Joe Velikovsky's Blog, page 22

Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond - the Inter-Disciplinary.net Transmedia Conference - 2013

A weblog post by JT Velikovsky on the IDNet `Transmedia: Storytelling And Beyond Conference - 2013So, I just attended and presented at the Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond - TM1 Inter-Disciplinary Transmedia Conference - 2013 at the Mercure Hotel in Sydney, Australia.



And: Wow. This was by far, the best conference I have ever: been, to spoken at - or, even heard of.


Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond - 2013 - (L to R): Di Charleson, Toni-Matti Karjalainen, Adam L Brackin (popping in and out of the Conference space-time continuum, possibly some new side-effect of jet lag), Dan Binns, Nat Krikowa, Ann-Marie Cook, Jeni Mawter, Jo Jacobs, Stephen Barrass, and: Deb Polson (taking photos). 


Note: Deb taking photo of Ann-Marie's presentation, in the above GIF... (The image above is, therefore: a photo of someone taking a photo - so, almost, mise en abyme.)

IDNet TM1 Transmedia Conference leader Ann-Marie Cook - presenting on `Skins' transmedia.Image courtesy of TM1 Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond FaceBook page
There were so many excellent presentations, it is actually quite challenging to identify `highlights', as: it was actually, entirely, all one big highlight. But here is an attempt:

Nat Krikowa's presentation on her webseries The Newtown Girls was amazing - and truly inspiring: this webseries has 1.5 million views in over 200 countries. Not bad, for a no-budget webseries with deliberately minimal marketing(!)

For me this super-successful webseries also perfectly illustrates the functioning of viral memes; beyond an initial `baseline injection' of PR into the culture, to let the target audience know that a project exists, traditional marketing is no longer necessary given exactly how far and fast word-of-mouth travels now, due both to social media and other communications technologies...  

Natalie Krikowa, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), presenting on her webseries, The Newtown Girls. Image courtesy of TM1 Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond FaceBook page
Also, Some Backstory about the Conference:

So, when I first arrived, and we were all meeting / greeting and setting up, Nat (who kindly provided an additional projector for us to use while presenting) actually asked me, if I'd ever been to an IDNet conference before, and my answer was in the negatory... But - Nat mentioned that she'd also attended one last year - and she suggested that I might be in for a pleasant surprise; the format and style of IDNet conferences are: `unusual', to say the least. (And, without suggesting that I ever *doubted* Nat's suggestion for a second, I can now personally verify that this is in fact empirically correct - and also: true.)



To be precise, the way that  IDnet conference presentations are structured, and curated/grouped, and, given the actual resulting flow of overall proceedings - and in addition: the more intimate, friendly and informal setting than is customary for an academic conference of this type, all means that - there is a vastly greater opportunity for engagement and elaboration (than, might generally be the case).

And so over the ensuing 3 days, our fearless conference leader, Ann-Marie Cook, and the ever-effervescent Deb Polson were wonderful conference hosts, meaning that the three days of the conference fairly flew by; the presentations themselves were not just informative - but actually all very entertaining as well. Chairing duties for each session were also shared among conference delegates, meaning, we all got to know each other better, and perhaps, more than would usually be the case than in larger and more formal conference settings.


Natalie Krikowa (UTS) chairs Ann-Marie's session on `Skins'.
But - by far the most impressive thing - for me personally - about IDNet (Inter-Disciplinary.net) conferences is the actual interdisciplinary focus and ethos, itself.

Mainly as - this is the exact primary methodological underpinning of my own research:


(Image from:  StoryAlity #36 )
In the course of my own doctoral research, I've discovered - in multiple places - overwhelming evidence that: Creativity most frequently emerges when Disciplines (and/or Domains) overlap or `collide'.

For example - here is one definition (within a Venn-Euler diagram) of Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, that illustrates a similar kind of `overlap of entities':


General Model of CreativitySource: (Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe 2000: 81)

And - as I then discovered first-hand at the TM1 Transmedia conference, this `overlap of disciplines' is just exactly what happens, at an IDNet Conference...

Which - is a breath of fresh air!

By comparison, maybe, consider for a moment, just how many Domains (and: Disciplines) are involved in feature films (i.e. one of my research interests, within the Domain of Transmedia) :


For some more on this same issue of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization (if, this is of interest) - I also blogged about it, here - in my StoryAlity post on Creative Practice Theory
(also, as it happens - a theory which my own TM1 conference presentation was on):

Creative Practice Theory
http://storyality.wordpress.com/creative-practice-theory/



i.e. Specifically, I like this quote on interdisciplinary creativity by Csikszentmihalyi from his landmark work, Creativity (1996):

`An intellectual problem is not restricted to a particular domain. Indeed, some of the most creative breakthroughs occur when an idea that works well in one domain gets grafted to another and revitalizes it.
This was certainly the case with the widespread applications of  physics’ quantum theory to neighbouring disciplines like chemistry and astronomy.
Creative people are ever alert to what people over the fence are doing… A large majority of our respondents were inspired by a tension in their domain that became obvious when looked at from the perspective of another domain.
Even though they do not think of themselves as interdisciplinary, their best work bridges realms of ideas.
Their histories tend to cast doubts on the wisdom of overspecialization, where bright young people are trained to become exclusive experts in one field and shun breadth like the plague.’
(Csikszentmihalyi 1996: 88-9)

And - for even more on cross-disciplinary thinking and combinatorial creativity, here:

StoryAlity #9B - On: Creativity in Science (and – The Arts and Film)



StoryAlity #36 - On Empirical and Scientific – vs. Un-Empirical and Un-Scientific – Film Story Research




So, my own presentation at the Conference was on: Two Successful Transmedia Case Studies: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Devil Inside (2012) (my conference handout is here.)



Given that this was the first official conference presentation of my doctoral research (The National Young Writers Festival where I presented on Indie Film Screenwriting late last year is actually, technically, a Festival - and, not a Conference) - so I was thrilled with all the great feedback and engagement my presentation received at the IDNet conference. Thanks again so much - everyone who organized, hosted and attended, and contributed to a great discussion afterwards in what was a very lively (and: rewarding) Q&A session.

One of the domain problems I am aiming to address with this research is: How to make feature filmmaking a sustainable career in Australia?

A great (very salient/germane) article on `The Curse Of The First-Time Director', here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/blog-articles/127215/-curse-of-the-first-time-director
(Small world: Kieran Darcy-Smith's first short film, `LOADED' - also featuring Nash and Joel Edgerton - won `Best Film' award at the Newcastle Film Festival, which I helped to found in Newcastle, NSW back in 1995.)


Tragically - it's actually quite rare that any Aussie director gets to direct another (i.e. second or subsequent) feature, after their first. The biggest reason for that is: their first feature film didn't make any ROI (return on investment). For this reason - I've engaged in researching common elements in the Top 20 ROI Films, and happy to see Australian films Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee are very high in the international theatrical box office / ROI rankings. (For more, my weblog about my doctoral research is here: StoryAlity .)


Another truly great talk at the Conference - was from Dan Binns, of UWS, on War Games: War, The Media and Videogames . Also - as a longtime professional game designer - I was especially intrigued by Dan's analysis of the war game Spec Ops: The Line with respect to classic `war narrative' films (such as Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, etc); it also put me in mind of Ernest W Adams' essay My Design Philosophy.

Namely that - a game presents an ethical framework - and yet, some games can subvert that - by questioning the ethics of war... (Rather than glamourizing war, Spec Ops: The Line practically presents the experience of already having PTSD...) My favourite filmmaker is Kubrick - and I note his own war films are also remarkably anti-war (Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket.)

And - it's no surprise that The Line was inspired by Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which also was (as most people know) the inspiration for Apocalypse Now... I also really got a lot out of Dan's presentation - as I actually studied certain selected TS Eliot poems, Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and also the film Apocalypse Now for my undergrad degree at the University of Newcastle, in a subject called Texts & Contexts taught by Bruce Wilson.

(Also - and interesting side note maybe - in the course of my ongoing doctoral research I also discovered that the original idea for Apocalypse Now came to Coppola from George Lucas, i.e. the only filmmaker with 2 films in the Top 20 ROI Films list.)

Yet another great games talk was by Ping-I (Adam) Ho on Game Design and Virtual Items, which again made me think of Ernest's work, with regard to the economy inside any game world. (In the past I have worked with Ernest on various game projects, and he also features in my Transmedia novel about transmedia, A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols , along with game design academics & gurus, Henry Jenkins, Noah Falstein, Matt Costello and Jesse Schell.)

It was so great to hear this theory behind Game Design from both Dan and Adam, as I just recently completed a game demo of Creative Practice Theory - The Game which is a mod of the life-sim game, KUDOS:

CREATIVE PRACTICE THEORY - THE GAME [Demo]   (Velikovsky 2013) (Download the Creative Practice Theory Game Demo, using the instructions provided here.)
Also Clare Southerton's paper on ‘Zombies, Run!’: Rethinking the immersion in light of nontraditional gaming contexts raised some fascinating points about the `gamification' of everyday life ( Zombies, Run!  is an iPhone, Android and IPod Touch app, that makes the act of running/jogging (for exercise) much more immersive, and: fun, i.e. less boring - by placing the runner in a `chased-by-zombies' context with audio and GPS).

And Clare's presentation also led us to notice just how pervasive one particular theme became, over the conference: namely, zombies. (Noting also that - Deb Polson also gave some fantastic presentations, about ARG's also involving zombies, and also gave a great talk on her geo-located mixed-media game, Scoot.)


I Ran With A Zombie...

And so - speaking of zombies - if you look below, you'll notice the first movie (i.e. chronologically speaking) and, the #5 ROI movie in the Top 20 ROI Films of the past 70 Years was in fact - the modern zombie classic Night of The Living Dead (1968) though, I note, interestingly - at no time do they ever actually use the word `zombie' in the film - rather, in that film, the undead are actually referred to as "ghouls". (In case you're ever asked in pub trivia, etc.)

