WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.760 --> 00:00:06.980 This session of the 2013 Adelaide Festival of Ideas was recorded by Radio Adelaide, 2 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:10.500 through the support of the Bar Smith Library, University of Adelaide, 3 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:14.480 the University of South Australia Library and Flinders University Library. 4 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:18.900 So today we've got like a really fantastic panel. 5 00:00:19.080 --> 00:00:21.660 These two here are just incredible and I'll do the best I can. 6 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:27.480 Sophie Hyde is a director and producer who runs the amazing production company Close to Productions. 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:34.480 They've made an incredible raft of films that you probably have seen some of. 8 00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:38.920 Shut Up Little Man is a really seminal work that made a huge splash 9 00:00:38.920 --> 00:00:42.280 and also Life in Movement is something that has really, I think, 10 00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:46.040 been an important work for a lot of audiences in Australia. 11 00:00:46.700 --> 00:00:52.000 They also are launching, or have launched 52 Tuesdays at the Film Festival, 12 00:00:52.100 --> 00:00:56.620 which has sold out in both of its screenings and is actually at the best of festival screening on Sunday. 13 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:57.400 Exactly. 14 00:00:57.480 --> 00:00:57.980 It's sold out as well. 15 00:00:58.340 --> 00:00:58.820 It's sold out. 16 00:00:58.940 --> 00:01:02.140 You can queue outside and say someone doesn't make it. 17 00:01:03.240 --> 00:01:04.780 So that's Saturday night? 18 00:01:05.160 --> 00:01:05.640 Tonight? 19 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:06.200 Tonight. 20 00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:06.460 Tonight? 21 00:01:06.620 --> 00:01:06.720 Tomorrow. 22 00:01:07.100 --> 00:01:07.580 Fantastic. 23 00:01:07.940 --> 00:01:11.320 And she's also the current recipient of the Sydney Meyer Creative Fellowship. 24 00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:15.720 She's going to talk about 52 Tuesdays, the making process of it, 25 00:01:15.780 --> 00:01:19.280 and also the innovative way that there's a participatory extension 26 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:22.620 for audiences to be carried out over the next year. 27 00:01:23.240 --> 00:01:27.200 And really the subject she's going to focus on is as the price of digital technologies 28 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:27.460 goes up, how do we make it more accessible? 29 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:32.940 How does that change the way that we can go about telling stories? 30 00:01:33.220 --> 00:01:35.540 Our other speaker today is Christy Diener, 31 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:37.100 and she's a writer, designer, director, 32 00:01:37.300 --> 00:01:41.200 who has worked on award-winning pervasive games, film, digital, theatre projects. 33 00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:44.200 She's worked with Tim Crigg's interactive project for Nokia. 34 00:01:44.580 --> 00:01:47.780 She's done alternative games for Cisco and ABC. 35 00:01:48.260 --> 00:01:48.800 Oh, sorry. 36 00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:50.980 Alternative game, reality game for Cisco, 37 00:01:51.140 --> 00:01:53.280 and an alternative reality drama for the ABC. 38 00:01:54.260 --> 00:01:56.980 She is Australia's first digital writing residency, 39 00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:59.520 at the Cube for her project Robot University, 40 00:01:59.860 --> 00:02:01.280 which I'm personally fascinated by. 41 00:02:01.780 --> 00:02:03.140 And she's funded... 42 00:02:03.140 --> 00:02:04.440 Sorry, she's seriously... 43 00:02:04.440 --> 00:02:04.940 I've written here. 44 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:07.820 Seriously awesome list of awards, publications, and projects 45 00:02:07.820 --> 00:02:10.340 across app, digital storytelling, and installations. 46 00:02:10.820 --> 00:02:13.540 She's actually the person that knows what we're talking about today, 47 00:02:13.700 --> 00:02:14.880 and I'm just a filmmaker. 