Sunday January 25, 2015

12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

New Frontier Microcinema
573 Main Street, 2nd floor

An all-in-one discussion on everything Virtual Reality. Learn what it takes to create a quality virtual reality production, where the technology is headed and the science behind the experience.

We will take a deep dive into the Virtual Reality companion to “Wild” with acclaimed virtual reality directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael, and SVP of Production for Fox Searchlight, David Greenbaum. Learn about the future of the technology with Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell. Moderated by Franklin Leonard, Founder of the Black List

Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
Time: Wednesday, January 21, 4-6pm
Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206
Title: Sequence Structure for Games- Beyond 3 Acts in Narrative Design

3-Act Structure—Hollywood’s dominant paradigm in film narrative—has often been adopted as a guideline for game narrative. But 3-Act structure meshes poorly with the requirements and vocabulary of gameplay design. Fortunately, there are other paradigms, including one taught right here across the hall in the USC School of Cinematic Arts Screenwriting program… Though created for film and other linear media, “Sequence Structure”, can easily be adapted for use in games, melding seamlessly with game elements such as mission objectives, experientiality, and gameplay loops, paving the way for even stronger narrative in the next generation of games. Join USC Screenwriting alum, games industry professional, and TV writer Jeremy Bernstein for a talk and discussion, as he walks you through the basics of Sequence Structure with a specific eye to how it adapts to games.

Jeremy Bernstein is primarily a television and video game writer, who has also worked in game design, feature films, and comic books. And the pharmaceutical industry. Seriously, he’s had a weird career. His TV credits include TNT’s hit shows Leverage The Librarians, while his video game credits include both Dead Space 2 and Pretty in Pink. That’s right. Dead Space 2 and Pretty in Pink. Jeremy wields Masters degrees in both Biochemistry and Screenwriting (the latter earned right here at the USC School of Cinematic Arts). He has been writing stories and designing games since he was eight years old. He’s much better at it now.

Speaker: JOE PEREZ, Co-Founder, Tastemade
Time: Wednesday, January 14, 4-6pm
Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Joe is an entrepreneur, advisor and Internet product executive with over 17 years of experience in technology, media and health. He is a Co-Founder of Tastemade, a food and travel lifestyle video network built for the mobile generation. Prior to Tastemade Joe was a founding team member and EVP of Product at Demand Media. Joe was also the Co-Founder of The Daily Plate, a popular diet and fitness community and app that was acquired by Demand Media as a foundation for the health and wellness site LIVESTRONG.COM. Joe and the team grew LIVESTRONG.COM from a small startup to one of the most visited health and wellness sites in its category in just 4 years. The MyPlate Calorie tracker mobile app has grown to be one of the most popular paid apps in the health category on iTunes since launching in 2007.
Prior to Demand Media, Joe was SVP of Network and Operations at Intermix Media, parent company of MySpace (acquired by Fox Interactive Media), where he was responsible for building and operating the online gaming and social media platform group. Previously, Joe was an executive in Silicon Valley where he worked for a variety of technology and gaming startups including TEN/Pogo.com (acquired by EA), Excite@Home and Pulse Entertainment.
Joe currently serves on the advisory board of the USC Center for Body Computing (CBC) whose mission is to bring together business and research innovators to study, accelerate and create digital health solutions.
Joe graduated from the University of San Diego with a degree in business and an emphasis in Marketing.

MEGA kindly welcomes all members of the Los Angeles community to participate in the 2014 Global Game Jam. A 48-hour game making frenzy welcoming innovation, experimentation, and collaboration, and the world’s largest game jam. Registration is now open at: http://globalgamejam.org/2015/jam-sites/university-southern-california-usc-los-angeles

Details will be announced when they are ready! In the meantime, get excited! This is the biggest MEGA event of the year, and one progressive, magical weekend filled with delightful stress and love.

REGISTER HERE:

DIGTAL POSTER:

(yes Jeff Watson – I am a copy cat…)

Filmmaker John Grierson famously described documentary cinema as “the creative treatment of actuality.” Documentary films can illuminate unseen processes, broaden our awarenesses of the past and present, and challenge us to make a better future. How might games achieve similar ends? What can interactive media do in the realms of non-fiction, documentary, and activism that other kinds of media cannot? How can we use games and interaction design not only to document “actuality,” but also to intervene on it, and to shape the world to come?

This course explores the past, present, and future of documentary and activist interactive media and games. Students will approach the topic from a variety of perspectives, drawing on art practice, cultural studies, game studies, cinema studies, urbanism, and more. Informed by these historical and theoretical contexts, students will workshop documentary and activist games of their own.

Coding experience welcome but not required. Limited enrollment. Course open to graduate students and upper level undergraduates.

Speakers: Mark Stephen Meadows & Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Ph.D.
Time: Wednesday, November 19, 4-6pm
Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206
TITLE: The Art of Conversational Characters: NLP, AI, IF, & NPCs!

