LIVE UPDATES FROM LAMP V - FREYCINET, TASMANIA
cnanodom SUNDAY 29 OCTOBER
After a long journey from all over Australia, the participants, special guests and mentors for LAMP V arrived at Freycinet Lodge around 1pm for lunch. Due to daylight savings some participants woke up around 3 in the morning. The weather today is beautiful and warm, much better than yesterday when it snowed in some areas of Tasmania.
Lunch was on the deck at 1pm followed by an orientation and welcome from Gary Hayes, director of LAMP and Peter Giles, AFTRS Head of Digital Media and the new CEO of Screen Tasmania, Karena Slaninka.
We were lucky enough to have Martin Brown Producer of Moulin Rouge at LAMP for the opening keynote speech who inspired everyone with tales of Colombian drug barons and brain re-tiling.
At around 4pm the mentors describe their latest list of what's cool. Jennifer Wilson, LAMP Mentor and Director of HWW showed a great service called dandelife which is a tool that can be used to track your 'life's cache'. Catherine showed a beautifully designed site that tracks the emotions of the world through colours and trawling the latest blog entries wefeelfine. Gary demonstrated collaborative creativity in MUVE's (multi user virtual environments).
Later in the afternoon Peter and Gary did their presentations. Gary spoke about Personalised Audiences and Immersive Services showing audience centric stats and behaviour and Peter did a great presentation about Innovation, Education and creating IP.
Then it was time for a game, The Italian Connection which was created by Gary Hayes and Jackie Turnure. Participants had to solve puzzles, search for clues both in the virtual world of Second Life and the beautiful landscape of Freycinet, and come up with a short fictional performance piece. The main aim was to break the ice which certainly happened as participants scaled rocks, scrambled through bushes and created their stories over a drink on the deck.
MONDAY 30 OCTOBER
Waking to a clear, calm day, breakfast was served at the Lodge with dolphins cued to provide some ambient entertainment in the bay.
The Italian Connection provided more early morning entertainment with Opera and spaghetti, cement boots, and a butoh inspired version of phantom of the opera. The team of Hearts won the wine, but the final team demonstrated a creative approach to making money, selling their wares, value adding cryptic content and pimping their maiden in distress.
Jackie Turnure kicked off the days mentor presentations with an analysis of 'The Art of Engagement'. She posed lots of questions to consider when developing projects including how to engage your audience, immersing, extending, evolving and rewarding them. She used examples of a cinema style interactive game called 'Indigo Prophecy' and a kids project called 'Oz - the Magical Adventure'.
Jackie's key message was to find a way to engage your audience through emotion and not just intellect.
In between each of the presentations the mentors and the teams got together to develop their propositions in break out rooms overlooking the bay and dolphins.
John Buchanan who is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) gave a presentation about game sketching. CMU has recently set up a campus in Adelaide with the support of the South Australian Government and concentrate on teaching students how to create interactive applications in the field of edutainment.
John talked about lack of conceptual development tools in the games industry and showed the work he has been doing to develop these tools. He explained that key decisions about gameplay and story can be made more easily using sketches rather than building out more expensive visual assets. Sketches enable stylistic highlighting and abstraction of projects which free up the creative process. CMU are currently developing game sketching as a client service for games companies and one of their first clients is the People's Republic of Animation.
After lunch Jennifer Wilson gave everyone the heads up on Mobile technology and content. The message is Think Small!. Jennifer demonstrated many examples of how mobile technology can be used to deliver products that are intimate, interactive and creative. She also cited examples of ways in which products can be delivered relevant to particular locations, eg. a guide to nearby restaurants straight to your phone.
Advertising on mobile phones is effective in very short bursts eg. 15 sec spots. Also useful is to curry favour with an Alpha User (if you can find one) as their recommendations can greatly increase exposure and sales for your product.
Keren Flavell ran the next session on Engaging the audience in web 2.0. Keren gave lots of tips on how to get your work out to huge audiences. Her advice included getting evangelists to spread the word for you and to be selective about who your audience is... don't try to reach everyone at once. She ran through the advantages of using Democracy to filter your video content and the potential market gained from uploading your clip to You Tube. She encouraged everyone to use the tools of blogging to communicate and get feedback about your ideas.
Keren also talked about the web being about ideas not the wrapping...TV and film will not forgive poor acting and low production values but the web certainly will.
TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER
The LAMP Adventurers kick-started their day with an early morning blast around the bay. The Freycinet Sea Cruises sped us off to Schouten Island for breakfast in search of more information about the East Coast's own Corleone Family who quarried the now famous pink granite which as emerged as a theme of this workshop. Next clue: Find the rock in the Zanchetta Brother's quarry that reads ZAN.
Second Mate Rastas fulfilled his promise and on the way back to the Lodge we slowed down to play with the a small pod of dolphins as they breached the water and played in the wake of the boat.
Back on dry land, latte's and the log fire were the first stop for most people.
Then back to the program and another inspiring presentation by Catherine. Catherine talked about the importance of design and its value to all projects. She emphasised that design is more than the look and feel of something, but how it works.
Catherine also has a knack of discovering and sharing her current favourite examples of exquisite design online. These websites deserve more exploration...
Jonathon Yuen, Phatterism and Retriever is a poetic way of searching in [www.flickr.com Flickr].
Jim Shomos gave a great presentation called forget the business rules. He outlined his experience developing and producing his award winning cross-media production Forget the Rules. This project was a series of 3 minute episodes of comedy/drama that was screened on television, online and mobile phones. Viewers were invited to choose one of three options that determined the plot for the following weeks narrative. Once the votes were counted, the scripts were written, shot and edited, ready for screening. The process was fast, short and responsive.
Jim's tip for engaging audience - Give the audience what they expect, but not how they expect to receive it.
Marc Walker followed up with a presentation on "Future Delivery - where the audience will be?" Marc discussed set-top boxes and IPTV.
WEDNESDAY 1 NOVEMBER
Catherine warmed up the crowds with an excercise in cutting and pasting - literally. The results for CHANGE ME NOW was a stunning array of self expression that reaffirmed the process of creativity in everyone and started the day with a positive and achievable exercise.
Next up we met the developers Anthony, Matt and Matt who gave everyone the run-down on what was in store for the next few days.
Jackie also shared her pearls of wisdom on pitching and got inspired with trying out a few new ideas for their presentation.
THURSDAY 2 NOVEMBER
There was a lot work, work, work on presentations, pitching and the build. The mentors have been busy helping all the teams and everyone has been working hard at rapidly finalising their projects, pitches and presentation for tommorrow.