48 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:21.660 She is going to talk about her iPad web audio adventure, 49 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:24.980 Authentic All-in-Caps, and also hopefully Robot University, 50 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:26.940 and the inspiration for it. 51 00:02:26.940 --> 00:02:29.100 And then after all of that, 52 00:02:29.180 --> 00:02:31.240 I'm going to talk about Ringbell and River Stories, 53 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:34.980 which is a geolocated, interactive documentary 54 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:38.500 that's pinned across the Murray-Darling River Basin, 55 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:41.600 in which we've collaborated with Aboriginal elders 56 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:46.060 to create cycles of stories, videos, audio stories, and photo stories, 57 00:02:46.200 --> 00:02:48.780 in which they will guide you through their countries 58 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:52.620 and teach you about the land for the last 50,000 years, 59 00:02:52.760 --> 00:02:53.740 right up till today. 60 00:02:53.880 --> 00:02:55.720 So I'll do that at the end. 61 00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:56.920 Thank you. 62 00:02:56.940 --> 00:02:59.580 And for now, I think that's everything, 63 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:01.140 and I'm going to throw to Sophie first. 64 00:03:01.880 --> 00:03:03.340 And yeah, thank you very much for coming. 65 00:03:09.220 --> 00:03:10.020 Hello, hello. 66 00:03:11.460 --> 00:03:17.860 I'm going to go between my notes and the PowerPoint, 67 00:03:18.100 --> 00:03:21.220 and we've all just put our work on someone else's computer, 68 00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:23.500 so bear with me if it gets a little bit clunky. 69 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:28.000 I had a look at what we were asked to speak about today, 70 00:03:28.120 --> 00:03:30.360 in terms of the ideas behind it. 71 00:03:31.380 --> 00:03:34.180 And Amanda came and talked to me and said, 72 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:38.780 how has technology changed the way, and the internet, 73 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:41.420 changed the way that we tell stories, 74 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:43.840 and also changed the stories that we tell? 75 00:03:45.220 --> 00:03:46.960 It's a hard thing for us to talk about, I think, 76 00:03:46.980 --> 00:03:49.660 because it's kind of how we've always told stories. 77 00:03:49.900 --> 00:03:52.520 I mean, when I started editing, 78 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:53.640 or making films, 79 00:03:53.720 --> 00:03:56.680 it was when non-linear editing came into being. 80 00:03:56.880 --> 00:03:58.340 And I think we tell different stories 81 00:03:58.340 --> 00:03:59.820 because we have non-linear editing, 82 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:01.080 compared to the people before, 83 00:04:01.320 --> 00:04:05.140 who told stories in a way where they needed to create them, 84 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:05.960 in a linear form. 85 00:04:07.740 --> 00:04:10.340 But I do think that over the last few years, 86 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:13.120 the idea of connection in our work, 87 00:04:13.180 --> 00:04:15.640 and how we explore the idea of connection between people, 88 00:04:15.720 --> 00:04:16.740 has changed a great deal. 89 00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:19.540 And a lot of that is due to social media, 90 00:04:19.700 --> 00:04:21.480 and the way that we present ourselves, 91 00:04:21.780 --> 00:04:22.500 and how public opinion, 92 00:04:22.500 --> 00:04:23.780 and how public we are with our own lives. 93 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:27.600 And so I think that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. 94 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:32.280 I've just finished making a film called 52 Tuesdays, 95 00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:36.860 and it is a film that is about, it's a scripted drama. 96 00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:39.960 It's about a teenage girl who comes home one day, 97 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:40.600 and her mum says, 98 00:04:41.060 --> 00:04:43.140 I'm going to live as a man, 99 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:44.460 and transition to being a man, 100 00:04:44.580 --> 00:04:46.180 and you should go and live with your dad. 101 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:49.540 And she says, she's not that keen on that. 102 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:51.320 So they make this promise to each other, 103 00:04:51.340 --> 00:04:52.480 to see each other every Tuesday, 104 00:04:52.500 --> 00:04:54.080 Tuesday afternoon for the year, 105 00:04:54.200 --> 00:04:56.080 and we follow their Tuesdays. 