Darfur is Dying

Gaza Sderot

First Australians

Long Journey, Young Lives

The Great Work

Gallipoli 3d

Thanatorama

Water Life

High Rise

Prison valley

Becoming Human

Collapsus

A short interactive film. A man drinks out-of-date milk & somehow ends up with super powers. Help him to save the damsel in distress from the clutches of his nemisis.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Simply Scripts is the website that taught me how to write a feature film script. Being that I have always wanted to work as a professional screen writer, I can think of no better site to find the official scripts of your favourite movies.

There is an abundance of feature film, short film, documentary, theatre and television scripts to choose from. Being that the site is based in the United States of America, most of the featured scripts are American movies and productions. However, they do have a list of some of the greatest foreign film scripts on offer as well.

My favourite part in checking up on this site is, seeing the original scripts that were presented to producers and studios for approval and seeing how they differ from the final cut of the film or production.

In particular my favourite film (Mulholland Dr.) has an entirely different ending in the original script than what was shown to the audience when they experienced it at the cinema. I believe that it was the original script when David Lynch presented it to ABC studios when it was pitched as a pilot for a potential TV series.

Anyone wanting to enter the industry as a writer should definitely check out this site to see how some of the world’s favourite films were presented on paper.

www.simplyscripts.com

Not only is the music platform Soundcloud easy to use and hugely accessible, but unlike many other cross media platforms you can access a great deal of the library without signing in as a member.  Accounts are low maintenance, without the need for many of the updates and subscriptions you may find through various other websites, and the site also had the ability to act as not only a music player but a source for sharing music among members of the public. This feature is most prominent in its ability to transport music among users, allowing two members to update and re-record a single track through the download application. Soundcloud is also compatible with the iPhone. With the easy single touch record and upload button it is possible to record and upload simultaneously with only one touch of the screen. It is hard to finds problems with this platform, especially from a casual browsers point of view. Surely form a professional musicians viewpoint Soundcloud may lack in some areas, but for quick and easy music sharing and browsing it is close to ideal.

Bored? Stuck for ideas? Welcome to the infinite black hole of knowledge that is TV Tropes, a catalog of fiction-writing tricks of the trade. TV Tropes is a wiki (a website designed to allow many users to submit content and enabling collaborative site-building) focused around recurring devices and conventions in storytelling, and how they can be/have been used. It’s also one of the more popular wikis around, as it offers an endless array of hyperlinks leading to new and interesting concepts, each dotted with more paths to follow.

It may be considered to have niche appeal, judging from the welcome page, but the sheer mass and variety of info on offer is what makes the wiki striking. It’s incredibly easy to navigate. Adding new information is also simple, owing to an inbuilt rich-text editor and troper community.

Each page offers a description of the trope, written by a troper in an entirely nonchalant and humourous manner. Most tropes will link to many other tropes, as well as displaying images and providing links to video footage. Exhaustive lists of examples in film, TV, manga, comics, literature and song are also nearly universal.

So if you’re stuck for something to write about, looking for a new film/book/comic/manga/TV show to check out, tooling around with time to waste, or having trouble putting a term to “You Know That Thing When…?” – TV Tropes is the place to go.

- David Molloy

Every year in Australia, there are over 200 violent crimes resulting in death. Every year, 80 of those murders go unsolved and unavenged. Now the city turns to you in its darkest hour. Will you rise to the challenge, or fall to the knife?

STAIN is a fast-paced and suspenseful adult transmedia experience, an alternate reality game that utilises webisodes, live video conferencing, phone applications and immersive real-world gameplay to draw its audience into the brutal reality of life in homicide investigation. No badges, no guns, no uniforms – nothing between you and the crime scene.

In creating this project, we considered story and engagement to be paramount.  It is a stand-alone experience, rather than a facet of a marketing campaign, but also has the option for a feature film transfer.

