An interactive and transmedia story.
A Semester Project by Benjamin Bauer, Valentin Boczkowski, Ramiro Cotarelo, Julie Karasch and Kay Löscher.
2. Semester, 2017
Prof. Dr. Frank Gabler, Prof. Tilman Kohlhaase, Dipl. Kfm. Sven Poguntke, Prof. Claudia Söller-Eckert, Prof. Thorsten Greiner and Georg Struck.
Leadership in the Creative Industries
The semester topic of SS 17 was to conceptualize a Transmedia Game/web-serial for a (fictive) political campaign.
„Crushed Ice Crisis“ is an Alternate Reality Game with a fictional story: The background of this idea was to draw attention to the problem in our real world, that members of any political party or even normal people on the streets are not able to talk in a respectful way with each other about different political views and opinions.
The central problem in our times is that people always have only one interest: they want to enforce their own opinions and do not allow any other opinions.
This culture of not listening and the belief in a sole monopoly on the truth, leads to a kind of political and civil society which does not allow any changes to be made in their way of thinking and so they call it political correctness to get rid of disturbing thoughts.
This led to the idea of the „free speech campaign“ in an exaggerated world of penguins and polar bears. The polar bears and penguins are a synonym for the extreme political left and right wing parties in our world.
Polar bears and penguins both live on the same planet but they live so far away from each other that they will never meet in real life. Like the left and right wings in our world, they would never talk or even meet each other and talk in a respectful way to find their common grounds.
To break this state and define rules to make a respectful co-operation possible we defined our first pillars for a better communication. Learn to listen and learn how to speak.
Story
So far, we knew which metaphors we wanted to use: The Poles as metaphor to opposite political postures. And The Bears and Penguins as metaphor to opposing cultural values. Irreconcilable societies. At this point, we needed to establish a conflict between the two species; one that could be resolved at the End.
Original Story for 120 Minutes Film
As a framework for our Story we based on the narratological template known as „The Heroe’s journey“. We chose a Penguin to be the Hero and his 11 call to adventure to take part in the North Pole.
