tim wright: digital writer

Storyfutures Academy: The National Centre for Immersive Storytelling

Eagle-eyed followers of my LinkedIn profile (are there any, really?) will have noticed I’ve had an extra job title at NFTS since October as ‘Acting Head of Immersive’.

My main task has been to help set up The National Centre for Immersive Storytelling at the school and contribute to the programme for StoryFutures Academy, a UKRI funded collaboration with Royal Holloway, University of London, which aims to develop a range of training and research programmes in immersive storytelling.

I think the logic behind the award of a lot of public money is this -  because we Brits are so great at storytelling in other forms (film, TV, theatre, games) we should be able to lead the world  in the use of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies too. Talented people just need to be found, trained, be inspired, gain access to the tools, get some work experience and some access to dev funding and markets - and away we'll all go!

My main focus over the first few months has been to kit out a space at NFTS where people can come and try out immersive titles, be introduced to production tools  - hardware and software – and be inspired  to develop their own original immersive storytelling projects (for which there will be some funding available in coming months/years).

So far we’ve delivered two Introductory Labs and have plans to host several more this year. Attendees so far have included such luminaries  film director Asif Kapadia, Channel 4 commissioning editor Fozia Khan, NFTS Head of Documentary Peter Dale, the artist Gillian Wearing and BFI deputy CEO Ben Roberts. I’m also delighted we’ve made space for young talented writers such as Jenna Jova and Nosa Eke – both recent NFTS alumni. 

At both labs, we captured the reactions, insights and discussions generated by the attendees so we can start to build up a library of issues, techniques and approaches that people might find useful to consider when starting out into the world of immersive storytelling.

I feel very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, so I can keep up to date with latest developments in this fascinating area. If you’re interested in VR, AR or any kind of MR or XR (oh yes, there’s a load of new buzzwords, acronyms and jargon to learn, folks), just head to the StoryFutures Academy website and keep an eye out for the many opportunities we’re going to be offering this year for labs, writers workshops, masterclasses, placements and development funding.

Producers Unite!: an Artful Spark Gathering

Thanks to Sam and Ben at Artful Spark for inviting me to be part of the Producers Unite! event last week at Rich Mix. If you’re at all interested in multifarious forms of digital play and creativity, you should think of going to future gatherings. The networking opportunities alone are worth the price of admission, with all kinds of artists, performers, programmers, technologists, curators etc making up the audience.

I'm happy to say that all the talks are available on Soundcloud. They're all good (even mine gets a couple of laughs):

ArtfulSpark · Artful Spark #07 - Producers, Unite!

My personal favourites were: JiaXuan Hon talking about her fascinating experiments in dance, audience participation and tech; Matt of Blast Theory sharing some basic mantras about producing interactive crossplatform work; and Russell McLean, one of the producers of Bandersnatch, revealing the labyrinthine branching narrative system that had to be created to support Charlie Brooker’s first (Netflix-funded) foray into interactive TV drama.

My only complaint about the night was that it was too short. Once the main presentations were completed it was clear there was a lot of good discussion to be had with people in the audience, but there was a strict time limit on how long we could stay in the space. I would have been happy for the conversation to go on for longer. But I guess this just means I’ll have to go back to the next event. You should too.