Narrative, Genre and Distribtuion. Haunting Melissa gets intimate.

A story worth telling is not enough, its just part of the equation. If we’re going to engage an audience with a creative experience we have to consider a more holistic equation of how we marry a complex system of elements:

NARRATIVE - the story’s ability in events, actions and metaphors to compel an audience.

GENRE - the expectations the audience hold for what they are engaging with.

DISTRIBUTION - how does your audience but find and access the narrative. On what platforms, in whats spaces, under what contexts.

Traditional narrative media - like feature films - have had consistently determined structures of these elements over time. Particularly in the context of distribution, the means by which audiences accessed a feature film were, by and large, predetermined and predictable. 

But the digital age throws a spanner in the works and whilst many attached the traditional hierarchies of distribution based on theatrical-release trickle-down have wrestled with how to protect, defend or prop-up existing business models and distribution mechanics, other creative folks are excited by the opportunistic damage the digital spanner has done. 

One of the more prevailing sacred cows that is being spanked by the digital age is the idea that the Theatrical Release is the prime way to experience a screen narrative. This idea has created an unspoken (and sometimes subconscious) notion that other screen forms are somehow secondary or ancillary or ‘lesser’ than the theatrical release cinema-theatre event - that all other things being equal, the cinema is the best place to experience a screen narrative. 

This notion of an experience-hierarchy is entrenched and embodied in traditional distribution hierarchies that see theatrical release as the first-run of a film after which, in a trickle down of release windows, subservient screen forms (TV, DVD, Cable, online) are only later employed. 

A surface level perspective on this idea sees the external fidelities of the theatrical experience as dominant - the screen is bigger, the room is darker, the sound is louder. And this is the reason to conclude the prime nature of the cinema-theatre and pursue the traditional theatrical release trickle down. Yet, considering these three elements of Narrative Genre and Distribution, in a connected rather than abstracted way, we might come to different conclusions.  

Haunting Melissa, the first release from newly formed Hooked Digital Media, is an example of a company seeing a more direct relationship between Narrative Genre and Distribution that leads to a decidedly un-theatrical point of view.

Hooked Digital was founded by Neal Edelstein, the LA producer best known for his work with David Lynch (Mullholand Drive and The Straight Story) as well as (what i would argue is the best contemporary Horror film since The Exorcist) the US adaptation of The Ring. 

Hooked Digital (and their first project, Haunting Melissa) focuses on horror narratives, delivered directly to audiences on mobile tablet devices; episodic narratives told as downloadable pieces, encapsulated with a unified single-app experience. In this rather simple but fascinating approach, Hooked have made that connection between Narrative, Genre and Distribution in a way that circumvents traditional thinking that sees Theatrical as prime and rejects assumptions about audience desires and habits. 

By delivering episodic rather than feature-length narratives, Haunting Melissa exploits that most compelling of narrative patterns - the opening and closing of dramatic questions over time. Chaucer knew it, Dickens knew it and the golden age of TV writers we currently live in know it. Stories told in pieces with carefully constructed patterns of closure and expectation affect viewers at a level of complexity and emotional engagement in a way that feature-length narratives rarely, if ever, can.

Hooked deliver direct to audiences via a delivery channel that moves from producers to audiences down a digital pipe free of middle-men, distributors, exhibitors and all the other bottle necks. By doing so Hooked are able to do to a few important things - namely to be significantly more efficient in production  and able to spend more their budget (and subsequently see greater return) directly on content creation and creative production values, rather than feeding the standard hierarchy.

And finally, the approach of Hooked in focusing on genre-specific Horror narratives and experiences, puts them a position to leverage the very specific emotional expectations of their audience and connect that experience with the platform itself. 

When people ‘buy a ticket’ for a horror narrative experience they are signing up to a contract that guarantees what they are about to see delivers on their feeling-state expectations: fears and thrills, the excitement of dread and terror. These feeling states of the genre have little to do with size of screen, loudness of sound or scale of the auditorium audience. They have everything to do with psychological intimacy and personal immersion in very particular high stakes emotions. If we recognize that these emotions are paramount to the genre expectations of  horror audiences then we can conclude that certain types of platforms may be able to deliver these emotions even better than the theatrical release. Sitting up in bed, headphones on, glowing iPad screen 40cm in front of you is a pretty fucking intense way to experience a horror story, with a punch way beyond the theatrics of the cinema.

And so with these set of observations around Narrative, Genre and Distribution we get Hooked Digital Media - horror stories delivered direct to your mobile device.

When i first encountered Hooked, and waited in daily countdown to the release of Haunting Melissa, I got very excited by the perspective Hooked and Neal Edlestein were offering because it resonated as consistent with the ideas that underpin my own work with PORTAL Entertainment. It’s nice to know you’re not alone in how you’re reading the zeitgeist and where you are seeing opportunity when so many others see only chaos.

