As we ended the last decade we were collating/archiving assets from the LAMP site and think it important to recognise the people that made LAMP the Australian icon in effective emerging media development.
Many of the mentors and participants were beginning their own journey on these workshops and residentials and are now leading the industry in Australia and abroad. We hope these ‘retrospective’ posts serve as a record for that which follows LAMP.
All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre July 2009. LAMP pod and vodcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon on the right if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
FIVE SEMINAR VIDEOS – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
Original seminar link – Social media has exploded over the last 3 years, the scale of this phenomenon means no one can ignore it anymore. For example mid 2008 there were over 113 million blogs, 200 million active Facebook users & over 1.1 billion twitter messages. Today over 346 million read blogs and another 130 million watch YouTube videos, daily. But it is the time spent using social media that tell a more significant story. Facebook users logged 13.9 billion minutes on their site in April 09, MySpace 5 billion minutes and the new kid in town, Twitter logged 300 million minutes. According to a Nielsen study, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. Learn how to connect and be involved in this social revolution.
AUDIO ONLY VERSIONS OF 1-5 ABOVE – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre March 2009. LAMP pod and vodcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon on the right if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
FOUR SEMINAR VIDEOS – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
Original seminar link – TV is in major transition. Where are the opportunities across on-demand platforms? Is the old advertising model broken? Will broadband to set top box comfortably co-exist with video on the web? Help prepare you for big changes just on the horizon. Innovations across broadband TV and IPTV. New advertising models and latest video web 2.0 mashups. Is IPTV a valid platform for video producers? The evolving role of public service broadcaster and online video distribution ABC new developments including iView, Google Earth TV & programme related services such as Gruen Transfer How online video will become more personalized Is audience contributed online content sustainable at scale? What does the future hold?
AUDIO ONLY VERSIONS OF ABOVE – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre April 2009. LAMP pod and vodcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon on the right if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
FOUR SEMINAR VIDEOS – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
Original seminar link – There are a vast range of new free to use tools that enable rich and efficient collaboration for audiences and professionals alike. What are the best tools for online communities, project development, video distribution and marketing. A survey of free to use tools and services including Mogulus, Twitter, Joomla, Ning, Blogger, Ustream, Drupal, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Virtual World Gatherings, WordPress and many others.
AUDIO ONLY VERSIONS OF ABOVE – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre April 2009. LAMP pod and vodcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon on the right if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
SIX SEMINAR VIDEOS – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
Original seminar link – All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre May 2009. Machinima is a dynamic new form of storytelling that will be explored in a seminar and interactive workshop at AFTRS this week. This unique event will feature leading international experts speaking about the exciting future of this new form which utilises games and virtual worlds as new tools of filmmaking.
A quick ‘tour of tools’ machinima created in only 3 hours using wowmodelviewer as part of the intro presentation, featuring @SilkCharm character and voice over.
AUDIO ONLY VERSIONS OF ABOVE – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
All video and audio below recorded at the AFTRS Theatre April 2009. LAMP pod and vodcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon on the right if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
FIVE SEMINAR VIDEOS – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
Original seminar link – The way content is consumed has changed. A selection of leading innovators in multi-platform content present recent projects in the areas of social media, cross platform storytelling, extended entertainment, games and online entertainment. This will be an eye opener for those who thought cross-media meant TV show and a website!
AUDIO ONLY VERSIONS OF ABOVE – Click the skip arrows to move between presentations
GameJam 2008 was run at AFTRS in Sydney on 1 November and featured talks to do with developing for or playing with console, pc games or online games. Creating and using virtual worlds, games, film cross-over, machinima, writing, AI and educational, fun or just plain cool stuff.
Below is a selection of those captured on the day including a short item related to three new courses AFTRS are offering in 2008 featuring Previsualisation elements – Animation Directing, Games and Virtual Worlds.
1 Guy Gadney “The Life of an MMORPG Diaspora”
Guy takes us on a personal tour of one of the first ‘grass roots’ online games as he tells the story of Diaspora. MP3 recording 6.9MB Click to listen
2 Dan Graf “Story and Game”
Dan gives a thoughtful talk about the conceptual framework of film or book to game adaptation. He talks about experiential design and audience centric focus when you plan your interactive version. An interesting session at the end when Ian Brown joins the discussion and the perennial issue of narrative vs play is brought to the fore again. MP3 recording 13.4MB Click to listen
3 Peter Giles “Future of Game Education”
Peter looks at many of the issues that are facing educators and academic institutions as they begin to consider games as a core part of curriculum. MP3 recording 5.6MB Click to listen
4 Physical TV “You Are Going To Die”
Karen Pearlman and Richard James Allen are the creators of a cross-media property called Thursday’s Fiction. They worked with Gary Hayes on the virtual world aspect of the project and talk more about where the proposition is headed as it moves into game space. MP3 recording 6.4MB Click to listen
5 Marigo Raftopoulos “Galapagos: Serious Game”
Marigo introduces us to her serious game concept to help businesses understand the benefits of thinking about the environment. MP3 recording 4.9MB Click to listen
6 Brett Robertson “History of Games”
Brett takes us on a light hearted trip down memory lane and also at the current state of the games industry. MP3 recording 7.9MB Click to listen
7 Ian Brown “Portal, Have Your Cake and Eat It Too”
Ian takes us behind the scenes from a user and passionate fan perspective of one of the most unique games to have become commercial, portal. He also looks at the original game, Narbuncular Drop, designed by students that Valve used to develop Portal. MP3 recording 7.4MB Click to listen
