Ben McKenzie was our guest lecturer this week, sadly not Ryan from The O.C. However he was a charismatic man with a great logo I was jealous of. He was one of the originators of Pop Up Playground. I guess a games/production company specialising in live games – anything from roleplaying to schoolyard games to something more akin to Sleep No More. He was very well versed in the kind of storytelling we are developing now – layered, transmedia content with a lot of audience agency. I’m jealous because I know a lot of good storytellers, much like him, who come from a world of Dungeons and Dragons and that really informs their ability to give their audience power within the story, something I find challenging. Building a world is a hard basket task.

McKenzie also spoke about emergent stories, the ones that unexpectedly come out of the story, that aren’t originally built into it by the creators. How to leave room for that in a narrative seems far from my grasp right now but it’s also incredibly exciting and I would like to learn better how to be inclusive of these possibilities. On the other hand, sometimes I find games like some that he spoke of quite trite, for example, a bunch of school kids walking around the city wearing monster tails. To be quite honest that image makes me cringe a little. I did learn what a “ludic marker” was though – something that shows you’re playing a game, people feel special and the people around them know they are in a game. Still much more to learn but felt curious about a new and innovative company like McKenzies’.

Today we discussed our major projects for the rest of the semester. DB set up a little pitching market for all the groups that had come up with an idea and we rotated around to hear about the diverse projects and then gave DB a ballot slip with who we wanted to work with. They were all fascinating and fabulous but none particularly resonated with me and on return to my table with Sandy and Alex we concluded we wanted to come up with something completely different. The word ‘cult’ was the first thing that tumbled out and we all got excited about that keyword. From that we suggested possible screen content, how the narrative may unfold, but I’ve come home and now I’m geed up for the rest of the semester!

What direction might this project go! I think we’re all highly ambitious content creators with a variety of skills and interests and this will be a total recipe for an interesting collaborative project. I’m really excited to be working with Sandy and Alex to create a deeply bizarre choose your own adventure type project with PowerPoint and iPads and crystal balls and mirrors. Below is a prime example of the kind of early 2000’s occult/astrological vibes.

I’d love to make the best next web series. I’m a big fan and I’ve watched a lot (read: excessive amount) of content online. And I’m always curious about what works and what doesn’t and the more you watch the more you know. Today we watched a few episodes of each of the following web series’ Starting From Now, High Maintenance, and The Guild. Here are my 50 word review of each:

SFN – Queer content is niche but people dig it and get caught up in it, particularly with a bunch of Sydney babes. I don’t hate this show but I think it’s a bit daggy, there are better versions of it’s kind (Feminin/Feminin is a French-Canadian lesbian web series that is top notch) it’s a good avenue for storytelling but wish it was developed more, could be stronger ⅗

HM – Class A web series content. This is what I imagine a really good online program to look like. It’s an unusual format with the protagonist being a character we don’t really get to know but I think it’s extraordinarily effective and I couldn’t enjoy it more. The eps we watched weren’t my personal fave but I have a great time watching it 5/5
TG – I am definitely not the target market for this show, but that aside, I really respected it’s use of the PhotoBooth/Skype as bookendings. It’s a pretty great idea for an extremely low-budget and seems well suited to the audience it targets. But overall probs wouldn’t watch again but respect it exists 2/5

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is not something I knew much about. Sandy, Alex and I made a very complicated diagram of the connections between all the content, mostly from Sandy’s brain.

This gigantic universe was born out of the post-credits scene in Iron Man in 2008 and since then has been growing exponentially. I was fascinated how the release of a film could alter the world for a TV show in the next week but not the other way around. And that the more recent films, without any knowledge of the previous films would seem garbled and foreign to a new audience member. So not all the films are entry points. It’s like you are privy, as an audience member, to a secret world that not everyone else is. I can imagine how that’s compelling but I also imagine that it’s very complicated to create.

We watched Captain America yesterday and it was bizarre, a hyper cheesy movie about a super soldier (in my opinion, as I’m sure many disagree with this statement). All I kept thinking was ‘Why do people love superheroes?’ There’s something so Greek about it all, Grecian gods.