106 00:04:56.560 --> 00:04:59.720 We created the film by scripting as we went, 107 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:02.440 although we had an idea for a script and a story, 108 00:05:02.600 --> 00:05:06.980 and by giving our actors their scenes only a week before we shot them. 109 00:05:09.460 --> 00:05:13.720 And I'll just show a little teaser from that. 110 00:05:13.820 --> 00:05:14.860 I don't know if I can. 111 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:23.300 You're right. 112 00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:25.700 Disguise. 113 00:05:26.300 --> 00:05:27.220 Try to walk. 114 00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:28.940 Do you stay? 115 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:30.800 Alone. 116 00:05:32.600 --> 00:05:32.980 Goodbye. 117 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:35.180 You're gone. 118 00:05:37.940 --> 00:05:41.120 But my soul, your heart, 119 00:05:41.940 --> 00:05:45.600 there's nothing without you. 120 00:05:45.880 --> 00:05:49.080 Oh, bring your change. 121 00:05:50.100 --> 00:05:51.620 Oh, bring your change. 122 00:05:56.300 --> 00:05:56.980 Chevy 123 00:06:22.460 --> 00:06:30.360 Fantastic. You know, the film is a lot about time and change, of course, and there are a whole lot of issues about family and things like that. 124 00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:42.460 But one of the things that when you've seen the film becomes apparent that I don't think we've talked about much to people that haven't seen it is that there's also a strong storyline and narrative about recording yourself and other people around you. 125 00:06:42.460 --> 00:06:50.940 And the film is framed with a director camera, like a video diary from that character there, Billy. 126 00:06:51.800 --> 00:06:54.360 And that runs throughout the film. 127 00:06:54.440 --> 00:06:58.520 But the mother in the film, who's transitioning gender, also films themself. 128 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:05.780 And the lead character, Billy, films her friends and her whole exploration of who she is and what's going on in her life. 129 00:07:06.280 --> 00:07:12.260 And so I think the idea of technology and the idea of how much we share with each other. 130 00:07:12.460 --> 00:07:18.300 It has changed the sorts of stories that I tell, which you can see in this work. 131 00:07:19.840 --> 00:07:21.520 And it's a huge question for me. 132 00:07:21.640 --> 00:07:30.420 I think as an artist and as a creator, I have the great privilege that I am allowed to live an authentic life and that authentic life can be very out loud. 133 00:07:30.700 --> 00:07:33.000 So for me, social media isn't a scary thing. 134 00:07:33.180 --> 00:07:40.220 I can be on there and be drunk or say something, my opinion, talk about my own opinion. 135 00:07:40.420 --> 00:07:42.140 And I feel OK. 136 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:42.440 Abundance. 137 00:07:42.460 --> 00:07:43.720 About that being out in the world. 138 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:46.480 I know that for some people that's not the case. 139 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:48.180 For many, many reasons. 140 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:55.840 And so it's a huge question that we had while making the work was, can you live an authentic life? 141 00:07:55.940 --> 00:08:00.580 And can you live that authentic life out loud in that sort of social media space? 142 00:08:02.960 --> 00:08:06.880 I think this becomes even more interesting when you think about your children. 143 00:08:06.980 --> 00:08:12.340 And we explore in the film a lot about if you film. 144 00:08:12.460 --> 00:08:18.280 Something that's very personal to you, including sexual exploration or your friends naked, essentially. 145 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:27.580 You know, if you grow up in that and you're doing something very real and personal for you, that has the potential to get out in the world and have other consequences. 146 00:08:29.280 --> 00:08:32.080 And these are all very interesting ideas to me. 147 00:08:34.100 --> 00:08:40.680 And it brings me to this idea of the other thing that we've made that goes alongside 52 Tuesdays. 