8 Michela Ledwidge “MOD the Movies!”
Michela takes us deep into Sanctuary and the thinking behind allowing the audience to customise, mash-up and generally Mod cinematic content. MP3 recording 7.4MB Click to listen
9 Gary Hayes “Reality & Pleasure – State of Play of Blended Real Life, TV and Game World” Vod/Podcast
This video above available as a download (with better audio & creative commons) 50MB MP4 click here
LAMP PODCASTS
All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
ABOUT LAMP PODCASTS
This podcast presentation by LAMP @ AFTRS.
Audio recorded by Gary Hayes & Brett Robertson
Description, editing, podcasting and production by Gary Hayes
Finally a short compilation capture edited by Peter Giles (note video has camera sound, podcasts are higher quality direct lapel mikes).
A presentation by Chris Edwards, CEO of LA based Third Floor to the Visual Effects Society in Sydney on 5th June 2008
A special released talk related to three new courses AFTRS are offering in 2008 featuring Previsualisation elements – Animation Directing, Games and Virtual Worlds.
This is a podcast of a talk Chris gave in Sydney on the 5th June 2008 for the local chapter of the Visual Effects Society. Chris’s visit to Australia was sponsored by Omnilab and Framework and he spoke to Australian games development, visual effects and animation companies during his visit.
Previsualisation is a hotly contested area at the moment particularly between Visual Effects supervisors, Cinematographers, Directors and Production Designers.
“Previs is a win win for directors and producers – it is one of those few things, it helps artistically and it simultaneously saves money. It also helps directors convey their vision to their entire cast and crew…it can also be used to enable endeavours that would have normally been too impossibly complicated to tackle and lastly previs can be used to raise money to for films that have yet to be greenlit”
“I feel the future is more a ‘multi-player’ experience of creating things (the not too distant future either). I think what you want to have is software that will allow you to log in as a user and then the director can log in – I imagine he’d be a bit bigger of an icon or something – and you could literally, if you’re playing Halo with your friends – you could have a guy drive the truck and someone else driving the camera and then having extras out there and then people in the back room actually set dressing behind the scenes. I think it’s definitely going to happen.”
CHRIS EDWARDS – CEO of Third Floor Studios
Chris Edwards is the CEO of Third Floor, an LA company who specialises in pre-visualistion for feature films, commercials and games cinematics. Third Floor completed extensive previsualation work on Cloverfield and the Narnia movies in addition to games cinematics for Lair and Resident Evil 5.
Chris studied at Film School and went to work for Disney on animated projects including ‘Dinosaur’. He went to work at Skywalker ranch on the previs teams that worked up the Starwars Prequel features before setting up Third Floor.
‘Building a Social Network” Strategies, implementation and management of online communities.
Laurel takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the various features and functions of organic social networks and how to identify positive and negative aspects of existing services. She refers to how on entry the motto/tagline, tools and what the community are discussing should be clearly visible. Other critical components Laurel mentions are sustainability of identity, notification of what is public and private, peer appraisal and methodologies to build trust. She then goes on to explain the many and varied forms of synchronous and asynchronous communication and the types of interaction certain demographics prefer.
Explaining why many sites need to also clearly display premium vs free content she references the member life cycle of visitor, newcomer, registered, responder, leader and elder combined with the various leadership types goes to make a rich tapestry of how communities form and evolve. Laurel talks about the best ways to manage closely knit communities and associated swarm behaviour – how empowering structured small groups actually engenders trust and makes it self-contained and ready to grow itself. She ends with a very useful summary of all the key points and answers as few questions such as fake content, her favourite community and reiterates the three main types of social networks (depth of content, filter and straight communications).
LAUREL PAPWORTH – Online Community Strategist, World Communities
Laurel Papworth is a consultant specialising in educating companies in how to maximise value from social networks, social media and web 2.0 technologies.
In the past she had lead roles in digitising Fairfax Newspapers and establishing Optus Convergent media and now Laurel lectures on marketing into social networks at the University of Sydney and advising clients such as Channel 10 (Australian Idol community) and Telecom New Zealand.
