The Australian Film, Television and Radio School has asked me to come in a give a lunchtime seminar on Cross-Media Entertainment. It is for practitioners across the whole school but outsiders are welcome to come too. Tomorrow at 1pm. Apologies for the late notice as I was waiting for the very sexy poster that you see here. If you do come along and I haven’t met you before, come up and say hi!
Just received the delivery of my first in-world purchase: Julian Dibbell’s book on living off virtual money Play Money. I bought it and the virtual version at the virtual store with virtual money (Lindens) in the virtual world of Second Life. This is a bundled product where for 1 purchase I get the virtual and real version. I’ve argued for this bundling of products before on this blog & at industry talks. Good to see it happening.
Anyway, I received the book today and to my disappointment it was addressed to me. It would of been nice to have it addressed to my in-world name, Lythe Witte, with my real name in brackets so the delivery works. It would of been nice to have something to indicate the special way it was purchased, even a message from the in-world bookseller Falk Bergman (though he didn’t do the delivery, just facilitated the process). Anyway, I’m going to enjoy the book though. You can read the book online at Julian’s blog but I like reading real books.
Details about the virtual & real world purchase at New World Notes
APPLY NOW TO EVOLVE YOUR MEDIA
OCTOBER 06 - THE 5th LIVE-IN-LAMP - TASMANIADiscover emerging media opportunities and create compelling next generation media at the next Laboratory for Advanced Media Production residential, proudly supported by Screen Tasmania through the Department of Economic Development.
LAMP is designed to future-proof projects by guiding creative teams through the opportunities offered by broadband and IP television, web 2.0 social networks, mobile media, games, virtual worlds and non-linear storytelling. In the last 10 months LAMP has run four major labs developing over 30 projects in a process which has transformed the creative mindset of 92 people. AFTRS LAMP has worked with high level creative teams from ABC TV, News Interactive, Firelight, Bush TV, Movie One and a host of independents to workshop and prototype cutting edge services.
LAMP is now calling for creative teams from all parts of the Australian media industries to submit cross-media projects to its 5th lab to be held at beautiful Freycinet Lodge, Tasmania between Oct 29 - Nov 3, 2006. Participants will be led by Australian and international mentors with specialist skills in design, writing, business, user experience and technical aspects of cross media production. They will also use the latest software, develop an interest grabbing pitch and work with some of Australia’s leading cross media developers. LAMP is truly practical, production and market focused.
The submission deadline is September 25, 2006.
http://lamp.edu.au/2006/08/17/5th-lamp-live-in-lab-oct-06-apply-now/
I’ve been watching the new jtv vodcasts and I think the comedy section, called Hello Future, is very funny. They basically make fun of the interactive television that we don’t have. It is set in the 80s apparently. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to the show on YouTube or anywhere and I’m not going to spend the time editing it out. It is usually at the end of the jtv vodcast. If you want to know how to do interactive without the technology, watch this show.
I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the great work that Julie Meloni and Jeremy Douglass did on creating the first Academic Citation Generator for blogs (at present only Wordpress). I was part of the testing and did have it installed on my blog but forgot it when I changed servers. So, here it is back again. At the end of the post you can see the text ‘view academic citations’. When you click on it you will see the correct citation details (in five styles) for that blog post. If you’ve got a Wordpress blog — pop it in!
I announced just recently that I work in SL as a journalist and that the magazine, SLATENight, is now online. Well now you can download a pdf of the magazine.
I was also interviewed for ABC’s Radio National programme: Background Briefing a couple of weeks ago. The segment is about virtual money etc and is now online. The segment, Loot: Real Money in Virtual Worlds, has all the virtual money Gods in there: Edward Castronova, Julian Dibbell (who’s book, Play Money, was the first real life product I have bought in a virtual world) and even Philip Rosedale of Linden Labs! I’m in there too as a writer and cross-media consultant who advises clients on how their property can extend to SL. Just little bits of me showing Cath Dwyer, the journalist, around SL, and a mention of Cybster DJ!
The paper I wrote for the upcoming Association of Internet Researchers Conference: Internet Convergences, How the Internet is Holding the Center of Conjured Universes, is now online.
The Internet is an indisputably influential force in changes to the way entertainment is conceived, produced, distributed, experienced and critiqued. Little is known, however, about how the Internet is used by fans and producers in the experience of cross-media entertainment. Cross-media entertainment forms such as ‘alternate reality games’, entertainment ecologies (artistic franchises and tie-ins) and enhanced television lean towards an ideal form of art that combines all forms. These works are distributed over media platforms, producers, arts types and time. They require assembly, navigation and interpretation. This paper outlines how fans and producers are using the Internet to hold these emerging works together, using examples from popular entertainment, providing a narrative- and ludic-agnostic ontology for the understanding and analysis of them, and posits motivations from cognitive psychology.
Feel free to send me any feedback or thoughts.
Church of the Customer have a great post on the 5 Lessons For Marketers. Film producers, have a look.