148 00:08:40.680 --> 00:08:42.320 And it's what we call an extension. 149 00:08:42.460 --> 00:08:44.860 It's an extension project called My 52 Tuesdays. 150 00:08:45.040 --> 00:08:50.920 And when we thought about making this film, we always imagined that we'd have other elements around it. 151 00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:55.080 We were making it for so long that we wanted people to be able to share in the experience in another way. 152 00:08:55.880 --> 00:09:02.740 But I kept being resistant to this idea of an extension project, an app or an online project, because I felt like it was marketing. 153 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:04.840 It was just saying, come and see the film. 154 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:09.160 And the purpose behind it was just to get people to purchase tickets. 155 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:12.400 And it never felt like the right thing for us to do. 156 00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:19.760 But I worked with a really amazing man called Lance Weiler, who's a transmedia artist. 157 00:09:20.740 --> 00:09:27.240 And for one thing, he talks about this beautiful idea of being form agnostic, not being limited by form. 158 00:09:28.420 --> 00:09:34.060 And having come from a documentary background and making drama as well and sometimes working in dance and performance, 159 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:38.880 you know, I love this idea of being agnostic to the form or about the form. 160 00:09:40.140 --> 00:09:42.440 And through working with him, I had a... 161 00:09:42.460 --> 00:09:50.780 It was a really revelatory moment, you know, where we realised that an extension project could actually mean extending on the ideas of the film 162 00:09:50.780 --> 00:09:54.780 and extending on the narrative and extending on the conversation that you want to have. 163 00:09:55.500 --> 00:09:57.640 And that transformed what we wanted to make. 164 00:10:01.340 --> 00:10:07.620 I wanted, therefore, to make something that was a way for an audience to have a similar experience to what we had 165 00:10:07.620 --> 00:10:10.860 or to be able to tap into the themes and the ideas in our film. 166 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:12.180 And so there is no... 167 00:10:12.460 --> 00:10:15.060 to our characters or our story in our extension work. 168 00:10:15.360 --> 00:10:17.640 And I'm going to show you a little trailer for that. 169 00:10:39.540 --> 00:10:40.420 wrote wrote 170 00:10:41.300 --> 00:10:41.740 wrote 171 00:10:41.740 --> 00:10:42.440 wrote 172 00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:45.700 After a while, you're still here 173 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:51.020 Hello, goodbye, you're gone 174 00:10:53.480 --> 00:10:56.740 Goodbye, hello 175 00:10:56.740 --> 00:11:01.940 After a while, you're still here 176 00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:06.940 You're still keeping your secret 177 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:12.880 But my stone-cold heart 178 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:17.420 There's nothing without you 179 00:11:17.420 --> 00:11:20.960 And the way you don't change 180 00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:23.500 Thank you 181 00:11:34.140 --> 00:11:36.880 Having a little week out there 182 00:11:36.880 --> 00:11:41.980 So what we've created is an app called My 52 Tuesdays 183 00:11:41.980 --> 00:11:45.480 And when you sign up to the app, every Tuesday you are sent a question 184 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:48.740 From Tilly, the actor who played Billy in the film 185 00:11:49.420 --> 00:11:54.240 And the questions range from, you know, funny to poignant, I guess 186 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:56.580 And they are all around the themes of our film 187 00:11:56.580 --> 00:12:04.820 Secrets, family, identity, sexuality, these things 188 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:06.640 We started... 