Night Of The Living Dead (1968) - the #5 ROI Film, of the past 70 Years 
(70 years on - and the `zombie' meme is still staggering strong... 
In fact - even longer, if we count the film I Walked With a Zombie [1943]...
...And even longer - if we also count The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari [1920], I guess... hmmm)

I also really enjoyed Stephen Barrass's talk on Telling our Stories with Augmented Reality in the Garden of Australian Dreams. I was fascinated to see how Stephen managed to help his students `place' over "100 Journeys containing over 700 pieces of geo-located digital media" in the National Museum of Australia (NMA). This again raises the question of: possible evolution towards `a classless society'... Locative gaming and augmented reality may well be the solution to bypassing `selection for publication' of certain (art)works, by The Field (in Csikszentmihalyi and Bourdieu's terms).

Also - as it happens the first academic paper I ever co-authored (2005) was `Augmented Reality Gaming on Five Dollars A Day' at the University of South Australia. (You can view/download the paper here from my Academia.com profile.)


Another great presentation was by Tanya Notley of UWS on Non-fiction Transmedia projects: What is the value of ‘going transmedia’ in the fields of activism and advocacy? 

Tanya's previous work includes some amazing projects:
http://informationactivism.org/en
https://onorobot.org/
http://www.papuanvoices.net/

And Tanya's talk reminded me of Christy Dena's point that "Franchise engineering by a conglomerate is different to `grassroots transmedia’ practice" and, also that - "Due to the evolution of media / transmedia - We are perhaps approaching a classless society..."

...I wonder what Marx (and even, Bourdieu) would make of all this, if they were around to see it - given that it suggests a move towards `the end of history'. (i.e. class conflict.)

Also in Tanya's great talk, I got to thinking about The Yes Men's awesome activist prank on Shell Oil's `Arctic Ready' social media campaign, last year. (So ironic, how that all backfired on Shell.) - It seems that: any given meme may still need certain elements, for it to go viral, but: in my view, humour still seems to the the #1 causal factor in many projects going viral.

I also really enjoyed Chien-Yu Lin's paper on the Application of Videogames on Special education for Children with Disabilities. The notion that a $30 Wiimote (remote controller for a Nintendo Wii game console) can interface with a pc, and enable learning- or physically challenged children to engage with new and different activities was truly inspiring. What a truly *great* creative solution/innovation in pedagogy...(!) I was also reminded of my time working with the UniSA Wearable Computer Lab, and Wayne Piekarski's Tinmith system which also uses gloves and fiducial markers.

Also - I thought of some of the apps that were created for PS2's EyeToy, and also the time I worked on Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal; we did a Wii, PS2 and XBox360 version of that game - and the Wiimote certainly takes haptics and interfaces to a new level, so: What a great (and: affordable) application this is for it! One other notion that struck me was, that the fact that learning tasks are much more easily able to be viewed by other students, using Chien-Yu's Wiimote and pc configuration on a projector screen; the fact that people can see other's creative solutions more easily means that creativity can be shared more easily.

Yet another truly inspiring talk was A Transmedia Story on Facebook’s Timeline by Amin Ansari of Flinders University, about his social media/transmedia transmedia narrative, Hunt . The story of the fictional Facebook character Sohrab Shekar was both fascinating and inspiring - and, actually makes me think, I should do the same for this, my transmedia novel: http://am-so-as.webs.com/

Given how certain images were obtained for Sohrab's FB page, I also was put in mind of the film Great Expectations (1998) because of how that film (somewhat similarly) utilized the amazing artwork of Francesco Clemente.

Along similar lines was Jeni Mawter's excellent talk on Transmedia Toe-dipping: Kiss Kill. As an extremely successful YA novelist, Jeni explained the creative strategy behind Kiss Kill (2012), a fascinating new transmedia novel dealing with the complex themes and issues surrounding Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Similar to Amin's storytelling strategy, Jeni's transmedia strategy includes the notion that - (from Jeni's Abstract) : "Readers can engage with me as the author on my blog (www.jenimawter.com/blog), or Mat the character on his blog http://www.whyidontgetgirls.com/. Facebook, Twitter (@mawter @kisskilldigital) and Pinterest are also used for sharing the story experience. Kiss Kill readers share their creations on Mat’s blog. They have created music and recorded their own versions of ‘Thought I Knew’ as well as made a YouTube for the haunting scene ‘How Do You Define a Man?’ Individual as well as community creation is encouraged so that this story can continually evolve." 

In fact, the above two papers (Amin's and Jeni's) are exactly what my own IDNet TM1 conference paper is about. What makes a successful transmedia novel/game/film (or: any media)?

For now I've set aside novels and games (i.e. so complex! Such recondite domains...) and focussed on Feature Film, as a Domain (mainly since I've been working in the field for over 20 years - so it's `what I know' - and yet I find still so many unsolved problems and unanswered questions. - i.e. Why do 7 in 10 features lose money? Is it all just because of: the story?). At any rate, I believe some or many the principles from the Film Domain apply also to Novels and Games, even Songwriting since I am currently convinced that Creativity works the same way across all domains...

- I was totally captivated by Jeni's talk, it reminded me of how Stieg Larrsen's `Millennium' trilogy was originally titled (in the Swedish) "Men Who Hate Women" and dealt so brilliantly with the theme of misogyny in a mystery-thriller context (I personally love when big, tricky issues are wrapped inside a clever narrative... I've attempted the same with `Fate vs. Free Will' - in a feature screenplay)...

And Jeni's paper also sparked so many further ideas, for extending my own `grassroots' (read: anti-corporate) Transmedia storytelling strategy for my  transmedia novel, ` A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols ' (Perhaps puzzlingly, the novel has been a Community Favourite in the Comic Fantasy genre on Penguin's Bookcountry web site for 6 months - and yet Amazon sales of the novel remain less than impressive).

- All of which, makes me wonder: How exactly did Amanda Hocking do it? lol.

Either way, another really terrific talk was Adam L Brackin's on ARG for ARG’s Sake: The Authenticity of Non-Commercial Alternate Reality Games, including the lovely pun on "art for art's sake". I got so much out of this talk, especially the model Adam presented with regard to `Authenticity vs Validity' in media/transmedia. I also read Adam's paper prior to the conference - and the presentation did not disappoint. (And - I will be using Adam's model in my teaching, in future.) I also was deeply impressed by Adam's game that he worked on, with funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I also got a lot out of Catch + Release: Disrupting Currents/Making Waves/Inspiring Insight—Engaging Communities Through Digital Media Storytelling and Art Practice delivered by Ruth Beer and Kit Grauer. Fascinating to consider that, a historic building and its history (such as the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Museum National Historic Site in Steveston, British Columbia, Canada) can even be a crucial narrative component of a transmedia work, `in and of itself'-! (and - more about this below, with regard to Di's talk...)

Still yet another great talk was Di Charleson's talk on Digital Video Installation as an immersive storytelling and story sharing experience which I found particularly fascinating and inspiring - mainly as I'm also working as a Screenwriter & Interactive Story Consultant, on a forthcoming art installation (with video and interactive components) by the very talented Alex Davies, a mixed-media (and transmedia) work that is planned for ArtSpace Gallery Sydney (thanks to a very generous Australia Council For The Arts grant).

In fact - on the 2nd night of the TM1 Transmedia conference I attended the opening of 3 new exhibitions at ArtSpace Gallery - namely, the launch of new works History is Made at Night (by Daniel Boyd), you gotta love it (by Pat Hoffie) and, Wellington (by Mathieu Gallois):


And - just on a personal note - as a result, after TM1 conference drinks on the deck of the Mercure - and still more celebrating at ArtSpace, I felt perhaps less `alert' than usual, for Day 3 of the conference itself, though it was certainly an enjoyable day - and evening...

But - back to the TM1 story: 

Another highlight of the TM1 Transmedia conference was Christy Dena's excellent presentation on Day 2 - which brilliantly brought together many of the various intellectual strands of the previous (and even, following) day's presentations.

Christy also talked about her excellent new web audio adventure iPad experience, AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS . Christy and her team at Universe Creation 101 are also currently running a crowd-funding campaign for this project, which you can view here.

Particularly fascinating was Christy's explanation of where the idea for AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS web audio-tour-adventure came from: while Christy was doing the Da Vinci Code audio tour of The Louvre, in Paris.

Image: http://www.authenticinallcaps.com/

Christy's 2009 PhD thesis on Transmedia is also available online here, and is a landmark work in Transmedia research.

Christy and I first met when she interviewed me for The Writer's Guide To Making A Digital Living a few years ago. Christy also gave a great presentation at another Transmedia conference a couple of years ago in Melbourne, along with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner, one of the biggest Transmedia companies in the world.

Jeff actually helped put together the definition of Transmedia (and: `Transmedia Producer') currently in the Producer's Guild of America Code of Credits. You can view the definition online, here.

(One of the suggestions we made during the IDNet TM1 conference was - to perhaps as a group, produce/publish an official definition of `Non-Fiction Transmedia', which currently seems notably absent from the literature. I discovered this, as I am currently co-authoring a conference paper on Non-Fiction Transmedia with Dr Susan Kerrigan.)

Therese Taylor from Charles Sturt University delivered a fascinating talk about Syrian Gay Girl Blogger – the politics of a cyberhoax . I was also reminded of the infamous Ern Malley hoax and of course, The Blair Witch Project, (one of the Top 20 ROI Films).


Having been a professional musician in a band for some years, I also was fascinated by The Dead Boy’s Narrative Transmediated by Toni-Matti Karjalainen of Aalto University School of Business, Finland. I was put in mind of KISS, and their concept album (Music From) The Elder (which never actually became a film), and also their 1978 telemovie KISS Meets The Phantom of The Park (which - perhaps unfortunately - did become: a pretty lousy movie, and one which even the band disowns.)

I also wondered if Metallica's 2004 Some Kind Of Monster documentary can be considered non-fiction transmedia, given the connections to their St Anger album - and also the album lyrics booklet. (I am not actually sure... someone really needs to write an official definition of Non-Fiction Transmedia. :)



I also very much enjoyed Assoc. Prof. Hart Cohen's presentation on Transmediated Educational Futures which covered `transmedia initiatives that define themselves as primarily educational projects for an education market', and which also referenced this excellent Henry Jenkins' TED talk: TEDx talks NYED – Henry Jenkins. Particularly interesting for me was Hart's Korsakow documentary project on Shakespeare, and Michael Christie's (Charles Darwin University) notion of `fluid ontology' with regard to database and documentary.