The focus of Portal Entertainment is interactive horror and thriller experiences told on mobile devices. Stories that draw upon the rich mythology and narrative depth of these genres and present an experience where the audience must take part in the story, be immersed in it’s telling as both witness and participant. 

Like Hooked, Portal sees the bigger picture connection between distribution, narrative and genre. The power of narratives told in episodic pieces to compel audiences to return for more; the distribution of creative product direct to audiences; And the intimacy of the mobile device platform to deliver the primo experience of horror and thriller genres and deliver, with gusto, on audiences emotional expectations. 

The first Portal production to roll off the current project slate is called THE CRAFTSMAN and will be released world-wide in June 2013. A dark thriller that plays out over 5 days, exploring voyeurism, art, secret societies and sacrifice.  Like Hooked Digital Media, Portal is looking to reshape the established ‘narrative-genre-distribution’ patterns and build a very audience-centric way of creating and delivering experiences.

After nearly two years of labour on the Portal Entertainment vision it’s really satisfying to see not only other players sharing the vision in different ways and with different, forward-thinking perspectives; but even more gratifying when those other players are of the calibre of Neal Edelstein and Hooked Digital Media. I feel like we are in good company. :)

Haunting Melissa is available now for iOS

Hooked Digital Media and Haunting Melissa have also been getting significant press.

CBC News

“The brainchild of American producer Neal Edelstein, Haunting Melissa isn’t a webseries or a movie sliced up into viral videos, he says. Filmed in Calgary and featuring Canadian crew members, the project was conceived as an app-told tale from the ground up, incorporating the medium’s unique requirements and environment: from unique sound and display specifications to push notification technology and built-in social media sharing capabilities.”

ABC News

“We created this pending technology called “dynamic story elements.” What that means is that if you go back and watch, things change. If you saw something the first time, you may go back, watch it and it might not be there.”

Tab Times

“Haunting Melissa is a ghost story created to be consumed in a dark corner with headphones on and iPhone or iPad in hand.”

On Bloomberg TV, Neal discusses the approach of Hooked Digital and the future of distribution.

Trust, Proof & behind-the-scenes of Wastelander Panda

The film, TV and digital media industries are built on two things - Trust and Proof. If you have a project you want to get into production these are two things you need to build currency in. Proof that the project is viable and has an audience, and Trust that you, as a creative team, can deliver the project in practical and audience engagement terms.

This is where the digital age is giving so many creative producers exciting new means to generate Proof and Trust in their project. Moreover, the online space allows them to do so in a very audience-centric and audience-direct way. These opportunities are a world away from the traditional short-film to film-festival path which too often biased a kind of indulgent artist-centric rather than audience-centric head space. Subsequently what we’ve been seeing over the past few years in particular, is a great many projects find production, audience and funding traction that would likely otherwise have been ignored by the traditional channels.

It’s been a long road of generating proof and trust for Wastelander Panda as a definitive case study of exactly the kind of project that would likely have never got up in the old-world, but which has proven itself more than viable in the new world. 

It began with a video Prologue that went positively ape-shit online becoming something of a cult sensation. This prologue proved the idea of a live-action post-apocalyptic giant panda could work at a practical and empathetic level. The prologue also, very importantly, proved that the tone of the project as a brutal, hard-edged, dark genre narrative, could work as it played against expectations.

From there, a highly successful crowd-funding campaign proved not only that Wastelander Panda had an audience, but also that this audience could be motivated and engaged to become invested in the projects’ future. The campaign also saw the forging of genre and fan-base connections with high-profile projects such as the hugely popular and successful video game Borderlands 2, where Arcayus the Wastelander Panda was featured as an easter-egg.

The crowd-funding campaign was never going to be able to raise the full production budget but it did generate the Trust required for funding agencies to get on board without question and get the project to the next level…

A trilogy of episodes was developed, three snapshots of the larger storyworld timeline of Wastelander Panda, previewed at the SXSW festival this year. This trilogy serves not only to satisfy the audience that rallied to the crowd-funding campaign but also serves as a crucial middle-stage development point; a chance to prove the creative team has the goods to deliver on the ideas promised by the prologue, but also to galvanise Trust in the fan-base that the project hasnt dissapeared and continues to develop. In doing so it also grows that audience base still further as the project heads towards its full realisation. 

And thus, in two weeks time the trilogy will go live, along with an interactive website that explores the larger scope of the Wastelander Panda world. A broad canvas staked out to be both immediately engaging as well as a vision of what’s yet to come. 