Players are led to the STAIN website via a series of teaser trailers. Here they witness the first webisode – a graphic introduction that follows the abduction and murder of a young woman. Players brave enough to register are contacted via live Skype conference by Roger Caruso, a criminal profiler and photojournalist. Roger is convinced that he sees a pattern among the murders, but is unable to assist in the police investigation owing to his sister’s death in webisode #1. Through the webisodes and Skype conferencing with Roger, players become familiar with both their contact (Roger) and their target’s modus operandi.

Roger acts as a guide to the players, giving them the info he has managed to compile, and players can keep track of this information on the website. The site acts a hub for players, where they can interact with each other, share case details, or purchase merchandise, such as blood-stained t-shirts to identify players in the real world. Players are also encouraged to download the iPhone/Android phone app to follow the progress of the case and interact in real world locations. Clues buried within the webisodes and case material will lead players to real world locations: crime scenes which must be carefully investigated. The phone app reveals more than the naked eye in these places, and will provide players with multiple choices. A point system within the application measures the players’ analytical accuracy and introduces a competitive element to the game.

Our killer is a figure only glimpsed in shadow, a man who ’stains’ his victims’ eyes with acid and ritualistically disembowels them. A killer whom, it is revealed, is scarred himself, acid-burned and cowering behind a distorted Rorschach mask. As the stakes grow and players are eliminated based on failure to complete assigned tasks, they are given the option to star in upcoming webisodes as the next victim. But the final victim is Roger himself, who, in a predetermined Skype conference, is butchered live online.

At last, the players must solve the mystery themselves, casing the scene of Roger’s death with the knowledge he gave them, and racing against time to find the killer’s hiding place. At this hiding place that the game ends, with a celebratory ceremony and afterparty, during which the player with the highest point score is richly rewarded.

We hope the experience frightens, shocks and astounds our audience, giving them a taste of what a real world thriller can be.

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Have you ever had writer’s block?

Have you ever struggled creatively under a deadline?

Have you ever felt that originality is slowly but surely being sapped out of society?

This concept of the loss of creativity and originality is pushed to the extreme in The Influence. The Influence is a transmedia project focused mainly around the release of a feature film. This feature film follows the story of a young man who is on the hunt for the last original idea and The Organisation is hot on his tail.

In creating this project we fabricated a story world in which there has not been an original idea for decades and creativity is an extinct mode of humanity. Society is in a world-wide state of writers block. The frustration and apathy brought on by extreme writers block is a global sickness and it is sucking the life out of us.

The government has created The Organisation – a group of elite intellectuals responsible for ending the GCC (Global Creativity Crisis). Our hero’s father was a part of this group. When he discovers the last original idea he attempts to hide it from The Organisation and after his mysterious death his son (our hero) is left to uncover the truth. At the climax of the film it is revealed that there was no idea but in pretending that there was the father has broken the icy cage of inactivity and inspired the world into action – thus sparking new levels of creative thought.

Our project adopts a viral marketing campaign in which the audience is led to our website by posters placed on bus stops, billboards, telegraph poles, in public toilets etc. This website is act both as a promotional tool for the film – with trailers and viral videos being released – and as a forum through which users can discuss and share their ideas about creativity and their own creative works.

Users will be encouraged to submit creative content through challenges set with the iPhone App available for download on the website. Challenges will be updated after every 100 submissions so that users are constantly being stimulated.

There will also be a ARG element to the site in which users are encouraged to join The Organisation and follow clues to discover the contents of a mysterious suitcase. Through this tool users will discover exclusive content and be leaked videos from the film that will reveal certain cast members attached to the film. By following this journey players will ultimately be led to an exclusive screening of the film and a Q&A with cast and crew.

