Studio 1 Folio 2 Plan Post HH

CONCEPT

After finishing the Dr Hughes project in Folio 1, I am ready to take on something completely fresh and new. It makes sense for me to follow my bliss, which right now has me focussed on the Australian music scene, something that has been a big part of my life until recent years. 

I learnt recently that the Australian music channel Channel [V] has essentially ceased to exist. For a period lasting roughly from the mid-90s until the late-00s, Channel [V] took on the challenge of acting as an MTV-style hub for Australian music and Australian music festivals. I need to research this further, but this period of time appears to have been something of a sweet-spot for a crossover between fun broadcasting, early technological excitement, the commercialisation of the music scene, and the end of the rock-band dominance of pop charts, all before television became the overly commercial, plastic sheen straight jacket that it is today.

The first two major projects that come to mind when I reflect on the channel are 2004's Band in a Bubble project, and the Big Day Out festival, which took place every summer in Australian and NZ capital cities between 1992 and 2014, covered comprehensively by Channel [V] to the point of becoming synonymous with the market.

When I pore through documentation of these two hugely fun, very Australian projects, I can't help but wonder "where are these people now?" and "why isn't anyone doing anything like this anymore?" and "why is this not more celebrated and better documented?"

Sure, there are music festivals today, but in my opinion none of them has replaced the BDO in terms of brand recognition.

So what happened to the BDO? Well that’s a bit complicated, but essentially the popular summer institution became much less popular. Just before the 2014 BDO, UK band Blur pulled out of the tour, which led organisers to offer refunds to ticket holders. This seems to have been one of the straws that broke the camel’s back, and 2014 ended up being the final year.

I personally went to every BDO from 2006 until 2011, and prior to that had watched hours of coverage every year on Channel [V]. A quick YouTube search of [V]’s early coverage will show you a chaotic, colourful, punk-inspired, psychedelic aesthetic that connects perfectly with the feel of the festival and the style of music it was showcasing. This intimate closeness you felt between the artists and the broadcasters at [V] looks today as though [V] was a community radio station, passionately engaged with a movement, rather than a capital-driven news outlet. Hosts would interview musicians and festival goers between footage of live sets of headliners and happenings at more niche stages like the LilyPad. This berserk documentary style has made its way into my current work, and seems like a place from which I have drawn deeply over the years, so I owe it a great deal.

At my first BDO, in 2006 at the age of 14, I remember sensing that we were sort of starting to see the end of the celebration of weirdness that it was, and its embrace of EDM music, safer artists, and expensive … everything. By 2013 I couldn’t have thought of anything worse than going to the BDO. Considering how much fun it looks like many people were having, how comprehensively it was documented and broadcast by [V], and how proud it makes me about the Australian music scene, this fact it pretty damn sad.

Perhaps in its effort to embrace as many different groups as possible, it had alienated the punks and weirdos who made it into a community- fuelled summer experience. (Today the biggest Australian music festivals are much more genre-specific.) It is also impossible to ignore the fact that its popularity ended around the time that social media became the dominant force it is today.

Anyway…… Folio Plan. Ahem, yes, okay, so.

It has dawned on me that the games I created in Folio 1 were really more worlds to explore than being games were you compete against something, complete a task, or master a problem. I think the idea of world-building makes a lot of sense for me with my history in filmmaking.

Considering how much I enjoyed making (and now playing through) the worlds of Zoe’s Waterslide, Multiple Levels, and Mystery House, and the fact that they were basically accidental, spontaneous creations, I have had the idea of building a well-researched, deeply considered world for players to explore, and I think that recreating the feel of an early Big Day Out-style Australian music festival with a Channel [V]- inspired aesthetic in an open-world video game is a great candidate. If I can also make this both good and easily accessible, then I’m fairly sure a lot of people (in Australia at least) will be very interested in playing it, and that it might spark a renewed interest in the criminally forgotten worlds of Channel [V] and the Big Day Out.

I think I could build a lot of this from my own memories of the festival, and will happily research widely online, including watching hours of early Channel [V] footage.

A working title for the project is “Australian Music Festival 1997”, which avoids copyright issues, and is ironically literal in a way that has seeped into popular lexicon (I can imagine someone saying “oh wow, that’s SO Australian music festival 1997”).

FIELD/ TOOLS

I’m not exactly sure what field this will sit in, but I am fairly sure I will use Unity to build it. It could be a game, but I’m not sure if there will any game elements. (Some game elements I've considered including are: a map of the stages so you can see the bands you want to see, and a clock timer that you race against to catch them, the need to stay hydrated, and money to purchase food, water and merch.) It could be a non-playable film that I make with a screen recorder, another outcome of my Folio 1 that I’m pleased with.

Outstanding practitioners in this field are video game level designers. I watched this great interview with some level designers, Jakob Mikkelsen and Eskil Mohl, of the Hitman series, a favourite of mine, and learnt a great deal about the considerations that go into level creation. I am also researching other games’ development processes, including Grand Theft Auto and The Getaway.

I think the best thing for now will be to start making/ researching/ and doing, and worry about the outcome later down the line. After all, this is only Studio 1.

METHOD

I know I don’t really have a ton of time before the end of the semester, but I do want to have an initial research period from which I can build a mood-board of visual references as well as learning tips on the practice and on the source material. Soon though, I will just open a Unity project and start modelling, seeing what I come up with along the way.

Through this all I hope to establish a deep understanding of world-design, branding, memory, community, and interaction, and to know how to infuse a setting with feeling and emotion.

Along the way I’m sure I will encounter many, many issues, learn about people working on similar projects, and possibly get sued. Can’t wait!