might be able to understand and take the hint.

                                                                             DIWO

DIWO takes place when we enlisted the help of our friends to play the game. With the fresh perspective of Tiffany, Jacob, Alena and Hannah, we are able to execute this idea without any prejudice and play along. This idea was apparent especially in the trial run where Joel and Bryan had to play the game. Dion and I had to withhold much of the recipe and gameplay alterations as possible so as to ensure the sanctity of the game is upheld. We are also only a 4 member group and we might not have the necessary skills or lack of skills to achieve the character needed for the game, such as a good chef or a bad chef.

                                                    3rd space

With the usage of Insta-live dual screen playing system, we are able to use the split screen to communicate between the two players.  This helped us to achieve our goal of the communicative element of the game through visual stimuli only. This element is different in real life as we tend to want to over do on the communication part and using only 3rd space communication really helps to create a controlled environment. The 3rd space also helps to enable an effective audience participation without having a set of live audience that might create unnecessary pressure for our players. The 3rd space helps to foster a physical border that actualise our test of visual cues as communication devices. It also helps to connect people of different location into one centralised kitchen or drawing room.

Glitch                                                                             

The glitch aspect for this game was the most apparent aspect as it can come in early on in the game. For Tiffany and Jacobs team, the glitch was more evident. During the grocery phase, Tiffany accidentally bought nuts and cucumber for the chicken and quesadilla, which kills off the entire recipe within 30seconds. This glitch happens when she overlooks the initial function of the recipe and ingredients, which is to make a chicken quesadilla, but instead look at the ingredients as basic units to a whole dish. When she overlooks the designated function set by us, she saw new and unrestrained potential in the dish, creating the sensational scrambled eggs shown above. This glitch aspect is snowballed throughout our game as there is nearly no way of trying to overturn it, instead one should just embrace this glitch and try to make the best out of it.


Videopackaging

Since I filmed the entire cooking process while Joel filmed the drawing process, I got the chance to edit the trailer for the final project. However, there were still maximum participation from all team members in terms of how we envision the video looking like and how we wanted to package the video, checking back with them every now and then with the video edits.

We wanted the trailer to look intense, as if it is a real cooking show with fast tempo beats. However, we did not want to include too much reels of the gameshow as it defeats the purpose of a trailer- which is to entice the audience into buying our show as a idea. We also want the glitch aspect to be apparent, thus adding in words that helps guide the audience into understanding our show as it is. We even have our own opening sequence that features glitch graphics.

In our highlights video, we featured a short clip of how Tiffany and Jacob interacted with their purchasing of mushroom and butter. This was important as these items are contextualised as a success and a failure. It was important to understand what was a failure and success in our show. The video is played one frame at a time as we did not want to confuse audience with  too many screens, which they will be able to see through our Insta-live show.


Resolutions

this project could be better with a stronger managerial procedure as we are not trained to handle a game show of such complexities. If able to, we would have a stronger processing procedure, documenting from all angle, including the perspective of audience who are watching our show.

We could also expand this project into an app, as suggested by Desmond, and link up with a food app that allows students to download recipes and we provide the ingredients. This ties in with us as fundamentally we wanted to achieve the relationship between food and hall life.