Rachel, Bec, Dan and Oscar

VICELAND is the site for the free circulating cultural zine Vice. The site is basically the magazine made digital for your browsing pleasure. If you know the magazine, then you know how difficult it is to get your hands on it sometimes – scarcely circulated, you have to virtually scour every trendy record shop and cafe in the inner city to find an issue. This is why making VICE online was such a stroke of pure genius. The site (and the magazine, for that matter) contains different sections including my personal favourite “DO’s AND DON’Ts” where fashion faux pas are addressed and random civilians’ stylings are attacked – there’s also the occasional fashion breakthrough too. Other sections such as the photography section contain and categorise all of the magazine’s shoots throughout the history of vice and I have discovered many a brilliant photographer through this section – after all, the basis of this magazine is pretty much to give you nice things to look at. The site also backdates all of the articles from older or current issues so you’re never starved for entertainment and can always stumble across an interesting or wacky read – it should be noted that the magazine is famous for it’s “cultural” issues, where they single in on the social trends and fashions of different countries. My favourite would have to have been the issue on Russia, complete with an intricate exploration into the Russian pill and party culture, and better yet, an intimate portrait of old Russian men and their fascination with wearing raunchy underwear. Definitely a site to look at if you want some mindless entertainment.

By Bec.

this is our short interactive film we created as part of the class. a girl gets into a sticky situation, you select her choices as she deals with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Two Thousand is a website and a free weekly email newsletter that aims to compile all the most interesting and fresh new things happening in our city. From restaurant reviews to books and fashion design, Two Thousand offers a complete picture of Sydney’s subcultural landscape on a weekly basis. It is compiled by an amorphous gaggle of writers, stylists, designers and photographers, all aiming to bring Sydney’s  trendiest establishments out of the darkness of obscurity and into the limelight.

Every weekly issue of Two Thousand is formatted according to certain areas of interest. For instance someone wanting to find a cool new bar to hang out at would go to the eat/drink section of the issue whereas someone wanting to see if anything good was on at the movies would go to the watch section. There is also an awesome Iphone app which will search the area your in using “maps” to find places that have been featured on two thousand. It usually works when your in Newtown/Surry Hills but I tried using it in Paramatta once and nothing came up.

On top of this every issue has a useful directory with a list of categories for you to search through and each article is accompanied by a handy review. Which I find can be helpful to decide whether you would want to follow two thousands advice and bring all your friends for a night out, to some illegal basement bar in Surry Hills with dead foxes and moose heads hanging from the walls and which probably was used as an underground dogfighting arena. Or perhaps just go for a quiet one at the Courty.

By Finn

Know someone who’s a slacker or simply breaking bad? Just get the baddest and baldest nerd on television to set them straight!

Thanks to Breaking Bad’s clever marketing team we have the opportunity to hear the TV drama’s main character Walter White tell us our problems and set us straight if we’re falling off the rails.

www.waltswisdom.com is Walter White’s blog, used as a marketing tool before the release of the first season of the TV series. You enter the details of someone you think is not living life to the full and send them a pep talk delivered by Walt. He’ll say your name, age, what you waste your time doing and cross your name off his list of slackers.

AMC released a similar interactive video before the release of the second season, www.waltswarning.com. Here you control where you look by moving the mouse. If you don’t look at Walt while he’s talking he’ll snap and kill you. He uses different methods to kill depending on where you move the mouse on the screen. You also upload a photo at the beginning of the video and Walt burns it – a bit disturbing if you upload a close up picture of your face.

I am an avid fan of Breaking Bad and think these interactive videos are good fun. You bump into a few glitches here and there but overall, a great idea. At http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad there are other fun interactive videos and games that include other characters in the series. The graphic novel game is especially clever.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A web series. A phone app. The ride of your life!

The Code is a story about man. A man who was kidnapped as a child and held captive in a room with nothing but a games console for entertainment. Years passed and the games slowly took over his mind. Eventually he couldn’t differentiate between the game world and real life, and became extremely disturbed.

The man re-enters the real world with a warped sense of reality and creates a game that turns him into a kidnapper. He starts kidnapping people and filming the process. He then forces his victims to talk into the camera and recite a riddle of his choosing. He’s very proud of his kidnappings and wants to create intrigue, so he posts all these kidnaps to his YouTube channel. He’s playing a game with the viewer – he wants you to play his game and try to figure out who he is, but he’ll always be one step ahead.