Another truly excellent presentation was Joanne Jacobs' talk, which is available online as a PPTX here: The Business Case For Transmedia.


Joanne Jacobs, COO of international word-of-mouth agency 1000heads presents on: The Business Case For Transmedia. 

- I was gripped the whole time by this electrifying presentation by Jo Jacobs on Transmedia (or in fact: "Social Media", as Jo insists is how business sees it) - most likely because, it is so closely related to my own approach to theory and methodology in my doctoral research, which focuses on the Narrative Patterns and Filmmaking Strategies of the Top 20 ROI Films of the past 70 years. The knowledge that Jo draws on in this talk, from the disciplines of: Economics, Marketing, Communications and Social Media was truly edifying.

We wound up with a great presentation and chat on teaching Transmedia with Peter Giles - "Formerly the Head of Educational Media at Australian Film TV and Radio School, Peter Giles is currently the Senior Producer at 2and 2, producing online educational experiences for clients including Education Services Australia and the ABC." Among many, Peter made some terrific points about how students see Social Media (being such a familiar technology, the transmedia potential of it doesn't occur to most), and spoke on locative gaming projects he has been involved with at AFTRS (The Australian Film, TV and Radio School).

Peter also talked about how the AFTRS LAMP workshops developed and were run in collaboration with another transmedia guru, Gary Hayes, whose Social Media Counter (though 5 years old now) is still relevant and awe-inspiring for anyone looking at Transmedia: (if you haven't seen it running, you must click this link, it's quite an amazing sight to behold.)

Source: http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/, by Gary Hayes, Personalize Media.
Also - my own LAMP presentation from 2008 on Game Writing is here.
(Some of my other Transmedia-related talks are also on Slideshare here.)

And, so, finally- after each of the 3 days, the conference itself was rounded out with some very salubrious end-of-day drinks, on the deck of the Mercure Hotel, with its wonderful view of the city of Sydney:

L to R: Adam L Brackin (UTD), Dan Binns (UWS), Nat Krikowa (UTS), Clare Southerton (ANU), and JT Velikovsky (UWS)   Image courtesy of the IDNet Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond FaceBook page
So - many thanks again, to our wonderful conference hosts, Ann-Marie Cook and Deb Polson (and to IDNet founder, Dr Rob Fisher) for what is - by far - the best conference I've ever attended. - Can't wait for the next one.


--------------

JT VelikovskyJT Velikovsky is a produced feature film screenwriter and million-selling transmedia writer-director-producer. He has been a professional story analyst for major film studios, film funding organizations, and the national writer’s guild. For more see:  http://on-writering.blogspot.com/ His  ongoing doctoral thesis on Film/Screenwriting/Transmedia is titled: “Understanding And Exploring The Relationship Between: Creativity; Theories Of Narratology; Screenwriting; And Narrative Fiction Feature Film-Making Practices.” For more, see the StoryAlity weblog at: http://storyality.wordpress.com/  NOTES: Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996), Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1st edn.; New York: HarperCollins) viii, 456 p.Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Wolfe, Rustin (2000), ‘New Conceptions and Research Approaches to Creativity: Implications for a Systems Perspective of Creativity in Education’, in K. A.  Heller, et al. (eds.), International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (2nd ed. edn.; Amsterdam; Oxford: Elsevier).

The 2012 National Young Writers Festival

So I just attended (and even appeared at, twice) the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle, NSW.
Another great festival, and even better than last year's!

I also took some photos at the festival:

Hunter Street, Newcastle - outside the Festival Club. (I swear those glowy-fish-bicycles are leftovers from the Sydney 2000 Olympics.)

Zoe Norton-Lodge, one of the festival organizers, outside the Festival Club, The Great Northern Hotel.

I also presented some of my ongoing doctoral research:
INDEPENDENT FILM/SCREENPLAY ANALYSIS - JT Velikovsky
http://youngwritersfestival.org/home/?ai1ec_event=indie-screenwriting-analysis&instance_id=181

And I chaired a panel on Pitching, with Christian Lander, the author of the blog and book Stuff White People Like:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Best Idea Wins: Pitching - with Christian Lander & JT Velikovsky
http://youngwritersfestival.org/home/?ai1ec_event=best-idea-wins&instance_id=259


Christian Lander and Zoe Norton-Lodge


Fin Neill and his sister Alex Neill.(I officially mentored Fin, at last year's festival. And - he's still smiling...! Amazing.) 
Alex Neill, hard at work, writing in the `backstage dressing room' at Curve gallery. Possibly even, writing a NYWF presentation she had given the day before, knowing Alex. :)
Ben C Jenkins and Zoe marking test papers at the Festival Literary Trivia Night. 
Ben Jenkins, hard at work during the Trivia... Simon J McInerney (who won the Spelling Bee) in the b.g....(Why does this shot feel like we're in a shearing shed?)
 Benjamin Law, author of the best-selling book GAYSIA. Our literary trivia team was named "R. L. Gertrude Stein" by Benjamin.(Nice work Ben. We lost the trivia, but; whatever.)Christian Lander's trivia team was called "50 Shades of Dorian Gray". Nice.
But check out how tricky some of the literary trivia questions are
(and thanks to Mr Mark Sutton for an awesome quiz!):
But be honest, now: Do you know your Dactylic hexameter from your Iambic tetrameter? 
Lawrence Leung, co-host of the Festival Spelling Bee!
(along with Geoff Lemon, author of Going Down Swinging)

The festival Spelling Bee, (with Simon in f.g. just prior to his triumphant win where he got all the letters of the last word right, and, in the right order.)
Chad Parkhill, in distinctive yellow jeans, launching the excellent (and, ironically-titled) Wasted On the Young: a chapbook of young writers' work, created during the festival:  Thirteen Young Writers, Four Days, One Published Chapbook!  Yet another amazing thing to come out of the festival... Chad was YYWP coordinator at the 2012 festival - and is also one of the festival directors of the forthcoming 2013 National Young Writers Festival. 

Before... (the 13 young writers are frame right, just about to go onstage...)
During: Each young writer read out the first sentence of their short story in the chapbook...!
After... The chapbook - officially launched! (The 13 young writers and Pip, frame left.)

And - afterwards still:


...a whole lot of other awesome sessions! 


 Final official event of the festival:
Christian Lander waiting to go onstage, and tell his story on the topic of "I Should Have Seen It Coming".

 And - it was even Geoff Lemon's birthday !!!(Geoff is holding a birthday cake, made on short notice from Tim-Tams, in this shot)

Anyway, another great National Young Writer's Festival, thanks to everyone who organized, participated and attended.

Can't wait for next year!

2012 `Words & Images' SRN Academic Screenwriting Conference

So - I attended the 2012 `Words & Images' academic screenwriting conference - at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney) and Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW. It was an amazing conference, very well attended, and brilliantly organized (by Alex Munt of UTS and Kathryn Millard of Macquarie University). I met so many great people, and learned so much in all of the sessions I attended over the 3 days.

I also shot some video on my phone-camera and cut it together: the video is 17 mins, and features `12 x 30-second grabs' of various speakers at the 2012 SRN. - It also features a `Great Moment In Screenwriting History': Ian W Macdonald's unveiling of the *new* official SRN website(!) ...There are some empirically-funny moments in there, as well.



I note: The sound on the video isn't *brilliant* (there's a *crackle* now and then... but - that's phone-cameras for you), but - hopefully the visuals make up for it in: verisimilitude.

I also took some photos at the conference:

Among those pictured: Carmen Sofia Brenes, Kerstin Stutterheim (one of the forthcoming 2014 SRN conference organizers, to be held in Germany), Jule Selbo, Adrian Martin, and 2012 conference co-organizer, Kathryn Millard.



Among those pictured: Christine Lang (also one of the forthcoming 2014 SRN conference organizers in Germany), and Raija Talvio (screenwriter of Little Sister, and the forthcoming film August Fools, starring Kati Outinen).



Highlights for me (personally) included: Adrian Martin's paper on "Where Do Cinematic Ideas Come From?", Alex Munt's paper on Kubrick, the auteur-archive, and the writing of A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick is actually my favourite filmmaker), Ian David on `emotion structure' in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (which - coincidentally - coincides with some of my own research), Kerstin Stutterheim on The Shining (impossible for me to get enough of Kubrick), JJ Murphy's keynote on the importance and value of treating location as another `character' in independent cinema, Carl Caulfield on Lindsay Anderson's `If...' trilogy, and Christine Lang on Thai cinema (I lived in Thailand for 3 months, 2 years ago). And - too many others to mention; in fact, if I mention all the highlights, this blog post would probably just be a listing of the 2012 conference program.




I took this selfie - and later found that it was flipped horizontally in my phone camera. After attending Kerstin's excellent paper on Kubrick, I now think that my phone-camera is possibly possessed by a daemon, much like The Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
Or maybe, this building is. I studied at the AFTRS in 1995-6 inside this same building, so it was a nostalgic and fond experience for me to attend the 2012 SRN conference at Macquarie. 
I also tried to go and find my old (AFTRS) office in this building (that I shared with my filmmaker friend Adrian Van de Velde), but our old office seems to have since been turned into a counter-terrorism department, which perhaps, says a lot about my (our) screenwriting.

I also remember attending a class in 1996 with legendary screenwriter John-Claude Carriere in the main AFTRS/Macquarie theatre (where many of the conference sessions were held), and I see (in my notes that I took at the time), that John-Claude stated: "A writer needs to kill his father, rape his mother and betray his country every day." (By which, I think, he meant: objective critical thinking is important when considering Theme, and that perhaps he was not speaking literally... As - among other things - that would require the zombie re-animation of one's father every day.)

The AFTRS has since moved to the Moore Park Fox Studios precinct, where I also worked in 1998 as a Story Analyst/Script reader, and while developing a sci-fi action-thriller TV series for Fox Studios, but I still get all choked up when I visit "the old AFTRS" that I knew and loved, out at Macquarie Uni...!   

Pictured (among others): Paolo Russo. Paolo is developing and editing the first academic Encyclopedia of Screenwriting.

