Writing for interactivity

Terry Borst: Three Cheers for eTV >>
Enhanced television offers instant gratification to writers and viewers.(From the December 2005 issue of "Written By")

...in the future we might redefine screenwriting as something more immediate, far more of a real-time performance, akin to what an orchestra conductor does. Staff writers for Goldpocket Interactive programming already offer us a glimpse into this evolution, collaborating with networks and production companies to create “enhanced” television (eTV) programming.

Jack Feldstein, Interactive Scriptwriting Part 1 >>
Interactive scriptwriting (storytelling) is new and exciting. It's also challenging because not only does the writer have to write a good script - no easy feat - but it must also be interactively compelling.

Paul Saffo, Consumers and Interactive New Media: A Hierarchy of Desires >>
From the 1993 Ten-Year Forecast,Institute for the Future (c. December 1992)

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Pixar Art Director Presentation -Tia Kratter

Saturday 8th July . 3pm Victorian College of the Arts - FederationHall
Grant st Southbank.
entry is free but seats are limited- further info- 9685 9020 , r.stephenson@vca.unimelb.edu.au or p.fletcher@vca.unimelb.edu.au
Tia Kratter will talk about her experiences as a digital painter and art director at Pixar. Tia joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1993 as a Digital Painter during production of the studio's first feature film, Toy Story. She has subsequently held the Shader Art Director role on four other films, including the upcoming Disney presentation of a Pixar film Cars.

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Class Monday 19th June

Don’t forget: there is a class this Monday as per the outline. Please bring as much material as possible for your assignment. At a minimum, you should have

Site structure/site plan -- what kind of information you are going to have and how each relates to the others.

A name and some general ideas about content.

You should leave next Monday’s class with a template you can plug text and images into over the holidays.

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Lost in Transition: From Post-Network to Post-Television

A Lecture by Professor Roberta Pearson
7th June, 6.30pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Theatre A, University of Melbourne

The mega-global hit Lost emerged from the relatively stable industrial conditions of the post-network era of the last part of the 20th century, when television, even if no longer broadcasting to mass audiences, still retained its centrality as a domestic medium. But Lost also reflects the increasingly unstable industrial conditions of the post-television era of the early 21st century, when the continual convergence of platforms and fragmenting of audiences morphs the medium into something rich and strange. In exploring this new territory, Roberta Pearson likens the plight of media industry executives to that of Lost’s castaways, both faced with the uncertainties of unknown environments. Television studies scholars face similar uncertainties, as the post-television era transforms the well-known industrial landscapes of the network and post-network ages out of all recognition.

Roberta Pearson is Professor of Film and Television Studies & Director of the Institute of Film and Television Studies (School of American and Canadian Studies) at the University of Nottingham. Professor Pearson's research interests range from Batman to the American television drama, to cult or genre television, and her publications include Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films (University of California Press, 1992) and Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films (co written with William Uricchio, Princeton University Press, 1993). She is also co-editor of Cult Television (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media (Routledge, 1991), American Cultural Studies: A Reader (Oxford UP, 2000) and the forthcoming book Small Screen, Big Universe: Star Trek as Television (California UP).

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Monday class

Show and Tell : Image series mini -site

Exercise #5: Good & Bad Sites

Writing for the Internet
Nielsen, Jakob, Be succinct! (Writing for the Web)
REF : http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html
Writing for the Web
REF : http://www.a-website.org/mnemosyne/advice/writing.html
10 Tips on Writing the Living Web by Mark Bernstein
REF : http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving

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