Midnights

Creating a cross-platform story-world is like curating a collage of ideas and then looking for the emotional touchpoints that will draw an audience to your property and make them wish to interact with it. What excites me is that we don’t have to choose between the physical and virtual experiences but can have both. I came to the Writers’ Room with a feature script and a mythology and I have found that the freedom of not locking in the medium first up has allowed our group to often surprise ourselves when discussing which platform would suit whichever branch of the story-world. I believe that technology will enable us to do so many exciting things very soon and that storytellers must get out of their comfort zones to keep apace with New Tech. The world is at a bridge into a new world with many challenges from emerging technologies such a bio and nanotech and the development of new weapons systems. How we may respond to a greatly increased lifespan is full of ethical ambiguities. It is wrong to think that the future rests solely in the hands of scientists and technologists; storytellers have a huge responsibility to encourage awareness, not through lecturing but through providing emotional journeys for others to add to. My story-world is all about asking: how far can we stretch ourselves and still remain human? It is about our insatiable curiosity and the pros and cons of ‘progress’. I am not so into dystopian worlds with deep space operatics, I want worlds that feel very real. The team are exploring ways to draw audiences to the Midnights’ world in physical, interactive ways. We also draw upon craft-based activities, such as ceramics and textiles and construction. The Midnights communicate in coded ways that operate purely under the radar of technology, to insure that it is difficult to crack. These codes draw upon age-old techniques, mostly hand-made objects. Sometimes these are linked to hunting, fishing, gardening. Other clues are centred around their slang which mostly reflects English as it was spoken around the late 18th century but many other words go back to their Norse roots. I have invented a lexicon, which will continue to be added to as the cross-platform property evolves. For instance, a “Fog-lighter” is somebody who assists a Midnight in rebooting his or her memory. These elements will be part of the online universe for the property.