Pictured (frame left): Ian Macdonald and Paul Wells.

Pictured (frame left): Mamokuena Makhema. Mamokuena gave an excellent paper on Nollywood (Nigerian) cinema.


Pictured: Me. (frame right). I discovered right at this moment that it is not easy to take a panorama shot, with yourself in the shot.

But - given Ian Macdonald's comment on the day, that this successful conference confirmed that there is an academic Field of Screenwriting, I thought it was a good opportunity to prove that "I was there" (in the room) at what I consider to be a remarkable moment in the history of cinema: the moment that an academic Field of Screenwriting `officially' emerged.

This is also the same room where while at AFTRS I attended classes by (among others) John-Claude Carriere, Robert Watts, Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, Joel Coen, John Singleton, and is also where the dailies (rushes) from my AFTRS graduation film ROCKET MAN (Dir: Adrian Van de Velde) were screened for us (cast & crew) during the shoot. I love this room. Many of the top-20 most exciting moments in my life happened in it.


Pictured: Alec Morgan, Carmen, Kerstin, Jule, and others.

The 2013 SRN Conference will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA - and is organized by filmmaker and academic JJ Murphy. (JJ is wearing the baseball cap, in the shot below.)


And, see also:


JJ Murphy on Independent Cinema:
http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com/blog/
and
JJ Murphy - personal site:http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com/

And - for more information on the SRN - please see:


http://screenwritingresearch.com/
And - if you're a screenwriter - or screenwriting researcher - join the SRN!

The annual conferences are just amazing, and the people are wonderful, friendly and helpful. And - you'll likely learn more about screenwriting than you could have dreamed.*

Also, if you are a screenwriter, then - in my view, it is *compulsory* to read:  Journal of Screenwriting .


And - Why? 

Because: It is the only peer-reviewed academic journal solely devoted to Screenwriting; it began in 2010, and the editorial board includes Ian W Macdonald (who also started the SRN, in 2006).
So, in 2013 - officially - the academic field of Screenwriting is only 7 years old.
The SRN currently has 233 members - so: Join Now!

(And, here is the most incredible part - as @ August 2013, it's currently *free* to join!)

Happy screenwriting -

JT

--------------------

JT Velikovsky
Filmmaker & Doctoral Candidate: Film/Screenwriting/Transmedia
University of Western Sydney
http://uws.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky/
Email: joetv (at) bigpond.com
http://storyality.wordpress.com/

First posted: 9th October 2012
Updated: 11th August 2013

* (Most people on average only dream 34.2 cubic metres per night.)

2012 `Words & Images' SRN academic screenwriting conference

So, I attended the 2012 `Words & Images' academic screenwriting conference at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney) and Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW. It was an amazing conference, very well attended, and brilliantly organized (by Alex Munt of UTS and Kathryn Millard of Macquarie University). I met so many great people, and learned so much in all of the sessions I attended over the 3 days.


Highlights for me (personally) included: Adrian Martin's paper on "Where Do Cinematic Ideas Come From?", Alex Munt's paper on Kubrick, the auteur-archive, and the writing of A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick is actually my favourite filmmaker), Ian David on `emotion structure' in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (which - coincidentally - coincides with some of my own research), Kerstin Stutterheim on The Shining (impossible for me to get enough of Kubrick), JJ Murphy's keynote on the importance and value of treating location as another `character' in independent cinema, Carl Caulfield on Lindsay Anderson's `If...' trilogy, and Christine Lang on Thai cinema (I lived in Thailand for 3 months, 2 years ago). And - too many others to mention; in fact, if I mention all the highlights, this blog post would probably just be a listing of the 2012 conference program.

I also took some photos at the conference:

Among those pictured include: Carmen Sofia Brenes, Kerstin Stutterheim (one of the forthcoming 2014 SRN conference organizers, to be held in Germany), Jule Selbo, Adrian Martin, and 2012 conference co-organizer, Kathryn Millard.



Among those pictured: Christine Lang (also one of the forthcoming 2014 SRN conference organizers in Germany), and Raija Talvio (screenwriter of Little Sister, and the forthcoming film August Fools, starring Kati Outinen).



I took this photo and later found that it was flipped horizontally in my phone camera. After attending Kerstin's excellent paper on Kubrick, I now think that perhaps my phone-camera is possibly possessed by a daemon, much like The Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
Or maybe, this building is. I studied at the AFTRS in 1995-6 inside this same building, so it was a deeply nostalgic and fond experience for me to attend the SRN conference at Macquarie. 
I also tried to go and find my (old AFTRS) office, that I shared with my filmmaker friend Adrian Van de Velde, but it seems to have since been turned into a counter-terrorism department, which perhaps says a lot about my (our) screenwriting. I also remember attending a class in 1996 with legendary screenwriter John-Claude Carriere in the main AFTRS/Macquarie theatre (where many of the conference sessions were held), and I see (in my notes that I took at the time), that John-Claude stated: "A writer needs to kill his father, rape his mother and betray his country every day." (By which, I think, he meant: objective critical thinking is important when considering Theme, and that perhaps he was not speaking literally... As - among other things - that would require the zombie re-animation of one's dead father every day.)

AFTRS has since moved to the Moore Park Fox Studios precinct, where I also worked for a year in 1998 as a script reader, and while developing a sci-fi action-thriller TV series for Fox Studios, but I still get all choked up when I visit "the old AFTRS" that I knew and loved, out at Macquarie Uni... My time there was possibly the best 2 years of my life. (Which is, possibly, an indictment on the rest of my life, since.)  

Pictured (among others): Paolo Russo. Paolo is editing the first academic Encyclopedia of Screenwriting.

Pictured (frame left): Ian Macdonald and Paul Wells.

Pictured (frame left): Mamokuena Makhema. Mamokuena gave an excellent paper on Nollywood (Nigerian) cinema.


Pictured: Me. (frame right). I discovered right at this moment that it is not easy to take a panorama shot, with yourself in the shot. But - given Ian Macdonald's comment on the day, that this successful conference confirmed that there is an academic Field of Screenwriting, I thought it was a good opportunity to prove that "I was there" (in the room) at what I consider to be a remarkable moment in the history of cinema: the moment that an academic Field of Screenwriting `officially' emerged. This is the same room where while at AFTRS I attended classes by (among others) John-Claude Carriere, Robert Watts, Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, Joel Coen, John Singleton, and is also where the dailies (rushes) from my AFTRS graduation film ROCKET MAN (Dir: Adrian Van de Velde) were screened for us (cast & crew) during the shoot. I love this room. Many of the top-20 most exciting moments in my life happened in it.


Pictured: Alec Morgan, Carmen, Kerstin, Jule, and others. (And my sincere apologies that I don't know who everyone is in this shot... If you happen to see yourself in these photos, and you would like me to add your name here, then please email me: joetv (at) bigpond.com and I will certainly do so)


The official site of the 2012 "Words & Images" conference: 

http://mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_media_music_communication_and_cultural_studies/events/words_and_images/

The 2013 SRN conference will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA - and is organized by filmmaker and academic JJ Murphy. JJ is wearing a baseball cap, in the shot below.


JJ Murphy on Independent Cinema:
http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com/blog/

and

JJ Murphy - personal site:
http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com/


For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network (and how to join it), please see: http://ics-www.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=llp&folder=56&paper=57



JT Velikovsky Filmmaker & Doctoral Candidate: Film & Screenwriting
University of Western Sydney
joetv@bigpond.com9th October 2012

Re: Oscar-winning Screenplays

Warning: This may be controversial... 



I'm interested to hear, what other Writers and Experts here think of this theory... 
(I'm currently doing a PhD on it, so - keen to hear arguments - both for, and against).

With Oscar-winning screenwriters, there is a very strong pattern that emerges. 


i.e. See the list, here: 

http://www.filmsite.org/bestscreenplays.html


eg Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Charles Brackett (who?), Fellini, Coppola, Damon, Cody, etc

The patterns that emerge are these:

* They all made a bunch of films before. ie - were all pretty much working `inside the system', whether it be Woody Allen, writing on TV for years first, Matt Damon, Diablo Cody, etc. 


When you look at their first films, they are usually: schlocky genre films. (eg Horror, or Broad Comedy, etc). Not that I am criticizing that. I love schlocky genre films. I also love Oscar winners. (Stop trying to pigeonhole me. I have no agenda. I like Diogenes, holding `the Lamp of Truth' up to - stuff. :) It's just a PhD.

* They're all white males. Also - 2 of them have beards, and none has `just a mustache'. So - obviously, first thing you need to do - to kick-start that writing career, is shave off the 'tache, and - especially so, if you're not a male.

* Examining the winners, raises the Q: When Academy members vote on Best Screenplay, what are they voting for? `Best' Story, and best actual Writing (execution)? ie - I can't find it written down anywhere, exactly what the Academy members are being asked to vote on. ie The question is wide open to interpretation. Therefore, in a voting situation, how do we know, that everyone is using the same criteria? ie, Best `Theme'? Some people think the Theme of `Revenge' is brilliant (see: Hamlet, Moby-Dick, Harry Potter, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and most popular fiction be it screen or book), yet - others find it utterly morally offensive and extremely `Old Testament' (ie - Eye for an eye - which leaves everyone with one eye missing, etc).

So - are they (Academy voters) making a value judgement, based on `nothing objective'?

(And what makes a `best' Story? Almost all films, have the exact-same Structure). Plot? Some people could care less about whether the hero solves that particular mystery. Dialog? - Is it all of these things they are voting on? We might assume "yes - all those things" but - how do we know that for sure?

ie - Has anybody ever checked - exactly what they were looking at comparatively, in deciding, which one to vote for as Best Screenplay? Is it just some intuitive feeling they get?, i.e. "I really liked that movie/script"?

Was it that - they were struck by some memorable scenes, or lines of dialog? Also `Adaptations' have a whole host of other fuzzy factors. Like: how many of the Academy members actually read the books, then saw the movie - and are comparing the book to the film? - What if, the film cut out one of the most crucial/important elements of the book (eg some subtext), How would they know? (Answer: maybe they wouldn't)

I guess my point is this: Is Winning an Oscar for `best screenplay' worth aspiring to?
Is that process, really an objective meritocracy? - Does the `best' screenplay actually win? What does `best' really mean? Arguably, `best' loosely according to a certain group of people's subjective feelings..?

i.e. How much of the process can be controlled, and therefore, how likely is a plan to win an Oscar to succeed? Or is a better goal - just to make a film that makes a profit? (as - if you don't, your next film may be hard - or even impossible, to finance.)

