StoryFutures: Gateway Cluster Partnership for Audiovisual Digital Creativity

未来的故事将以新的复杂方式到达观众手中，这将受到沉浸式技术、数据驱动的个性化、智能设备和人工智能以及当代屏幕形式演变的推动。因此，银幕行业的创造性故事流程、技术、商业模式、价值网络和工作流程面临挑战，需要迭代下一代故事讲述，使观众参与到新颖和商业可行的体验中。我们横跨银幕和创意科技行业，汇聚了世界上讲故事的领先者，包括Double Native、Punchuded、nDreams、Sony、Pinewood、BBC Worldwide、HTC Vive和BFI，与中小企业合作。我们将这些知识与横跨故事形式(媒体、游戏、戏剧)、受众行为(心理学)、商业模式(管理)、生产文化(媒体)、硬件、软件和用户界面(工程、计算机科学、设计)的学术专业知识相匹配，以促进研发，为新兴的创意技术创造创新和引人注目的内容、产品和服务。StoryFutures将同时发展屏幕和Createch行业。在创新的StoryLab模式的领导下，我们跨4个主题开展工作：T1 StoryLab；T2 Value Networks；T3创造性工作流程中的数据；T4受众参与度。我们的StoryLab(T1)提供专业知识和空间，用于协作解决阻碍业务增长的创造性挑战，例如如何提高用户在VR中的舒适度、构建社交身临其境的体验或对现有IP进行新的开发。它将在专业和学生层面上运作，跨越FE、HE和CPD，培训下一代讲故事的人和世界级创意内容和产品的企业家。StoryLab将开发、资助和支持故事形式的原型和高风险创新，以应对此类挑战，为中小企业提供新的商业机会，并获得进一步的资金和指导(T2)。顺丰的研发计划将这些创新产品与研发联系在一起，有效管理创意生产流程中的数据，从而实现更高效和更具创意的工作流程(T3)。而且，通过我们的合作伙伴分销平台(HTC、希思罗机场、BFI、Sky VR)，以新颖的方式测试下一代观众的体验，以产生对他们参与的丰富理解，包括与这些新领域的年轻观众偏好的长期分析有关的认知和神经反应(T4)。通过这项工作，我们将在本地区和其他地区增加收入和就业机会。SF拥有超过670万GB的杠杆融资，由Royal Holloway领导，以及其行业合作伙伴和高等院校、Brunel、NFTS和创意艺术大学。SF跨越了电影、电视、游戏和沉浸在一个区域集群，形成了进出伦敦的门户。它将把该地区北部的电影制片厂与吉尔福德南部的游戏公司连接起来，穿过西部过多的Createch公司，回到伦敦密集的创意产业(见地图)。因此，该集群强调了该地区--以及英国经济--数字和创意技能的融合，这类公司可能比完全位于一个学科的公司更有生产力，增长率更高(Bazalgette 2017：14)。该地区拥有英国近20%的高集中度、高增长的创意出行工作区，构成了伦敦以外创意工作和企业的最高比例。在集群内，希思罗机场构成了“该地区经济的关键驱动力”(TVBerkshire，2017)，也是通往全球市场和受众的门户，我们的创新产品和服务必须触及这些市场和受众。SF将解决英国创意经济在维持创意城市方面的重大挑战，这些创意城市具有比创意城市更高水平的商业生产力的潜力(Nesta，2016：6)。因此，Gateway集群有潜力形成一个类似于紧邻其北部的医学研究、产业合作和创新的“金三角”的强国。

The stories of tomorrow will reach audiences in new and complex ways, fuelled by immersive technologies, data-driven personalisation, smart devices and AI alongside evolutions in contemporary screen form. Screen industries' creative story processes, techniques, business models, value networks and workflows are thus challenged to iterate a next generation of storytelling that can engage audiences in novel and commercially viable experiences. We span screen and createch industries, converging world leaders in storytelling, including Double Negative, Punchdrunk, nDreams, Sony, Pinewood, BBC Worldwide, HTC Vive and the BFI, to work alongside SMEs. We match these with academic expertise traversing story form (Media, Gaming, Drama); audience behaviour (Psychology); business models (Management); production cultures (Media); hardware, software and user interfaces (Engineering, Comp Sci, Design), to facilitate R&D that will create innovative and compelling content, products and service for emerging creative technologies. StoryFutures will grow both screen and createch industries. Led by an innovative StoryLab model, we work across 4 themes: T1 StoryLab; T2 Value Networks; T3 Data in the Creative Workflow; T4 Audience Engagement. Our StoryLab (T1) provides expertise and space for collaborative approaches to creative challenges that are barriers to business growth, such as how to increase user comfort in VR, build social immersive experiences or novel exploitation of existent IP. It will operate at professional and student level, spanning FE, HE and CPD, training a next generation of storytellers and entrepreneurs in world-class creative content and products. StoryLab will develop, fund and support prototype and risky innovations in story form that tackle such challenges, providing SMEs with new business opportunities and access to further funding and mentoring (T2). SF's R&D programme links these innovative productions with R&D on the effective management of data in the creative production pipeline, enabling more efficient and creative workflows (T3). And, via our partner distribution platforms (HTC, Heathrow, BFI, Sky VR), tests next gen experiences with audiences in novel ways that produce rich understandings of their engagement, including cognitive and neurological responses linked to a long-range analysis of youth audiences' preferences in these new spaces (T4). Across this work we will grow revenues and jobs in our region and beyond.With over £6.7m in leverage funding, SF is led by Royal Holloway together with its industry partners and HEIs, Brunel, NFTS and University of Creative Arts. SF spans film, television, gaming and immersion across a regional cluster that forms a gateway in and out of London. It will connect the film studios in the region's north to Guildford's gaming in the south, across to the west's plethora of createch companies and back to London's intensity of creative industries (see map). The cluster thus emphasises the region's - and UK economy's - fusion of digital and creative skills, with such companies likely to be 'more productive and have higher growth rates than [those] located entirely in one discipline' (Bazalgette 2017: 14). The region contains nearly 20% of the UK's high concentration, high growth creative Travel to Work Areas, forming the highest proportion of creative jobs and businesses outside of London. Within the cluster Heathrow constitutes "a critical driver of the area's economy" (TVBerkshire, 2017) as well as a gateway to the global markets and audiences that our innovative products and services must reach. SF will address a significant challenge for the UK creative economy in sustaining creative conurbations that have the potential for 'higher levels of business productivity' than Creative Cities (Nesta, 2016: 6). The Gateway Cluster thus has potential to form a powerhouse akin to the 'Golden Triangle' of medical research, industrial collaboration and innovation to its immediate north.