The Lab

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Extended Experiences Lab

3 min readNov 29, 2017

What happens at the lab and who can participate?

The lab will give you hands-on training in conceiving and developing extensions to your creative projects. It is open to all Queensland filmmakers and creatives in any artform.

What will happen at the Lab?

Over two days, you will be guided through developing extensions to a creative project. You will be taken through how to analyse your existing project (or the commissioned film, or a sample one if you don’t have a current project), to determine the opportunities to extend, the elements that need to persist, and importantly how you can meet audience interest. You will research and workshop the ideas through mini-pitches and peer feedback. You will develop a production plan and release schedule that looks at the design issues involved with the launch timing and pacing.

What are the takeaways?

You will leave with worksheets you can use in your current and future projects. You will leave with a list of techniques to help you choose the media what you do in the media, and when you release the media. Depending on how developed your project is in the first place, you will leave with development plan for testing your ideas immediately.

Who is the lab for?

The lab is open to all creative professionals. It is for independent filmmakers, producers, directors, theatre makers, game developers, bands, agencies, and novelists. It is ideal for creatives who have a project they want to develop extensions for, no matter what stage of development or release they are up to.

Why do the lab?

You’re an independent who has to self-market your creative projects, and know that you need to appeal to audiences with more than times and dates. You’re engaging other creatives to promote your project, and want to know how to ensure they do justice to your project and do it effectively. You’re an interactive creative who is interested in working with filmmakers. You work in many artforms, and are interested in how you can create multi-artform projects that work together. You’ve heard about or worked in transmedia, and are keen to find out what are the latest effective approaches you can use.

Who is running it?

The Extended Experiences Lab is conceived, organised, and curated by Christy Dena, Universe Creation 101. Christy has mentored at industry labs around the world, been a juror for multi-platform projects including the Emmys, makes cross-media projects, and has been teaching and researching cross-media projects for over 10 years. She has run many events, including Forward Slash Story (with Lance Weiler and underwritten by Columbia Storytelling Lab); Transmedia Victoria (commissioned by Australia Council for the Arts), Extended Entertainment Experiences (for AFTRS), and BarCampSydney, and has run many game design workshops across Australia, including for the World Science Festival.