189 00:12:06.640 --> 00:12:10.500 We started on Tuesday and we had 170 people answer the first question 190 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:11.300 Which was great 191 00:12:11.300 --> 00:12:14.420 And then we had 500 people have now downloaded the app 192 00:12:14.420 --> 00:12:16.700 I think 300 the day after the first question 193 00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:17.320 Which was great 194 00:12:17.320 --> 00:12:22.640 And the very beautiful thing about the work is seeing the responses that other people have, I think 195 00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:29.360 And being able to consider the very different ways that we all want to answer that out loud 196 00:12:30.500 --> 00:12:33.600 Inside the app, you can always keep everything 197 00:12:33.600 --> 00:12:36.200 You can answer the question and then you can keep it private 198 00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:36.620 Or you can keep it private 199 00:12:36.640 --> 00:12:38.020 Or you can choose to keep it public 200 00:12:38.020 --> 00:12:40.260 And you can also share it on social media 201 00:12:40.740 --> 00:12:44.720 And for me, talking to people that had participated in it the other day 202 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:48.680 One of the great things was that that question is live all the time 203 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:51.540 How authentic am I going to be in my response? 204 00:12:52.180 --> 00:12:58.260 And then, if I'm being authentic, how open am I going to be with that authentic me? 205 00:13:00.900 --> 00:13:03.460 This is a screenshot from the website 206 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:05.500 So this was our first question 207 00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:06.580 What does it feel like to... 208 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:08.840 When wrote 209 00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:39.200 And already, you know, people taking it away from the paper 210 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:42.280 and, you know, writing on themselves and stuff is exciting for us. 211 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:45.360 This one's beautiful. 212 00:13:46.420 --> 00:13:47.320 Can you read it? 213 00:13:50.100 --> 00:13:53.680 And, you know, the choice to put yourself in, you know, 214 00:13:54.240 --> 00:13:56.020 is, I think, lovely. 215 00:13:56.140 --> 00:13:59.440 But I also think I really respect and think 216 00:13:59.440 --> 00:14:02.240 that not everyone has to share everything, you know. 217 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:04.620 And so I think it's a great question to have. 218 00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:07.200 And I think the app is there to ask you that question, 219 00:14:07.300 --> 00:14:09.940 not to tell you which version of your response 220 00:14:09.940 --> 00:14:13.160 or whether you make it public or private is the important thing. 221 00:14:14.380 --> 00:14:18.300 For me, it all taps really distinctly into the story of the film. 222 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:21.980 You know, we have a character, the mother, 223 00:14:22.020 --> 00:14:24.820 who is choosing to be their authentic selves. 224 00:14:24.900 --> 00:14:26.700 You know, a man, which, as a mother, 225 00:14:26.740 --> 00:14:30.140 is a very, very difficult thing to do, I think. 226 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:33.340 And, you know, they struggle with that through the film. 227 00:14:33.380 --> 00:14:34.340 But the teenage daughter, 228 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:35.540 whose story it is, 229 00:14:35.580 --> 00:14:40.500 is also grappling with this idea of whether to be as out loud. 230 00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:41.700 And I think in our film, 231 00:14:41.800 --> 00:14:45.800 her response is a discovery that some things aren't about sharing. 232 00:14:45.920 --> 00:14:47.060 Some things are for yourself. 233 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:49.560 And so, for me, the important thing, as I said, 234 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.320 is that this is a live question all the way through the work. 235 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:55.440 We also have a little photo booth. 236 00:14:56.260 --> 00:14:58.080 Oh, there's another one that's really sad. 237 00:14:59.820 --> 00:15:01.520 But also beautiful, isn't it? 238 00:15:04.680 --> 00:15:06.820 One of the great things that I discovered, you know, 239 00:15:06.840 --> 00:15:10.120 talking to people about the app was that you can't go and... 240 00:15:10.960 --> 00:15:12.760 You can go and favourite this for yourself 241 00:15:12.760 --> 00:15:14.680 and you can store the things so that you can go 242 00:15:14.680 --> 00:15:16.540 and follow someone's journey through their year. 243 00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:18.740 But you don't get a reward system from that. 244 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:22.320 You know, it's not like Facebook where you get 1,000, you know, likes or whatever. 