And what is to come may be truly exciting in scale, scope and machete-wielding Panda awesomeness…. Stay tuned….

In the meantime, the take away lesson from the Wastelander Panda experience is that Proof and Trust are the most crucial elements to seeing a big creative vision come to life and, more specifically, that proof and trust are built by an audience-centric development process of testing and drafting. You dont build it and hope they come. You test it, draft it, prototype it, put it out in incremental steps and invite audience to be a part of it. 

In the lead up to the launch of the Wastelander Panda trilogy of episodes, the production team have been compiling a set of fascinating behind-the-scenes videos. Not just the usual banality, these videos get into the nitty grit of how a giant panda costume works, how you can build a post-apocalyptic wasteland on a budget and how to mix really good fake blood.

Movies that play with the future

Future Tense is the superb ABC Radio National program that presents speculative exploration of the future, technology, ideas. Last weeks episode took a fascinating angle on Movies that Play with the Future, using the anniversary of the generation-defining comedy classic Groundhog Day as a launch vehicle.

“Groundhog Day was billed as a screwball romantic comedy when it was first released in 1993. Twenty years on, it’s now being described as a ‘profound work of metaphysics’. To us, it’s a film with an interesting cut on the future. Groundhog Day’s screenwriter Danny Rubin is among our guests as we look at a clutch of films that deal with futuristic themes in surprising, and sometimes unexpected, ways.”

Its always an hour to be asked onto Future Tense and Ive done a number of interviews previously related to cinema and scifi. But this weeks episode was particularly bloody cool because I can now say you can all listen to a radio program that features Me and Groundhog Day screenwriter Danny Rubin… 

In the interview Danny touches eloquently on both the metaphysical futuristic ideas in Groundhog Day as well as offering insight into the strange beast that is Hollywood.

“I think that this movie in a very honest way does what a lot of Hollywood movies do in a dishonest way, and that is that the character does seem to earn the good things that happen to him at the end. So his redemption, his change seems to have come about in a natural way, not in a way that was just contrived for the movie” 

Theres something very telling in this observation that speaks to directly to the screenwriter and singles out why Groundhog Day is so universally admired and resonant and yet so many other ‘romantic comedies’, are eminently diposable.

Danny goes on to extrapolate out some absolute gold for writers and filmmakers in getting to the real heart of a story, the metaphor within the device. 

“It occurred to me right at the beginning that Hollywood would require this story to have a purpose, a reason that he got into the repetition. But as I started ticking in my head through all the ideas, I was realising how ridiculous it was, how arbitrary. I was just sort of thinking, well, okay, it could be a mad scientist, it could be a wronged girlfriend, it could be a magical clock, you know, you could make up anything. And I thought but that’s going to put too much attention on the device that caused it and then the plot becomes about how does he get out and it doesn’t become about how does he live, how do you live in the situation. 

When I decided just to take it out, it solved all of my problems. It is our universal experience that we just sort of find ourselves in this situation, alive, here we are, here we are presented with the day, now what do you do with it? And of course from childhood on there are a lot of people giving you advice, but in the end it really comes down to that, and that is Phil’s experience; he just basically wakes up one morning and has to figure out what the rules are.”

For my part, the film i chose to present as having a very particular way of playing with the future was the much loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

Here’s what I had to say, hoping desperately to be half as eloquent as Danny Rubin. 

“What I think is interesting about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not just that it’s a great film unto itself and resonates in so many interesting ways, that it’s kind of the tip of a spear of a long tradition in cinema of films that deal with memory in interesting ways, and they are not always science fiction, but there’s something very compelling about the idea of being able to manipulate memories or how memories are manipulated that it kind of speaks to a sci-fi longing that’s really palpable. If we think about how science fiction films generally work, we often have fears at their central heart—the fear of progressing too far, the fear of unleashing something we can’t control—and we see this in disaster movies and alien invasion movies and robots that were once our humble servants now gaining agency to have power over us. And this fits a kind of a model of what Richard Wright, the archaeologist and sci-fi writer, calls the progress trap, and I think it’s a really important idea.

But what happens when we get to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a get a film that’s not about things escalating out of control, instead it deals with something very, very personal and very, very minute, even down to the setting of the company that can manipulate your memories. This is not the same as the company might be in a film like Total Recall where it’s a giant corporation that advertises wildly ‘We Will Remember it for You Wholesale’, as the original Philip K Dick title was. The company that can erase his memories is like a backyard job, it’s like your local mechanic down the corner, it’s very domestic, it’s very simple, it’s very normalised, and this is a really important part of why this film is so affecting. And when I got thinking about visions of the future that feel profound or feel very sharp in the way we engage with the 21st-century world, this was the film that stood out for me, not space ships or laser guns or robots, but the ability to manipulate memories themselves, and that I might go to a company to take away something that’s too painful to live with.

