LIVE UPDATES FROM LAMP VI: Story of the Future - FREYCINET, TASMANIA

This is a collaborative update live from Freycinet on the east coast of Tasmania May 20-25 2007.

Sunday

The Lab opened on Sunday lunch time with mentors and lab participants traveling to Tasmania from all over Australia. A healthy contingent of three Tasmanian creative teams are taking part in the lab - Captive, Mondo Froggo and The Parcel. More information about the projects is available here

LAMP welcomed international mentors Paul Bennun from the UK and Tony Walsh from Canada to the lab. More information about their background is available here alongside the other lab mentors.

The lab was opened with presentations from main sponsor organisations the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board (Therese Fingleton), the Australian Film TV and Radio School (Peter Giles) and Screen Tasmania (Karena Slaninka). Gary Hayes then outlined the pedagogical design of the lab setting out the main structure of the week and aims and objectives.

After presentations and introductions which included a media landscape overview from Peter, Jackie Turnure and Gary Hayes led a multi part Italian mystery, quest, mixed reality game (designed by both of them!) which saw participants working together for the first time in parallel in Second Life and in the real life surrounds around Freycinet Lodge and the lodge itself (hurridly built by Gary). After a team creating puzzle we went into a quest for clues and credits (gold coins, codes etc) in both Second Life and a nearby forest so they could continue to part three. The teams talked on walkie talkies as they found locations in Second Life which mirrored hidden clues around the lodge, in the walkways along the coast and the long pier. This finished with an exercise to buy props for a presentation and work together to create a story incorporating as many elements as they could. As many people had been awake since 4am to get flights from other parts of Australia, the game functioned to revitalise people and set the mood for the next five days of the lab. (Catherine Gleeson did film a great edgy, infrared video of this game that lasted about two hours, into the darkness but sadly one of the mentors deleted it during the week YouTube nonsense).

Monday

After some very exciting presentations from the previous evenings game today and Tuesday were a mix of presentations, exercises and mentor development sessions.

The day opened with a presentation from Paul Bennun, Head of Strategy of Somethin' Else, a UK based cross platform production company. Paul gave an in depth case study of developing a pitch for an interactive drama for the BBC 360 degree pitch competition at MILIA. He stressed the importance of iteration in the development of any interactive project and the importance of looking at the needs of user as well as of commissioning organisations.

The next presentation was given by Tony Walsh who is a well know creative developer from Canada who was on the Emmy Award winning team behind the Regenesis Extended Reality Game. Tony led a case study of another alternate reality game project for the Disney-ABC family called Fallen which was based on the TV series pilot of the same name. He talked about some of the practical legal issues related to ARG creation and talked through the logic of how an ARG is put together.

Lisa Romano who is a lead producer at ABC innovation talked about the creative challenges around the development of interactive TV and how to consider the needs of the audience. She talked about the ABC childrens iTV service that is primarily being delivered on PayTV digital satellite and how it can be made compelling by including 'viewer created' elements that are incorporated into the slightly anarchistic TV overlays.

The final presentation came from Jackie Turnure who gave an insight into here wonderful ARG creation that won the Content 360 award at Cannes in France. Olgilvy and AMEX as well as compelling narative and gameplay were her goals here and she melded them together in a Bond'esque search for the truth spread over 6 months.

Tuesday

The day started with Jim Shomos of Forget the Rules fame talking about how to keep a cutting edge service going and move it into international markets. He also used the case study of the Zimmer Twins (a joint winner of the international interactive Emmy with regenesis mentioned above) and how the service is both creative and sticky.

Gary Hayes the director of LAMP and now the head of Multi User Virtual Environments at the Project Factory talked about the changing paradigms of web 3.0, the growth of customisable virtual worlds and gave a long case study insight into the construction and success of the Pond build in Second Life. He also talked about why some branded areas such as the leading five including ABC and BigPond are so sticky, how these social networks are the new story world environments.

More detail to be added.

Wednesday

More detail to be added. A variety of focusing exercises and short presentations on pitching, building using Flash, Never Winter Nights and Second Life and developer planning.

Thursday

More detail to be added. The big build day interspersed by several presentation feedback sessions. Builds went on to about 2.30 am for some groups (and key mentors!)

Friday

More detail to be added. Dress rehearsals, final presentations, feedback from visitors, business thinking, evaluations, wrap and party!