245 00:15:22.620 --> 00:15:24.980 It's all about your own sort of personal experience of it. 246 00:15:25.040 --> 00:15:26.240 And so you can share someone else's, 247 00:15:26.260 --> 00:15:27.700 but they don't know you've shared it necessarily. 248 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:29.740 So if you've made it public, it can go beyond. 249 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:32.160 Here's our little photo booth. 250 00:15:32.260 --> 00:15:34.060 This is... We wanted a live kind of... 251 00:15:34.340 --> 00:15:36.780 ..way of interacting with this experience. 252 00:15:36.900 --> 00:15:40.940 And so we created this portable My 52 Tuesdays photo booth, 253 00:15:41.160 --> 00:15:44.460 which is touring around to locations through the festival. 254 00:15:45.620 --> 00:15:48.020 Inside it, you get a little video 255 00:15:48.020 --> 00:15:54.180 and it asks you to give advice to your 16-year-old self. 256 00:15:54.440 --> 00:15:57.420 And so inside, you write down your advice and you take your photo 257 00:15:57.420 --> 00:16:00.600 and you put your email in and it sends you your photo 258 00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:03.180 and it sends you your first sort of experience of the app. 259 00:16:03.340 --> 00:16:04.320 And it also gives you... 260 00:16:04.340 --> 00:16:07.160 It gives you a little printout so you can take it away and keep it. 261 00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:10.460 We've just had it on Lee Street every Friday 262 00:16:10.460 --> 00:16:12.960 and it's around at the Palace at the moment. 263 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:15.740 And then we've been projecting the images 264 00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:17.660 only if people choose to make them public. 265 00:16:17.920 --> 00:16:20.680 So at the beginning, I think in the first day, 266 00:16:20.760 --> 00:16:25.960 90 people did the work and half and half kept it private and public. 267 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:27.740 So it was interesting. 268 00:16:28.360 --> 00:16:30.360 But people's responses are lovely 269 00:16:30.360 --> 00:16:32.980 and I think it's lovely to see them around the city in projections. 270 00:16:36.360 --> 00:16:38.280 And some of them are beautiful too. 271 00:16:38.400 --> 00:16:39.640 Oh, that must be it. 272 00:16:40.100 --> 00:16:40.580 That's it. 273 00:16:42.280 --> 00:16:43.380 That's it for me today. 274 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:46.120 But feel free to ask me some more questions afterwards. 275 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:47.780 I'm sure there's plenty we can talk about. 276 00:16:48.260 --> 00:16:48.620 Thanks. 277 00:16:50.280 --> 00:16:52.900 To do that, I need to give a bit of quick background. 278 00:16:53.520 --> 00:16:56.700 Some of the projects that I've worked on that Ben mentioned 279 00:16:56.700 --> 00:17:00.520 was Cisco's The Haunted and the Conspiracy for Good project 280 00:17:01.260 --> 00:17:04.280 that some of you may know but most likely some of you don't. 281 00:17:04.340 --> 00:17:07.840 And Conspiracy for Good was with Tim Crinn, 282 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:09.780 the creator of the Heroes TV series. 283 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:15.660 And he decided he teamed up with a company in Sweden and with Nokia 284 00:17:15.660 --> 00:17:18.020 and they put a whole lot of money together 285 00:17:18.020 --> 00:17:22.440 and created a huge multi-platform story 286 00:17:22.440 --> 00:17:24.520 that went over lots of different websites, 287 00:17:25.260 --> 00:17:26.360 live events in London, 288 00:17:27.500 --> 00:17:31.040 bits of story elements that were on billboards 289 00:17:31.040 --> 00:17:34.220 and hidden in newspapers and mobile games. 290 00:17:34.220 --> 00:17:36.320 Basically just distributed all over the place. 291 00:17:37.340 --> 00:17:39.840 And the same with Cisco for The Hunt. 292 00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:43.820 That was an alternate reality game as well 293 00:17:43.820 --> 00:17:47.200 where we basically dispersed the whole story across the web. 294 00:17:47.560 --> 00:17:50.860 So if there are characters in the story, 295 00:17:51.040 --> 00:17:53.320 the characters have their own social media accounts 296 00:17:53.320 --> 00:17:54.520 and you can talk with them. 297 00:17:54.740 --> 00:17:57.080 If they go to work in a company, 298 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:01.060 the company will have a fictional web address. 