In stark contrast to the rollicking and genuine experience of the Kevin Smith launch at the State Theatre in Sydney last night, was the club launch of Yahoo!7’s new online interactive drama: PS Trixi. The new property, a multi-platform drama with an Internet pivot point, is officially launched on August 28th but you can see an online teaser right now at www.trixi.com.au. The show, which has intelligent cross-platform creators Hoodlum Active behind it is incorrectly described as a first in Australia and the world (at the launch) and as an ‘alternate reality game’ on the Hoodlum website:
PS TRIXI is a world first alternate reality game and interactive drama series created and produced by Hoodlum Active exclusively for Yahoo!7.Over the next 12 weeks you are about to be taken on a ride like no other as Trixi and Hamish invite you to be part of their innercircle. This drama plays out in real time and gives you an opportunity to win a car by playing the game.Over the next 12 weeks you are about to be taken on a ride like no other as Trixi and Hamish invite you to be part of their innercircle. This drama plays out in real time and gives you an opportunity to win a car by playing the game.Over the next 12 weeks you are about to be taken on a ride like no other as Trixi and Hamish invite you to be part of their innercircle. This drama plays out in real time and gives you an opportunity to win a car by playing the game.
How do I know it isn’t an ‘alternate reality game’? They’re doing everything an ARG never does. How do I know that? I play them, I’m on the International Game Developers Association ARG SIG, and I’m a co-writer of the upcoming ARG Whitepaper. So there. I know such claims are to assist in creating media buzz, but what gets me about claims of being the 1st in Australia (and the world?!) is that is it obvious that hype and untruth is more important than anything else. I would be so impressed if someone got up and said:
Building on the trail blazing online interactive dramas developed by Jason Wheatley in 1997 with his Byte-Sized Theatre; Griffith University’s Voyear Motel in 2001 and Hardboiled in 2002; Wheatley, AFTRS, NIDA and Brainwave Interactive’s Love Cuts in 2002; and the highly successful Forget the Rules by Jim Shomos or Kylie Robertson’s more recent Girl Friday; and internationally, one cannot miss the pivotal Online Caroline by XPT in 2003; the well-known soap The Spot that has developed to being multi-platform or the original landmark explorations of the Oz Project; like Jupiter Green which was situated in the CitySearch portal and MSNFound by 42 Entertainment using MSN Search…we now introduce our contribution to this important area of entertainment…[fill in whatever name you want to call it]…it ultilises design techniques from interactive drama, alternate reality games, pervasive gaming…etc
But that won’t happen! The untruths and lack of respect for audiences takes away from what is actually good about the project. PSTrixi will be using all the parts of the Yahoo!7 universe (to sell itself obviously) but hopefully in clever ways. The mystery, to solve what happened to Trixi’s missing sister, is experienced over 12 weeks over a variety of platforms. Players will be using messenger, the search engine, streaming, email, podcasts, webcams, casual games, blogs and even reading Famous Magazine and watching teen soap Home and Away. At the launch they said they will ‘reward those who really want to get involved’, which I thought was an excellent design implementation until I realised the experience will all be a competition to win a car. Toyota are the sole sponsors of the property. It is aimed at a particular demographic obviously.
One of the statements at the launch was that this is ‘not TV replicated online’. True, it is interactive. But I wonder, it seems the content of the show is trying to appeal to a mass audience. This is a TV-centric way of writing. The Internet is the ideal ground for niche content. And niche is, ironically, more popular I think. I was also surprised at the launch. It was a room full of 30+ party goers, not the demographic of the intented audience I don’t think. And, it struck me as silly that more of these launches don’t invite active bloggers to them. Sure, I was there, but I wasn’t invited! (Thanks Gary for passing on the internet invite.) I think that rather than trying to look cool, why not take that scary step DOWN to your audience and also invite people who, like me, will get on the Net or a podcast and spread the word of your work. Directors like Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon and the like really know how to speak directly to their fans. They’re not afriad of them…
Anyway, rant over. I will be ‘playing’ PSTrixi, to study the cross-media design. I wish the PSTrixi team the best of luck with the project and hope you provide wonderful surprises for me! 
I was lucky to have the opportunity to not only see the special launch of Kevin Smith’s Clerks II in Australia last night 9 days before it hits the cinemas, but…wait for it…I was at the Q&A session with Kevin Smith — the first time he has ever been to Australia!!! OMG! It was an amazing evening, watching his film and then hearing his witty retorts to shaking fanboys for hours after. Besides the raw and heartfelt nature of his films I have been admiring his use of the Internet in his marketing of the film. Kevin lives on the Net like me and many of my readers, so naturally he employed it, and employed it well. He has always had a number of websites, like the View Askewniverse and Clerks II site, that are even mentioned in his films. He podcast the making of Clerks II, called Trainwreck, for 1 year online, through iTunes & YouTube (there have been a few that do that though). He created Internet only trailers and uploaded them to places such as YouTube (which had its own story, that CC Chapman elaborates on). Clerks II is in MySpace as well, and he ran competitions to get MySpacians to add Clerks and all the characters to their own MySpace sites (this is something that has been done before too, as I note on my MySpace blog). Kevin is also active on forums and blogs. But there is something on top of all this that Kevin does that guzumps all other MySpace efforts:
Kevin lists every MySpace friend in the credits of the film
Now, at the time of the production of the film, there would be a lot less friends than there are at present. But there are 45,000 at present. The MySpace credits were about 7 minutes long, and that was with about 5 columns! I so wish I was on the list — immortialised forever as a fangirl!