But what’s also interesting about it is the idea that surgery or a machine or a medical scientific process could selectively erase memories is dangerously close to our real world. It feels, oh boy, that could be tomorrow, and it’s not necessarily whether physically or literally we could do it, but it feels so close to the bone in the way science and technology allows us to see inside ourselves and manipulate ourselves and understand ourselves. When we can read our genetic code and when that genetic code can be sold to an insurance company we’re kind of down a road that is incredibly confronting about what is most important to us in the way science progresses. And I think that’s what I find most terrifying a little bit in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is I’m enjoying the ride of watching it and I’m laughing at times and fascinated by it, I’m also terrified by that idea that my memories are that slippery, that they could be removed with surgery or they could be erased with a magnetic wave, that they are not necessarily intrinsic to who I am, or that perhaps they are and there could be a real problem if we mess with them.”

Of course, screenwriters like Danny and Me weren’t the only guests on the program and were quickly followed up by some fascinating ideas expressed by Lauren Rosewarne Writer, commentator and Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne; and Richard Watson Futurist and co-author of ‘Future Vision: scenarios for the world in 2040’.

As always, the Future Tense team deliver a great show and its well worth a listen. Available as a podcast and transcript here.

Storyworld Studio: There is Nothing easy about interactive multiplatform development.

Lets just get that out there in the open. Its really bloody difficult. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either talking shite or has never made anything.

As we draw closer to the end of post-production on the maiden Portal Entertainment project, The Craftsman, Ive been reflecting a lot on development processes for generating and executing immersive entertainment. In particular thinking through all those elements that are the layers of complexity that envelop and make even more complex the core narrative principles that are universal to any form of storytelling. 

Technology doesn’t change what a story is, but technologies and platforms do change audience experience and the process by which writers develop ideas. For today’s storytellers, this means seeing storyworld building as central to storyteller’s craft; story worlds that can generate multiple stories across multiple media and envelop audiences in role-play and immersion.

Over the past year (and expanding from the fantastic conceptual development partnerships with my colleagues Karen Pearlman and Julian McCrea) Ive been involved with running a wide range of development programs around Storyworld building and interactive multi-platform narratives; working with other writers, producers and directors to take them through processes to investigate and mine their ideas for their interactive multiplatform potential. 

The Immersive Writing Lab in the UK, the Interactive Media Innovation program with QUT and AFTRS, the Digital360Lab program with the South Australian Film Corp, the Doha Film Institute Transmedia Development Workshops and the Storyworld Development lab with Screenworks. It’s been a bloody busy few months.  But certainly what has proved invaluable has been the experience testing development processes with different artists on different projects in different contexts. You most certainly learn more about the viability and internal strength of your own creative process when you have to condense and articulate it to others. 

What has come out of all this for me has been a recognition of the complex layers that go into an interactive multiplatform project. I somewhat infamously present a lecture entitled “There’s nothing New about New Media” where I rally against the guru protestations of “profound newness” to look at the long-standing, technology-agnostic, foundations of interactive multiplatform. Evolution NOT Revolution!

Yet, whilst Im passionate about debunking some of the myths of ‘transmedia’ and returning focus to core narrative principles to avoid baby-out-with-the-bathwater syndrome, it’s also important recognise that these long-standing core principles are invariably wrapped in layers of complexity when it comes to their articulation into the digital interactive multiplatform world. 

So where I can begin a development process by recognising good old Episodic, Adaptation and Epistolary narrative principles in interactive multiplatform works, I must also look to the overlaying new elements and hence I found myself making a list of all the ‘new media’ ideas that must invariably be part of the development conversation.

• First person, present tense - can your story be told or experience in immediacy.
• Active and specific Role play and Agency for the audience.
• Conation - the presence of Will within cognitive and affective experience.
• World first then plot - energise the storyworld to spawn many plots through Rules, Pressures and forces in opposition. 
• Designing Memories and Rituals  for the audience to retain or perform.
• Articulating Interaction as a system of motivations, actions and rewards.
• Seeing the spectrum of Interactive Narrative as spanning from Open to Authored and governed by levels of agency.
• Seeing the diversity and unique traits of Interactive Modes - first, third, omnipotent, voyeuristic
• Engaging with Interactive mechanics of strategy, simulation, puzzle
• Authoring Storyworld Timelines as systems of events, thresholds, inversions.
• Constructing narrative as Episodic patterns and Returnable elements.
• Recognising the crucial separation between Plot & Narration - What happens vs How it is viewed, played and navigated?

And thats just for starters…! As if writing a good old feature film screenplay wasn’t bloody hard enough, now I have to deal with all this shit!