299 00:18:01.300 --> 00:18:02.640 So you can go to the company, 300 00:18:02.740 --> 00:18:04.020 you can go to the fictional company, 301 00:18:04.220 --> 00:18:05.420 you can go online and have a look at it. 302 00:18:05.740 --> 00:18:07.840 So the whole idea with these sorts of works, 303 00:18:07.980 --> 00:18:10.060 and they're called alternate reality games 304 00:18:10.060 --> 00:18:11.660 and alternate reality experiences, 305 00:18:11.960 --> 00:18:15.700 is that you're creating a fiction in the world of the audience. 306 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:18.960 So rather than going to the cinema and you're seeing it up there 307 00:18:18.960 --> 00:18:20.380 and the whole idea of the theatre 308 00:18:20.380 --> 00:18:23.780 and that's where the fiction happens and that, 309 00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:27.180 the idea with these sort of experiences is that it's in your world. 310 00:18:27.280 --> 00:18:29.300 It's on the websites that you use. 311 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:31.280 It's in the social media that you use. 312 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:33.640 We have live events. 313 00:18:33.640 --> 00:18:34.200 We have activities. 314 00:18:34.220 --> 00:18:36.560 It's in the streets where you walk around the streets. 315 00:18:38.060 --> 00:18:40.020 So yeah, so it's in the player's world, 316 00:18:40.100 --> 00:18:41.200 in the audience's world. 317 00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:44.180 And I've been working on these for a few years, 318 00:18:44.340 --> 00:18:46.920 on big campaigns and small ones as well. 319 00:18:47.100 --> 00:18:53.560 And what I found was that as soon as you had this extreme dispersion, 320 00:18:53.560 --> 00:18:56.300 like all of these different websites that you needed to go to 321 00:18:56.300 --> 00:18:59.000 and all these little things that you needed to do, 322 00:18:59.120 --> 00:19:01.980 that we'd lose audience across the way. 323 00:19:02.620 --> 00:19:03.900 We'd lose our players. 324 00:19:04.540 --> 00:19:05.280 We'd lose our audience over time. 325 00:19:05.660 --> 00:19:08.400 And that's because there was just this, there's a few reasons, 326 00:19:08.520 --> 00:19:15.200 but one of them is that there's something that needs to drive you 327 00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:17.140 to sort of keep all of these elements together. 328 00:19:17.580 --> 00:19:21.060 And what I found is that people weren't experiencing the whole story. 329 00:19:21.160 --> 00:19:23.020 They're only just getting little parts of it. 330 00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:28.600 So I was trying to figure out how I could keep this idea of dispersion. 331 00:19:28.600 --> 00:19:31.940 I could keep this idea of having places all over the place, 332 00:19:31.940 --> 00:19:34.420 but try and unify it in some way. 333 00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:38.100 And the response that people usually do is that, okay, 334 00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:40.240 we'll put it all into one spot. 335 00:19:40.620 --> 00:19:42.780 You know, we'll take out the dispersion. 336 00:19:42.780 --> 00:19:44.960 You know, it's often called the convergence drive. 337 00:19:45.140 --> 00:19:47.300 And we'll move them all together into that one spot. 338 00:19:48.100 --> 00:19:51.420 But as I said, I wanted to keep the dispersion, but unify it in some way. 339 00:19:51.820 --> 00:19:57.480 So what happened was that I did the Da Vinci Code audio tour of the Louvre, 340 00:19:58.640 --> 00:20:00.320 which was sacrilegious to some. 341 00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:00.820 Yeah. 342 00:20:01.440 --> 00:20:01.920 And I was like, oh, I'm going to do this. 343 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:06.440 And it was a fascinating thing where you put your headphones on before you actually walk 344 00:20:06.440 --> 00:20:08.340 through the doors, and they guide you through. 345 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:14.360 And when you first walk through the doors, everyone is walking up the stairs. 346 00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:17.440 And the narrator said, no, don't go that way. 347 00:20:17.500 --> 00:20:18.060 Turn left. 348 00:20:18.980 --> 00:20:23.820 And I was taken through this elevator by myself sitting there with one person staring 349 00:20:23.820 --> 00:20:25.420 at me as I'm there with headphones. 