Anyway so I have a feature film coming out soon, in US theaters. It's won a bunch of awards and stuff. But how `scientific' are awards anyway?

Also, if it's your first film, i.e. If you are an unproduced writer, if the budget is over $2m, it probably has almost-no chance of ever getting made. (Discuss...)

Interview with JT Velikovsky in `Writer' Magazine (2012)

INTERVIEW - January 2012 issue of national Writer magazine (Australia)
Transmedia Writer at Work: JT Velikovsky
Transmedia Writer JT Velikovsky is often writing a feature film script, a game, a novel, and a graphic novel all at once. Among his achievements are the feature film Caught Inside (http://www.youtube.com/joeteevee), satirical transmedia novel A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols. (http://am-so-as.webs.com/), The Feature Screenwriters Workbook (available free online: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/feature-screenwriters-workbook/15459299), and the comic strip Dr N Sayne (illustrated by Deane Taylor). He works as a Transmedia Consultant and as a Script Assessor for the Writers’ Guild. He writes a blog at http://on-writering.blogspot.com/ . See also:  http://storyality.wordpress.com/   [Revised edited version of interview]




Tell me about your involvement in the 2011 National Young Writers’ Festival.
I received an email asking me to appear on two panels at the Festival: ‘Games Writing’ and ‘Transmedia: The Business Behind the Buzzword’, so I was honoured to accept. It was an exciting time, as I’d recently finished writing a videogame and a comic - and also the feature film Caught Inside, on which I was also a screenwriter opened in cinemas the week after the Festival.

CAUGHT INSIDE (2011) - Trailer (Screenwriter: JT Velikovsky)
The Festival (NYWF) is terrific for writers of all ages, and it was nice to get back to Newcastle NSW, where I'd lived for five years, including when I was studying for my B.A. in Communications (Screenwriting major) at University of Newcastle, and also playing in the band Texas Radio. I’m deeply fond of Novocastria: that's where I started my professional writing career, working in comedy theater with Footlice Theatre Co, and as a TV sketch-comedy writer, and making short films at uni.

ROCKET MAN (2003) - 10 min short sci-fi docu-drama
(Co-writer: JT Velikovsky) - Rated R (language, violence)

How involved is the task of game writing? How did you land that gig?
Game writing is a truly, madly, deeply involved process; it’s not just a case of iteratively ‘making up a story to fit the game’, although that’s certainly part of it. As a writer, you also need to consult regularly with the Game Designer (the equivalent of a film director), and also the game's Level Designers, and Producers and artists, programmers and sound teams, to make sure that the game story and the dialogue all ‘works’. Sometimes it seems around half of what you’re doing - the game you're all making - changes every day, as the game evolves while it’s being made over two or three years, so the writing (and re-re-writing) during the game production process can be ultra-intense. I think it’s actually about three times as much writing as on a feature film (even when a film script goes through several drafts, over many years).
It’s also a different way of thinking about narrative, to linear stories. Feature films and novels are (generally speaking) linear narratives, but with non-linear stories you need to design the many parts of the story (and lines of dialogue) to work effectively, even if they're experienced in different combinations and orders.
The Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal game I wrote had around a thousand lines of dialog (in an Excel spreadsheet), but there’s also much more writing involved than simply the dialog: there were Story Outlines (which include mission goals and objectives), Character Design (art and functionality) briefs, and also 70-page illustrated Treatments/Walkthrus for each of the ten levels (or ‘chapters’) in the game. Warner Bros told us they expected it would be a million-seller-plus game (it eventually sold 1.5 million units) so I made sure the research on Looney Tunes detail was as comprehensive as possible, given the time constraints. It's always so important to respect and honour the fans, both old and potentially new, and everyone also has their favorite character/s - and in Looney Tunes, let alone in Merrie Melodies, so, there's about 50 years' worth of canon. 


    Get More: GameTrailers.com, Looney Tunes: AA - Behind-the-Scenes: The Weapons, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 LOONEY TUNES: Acme Arsenal (2007) - JT Velikovsky (Game Designer & Writer)

I actually landed my first (professional) gig writing games, the day that I completed the `Game Writing and Design' short course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, in 1995. Someone rang the school that day looking for a Game Writer, and my name was put forward. Possibly in part because I was mainly studying Screenwriting at AFTRS, but I’d also been making my own computer games since I was seven years old, on a HP-19C calculator, and then later on an Amstrad 6128, and Microbee pc's at high school. (What an über-nerd.)

HP 19C - with Reverse Polish Notation.
NASA astronauts took this calculator to the moon. Though probably not this exact one. 

What’s the biggest challenge you have faced as a Transmedia Writer? Your most memorable moment?
One time, it was challenging working on a game project where, we were adapting a movie that I personally thought just wasn’t very good. So, it was hard to take the game and its story seriously, and passionately, when the film story in my own view, wasn’t all that brilliant. Another challenge is - when several external producers all want to pull the project in a different direction. That can sometimes drive you a little spare, but when collaboration really works (with a great blend of creatives, all working in sync), it’s one of the greatest rushes. For more on all that, see Csikszentmihalyi on `flow' theory (e.g. Creativity, 1996, and also Sawyer's Explaining Creativity, 2006).
Probably, my most memorable Transmedia moment was when I was working on a project with Robert Watts, the producer of the first three Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. I co-wrote a screenplay that Robert had optioned and, while we were working on the film, the game and a comic all at once, in the middle of it all we met with George Lucas, who was one of the contributing reasons I wanted to be a writer-director-producer in the first place. Robert also worked on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and was telling us about working with Kubrick (one of my other film heroes).
To cap it off, Robert completely blew our minds by telling us his idea for a new form of non-linear cinema storytelling. His idea was this: The audience watches a 10-minute `introductory/story setup' film about five main characters, then the movie stops, and the lights come up, and then - the film branches off into five different films in five different cinemas, with each film following a different character within the one over-arching story. So, having seen one film, there are four other films you have to see, to get `the whole story', and of course there are multiple twists, so that characters that you assumed were ‘good guys’ based on one point of view actually turn out to be villains once you’ve seen what they were up when they were ‘offscreen’ in the other story streams, or points of view. It’s a brilliant way to tell a story in my view, and is exactly what transmedia storytelling is, except that with conventional transmedia the idea is split across two or three or more different media formats (e.g.: a film, a game, a comic).

I've actually experimented with non-linear storytelling quite a bit, over the years. In 2004 we made what is possibly the world's first mobile-phone soap-opera comedy, LIFERAFT. The core idea was to let the viewer/player control the decisions made by a couple of bickering newlyweds on a liferaft, after their honeymoon yacht has sunk. The decisions that you as viewer/player make, affects whether the liferaft floats or sinks, and so you can choose how the story progresses, depending on your own personal reaction to the couple in the story. - If you like them, you can help them to make good decisions that will save them - and, if not, you can just sink the raft, and doom them to the sharks. Sort of like, in the movie Flying High / Airplane!: i.e.: "I say, let 'em crash-!"

LIFERAFT (2004) Writer & designer JT Velikovsky     And in terms of other writing-career highlights, I also loved working with Marv Wolfman on an XCOM game last year, Marv was the creator of the character Blade. Apparently, Marv also actually published Stephen King’s first short story - and actually, was THE guy who first got comic-writers a credit, back in the 1950s: he signed ‘by the Wolf Man’ under the title of a horror comic story, and suddenly every other comic writer insisted on a writer’s credit. Marv certainly taught me a lot about storytelling, and has done so many great things for writers in general, over the years.

Marv Wolfman 
Author of DC Comics'  CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (1985)
Photo courtesy of  http://marvwolfman.com/
What are your tips for writers who want to be published?
Well, if you want to be, say, a published novelist, then I'd probably recommend you read Elizabeth Paton’s thesis Creativity and the Dynamic System of Australian Fiction Writing, which is available online, and include interviews with 40 Australian published fiction writers who have over 400 books published between them. It's available as a free .pdf online through the University of Canberra library:
http://erl.canberra.edu.au/public/adt-AUC20090825.125448/index.html
The thesis even delves into ‘What is Creativity, and How Do I Do It?’ based around Mike  Csikszentmihalyi's work on creativity (see: Creativity, 1996), which is possibly something that a lot of writers don’t study enough, just in my personal opinion... Also, for would-be Game Designers, I recommend Mike's work on `Flow Theory', which is the state (`flow') every gamer wants to be in, when they play a game. Or - viewer when they watch a movie, for that matter. Or even, a reader of a novel. There's also `transportation' theory which is a version of flow theory. (See: Scientific Study of Literature journal for more on 'transportation' theory.)
My other big tip for writers is: Submit, Submit, and then Submit some more, and - work on through the rejections. Use any advice you get from publishers, but know also which advice to ignore as well, if someone simply doesn’t ‘get’ your work. Some readers sometimes `miss' that my own satirical novel AM SO AS is a satire of The Catcher In The Rye, and as a result, often don't quite `get it'...

For writers who feel they’re merely ‘running on the rejection treadmill’, I highly recommend the book Rotten Rejections: The Letters Publishers Wish They’d Never Sent, which is a hilarious and very encouraging collection of rejection letters. http://www.writersservices.com/mag/m_rejection.htm

But all successful writers were rejected once. Some, like Robert M Pirsig (Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), 122 times... So, learning about `resilience' in general is probably also helpful.
What about Comics?

Comics can be tricky - as in some senses, it's a highly-competitive market, and there's a lot of free stuff now on the interwebs.... I don't mean graphic novels, I'm just talking about "4-panel daily newspaper syndicated comic-strips" now... With the comic Dr N. Sayne, I was actually very fortunate, in that I'd known the artist Deane Taylor, as we'd work on games together before, with Deane as concept artist. We decided to collaborate on a comics project, and so, I wrote it, and Deane drew it. Then we put it in a competition, and found a publisher. It was (possibly) the world's first `exclusive mobile phone comic strip'. It was a lot of fun, Deane's worked with everyone from Tim Burton to Miyazaki, so I sure learned a lot from him too.




