New partners-in-crime: NYU Poly Integrated Digital Media + IFP Media Center

It takes a crew to build a ship, right? The project (tentatively titled Elastic Movies currently) is now in the "build" phase. There are two big priorities over the next several months: gather data about movie ticket attendance (as granular as possible) to develop an algorithm, and prototype an app. This week, I joined the IFP Media Center as a fellow.  Newly opened just 7 months ago in Dumbo, the Center is a partnership between Made in NY and IFP. There are a number of gaming, new media, and entertainment companies already in the co-working space. I've got some office space in the incubator program and hope to find some great collaborators here. Or at the very least, smart folks to bounce ideas off of and frequent commuting walks over the Manhattan Bridge.

To build the app and rethink movie pricing, a partnership with NYU Poly is in the works. The Integrated Digital Media co-director Luke DuBois gave a tour of the year-old floor and the work that they're doing is pretty awesome. The best part is that this space holds not just students from the IDM program, but from other NYU groups that are interested in cross-collaboration. The MFA Gaming group is here, instance. A blurb about this dynamic ticket pricing project goes up today, and hopefully, some great Poly collaborators will be joining the project soon.

Games and Film : Emotional Throughline

One of the hurdles with any filmmaker interested in exploring AAA game narrative is the timing of the release. Experiencing the unveiling of a game narrative in real-time as other players around the world are simultaneously revealing the story is one of the key factors in creating the 'nostalgia'-effect that comes along with discussing great gaming experiences.

Games, because of advancing technology tend to occupy a certain place in time and may in some cases, not be as playable years later.

That said, for anyone interested today might a perfect time to jump on the narrative AAA bandwagon with the release of Bioshock: Infinite hitting store shelves.

Check out this CNN piece on the emotional throughline and how the gameplay is using narrative in a really interesting way.

This is certainly one of the top games being discussed at GDC and the gaming world at large.

In future posts, I'll be providing a primer of games that filmmakers might want to check-out