350 00:20:25.780 --> 00:20:29.040 And they took me through this alternate route of the Louvre. 351 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:31.480 But at the same time, it was a... 352 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:32.660 It was a narrative. 353 00:20:32.820 --> 00:20:34.900 You know, it was within the world of Da Vinci Code. 354 00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:38.660 So there was all of this action that was unfolding. 355 00:20:39.380 --> 00:20:43.340 So I got to see all of the pieces, but with this narrative layer on top 356 00:20:43.340 --> 00:20:46.160 that also integrated everywhere that I was. 357 00:20:46.280 --> 00:20:49.880 Like now and then, the narrator would say, quickly, turn around. 358 00:20:50.140 --> 00:20:50.880 Look up. 359 00:20:50.940 --> 00:20:52.680 And I'd look up, and there was a security camera. 360 00:20:52.940 --> 00:20:55.800 And it's like, we're looking at you and all these sorts of things. 361 00:20:56.640 --> 00:21:00.300 And I walked out of that, and I went, oh, of course. 362 00:21:00.940 --> 00:21:01.860 Of course. 363 00:21:02.460 --> 00:21:08.800 I can use audio to guide people to all these different elements across the web, 364 00:21:09.740 --> 00:21:11.600 even from online to offline. 365 00:21:12.420 --> 00:21:17.100 This is the way that I can have this glue that goes across all these little disparate elements. 366 00:21:17.860 --> 00:21:24.480 It stays with the person no matter where they are, but unifies them all together. 367 00:21:24.900 --> 00:21:28.220 So I maintain my dispersion, but I get my unity. 368 00:21:28.820 --> 00:21:30.280 So that was the design. 369 00:21:30.300 --> 00:21:36.540 I was the design inspiration behind the idea of this web app, this web audio app. 370 00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:41.240 And then there was the personal inspiration of what sort of story am I going to tell with this. 371 00:21:41.880 --> 00:21:45.340 And I was working through a few things, and at the time I was trying to finish my PhD. 372 00:21:45.720 --> 00:21:52.000 And then my mother, who's there, pictured there with me, she suddenly died. 373 00:21:52.220 --> 00:21:53.860 She had an aneurysm. 374 00:21:54.440 --> 00:21:55.920 So she wasn't ill or anything. 375 00:21:56.020 --> 00:21:56.940 She was just suddenly gone. 376 00:21:58.580 --> 00:22:00.000 And that was a... 377 00:22:00.300 --> 00:22:02.780 intense period of my life because I grew up with a single mother. 378 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:04.940 And we were incredibly close. 379 00:22:05.580 --> 00:22:06.600 We were best mates. 380 00:22:06.740 --> 00:22:09.480 We spoke nearly every day about everything. 381 00:22:09.700 --> 00:22:11.220 And then suddenly she was gone. 382 00:22:11.600 --> 00:22:13.580 And we had this sort of... 383 00:22:14.080 --> 00:22:19.460 sort of people that we let ourselves feel what it is that we're feeling. 384 00:22:19.600 --> 00:22:23.900 So I went through intense grief and all of the feelings of intensity 385 00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:25.740 when someone that you care about dies. 386 00:22:26.020 --> 00:22:30.080 You suddenly face your own mortality, the meaning of life, and all that sort of thing. 387 00:22:30.680 --> 00:22:32.180 But I found that... 388 00:22:32.180 --> 00:22:36.120 So while I did this, I also found that there were people around me saying, 389 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:37.100 oh, just get back to work. 390 00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:38.000 You know? 391 00:22:38.980 --> 00:22:39.600 Come on. 392 00:22:39.700 --> 00:22:41.240 You know, it's only death. 393 00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:46.620 And so, yeah, so I found this sort of lack of... 394 00:22:46.620 --> 00:22:51.920 And these were people that, you know, got up and did the same job every day for 50 years, sort of thing. 395 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:58.720 And I realized that there was these competing mentalities about what life is and what death is and all that sort of stuff. 396 00:22:58.860 --> 00:23:00.280 So there was... 397 00:23:00.300 --> 00:23:04.820 And then the fact that I share a lot of my stuff online, like you, Sophie, you know. 398 00:23:04.840 --> 00:23:05.200 We just... 399 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:09.640 We're online and negotiate what that means to be authentic online. 400 00:23:11.260 --> 00:23:15.640 And so this is where the inspiration for the storyline came from. 401 00:23:15.740 --> 00:23:18.960