Dr N Sayne - by Joe (Tesla) Velikovsky & Deane Taylor

Is there a large community of Transmedia Writers in Australia?
Funnily enough, no, I don’t believe there is a large community...Or if there is, we should all join forces and fight crime together. Gary Hayes and Christy Dena are probably the two main forces in the land of Oz, at http://www.personalizemedia.com/ and http://www.christydena.com/
And of course, internationally (in the US), there is Professor Henry Jenkins: http://henryjenkins.org/(See also: http://storyality.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/storyality-96-transmedia-practice-a-collective-approach-2014/ - Ed)
Some other Transmedia writers who I've been fortunate to work with are Matt Costello, Ernest W Adams and Noah Falstein (and in fact, they're all also in my novel about Transmedia, AM SO AS...)

Did you plan to build up such diverse experience in media?
I don't think so. It just sort of happened. Insert something profound here, about Robert Frost, and `way leading on to way'. I actually started my Bachelor Degree in Communications aiming to get into advertising, as a copywriter (partly as, many of my favourite authors, like say Joseph Heller, Don deLillo and possibly even Flann O’Brien (author of The Third Policeman), seemed to work in advertising, before they cracked novel-writing). But then I did `Horror Film Studies' at uni in 2nd year, and also made some films, and I was hooked by it.
I guess I enjoy telling stories across as many media as possible. They (whoever `they' are) also say “You should write what you know” and so, with the novel A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols (AM SO AS), I wrote a Transmedia story about a Transmedia Writer, and using transmedia to tell the story (films, games, novel, a cult manifesto.) The title is actually an obscure and contrary allusion to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". But the story itself satirizes Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye", and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". If you haven't read all three, it's possible you may not appreciate all the literary references or allusions in there, but, the story is `stand-alone', and hopefully `works' either way. It's really about Transmedia, and how videogames are made. After 20 years of writing and designing games, movies, comics, I figured it might be fun to do a satirical expose on the process. Actually, making games is probably more fun than even playing them. It also depends on how you define fun, I guess.
A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols Blog: http://am-so-as.blogspot.com/

A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols 

Transmedia Site: http://am-so-as.webs.com/

E-novellette on Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074RW1O0

So do you have a favourite medium?
Currently, feature films, which have probably always been my ‘first love’. Though I do like the relative freedom from constraints of novels, mainly because the budget of any given genre, scene or story is less relevant. By which, I think I mean, imagination is possibly the main "limiting factor" in novels, regarding story scope. Also I suspect you can use a more distinctive `voice' in novels; to me it seems that you can take more creative risks, in a way. 
A-Rage - Sky Invaders (2004) An augmented reality game that you play in your backyard

Games really are loads of fun to write, and make - but just in my experience, one possible downside is that sometimes, they’re simply not as narratively satisfying, for a writer. I suspect the main reason for this is that, as Henry Jenkins says, ‘Player freedom annihilates Character’ (see Ernest W. Adam's PhD thesis, on Problems in Game Storytelling). It’s the old ‘Agency versus Structure’ (`freedom versus constraints') issue... Besides which, Games are also usually so expensive to make... In my experience, the more expensive the art form or medium, the less interesting and `edgy' it becomes; the product always becomes ‘safer’ as the budgets go further north. That’s probably also why self-publishing is so interesting, satisfying  – and empowering. But who knows. Everything's a tradeoff. Sometimes it's nicer to have the marketing muscle and expertise of a publisher, but sometimes, they also want you to change your content. It's a case-by-case problem, probably.
Do you work with other Writers much?

Well, yes, I collaborate about half of the time, and the other half of the time I write solo. I've worked a lot with my great friend
But either way I think it's helpful to have a community of like-minded writers around you, just so that you're not writing in isolation... I'm a member of a few writer's groups - The Decent Ventriloquists over in Adelaide - which includes some truly amazing writers, guys like Pat McNamara of "Dragonscarpe" and "SpaceLord Mo-Fo" fame, Alex James the novelist and film critic, Shane Dix (of Star Wars novels fame), Greg Moss the writer-director, comedy scribe Dave "The Wiz" Osbourne - and some incredible artists like Dan Foley, Dave Williams, and legendary writer-critics like Dave Bradley. A really amazing gathering of talent there...

Dragonscarpe: The Last Realm  by Pat McNamara, Gary Turner, Michal Dutkiewicz 
Over in Melbourne, I have another writers' group, with guys like Damian McLindon, Mitch Forrester, Warwick Holt, Allan Cameron and Ev de Roche...

Screenwriter And I'm also in the legendary Skip Press's Hollywood Screenwriters group, and a few other online communities... So - in amongst all that, my writing gets a decent amount of feedback and critiques from some pretty amazing scribblers. I'm very lucky in that regard, to have met and become friends with so many talented and creative writers and artists. I'm also lucky in that - some years ago, my sister married an awesomely-creative guy, Dr Phillip McIntyre. He's actually got a new book out this month, called Creativity and Cultural Production. He's also taught me an immense amount about the creative arts as well, including music. He taught Daniel Johns of silverchair songwriting... We've also got a band, Texas Radio. Our forthcoming album has a song about aliens on the moon... So... (nods to the sky, with wry grin) "The Truth is Up There..." It's based on some NASA astronauts talking about what they saw. Conspiracy theories are like stories on steroids. (See Gottschall's The Storytelling Animal (2012), for more - Ed).

Do you think your experiences as a Game Design/Writing Mentor for the Australia Council and as a Script Assessor and Judge for the Writer's Guild have contributed to your ongoing development as a writer?
Absolutely yes - as Mentoring is just teaching, really, and ironically you learn so much more by teaching something... When you're passing on ideas, skills and techniques that have `worked before' - you're also constantly comparing those techniques to other possible approaches (for example, different ways to structure or `reveal to the player', a game story, say), and - mentoring also sometimes involves additional research (say, into game development tools for a certain game platform - e.g. iPhones or Android phones - etc) that you may not have otherwise explored... There's some kind of `ratchet effect' there, where your own knowledge gets amplified faster than it would, if you weren't teaching something.
Also working as a Story Analyst/Script Assessor (for the Writer's Guild, and film studios) is a priceless experience for any writer - having to read and think critically about all aspects of hundreds of scripts makes you consider all those same issues in your own work - so that's helpful. The Guild is actually running training sessions at the moment, for aspiring script assessors (see the AWG website). The Writer's Guild does a terrific job in advancing the art and craft of writing, hats off to those guys.      

JT Velikovsky

Interview with JT Velikovsky in Writer Magazine

INTERVIEW - in January 2012 Issue of national Writer magazine
Transmedia Writer at Work: JT Velikovsky
Transmedia Writer JT Velikovsky is often writing a feature film script, a game, a novel, and a graphic novel all at once. Among his achievements are the feature film Caught Inside (http://www.youtube.com/joeteevee), satirical transmedia novel A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols. (http://am-so-as.webs.com/), The Feature Screenwriters Workbook (available free online: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/feature-screenwriters-workbook/15459299), and the comic strip Dr N Sayne (illustrated by Deane Taylor).  

He works as a Transmedia Consultant and as a Script Assessor for the Writers’ Guild. He writes a blog at http://on-writering.blogspot.com/ . See also:  http://storyality.wordpress.com/




Tell me about your involvement in the National Young Writers’ Festival.
Smack-bang out-of-the-blue, I received an email asking me to appear on two panels at the Festival this year: ‘Games Writing’ and ‘Transmedia: The Business Behind the Buzzword’. I was thrilled to accept. It was exciting timing for me because I’d recently finished writing a big videogame and a comic, and the feature film Caught Inside, for which I was the screenwriter, opened in cinemas the week after the Festival.

CAUGHT INSIDE (2011) - Trailer (Screenwriter: JT Velikovsky)
The Festival is brilliant for Writers of all ages - and it was nice to get back to Newcastle NSW, where I lived for five years when I was studying for a BA in Communications (Screenwriting major) at the University of Newcastle. I’m deeply fond of Novocastria: it was there that I started my professional writing career, working in comedy theater with Footlice Theatre Co, as a TV sketch-comedy writer and making short films at uni, and then later at Film School...

ROCKET MAN (2003) - 10 min short sci-fi docu-drama
(Co-writer: JT Velikovsky)

How involved is the task of game writing? How did you land that gig?
Game writing is truly, madly, deeply involved! It’s not just a case of ‘making up a story to fit the game’, though that’s certainly part of it. As a writer, you need to consult regularly with the game designer and the game level designers, producers and artists, programmers and sound guys, to make sure that the game story and the dialogue all still ‘works’. Half of what you’re doing changes every day as the game evolves while it’s being made over two or three years. The writing and rewriting during the game production process can be ultra-intense. I think it’s actually about three times as much writing as on a feature film (even when a film script goes through several drafts).
It’s also a totally different way of thinking about narrative. Feature films and novels are (generally speaking) linear narratives, but with non-linear stories you need to design the many parts of the story (and lines of dialogue) to work effectively even if they are experienced in different combinations and orders.
The Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal game I wrote had only a thousand lines of dialog (in an Excel spreadsheet), but there’s much more writing involved than simply the dialog: there were outlines, character design briefs and 70-page illustrated treatments for each of the ten levels (‘chapters’) in the game. Warner Bros told us it would be a million-seller-plus game (it eventually sold 1.5 million units) so I made sure the research was exhaustive. It's always important to respect the fans, everyone has their favorite character - and in Looney Tunes, let alone Merrie Melodies, there's like, 50 years worth of canon. 


    Get More: GameTrailers.com, Looney Tunes: AA - Behind-the-Scenes: The Weapons, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 LOONEY TUNES: Acme Arsenal (2007) - JT Velikovsky (Game Designer & Writer)

I actually landed my first gig writing games the day I finished the Game Writing and Design short course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Someone rang the school that day looking for a Game Writer and my name was put forward. In truth, I’d been making my own computer games since I was seven years old, on a HP-19C calculator and then later on an Amstrad 6128, and Microbee pc's. What an über-nerd.

