Saturday 24 September
5pm to 6.30pm
Griffith Film School Soundstage
Are videogames so different to everything which has come before? Their proponents often insist that they are; that interactivity and gameplay “changes everything”, and that the rules and practices of predecessor media no longer apply. But is this really the case?
Look in the right places, and for many practitioners and theorists working across a spectrum of different entertainment media and performing arts and we can find an increasing sense of commonality: common challenges, common perspectives and even common technologies. This means that there is beginning to be an evolving interchangeability of skills and practices, which bridge both legacy creative and technical divides and also span the forms and formats through which we increasingly create and consume our contemporary popular culture. And for those of us working in areas such as film, television, theatre, music, and videogames, we can at last see perhaps that there are many more things that unite us than divide us.
To illustrate this idea of 'Converging Creativities', this talk focuses on the two-year MA Games course at the National Film and Television School (NFTS), UK, which saw its first intake in January 2012. Inviting its students to learn and work alongside emerging advanced practitioners in an array of film and television specialisms, the remit of the course was to nurture future games innovators, enabling them to create engaging, edifying and emotionally consequential experiences that would move the medium beyond its current norm. Nearly five years later, and with three groups of graduates now beginning to make their mark in the industry, this session looks at some of our successes, and unpicks the various challenges faced along the way.
Register @: https://jonweinbren.eventbrite.com.au