May 22
The Sky Remains
Our latest project is here! http://www.theskyremains.com The Sky Remains is the result of nine months hard labour - yes it’s almost like giving birth! Unlike our previous ARG ‘MeiGeist’, which ran as a multi-platform live event for 8 weeks, The Sky Remains  is a pre produced ARG whose legacy is a social network site for all kinds of ARG type games. It’s kind of like we’ve made the first episode of a British ‘X-Files’, now you continue the universe! When you sign up to The Sky Remains you begin your training as a ’sixth dimension detective’. Your first assigned case is that of Wendy Skinery, a very deap and rich mystery. The answers to this mystery are not only to be found within The Sky Remains site itself but are hidden in ‘Shards’ around the world. Other clues are also gained from playing the three GPS games, which have you turning the real world into a complex board game, using HPs mscape software. So there’s plenty to be getting on with! The amazing ARG community have all ready got their teeth into it, finding the first of the hidden treasures around the world and producing their own videos. We also owe a lot to the global geocaching community for their help.The aim of The Sky Remains (as well as providing user-research for our sponsors at the HP Pervasive Computing Labs) is to raise public and critical awareness to the amazing  possibilities of ARG-type gaming and story- telling - this is a brilliant way to  reach a global audience and a wide demographic. And of course to give further employment to the Somerset  Paranormal Investigators Pat and Dave…(watch this space…it has become my mission to expand Pat  and Dave’s ‘Timehole’ universe even further) 
Aug 25
Edinburgh TV Unfestival
The Wilderness is a Wonderful Place
An appeal for the commissioning and sponsorship of interactive narrative.
As a writer and director I am always looking for new ways of telling old stories. Any way of getting an audience is good for me. I’ve worked as a stand up comedian, I’ve been an actor, writer and director for many years in theatre, radio, animation, music video and film. I have a Masters Degree in Visual Culture and I have also walked around the streets of Tokyo pretending to be an old lady from Swindon. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from working as a street performer all over the world, it is that the human race is divided into two types of people: not the young and the old, not the male and the female, not the black and the white, but those who know how to play and those who do not. Whether it’s nurture or nature, any where on the planet when encountering for example a flower pot person in the street, for every one of those who ask ‘Why’ve you got that on your head? or ‘How much do you get paid for doing that then?’ (to which the answer spoken only inside one’s head would always be ‘not enough mate’) for every one of those, there are always two who will greet you with a ‘Hello Mrs Flower Pot, you look nice today.’
And now I am working in gaming. With our little company Licorice we have made both Alternate and Augmented Reality Games, reaching a worldwide audience without a distributor, without a manager, without making any profit. There’s always been a certain amount of shame attached to multi tasking. Produced, written, directed by, starring, the kind of credit roll you see before a festival short which makes you think – oh Christ this’ll be a piece of shit no one else would put money into. Why not get a proper job? Why be a jack-of-all-trades? These are the questions the devil on your shoulder always whispers into your burning red ear. And then…the revolution! The past ten years in digital, cross-media story telling has brought new opportunities to reach an audience at last. Could it be we are entering a Renaissance period? Can an auteur who has never lived in London and therefore never worked in television have a voice? I feel that at last I’m coming in from the wilderness. Or is it that the wilderness is finally coming out of me? Either way, good story telling does well in whatever medium it is expressed. Good story telling always goes down well with audiences. Story telling costs nothing. It is reaching the audience which costs.
Dear Broadcasting Commissioners and Sponsors, Do you want to reach your audience who no longer watch television? Do you want to nurture new storywriters? You can reach and encourage a young audience who no longer sit passively in front of a screen. There are ways of being involved in stories which are connected to the outdoor environment, that involve activity and research and intelligence on behalf of the audience. This is a world where audiences are not always passive viewers but an active element in the process of story telling. What you will be producing for your audiences in the near future will not simply be ‘viewing’ or ‘watching’ interspersed with an injection of hated, in your face advertising. What you will be producing for your audiences I the near future must be commissioned and sponsored ‘experiences’. Film and television will have the feel of live theatre. Cinema and radio with the feel of a conversation. Ladies and gentleman step nearer to the Holodeck. I challenge you, BBC, Channel 4, brand sponsors: be smart. Look beyond the London based Independents to the mavericks. Look beyond quantity to quality. Look beyond the tries and tested to the surprising and original. Look beyond the cheap to rich content. Look beyond the end of your nose. I say, put some money into experimental, free-floating, independent story telling, now. Take a risk and you will be rewarded.
Hazel Grian.
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