I know what i want to do in my life...

there was a guest speaker who has done some relatively large scale productions here in australia. Scorched and Storm Surfers are the two major ones. storm surfers is entirely web based (although moving to the big screen) and scorched is the reason why i'm writing this message.

scorched was about a "what if" scenario. with all of the droughts australia keeps having this filmmaker decided to do a film series about "what if sydney (biggest city and largest producer of food in australia) had only 8 weeks of water left?" the film was researched and backed by incredible amounts of research and the end goal was to make a television 2 hour event... kind of like a mocumentary showing how people would react and such. but they realized they could do so much more in a multi-media event. 6 months before the release they started a vlog on youtube about a girl named cassie who has dreams. she has dreams of a drought and the devastating effect it has on the country. this is all dated for the future mind you... 2012. this girl is the protagonist of the film. but nobody knows this. intercut in the vlogs are split second cuts to their website scorched.com. and as time got closer they started to release (with the help of their sponsors... the major news networks here) false news reports that for all intents and purposes seemed real. with one month before show time, the site launched. the cat was kind of out of the bag, but they had 1.3 million viewers online (australias pop is 22 mill) and they had created websites for the bad corporation behind all of this. and gotten real anchors and weather men not only to help write segments of the film, but to take part in it. they created this complete and engaging world. when the tv show finally aired, it far exceeded what was expected and set this guys career on fire.

this is what i want to do. i feel like i wanted something like this (though i was thinking on a much smaller scale) for diaries (my senior project at CWU. if you haven't had a chance to check it out, please do: http://www.facebook.com/pages/EllensburgVancouver-WA/Intense-Entertainment/110464375638449?ref=ts). but i want to create something almost like world of warcraft creates for gamers, or LARPing creates for the even nerdier crowds. i want something that takes on a life of it's own. and what was interesting was how the story changed as viewers got involved, and talked in forums. and it essentially became fed by the audience.

haha i don't think i'm content to just make films. this guy really fired me up (even though when i went and talked to him he was extremely cynical and didn't give a shit about actually talking to me unless i was buying his dvds haha). this is what i want to do. lol if i spend the next two, three or even five years building up the research and developing the world of... whether it's diaries or something else (i'd probably want to rewrite and reshoot if i go with diaries...). and while i work on that just work on other projects, building contacts and getting my finances in order so those don't eat me alive.

THATS what i want to do though. i want a universe. narcissistic? probably. but i want to create in my audience that excitement i felt when i saw star wars or jurassic park for the first time where all i wanted to do was be apart of that world. and i don't think anything would hook your audience members faster than if they feel they have some say in it.