And yet, whilst this may seem daunting to many there will brave souls who find this enormously exciting. Like an artist who suddenly has a dozen more colours on their pallet or a sculptor with more than just marble to carve from. 

So this leads me to the latest development program I will be leading. The Storyworld Studio presented by Metroscreen in Sydney… 

The interactive multi-platform space is rapidly expanding but, more importantly, it is also maturing. This means great opportunities to generate rich, engaging, narratively complex experiences. There’s never been a better time to be a storyteller because there’s never been more screens and media forms to tell stories on.

Seeking: Big thinking writers, filmmakers and storytellers who want to create epic worlds for their characters to come to life in, not bound to any one screen or platform. Take your audience on a journey through many touchpoints for a rich, engaging experience. 

The Storyworld Studio is an intensive development program for interactive multiplatform stories and an Australian first.

Limited places are available at this unique structured development studio, subsidized by Screen NSW and Metro Screen.

The rigorous program is an engaging and structured process for the development of meaningful, dramatic and sustainable storytelling in the interactive multiplatform world. Participants will be guided through storyworld design, rules and pressures taking point of view in to account. Narrative adaption, journey mapping and process will be explored along with Author versus Agency, role play and game mechanics. Practical demonstrations and expert advice on presenting and pitching rich creative concepts will see participants completing the studio ready to develop fully-fledged projects.

Applications are due by close of business Tuesday 14 May 2013.

Dates:

Successful applicants must be available to attend all five Storyworld Studio sessions from 9.30am to 4.30pm.

• Thursday 6 June
• Thursday 13 June
• Thursday 20 June
• Thursday 27 June
• Thursday 4 July

Administration Fee:

This program is valued at over $2000 which is heavily subsidized by Screen NSW. The successful participants will be required to pay an administration fee of $300 upon confirmation of the studio.

Studio Location:

Metro Screen, Paddington Town Hall, Corner of Oxford Street & Oatley Road, Paddington, Sydney

APPLICATION BRIEF

We’re looking for Storyworlds that have broad possibilities across multiple platforms – TV, Feature, Web Series, Interactive experiences and Video Games, Interactive Books and Graphic novels, Alternate Reality Games and Social media.

Applicants need to submit a summary of their Storyworld idea that includes:

• Short Summary of the storyworld
• Characters and Communities that live in the storyworld
• Conflicts and Dramatic problems that affect the storyworld

Creative concepts can be bought to life by supplying supporting materials e.g. visuals, maps, scripts.

For further details contact Metro Screen Productions and Projects Coordinator Craig Boreham on c.boreham@metroscreen.org.au or call 02 9356 1818.

The Storyworld Studio is proudly supported by Screen NSW.

Inciting Willfulness: 'Conation" & Interactive Entertainment

* A Guest-Post by Dr. Karen Pearlman, head of Screen Studies, Australian Film Tv and Radio School

See, Hear, Feel, Understand.  These are the first four things I ask students to articulate when they look at a film.  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you feel? What do you understand?  This method of developing filmmaking skills through screen studies is based in a cognitive/phenomenological approach.  It asks about perception, affect, and cognition - in other words: how does a film impact on your body, your emotions and your thinking?   When students get used to articulating their insights through this approach (my acronym for it is SHFUA: see-hear-feel-understand-articulate)  they are able to articulate something about how a given film works; how films in general might work as active processes that invite audiences to make meaning; and, importantly, how their own films might work.  

But ‘see hear, feel and understand’ just don’t quite describe all of the activities of mind and body that interactivity offers.  One could add ‘participate’ or even the obvious, ‘interact’  but for purposes of analysis and creating work, these become specific to the mechanics of the property one is talking about.  They are about how you participate and interact, not why.   So, I’d like to kick it up a level and introduce: CONATION.  

Here is what wikipedia says the word ‘conation’ means:

“Conation is a term that stems from the Latin conatus, meaning any natural tendency, impulse, striving, or directed effort.[1] It is one of three parts of the mind, along with the affective and cognitive. In short, the cognitive part of the brain measures intelligence, the affective deals with emotions and the conative drives how one acts on those thoughts and feelings”

Although “The term conation is no longer widely known—it is in “The 1,000 Most Obscure Words in the English Language,” it is highly relevant to interactive screen based entertainment and I think it should be brought back into common usage for studying and creating interactive properties.  

Mike Jones and I have been teaching interactivity in a series of workshops for the [imi] project and AFTRSstudents.  The workshop starts with asking: “what does an interactive screen story or experience need in order to get people involved?”  