This talk provides an overview of autonomous avatars and virtual assistants.  The talk is divided into two portions: Today and Tomorrow.
Today: This is a state-of-the-art survey. We review a number of systems and draw comparisons of interaction, personality, function, backstory, and their place in this exploding market.  We compare Cortana, Ellie, Jarvis, Watson and Siri and draw some conclusions about the importance of context. Of course we show Geppetto Avatars’ own Sophie as well.  We will discuss the technologies used and in particular the fragility of voice recognition.  We expand this into an investigation of the role that emotion plays in our interactions, how emotion and identity is detected, and what this means to search and advertising companies like Google or Facebook.
    Tomorrow: These systems will change the landscape of the Internet.  First we look at the impact avatars will have on search and social media. We then look at what this means for identity, privacy, knowledge, and our right to own our own personalities.  A social media structure that uses autonomous avatars and blockchain technologies to address these concerns is reviewed and we show example scaffolding for current development work that opens up broad new vistas for not just entertainment and games, but how we can each make money by contributing our own information to a city of avatars that will serve us in the coming years.

Mark Stephen Meadows is an American author, entrepreneur, and artist. He is the co-founder of Geppetto Avatars, Inc. and creator of several conversational character technologies.
He is the inventor of several US patents relating to artificial intelligence and avatars, and he lectures internationally on this work. In addition to developing software, Meadows is known for his hitchhiking adventures, specifically for visiting Baghdad in 2003, and his interviews with terrorists in Sri Lanka. He holds a USCG captain’s license.

Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Ph.D. is Director, Medical Virtual Reality at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and Research Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Gerontology, University of Southern California.
He conducts research on the design, development and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems in the treatment of PTSD, autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and other serious disorders. He studies how interactive and immersive VR simulations can be applied to healthcare needs, beyond what’s possible with traditional tools and methods. Rizzo also tracks VR applications in clinical assessment, treatment and rehabilitation across psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. He is a clinical psychologist and the director of Medical Virtual Reality Research at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California; and research professor in the USC Department of Psychiatry and at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. In his spare time he plays rugby, listens to music, rides his motorcycle and thinks about new ways that VR can drag the field of psychology, kickin’ and screamin’, into the 21st century. To view videos on his work, please visit: Youtube.com.

Students! If you missed out on the legendary comic book writer and pop-culture innovator Stan Lee…no worries! because USC was there at the event to cover the latest innovations of comic book characters, interactive media, and above all the cosplay! Why do we go to Comic-Cons? to geek out. To buy Stuff, see stuff, enjoy all the things that “nerds” were scrutinized in the early generations, now turned pop-culture. We like geek-dom all in one place. With San Diego Comicon, the mother load of all conventions, being virtually impossible to get into, (even for professionals now) Stan Lee’s Comikaze is a wonderful event packed with all the great things we love. Cosplayers in awesome costumes, vendors selling cool stuff, celebrities in the industry, many independent creators promoting their work….and more.

USC was there to look into the innovations as media and to look into the new techniques utilized to draw, color, paint, and develop the modern day Comic Book. Also known as a graphic novel, comic books have been a generational success drawing additional readers to the many publishers like DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, and even independents! What was great about Stan Lee’s Comikaze is the innovation promoted by the writers and publishers. You could attend certain panels in isolated meeting rooms to learn how to imagine, write, and develop storybooks…the foundation(s) of becoming a writer. Other panels included penciling, sketching, inkers, and editing.

A wonderful experience for the few USC students who attended and hope to draw more from the interactive community to these smaller expos!

Speaker: Alyssa Padia Walles
Time: Wednesday, November 12, 4-6pm
Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Alyssa’s career in the video game industry includes re-launching the Atari brand, developing international distribution markets for Sony PlayStation and negotiating national sports league agreements for Backyard Sports. At Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, she was a member of the senior management team that launched PlayStation across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. As Senior Vice President at Infogrames/Atari, Alyssa played a significant role in the integration of both GT Interactive and Hasbro Interactive.

In addition to her work with multi-national corporations, Alyssa spent a number of years focused on her own start-up: Big Screen Gaming. Big Screen Gaming was a proprietary gaming platform that combined console-style gaming with the premium experience of movie theater sound and visual quality.
As a consultant on business strategy, development, sales and marketing (through her company Amplitude Consulting, Inc.), Alyssa has influenced brands such as Fisher-Price, Nimbus Games, Leapfrog and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. She is currently COO of Information Humanities, Inc. a digital media company the digital media company that publishes Glo Bible.

A USC Cinema graduate, Alyssa is a founding member of Long Beach TEC (a digital media incubator), mentor on behalf of the USC Marshall School of Business, and serves on the Board of Directors of Atari, S.A.

Speaker: Nauman Javed, Gaikai
Time: Wednesday, November 5, 4-6pm
Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Nauman Javed is a computer engineer presently working at Gaikai, a Sony Computer Entertainment company, on integrating its revolutionary video game streaming service to all kinds of consumer electronics devices, from smart TVs and cable/satellite set-top boxes to tablets and smart phones. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering earlier this year from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked in the research and development of various large-scale distributed computer systems, ranging from defense command and control systems to networked radar systems and other cyber-physical systems. Among some of his avocational forays was his development of a language understanding software system to be used on a robot. In his spare time, he enjoys consuming good literature in cognitive science and neuroscience.