HP 19C - with Reverse Polish Notation.
NASA astronauts took this calculator to the moon.

What’s the biggest challenge you have faced as a Transmedia Writer? Your most memorable moment?
One time, it was challenging working on a game project where we were adapting a movie I thought wasn’t very good. It was hard to take the game and its story seriously, passionately, when the film story isn’t all that brilliant. Another challenge is - when several external producers all want to pull the project in a different direction. That can sometimes drive you a little nuts, but when collaboration really works (with a great blend of creatives all working in sync), it’s the greatest rush.
Probably my most memorable Transmedia moment was when I was working on a project with Robert Watts, the producer of the first three Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. I wrote a screenplay that Robert had optioned and, while we were working on the film, the game and a comic all at once, in the middle of it all we met with George Lucas, who was one of the reasons I wanted to be a writer-director-producer in the first place. Robert worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and was telling us about working with Kubrick (one of my other film heroes).
To cap it off, Robert completely blew all our minds by telling us his idea for a new form of non-linear cinema storytelling. The idea is that the audience watches a 10-minute `introductory/story setup' film about five main characters, then the movie stops and the lights come up, and then - the film branches off into five different films in five different cinemas, each film following a different character within the one over-arching story. So, having seen one film, there are four other films you have to see to get `the whole story', and of course there are multiple twists, so that characters that you assumed were ‘good guys’ based on one point of view actually turn out to be villains once you’ve seen what they were up when they were ‘offscreen’ in the other story streams. It’s a brilliant way to tell a story and is exactly what transmedia storytelling is, except that with conventional transmedia the idea is split across three or more different media formats (a film, a game, a comic).

I've actually experimented with non-linear storytelling quite a bit, over the years. In 2004 we made the world's first mobile-phone soap-opera comedy, LIFERAFT. The core idea was to let the viewer/player control the decisions made by a couple of bickering newlyweds on a liferaft, after their honeymoon yacht has sunk. The decisions that you as viewer/player make, affects whether the liferaft floats or sinks, and so you can choose how the story progresses, depending on your own personal reaction to the couple in the story. - If you like them, you can help them to make good decisions that will save them - and, if not, you can just sink the raft, and doom them. Sort of like, in the movie Flying High / Airplane!: i.e.: "I say, let 'em crash-!"

LIFERAFT (2004) Writer & designer JT Velikovsky     And in terms of other writing-career highlights, I also loved working with Marv Wolfman on an XCOM game last year, Marv was the creator of the character Blade. He also published Stephen King’s first short story - and actually was THE guy who first got comic-writers a credit, back in the 1950s: he signed ‘by the Wolf Man’ under the title of a horror comic story, and suddenly every other comic writer insisted on a writer’s credit. Marv taught me a lot about storytelling, and has done so many great things for writers in general over the years.

Marv Wolfman 
Author of DC Comics'  CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (1985)
Photo courtesy of  http://marvwolfman.com/
What are your tips for writers who want to be published?
Well, if you want to be, say, a published novelist, then I'd probably recommend you read Elizabeth Paton’s thesis Creativity and the Dynamic System of Australian Fiction Writing, which is available online, and include interviews with 40 Australian published fiction writers who have over 400 books published between them. It's available as a free .pdf online through the University of Canberra library:
http://erl.canberra.edu.au/public/adt-AUC20090825.125448/index.html
The thesis even delves into ‘What is Creativity, and How Do I Do It?’ based around Mike  Csikszentmihalyi's work on creativity (see: Creativity, 1996), which is actually something that a lot of writers don’t study enough, in my personal opinion... Also, for would-be Game Designers, I recommend Mike's work on `Flow Theory', which is the state (`flow') every gamer wants to be in, when they play a game. Or - viewer when they watch a movie, for that matter. Or even, a reader of a novel.
My other big tip for writers is: Submit, Submit, and then Submit some more, and - just work through the rejections. Use any advice you get from publishers, but know also which advice to ignore as well, if someone simply doesn’t ‘get’ your work. Some readers sometimes `miss' that my satirical novel AM SO AS is a satire of The Catcher In The Rye, and as a result, often don't quite `get it'...

For writers who feel they’re merely ‘running on the rejection treadmill’, I highly recommend the book Rotten Rejections: The Letters Publishers Wish They’d Never Sent, which is a hilarious and very encouraging collection of rejection letters.

http://www.writersservices.com/mag/m_rejection.htm

But all successful writers were rejected once. Some, like Robert M Pirsig (Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), 122 times...

What about Comics?

Comics are tricky - as it's a niche market, and there's a lot of free stuff on the interwebs.... I don't mean graphic novels, I'm just talking about "4-panel daily newspaper syndicated comic-strips" now... With Dr N Sayne, I was fortunate in that I'd known Deane Taylor as we'd work on games together before. We decided to collaborate on a project, and so I wrote it, and Deane drew it. Then we put it in a competition and found a publisher. It was the world's first exclusive mobile phone comic strip. It was a lot of fun. Deane's worked with everyone from Tim Burton to Miyazaki, so I learned a lot from him too.




Dr N Sayne - by Joe (Tesla) Velikovsky & Deane Taylor

Is there a large community of Transmedia Writers in Australia?
Funnily enough, no, I don’t believe there is a large community...
Or if there is, we should all join forces and fight crime together.
Gary Hayes and Christy Dena are the two main forces in the land of Oz, at http://www.personalizemedia.com/ and http://www.christydena.com/ And of course, Henry Jenkins: http://henryjenkins.org/
Some other Transmedia writers I've worked with are Matt Costello, Ernest W Adams and Noah Falstein (and in fact, they're all in my novel about Transmedia...)

Did you plan to build up such diverse experience in media?
No way! I started my Bachelor Degree trying to get into advertising as a copywriter (as all my favourite authors, like Joseph Heller, Don deLillo and Flann O’Brien (The Third Policeman), seemed to work in advertising before they cracked novel-writing)! Then I did Horror Film Studies at uni and I made a bunch of films, and I was hooked.
I can’t resist telling stories across as many media as possible and I've always been that way. They do always say “you should write what you know” and so, with the satirical novel A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols, I wrote a Transmedia story about a Transmedia Writer, using transmedia to tell the story (films, games, novels, a cult manifesto.) The title is actually an obscure send-up of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". But the story itself satirizes Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". If you haven't read all three, it's possible you may not appreciate all the literary references in there, but the story is stand-alone, and works either way. It's really all about Transmedia, and how Videogames are actually made. After 20 years of writing and designing games, movies, comics, I figured I could do a satirical expose on the process. Making games is more fun than even playing them.
A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols Blog: http://am-so-as.blogspot.com/

A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols 

Transmedia Site: http://am-so-as.webs.com/

E-novellette on Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074RW1O0

So do you have a favourite medium?
Yes - feature films, without a doubt, have always been my ‘first love’. Though I do love the freedom of novels because the budget of any given genre, scene or story is irrelevant. Imagination is the only "limiting factor" in novels. Also you can use a more distinctive `voice' in novels. 
A-Rage - Sky Invaders (2004) An augmented reality game that you play in your backyard

Games really are loads of fun to write - but the downside is that they’re simply not as narratively satisfying for a writer. I think the main reason for this is that, as Henry Jenkins says, ‘Player freedom annihilates Character’. It’s the old ‘Agency versus Structure’ (freedom versus constraints) issue. Besides which, Games are also usually so damned expensive to make! In my experience, the more expensive the art form or medium, the less interesting and `edgy' it becomes; the product always becomes ‘safer’ as the budgets go further north. That’s why self-publishing is so interesting, satisfying  – and empowering.
Do you work with other Writers much?

Well, I collaborate about half the time, and the other half of the time I write solo. I've worked a lot with my good friend
But I think it's compulsory to have a community of like-minded writers around you, just so that you're not writing in isolation... I'm a member of a few writer's groups - The Decent Ventriloquists over in Adelaide - which includes some truly amazing writers, guys like Pat McNamara of "Dragonscarpe" and "SpaceLord Mo-Fo" fame, Alex James the novelist and film critic, Shane Dix (of Star Wars novels fame), Greg Moss the writer-director, comedy scribe Dave "The Wiz" Osbourne - and some incredible artists like Dan Foley, Dave Williams, and legendary writer-critics like Dave Bradley. A really amazing gathering of talent there...

Dragonscarpe: The Last Realm  by Pat McNamara, Gary Turner, Michal Dutkiewicz 
Over in Melbourne, I have another writers' group, with guys like Damian McLindon, Mitch Forrester, Warwick Holt, Allan Cameron and Ev de Roche...

Screenwriter And I'm also in the legendary Skip Press's Hollywood Screenwriters group, and a few other online communities... So - in amongst all that, my writing gets a decent amount of feedback and critiques from some pretty amazing scribblers. I'm very lucky in that regard - to have met, and become friends with so many insanely-talented and creative writers - and artists.

I'm also lucky in that - some years ago, my sister married an awesome - and awesomely-creative guy, Phillip McIntyre. He's got a new book out this month, called Creativity and Cultural Production. He's also taught me an immense amount about the creative arts as well, including music. He taught Daniel Johns of silverchair songwriting... We've also got a band, Texas Radio. Our forthcoming album has a song about aliens on the moon... So... (nods to the sky, with wry grin) "The Truth is Up There..." It's based on some NASA astronauts talking about what they saw.

Do you think your experiences as a Game Design/Writing Mentor for the Australia Council and as a Script Assessor and Judge for the Writer's Guild have contributed to your ongoing development as a writer?
Absolutely, yes I do - as Mentoring is just "teaching" really, and - ironically, you always learn the most by teaching something... When you're passing on ideas, skills and techniques that have `worked before' - you're also constantly comparing those techniques to other possible approaches (for example, different ways to structure/`reveal to the player' a game story), and - mentoring also sometimes involves additional research (say, into game development tools for a certain game platform - e.g. iPhones or Android phones - etc) that you may not have otherwise explored...
Also working as a Story Analyst/Script Assessor (not just for the Writer's Guild, but for film studios as well) is priceless experience for any writer - having to read and think critically about all aspects of hundreds of scripts makes you consider all those same issues in your own work - it's just invaluable. The Guild is actually running training sessions at the moment, for aspiring script assessors (see the AWG website). I think the Writer's Guild does a simply amazing job in advancing the art and craft of writing. Hats off to those guys!      