Laurel frequently presents on Web 2.0 technologies and how they can best be used at a business level including corporate blogging, RSS feeds, user documentation wikis and vibrant customer communities. Renowned blog here.
ABOUT LAMP PODCASTS
This podcast presentation by LAMP @ AFTRS.
Audio recorded by Peter Giles and Brett Robertson
Description, editing, podcasting and produced by Gary Hayes
John Banks and Peter Giles interview Matt Costello in two parts at the LAMP: Story of the Future Residential held at Couran Cove, Queensland, Australia in December 2007.
Matt talks about story worlds and how the game play is very dependent on the underlying story and how more importantly they really need to be developed in parallel. He uses Bioshock and the first Halo as examples of how story is really starting to permeate games in a more integrated way. Matt also refers to two games he recently wrote, Rage and Pirates of Caribbean as how the iterative and creative process work from first hand experience, but points out that each game development and production is often different from the last.
“There is a heightened awareness that the story is important. Not that the narrative has to be linear or has to drive the gameplay, its just that the way the next generation machines look, the graphics and the new engines that are being developed, it has to be treated as a very serious thing…do I find that a lot of people create that bubble of time to sort of play with those ideas? Sometimes yes and sometimes no but often it can show in a project. But if there is one suggestion I would make to the industry in general is make that time, do the retreat, go for a week in the mountains, and come back and have in paper form the world and the story and the gameplay you want to have.”
The discussion moves to adaptations of games using existing properties like Aladdin, the aesthetics of games and in part two the cross-over form between film and game and the skills required by future creatives. Matt thinks that screenwriters are not being given the opportunities at film schools to immerse themselves in interactive media and visa-versa interactive students do not learn the deep storytelling skills. This doesn’t create the opportunity to create a new kind of person – a talented script writer who understands non-linear and interactive. Matt uses the examples of early animation when writing stories for cartoons seemed quite odd at the time of early Disney and then about games leading the film writing and Matt’s work informing the story for the next Pirates of the Caribbean film. The interview finishes with a discussion about the lack of courses looking specifically at growing story worlds and writing for games.
All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!
This podcast presentation produced and presented by LAMP @ AFTRS.
Filmed by Fadia Abboud, Sound by Peter Giles and Fadia Abboud Podcast description, editing, processing and publishing by Gary Hayes
MATT COSTELLO – Writer and Games Designer, Polar Productions Matt Costello is based in New York, London and LA and has written ground-breaking and award-winning novels, games, and television. Matt has scripted dozens of best-selling games and of one Time Magazine said, “The story is delivered with unusual art.” He wrote the groundbreaking Pirates of the Caribbean 3 game across all platforms and has been commissioned to do the fourth in the series.
Since writing the critically acclaimed classic game The 7th Guest, he has scripted dozens of best-selling games such as Shellshock-Nam ‘67 (Guerrilla Games and Eidos), Bad Boys 2 (Empire) and 2005’s Doom 3 winner of an unprecedented five awards at E3 including the Game Critics Award: Best of E3. Just Cause, co-written for Eidos, debuted as the #1 game for Xbox 360 in the UK. Named ‘Best Adventure Game’ at the 2006 E3, it premiered on the US best-seller lists as the #2 Xbox 360 game.
He has written a major new game for Eidos and Rage a new game for ID Software and other notable games include:
Hercules, for Disney Interactive
The Dark Half, for MGM.
Derelict, for The Sci-Fi Channel
Fatal Illusion -The Clue Chronicles – for Hasbro
Barbie’s Riding Adventure–for Mattel
Clifford’s Reading– for Scholastic
Starsky & Hutch – for Empire
The Italian Job – Eidos
Matt also specialises in the kid’s genre and has created many award-winning games for children. Several years ago he co-created one of the first major experiments in ‘two-way TV’, called ZoogDisney. Branded as ‘TV you do’ – for two years the ZoogDisney weekend bloc re-shaped the Disney channel, bringing it squarely into the interactive and ‘tweens world. He has written a kids book series for Scholastic , The Kids of Einstein Elementary, which blends adventure and math and also scripted episodes of the award-winning PBS animated series, Cyberchase. Other awards include the landmark Aladdin’s Mathquest with math expert Marilyn Burns for Disney, as well as A Cartoon History of the Universe (Putnam).
Matt is a designer of many role-playing and board games, including Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Batman, Lone Wolf & Cub, and many others. He also co-wrote episodes of the BBC/Disney series Microsoap, winner of the Prix de Jeunesse and is currently creating an MMOG using Multiverse which integrates its story world with an animated Childrens BBC TV series. Penguin published his latest novel, Nowhere, in 2007.