The Code is a web-based series.  Each episode is a video that the psycho has posted onto his YouTube channel.

The chief of police doesn’t believe the kidnappings are real but an anonymous rookie cop wants to solve the case because his brother was a victim of kidnapping years ago. He asks for the viewers help in solving the mystery.

The viewer plays along using The Code phone app. This app asks you questions related to the riddle in each video. If you answer correctly it generates a code that you use to unlock the next video.

The series and phone app are a lead-up to the grand opening of a new theme park ride. The ride is the kidnapper’s house. You try and find him while walking through a series of spooky rooms. If you didn’t follow the series, the rookie cop (an actor) takes you through the ride. If you followed the web series you use the clues from the phone app to make your way through the house and you lose the rookie cop half way. You get to the final door in the house and this is where you strap yourself in and plummet to the ground in a drop ride. If you make it to the bottom it is revealed that the kidnapper is indeed the rookie cop’s long lost brother who was kidnapped all those years ago.

Founded in 2000 by two long-time buddies Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart, Threadless is an innovative and original online apparel and design store that is centered around community involvement in every aspect.

The way it works is simple: designers (that means anybody – professional or amateur) create t-shirt designs, upload them to the website, and then the community votes on which ones they’d like to see printed. About ten out of the weekly submission tally of 1,500 designs get printed, with the winner receiving $2000 cash and a $500 Threadless voucher.

Threadless often runs creative design challenges every couple of months, setting the task of a designing a t-shirt around a specific theme. For example, “Threadless Loves Noir”. Some challenges also aim to raise money for various social issues or global disasters, such as the Japanese tsunami.

Threadless is one of the only t-shirt design websites that relies entirely on the involvement of their tight-knit online community to keep it moving. What results is a fun atmosphere and a lot of awesome quirky shirt designs at an affordable price.

If you want a rad shirt, Threadless is where the moose is kickin’ out the juice. Real, profitable, quality, charitable, quirky and independent – go check out Threadless!

Oh, and it also has a cool free iPhone app.

"The Horde"

"Foam Monster in Emotional Reunion with Severed Limb"

"Metal Fan"

"Missing!"

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings.. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back.”

Our scavenger hunt was a blend of historical events in and around the Entertainment Quarter which were amalgamated into a tale of misguided justice and shady morals ala classic western. Players were led around the school and over to Centennial Park in the search for justice. We loosely based our story around Mount Reinne rape case for which four men were hanged, the death of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and the fact that Moore Park was the original site for Sydney’s first zoo.

Six lone riders set out to solve the mystery we set them after receiving their first message from the sheriff. They were given playing cards and instructed to high tail it over to the props department to disguise themselves accordingly. There were horses to be tamed, animals to be captured, duels to be won, shots to be downed, snake bites to be healed and finally there was to be a hanging.

Our original back-story for the scavenger hunt was that the six players were all guilty of the crimes laid out before them and by the end of the hunt they would have to hold themselves accountable. This idea was a little hard to get across in the hunt itself but the vibe of the western was very strong. We used a lot of real world props to add a more dynamic element to the hunt that the app doesn’t necessarily allow for; this helped to really drive home the sense of genre and keep the players engaged from start to finish. We had a great time creating this hunt and we hope you guys had a great time playing.

If you are interested in web design then Favourite Websites Awards is the best place to find cool and innovative sites. FWA is the most visited website award site with over 100 million views since it first started. Sites are awarded based on their creativity, originality, design, content and personality. After submitted sites have gone through the first round of evaluation a certain number are selected and are available for public vote.

I really liked this site because it was a way for me to explore and find new and interesting sites that I might not usually come across. As the sites are selected based on content as well I usually find that design and creativity aside there is something interesting to be discovered or explored in the site on a content level. The website is easy to navigate and has a really intuitive design. The way the website is structured makes it really easy to explore sites that have won FWA awards and also find out more information about the site itself and sites awarded without having a cluttered interface. This is a site that is really fun and interesting to explore, although it is a bit of a time hole.

- Rachel Argall