The answer proposed in the workshop is: 

 - motivation
 - action
 - reward

What motivates an audience to participate?  What action do they do or role do they have to play?  What is their reward?  What I realised when I learned the word ‘conation’  yesterday is that these three things  - motivation, action, and reward - speak to the CONATIVE aspects of mind.

Put together with cognition and affection (understanding and feeling) conation adds volition, will to act, or, colloquially: an itch to scratch.   

This notion of an ‘itch to scratch’ is immediately recognsiable in puzzle games like Tetris.  When I see an unfinished line up of squares in Tetris I just want to line the squares up.  I have no emotional feeling about them, I don’t get any any insight from lining them up, I simply scratch the itch - satisfy my conative urging. 

The conative becomes more complex in story driven interactive entertainments like Dear Esther where the aesthetics make you feel haunted,  and the story makes you want to uncover the mystery.  In this case the affective and the cognitive drive the conative.  Your ‘itch to scratch’  - your will to act - is integrated with dramatic questions and sophisticated feelings states. 

The Physical TV Company, Richard James Allen, Mike Jones, Nathan Anderson and I are developing a new interactive property called More Lies based on a book by Richard.  In this “interactive book/movie experience”  the conative is driven by a direct audience relationship with the central character - a charming but unreliable narrator who needs your help…  But when is he telling you the truth?  The interactivity of the proposition offers you a way to scratch the itch of wanting to know: what is a crazy, compelling lie he is telling and what is a crazy, compelling truth?   Creating More Lies will be an action research experiment in embedding the word ‘conative’ as a consideration in a creative process.  Since it is a story based interactive experience we’ll be asking, at each stage: how does an element make you feel?  what does it offer to understanding? what conative response does it incite?  Watch this space for notes on the process.  

(p.s. AFTRS students can expect to be discussing the conative in upcoming workshops, because I’m changing my acronym to: SHFUCA - see-hear-feel-understand-conate-articulate - Shall I paraphrase the now famous line from the movie ARGO?  Aw go SHFUCA…)

Storyworld, Gameplay, Narration - Doha Workshops

Storyworld, Gameplay, Narration. These are the three crucial elements of developing engaging multiplatform interactive experiences. And they are the three master-topics of a series of Transmedia workshops being offered by the Doha Film Institute in Qatar over the next 3 months. 

Building on the successful Immersive Writing Lab program in the UK, me and some of my colleagues from Portal Entertainment will be heading to Doha to take Qatari and Gulf-based writers through a grounded development process for building immersive entertainment. There’s no doubt the whole middle-east region has boomed with screen media talent over the past decade in filmmaking, documentary, journalism, animation and TV and we’ll be looking to build on that talent base in extending their creative processes in new directions.

Which brings me back to Storyworld, Gameplay and Narration. As I have written many times - like a kind of broken-record-mantra - there is nothing new about new media, technology does not change what a story is, never has. BUT, what it does do is effect creative processes - it changes the way we work and adds all kinds of new creative tools to our conceptual kitbag.

With Storyworld we look to conceive not ‘a plot’ but a pressurised world of plot potential. A world that has an engine powerful enough to sustain numerous stories on numerous platforms from different points-of-view.

With Gameplay we engage with new toolkit that drives us to consider the active, meaningful and impactful role an audience might play within that story world. How do we motivate and compel them to interact? How do we reward them for taking action? How do we implicate them in the story’s outcomes? How can we engage a creative process that sees game-play mechanics as intrinsically mashed with dramatic questions and narrative structures?

With Narration we recognise that the Story and the way it is Told are not the same thing. Narration is a vehicle for the story but multiple different Narrations might emerge from story world and gameplay. How do we consider Narration possibilities as part of the development of a narrative idea?

The DFI Transmedia workshops are NOT a formula or a set of rules and we will not be talking about mutltiplatform as simplistic marketing or advertising. Rather we will be engaging with Storytelling in the richest possible way, hoping to empower Qatari creative practitioners with new tools for their own creative processes. There’s never been a better time to be storyteller because there have never been so many mediums through which to tell a story. 

Details from the Doha Film Institute Website:

Explore the exciting possibilities of transmedia storytelling in this three-part workshop created by DFI.

This workshop series will teach aspiring filmmakers how to create a storyworld, introducing them to a wide array of ways to generate interaction with audiences across a variety of digital platforms. Over the course of three sessions, workshop participants will build and develop their understanding and mastery of cross-platform world-building.

• Workshop applicants must submit a story idea they would like to develop.
• Successful candidates will be selected on the basis of the strength of their submission, as well as on their previous work.
• Candidates must be at least 18 years of age, and must be available to attend all three of the workshop series.

Workshops are conducted in English and are led by internationally acclaimed mentors Mike Jones and Julian McCrea of Portal Entertainment, a cross-platform production company based in London.

