The SBS Insight program has run a discussion on the state of the Australian Film industry. Reel Drama will be broadcast on Tuesday 13th September at 7.30pm and then repeated on Friday 16th September at 1pm. I was interviewed for the program and put on stand-by to fly up, but wasn’t on the panel in the end. That cross-media storytelling was considered as a factor in a forum on the Oz film industry is a really good sign. For those not in Oz, Insight provide the program online after the broadcast.
Month: September 2005
Cross-media Smell!
Australian TV is experimenting with cross-media, but not in the way you think. A popular gardening/renovation show, Backyard Blitz, had a ‘simulcast’ show (ep.13) on Sunday 4th September in Melbourne on Channel 9. The show was simulcast over TV and a magazine. The content? Smell. When presenters discussed flowers on the show you could also open up the accompanying magazine and rub a picture of the flower to smell it.
In an innovative Blitz first, we launch an interactive “smellivision” experience! In partnership with the Burke’s Backyard magazine, viewers can smell the scents of the flowers that we plant in the garden.
They have a copyedit problem, as the magazine describes the show as ‘smellavision’ not ‘smellivision’ as on the website, or ‘smellovision’ as it is known from experiments in film in the 50s, 60s and 80s.
I wanted to watch the show to see how they dealt with the ‘call to action’. I missed it unfortunately, but by a shot on the website, it looks like they used ‘modeling’ techniques: where the instructions on how to act are shown so that the audience can model behaviour. I do have the magazine section though, and they do smell lovely. They used ‘new technology paper’ which I’m quite impressed by. Smello/i/a/vision is back!
Interactive Entertainment Program Up
The program for The Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE2005) is now online. It looks like a great mix of subjects (they haven’t listed the speakers unfortunately). I did plan to submit but I didn’t get time to finish a paper. I plan to attend though. It is on the 23-25 November in Sydney, this year. It is primarily an academic conference but as you tell from the program, it has a definate industry concern. Indeed, they are still looking for industry speakers:
[W]e are looking for industry speakers from the Australian game development community or from the interactive entertainment community to give talks at IE2005. If you have somebody in mind, please contact them to confirm their availability and then contact ie05@it.uts.edu.auÂ
The people I have in mind read this blog — so you are notified and invited!
In the meantime, they are running an informal talk about interactive entertainment design and computer games at dFactory on Thursday September 24th at the PowerHouse Museum. They are also hoping to run a few panel discussions outside of the the dFactory event. They’ve requested ideas for panel topics and panelists too.
By the looks of the program committee, this looks to be one of the most exciting ‘interactive entertainment’ conferences held in Australia for a while. I wish I was presenting!