JT Velikovsky

Interview with JoeTV in "Writer" Magazine

INTERVIEW in Jan 2012 Issue of "Writer" Magazine.
Writer at Work: Joe T Velikovsky
Transmedia Writer Joe Velikovsky is often writing a feature film script,a game, a novel, and a graphic novel all at once.
Among his achievements are The Feature Screenwriters Workbook (available free online: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/feature-screenwriters-workbook/15459299), the comic strip Dr N Sayne (illustrated by Deane Taylor), the feature filmCaught Inside (http://www.youtube.com/joeteevee) and the satirical transmedia novel A Meaningless Sequenceof Arbitrary Symbols. (http://am-so-as.webs.com/) 


He works as a Transmedia Consultant and as a ScriptAssessor for the Writers' Guild. His website is www.joeteevee.com and he writes a blog at http://on-writering.blogspot.com/ .
Tell me about your involvement in the National Young Writers' Festival.
Smack-bang out-of-the-blue, Ireceived an email asking me to appear on two panels at the Festival this year:'Games Writing' and 'Transmedia: The Business Behind the Buzzword'. I wasthrilled to accept. It was exciting timing for me because I'd recently finishedwriting a big videogame and a comic, and the feature film Caught Inside, for which I was the screenwriter, opened in cinemas theweek after the Festival.
The Festival is brilliant forWriters of all ages - and it was nice to get back to Newcastle NSW, where Ilived for five years when I was studying for a BA in Communications(Screenwriting major) at the University of Newcastle. I'm deeply fond ofNovocastria: it was there that I started my professional writing career,working in comedy theatre with Footlice Theatre Co, as a TV sketch-comedywriter and making films at uni.
How involved is the task of game writing? How did you land that gig?
Game writing is truly, madly,deeply involved! It's not just a case of 'making up a story to fit the game',though that's certainly part of it. As a writer, you need to consult regularlywith the game designer and the game level designers, producers and artists,programmers and sound guys, to make sure that the game story and the dialogueall still 'works'. Half of what you're doing changes every day as the gameevolves while it's being made over two or three years. The writing andrewriting during the game production process can be ultra-intense. I think it'sactually about three times as much writing as on a feature film (even when a filmscript goes through several drafts).
It's also a totally different wayof thinking about narrative. Feature films and novels are (generally speaking)linear narratives, but with non-linear stories you need to design the manyparts of the story (and lines of dialogue) to work effectively even if they areexperienced in different combinations and orders.
The Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal game I wrote had only 1,060 lines ofdialog (in an Excel spreadsheet), but there's much more writing involved thansimply the dialogue: there were outlines, character design briefs and 70-pageillustrated treatments for each of the ten levels ('chapters') in the game.
I landed my first gig writinggames the day I finished the Game Writing and Design short course at the AustralianFilm Television and Radio School. Someone rang the school that day looking fora game writer and my name was put forward. In truth, I'd been making my owncomputer games since I was seven years old. What an über-nerd.
What's the biggest challenge you have faced as a Transmedia Writer?Your most memorable moment?
It was challenging working on agame project where we were adapting a movie I thought wasn't very good. It washard to take the game and its story seriously when the film story isn't brilliant.Another challenge is when several producers all want to pull the project in adifferent direction. That can drive you nuts, but when collaboration reallyworks (with a great blend of creatives all working in sync), it's the greatestrush.
My most memorable Transmedia momentwas when I was working on a project with Robert Watts, the producer of thefirst three Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. I wrote ascreenplay that Robert had optioned and, while we were working on the film, thegame and a comic all at once, in the middle of it all we met with George Lucas,who was one of the reasons I wanted to be a writer-director-producer in thefirst place. Robert put on 2001: A SpaceOdyssey and was telling us about working with Kubrick (one of my other filmheroes).
Then, to cap it off, Robertcompletely blew all our minds by telling us his idea for a new form ofnon-linear cinema storytelling: the audience watches a 10-minute introductoryfilm about five main characters, the movie stops and the lights come up, andthen the film branches off into five different films in five different cinemas,each film within the one over-arching story.
Having seen one film, there arefour other films you have to see to get the whole story, and of course thereare multiple twists, so that characters that you assumed were 'good guys' basedon one point of view actually turn out to be villains once you've seen whatthey were up when they were 'offscreen' in the other story streams. It's abrilliant way to tell a story and is exactly what transmedia storytelling is,except that with conventional transmedia the idea is split across three or moredifferent media formats (a film, a game, a comic).
I also loved working with MarvWolfman, the creator of Blade. He publishedStephen King's first short story and was THE guy who first got comic writers acredit, back in the 1950s: he signed 'by the Wolf Man' under the title of ahorror comic story and suddenly every other comic writer insisted on a writer'scredit. He taught me so much about storytelling.
What are your tips for writers who want to be published?
If you want to be a publishednovelist, I recommend you read Elizabeth Paton's thesis Creativity and the Dynamic System of Australian Fiction Writing,which is available free online and include interviews with 40 Australianpublished fiction writers. It's available as a free .pdf online through theuniversity of Canberra library:
http://erl.canberra.edu.au/public/adt-AUC20090825.125448/index.html
The thesis even delves into 'Whatis Creativity, and How Do I Do It?', which is something that a lot of writersdon't study enough, in my opinion.
My other big tip is: submit,submit, submit, and just work through the rejections! Use any advice you getfrom publishers, but know which advice to ignore as well, if someone simplydoesn't 'get' your work. For writers who feel they're merely 'running on therejection treadmill', I highly recommend the book Rotten Rejections: The Letters Publishers Wish They'd Never Sent, whichis a hilarious and very encouraging collection of rejection letters. Allsuccessful writers were rejected once. Some, like Robert M Pirsig (Zen &The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), 122 times!
Is there a large community of Transmedia Writers in Australia?
Funnily enough, no, I don't believethere is a large community. Or if there is, we should all join forces and fightcrime together.
Did you plan to build up such diverse experience in media?
No way! I started my Bachelor Degreetrying to get into advertising as a copywriter (as all my favourite authors,like Joseph Heller, Don deLillo and Flann O'Brien, seemed to work in advertisingbefore they cracked novel-writing)! Then I did Horror Film Studies at uni and Imade a bunch of films, and I was hooked.
I can't resist telling stories across as many media aspossible and I have always been that way. They do always say "you should writewhat you know" and so, with the satirical novel A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols, I found myself writinga transmedia story about a transmedia writer, using transmedia to tell thestory (films, games, novels, cult manifesto.) The title is a send-up of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." And the story itself satirizes Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." If you haven't read all three, you may not get all the literary references, but the story is stand-alone, either way. It's really all about Transmedia, and how Videogames are actually made. After 20 years of writing and designing games, movies, comics, I figured I could do an expose.
A Meaningless Sequenceof Arbitrary Symbols Blog: http://am-so-as.blogspot.com/

A Meaningless Sequenceof Arbitrary Symbols e-novellette on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XW2GDK/


Do you have a favourite medium?
Yes! Feature films, without adoubt, have always been my 'first love'. Though I do love the freedom of novelsbecause the budget of any given genre, scene or story is irrelevant. Imagination is the only limiting factor in novels.
Games are loads of fun to write -but the downside is that they're simply not as narratively satisfying for awriter. I think the main reason for this is that, as Henry Jenkins says, 'Playerfreedom annihilates Character'. It's the old 'agency versus structure' (freedomversus constraints) issue. Besides which, games are also usually so damnedexpensive to make! In my experience, the more expensive the art form or medium,the less interesting it becomes; the product always becomes 'safer' as thebudgets go further north. That's why self-publishing is so interesting – and empowering.
Do you think your experiences as a Game Design/Writing Mentorfor the Australia Council and as a Script Assessor for the AWG havecontributed to your ongoing development as a writer?
Absolutely, yes - mainly asmentoring is teaching, and ironically, you always learn the most by teachingsomething... When you're passing on skills and techniques that have `workedbefore' - you're also constantly comparing those techniques to other possibleapproaches (for example, different ways to structure/`reveal to the player' agame story), and - mentoring also sometimes involves additional research (say,into game development tools for a certain game platform - e.g. iPhones orAndroid phones - etc) that you may not have otherwise explored...
Also working as a Story Analyst/ScriptAssessor (not just for the Guild, but for film studios as well) is fantasticexperience for any writer - having to read and think critically about allaspects of hundreds of scripts makes you consider all those same issues in yourown work - it's just invaluable. The Guild is actually running trainingsessions at the moment, for aspiring script assessors (see the AWG website). Ithink the Writer's Guild does a simply amazing job in advancing the art and craft ofwriting. Hats off to those guys!      





www.joeteevee.com

On "The Matrix" - Augmented Reality Games has you

This is a talk I gave at the Australian Game Developers Conference a while back with some colleagues from UniSA.

These A-Rage games we created are kind of like `The Matrix' - in that, the game world is superimposed over the real world, using a head-mounted-visor.

`The Matrix' has you... kinda thing.

A-Rage AGDC (The Australian Game Developers Conference)


View more presentations from Joe Velikovsky

Anyway - these games were all very fun to write the stories for...

`SKY INVADERS' is about Martians invading Earth...

Not exactly a `new' premise, but H G Wells is as good a source to rip off as any, right?

We also had TV news stories within the game, that played at certain points, as the circumstances of the game changed (depending on how the Player was doing against the alien invaders, i.e. the UFOs that are attacking them in their back yard, or - the park - or - wherever the Player is playing the actual game.)

I think the best line from the news broadcasts was:

"President Al Gore says - We will prevail, after all, we are the greatest planet on Earth."

Which actually is a homage to a line by General Jack D Ripper from "Dr Strangelove", except he was talking about our precious bodily fluids.

So, there you go.

On Game Writing - 2011 NYWF

Games Writing - NYWF 2011 jtv .....A PPT from a 2011 NYWF (National Young Writers Festival) guest presentation on: Game Writing and Interactive Storytelling by JT Velikovsky....


View more presentations from Joe Velikovsky.