Workshop 1: Storyworld – 15 to 18 April, 6:30 to 9:00PM 
Introduction to storyworld principles, rules and pressures, genre, characters and plot, and dramatic questions. Begin to define and build a storyworld, and articulate its timeline, parameters and plot.

Workshop 2: Gameplay – 2 to 4 May (TBC), 6:30 to 9:00PM
Learn about narrative mechanics and gameplay elements. Define the stakes of the story, the scope of the audience experience, and playtest the storyworld.

Workshop 3: Narration – 7 to 9 June (TBC), 6:30 to 9:00PM
Overview of audience attention, memory recall and interaction design. Design and test the storyboard prototypes and audience journey of the storyworld.

Storytelling across platforms - Gabe Newell vs JJ Abrams

Video from the DICE 2013 conference has a semi-scripted debate between Valve’s gabe Newell and Star Trek’s JJ Abrams.

Showrunner and Writers Room in Australian TV Drama

When looking at the huge success of US high-end drama television over past decade, much is made of the Showrunner and Writers-Room model of script development and writing. In contrast to how Tv drama in Australia and the UK has traditionally been written by individual writers working very individually to a brief; the Writers-Room sees a truly collaborative team and captain framework. 

Tied with the creative process of the writers-room is also a very different economic model for how writers are paid - a scaling wage that rises with each year a writer works in the writers room. This is also part and parcel of a structure that sees writers as producers and a system that actively mentors writers to be episode and series producers.

These are big, challenging ideas when we consider how they might be applied to the australian industry and Roslyn Walker has taken exactly that challenge in a research paper entitled “TV Drama Series Development in the US: possibilities for the Australian Industry.” (PDF)

It’s a great survey looking at specific case studies of current successful US TV series  and thinking about the industrial implications here.

Screenworks Storyworld Seminar

The world has been talking about interactive multiplatform storyworlds for what seems like ages. Yet far too often the conversation has been by saturated in vacuous games of buzzword bingo dominated by marketing and advertising agendas treating such new media forms as just another vehicle to sell people shit they dont need. Equally problematic has been the overbearing technologists and strategists who have hijacked the word ‘story’ without having any real understanding if what a narrative is. A great narrative experience is not simply delivered by a combination of technology and demographic analysis that so many Transmedia gurus seem to have us believe.

Despite my long-standing love for what’s possible in an interactive multiplatform space it’s only in past year or so that it’s really starting to feel like the ideas have a grounded critical mass. No longer the ‘other’, an add-on or a glorified promo vehicle, creative people are starting to have Real and Exciting conversations about interactive multi platform in a way that isn’t just tokenistic. 

And it is exactly these conversations I hope to be helping to kickoff for Australian creators in Byron Bay, Northern NSW this week as part of the Screenworks Storyworld Seminar.

Working with the wealth of talent from the northern rivers area, Screenworks is flying in myself and well known all-media producer Marcus Gilleazeau to deliver a combination of presentations and 1-on-1 development sessions for local writers, directors and producers. 

What Im particularly excited about in the Screenworks Storyworld Development program is the Writer centric approach that puts the writing, articulation and conceptual development of an holistic dramatised storyworld foremost in the process. For my part, what I’ll be discussing on the night is specific ideas, perspectives and principles to help shape the writing process; to open it up to a span of platform possibilities, rather than devised to fulfil the requirements of a pre-determined platform. 

This is a song-and-dance I’ve been performing quite a bit of late and Im genuinely excited by the reaction I’m getting from participants and audiences. Not just that creative people are enthusiastic but that they ‘get it’, they see the possibilities in a grounded rather than airy-fairy way and they are bringing great ideas to the table. 

Don’t get me wrong, this shit aint easy…! In the past year I’ve presented on writing for interactive multi platform all over the joint - the Immersive Writing Lab in the Uk, the SAFC’s Digital360Lab, the AWG National Screenwriters Conference, SPAA Fringe, Futurebook and London Literary Conferences and later this year I’ll be in Doha, Qatar - and the key message that is quickly apparent is that the excitement of possibilities is matched equally by the daunting narrative challenge. 

But the answer i have argued is in Process. If we can understand how new platforms effect the way we work, the process by which we create, we can put ourselves in a position to make better and more informed choices about how to create an engaging interactive multi platform experience. As I argued in a previous post; Whilst Story doesn’t fundamentally change, creative process by which artists produce narrative experiences do… we should be focusing Less on the newness of technology and how it is different from past technologies and instead focus on what is different or new in our creative processes. 

The Screenworks Storyworld Development seminar is on this Thursday 21st March 5pm-8pm at the Byron bay Community Centre. Bookings are essential. Contact events@screenworks.com.au or phone 02 6687 1599

Australian Content Quotas & Convergence Report - Right Cause but perhaps Wrong Argument

In 2012 the Australian Government commissioned a report entitled The Convergence Review.  The intention was simple; survey the current landscape of screen and broadcast media that has seen such change in the digital age, and make recommendations for future policy.

So the report was done and submitted based on wide and detailed consultancy with all stake holders - creative, business, production, enterprise and technology. And now the key findings of the report look to be ignored… Gee whizz! It’s enough to make you loose faith in politicians…

The Australian Writers Guild - along with the the Australian Directors Guild and Screen Producers Association of Australia - are currently waging a campaign to ensure the government follow the key recommendation number 18 which refers specifically to ‘Australian Content Qutoas’

Writers, directors, producers and production people from right across all sectors are flocking to sign the petition, seeing defending the requirements for producing original Australian content as crucial. 

This from the campaign page: 

Senator Stephen Conroy commissioned an independent review to check how effective our current media and communications laws are in a world of ever evolving technology. Recommendation 18 was the first to be considered, it insisted on a 50 per cent increase in levels of Australian drama, documentaries and children’s television. Recommendation 18 is the first to be ignored. 

Senator Conroy says one thing:

“Free-to-air television plays an important part in our lives, and seeing Australian stories told on TV is vital in reflecting and maintaining our Australian identity, character and diversity… 

To make sure that we keep being able to watch Australian content, we are taking a number of steps to enable commercial television broadcasters to continue to invest in and broadcast Australian content.”.

Senator Conroy then goes and does another:

Senator Conroy has slashed the fees channels 7, 9 and 10 pay the Government to broadcast “free-to-air” by 50% without cabinet approval, handing them savings of approximately $142 million per year, with absolutely no requirement for investment in Australian stories.”

I was of course one of the first to sign to show my support to the campaign but, at the same time, I think there is a flaw in the language of the defence and a restricted idea that may be part of the problem. 

The campaign is predicated on the slogan of “Telling Australian Stories” and almost all of the Twitter endorsements of the campaign have focused on this element - of not wanting to be ‘overrun with American stories’. 

There is, no doubt, a lot of truth to this concern, but I also think there is a bigger issue that goes above the diminutive argument for ‘Aussie stories’ as intrinsic to some kind of national identity. I’m far less concerned about ‘Aussie Stories’ than I am about a policy that directly encourages a nation of Consumers rather than Creators. I take myself here as a micro case study. I have a slate of projects and creative work in train this year - Film, TV, Book and Interactive projects. Virtually none of them are set in Australia or have Australian characters. But they are being made and creatively developed by Australians. I have NO interest in “Aussie Stories”, my only interest is in Good Stories, Compelling, Mythological, Exciting, Big Stories. And as such characters and events and settings might be anywhere in the world.

“I’m far less concerned about ‘Aussie Stories’ than I am about a policy that directly encourages a nation of Consumers rather than Creators.”

So whilst I whole heatedly signed the petition and feel despondent that our Government may ignore the key recommendations of its own independent report, I do so NOT because of some misguided idea or belief in “Australian Stories’”. I think it a much stronger and more forward-thinking idea to defend Australian Content Quotas as Creative Works BY Australians to ensure we don’t become a nation of rank Consumers, skilled only is absorbing the creativity of other nations. 

Without such quotas we have no mechanism by which to foster, develop and generate creative talent. We provide no vehicle to the wider society for all the benefits a creative culture brings. I don’t want to live in a country whose only skill is buying, eating and watching. I want to live in a nation that Makes Stuff and is governed by policies that strive to provide as rich and diverse opportunities as possible for people to be able to Make Stuff!

Filmmaker and scholar Karen Pearlman has framed this argument in relation to the feature film sector in a compelling way with an influential article from a couple of years back entailed ‘Make our Myths’. 

Feature Film more than any other creative sector has been dogged and limited for far too long by this idea of ‘Telling our Stories’ - a mantra that many associate with with narrow, small, parochial and self-indulgent films that no one wants to see. Instead Karen argues for finding the Mythologies that underpin Australian society rather than looking to the surface level for Aussie Stories. Our national myths are a more empowering platform that could lead us to set our stories anywhere in the world with characters from anywhere in the world and yet still built from an Australian core and point-of-view. 

I agree wholeheartedly with the AWG campaign but I think predicating the argument on “KEEPING AUSTRALIAN STORIES ON TV” is a limited vision and a misguided argument. There’s a bigger picture. Im not convinced Australians care much about seeing ‘Aussie stories’ on screen but I think they care deeply about the idea that Australia should be full of creative opportunities and populated with creative people. Thats what this debate is Really about. 

Read more and Join the campaign here.