Interactive Storytelling for the Screen

An invaluable collection of essays and interviews exploring the business of interactive storytelling, this highly accessible guide offers invaluable insight into an ever-evolving field that is utilizing new spatial and interactive narrative forms to tell stories. This includes new media filmmaking and content creation, a huge variety of analog story world design, eXtended realities, game design, and virtual reality (VR) design.

The book contains essays written by and interviews with working game designers, producers, 360-degree filmmakers, immersive theatre creators, and media professors, exploring the business side of interactive storytelling – where art meets business. Contributors to this book share their perspectives on how to break into the field; how to develop, nurture, and navigate business relationships; expectations in terms of business etiquette; strategies for contending with the emotional highs and lows of interactive storytelling; how to do creative work under pressure; the realities of working with partners in the field of new media narrative design; prepping for prototyping; writing analog and digital.

This is an ideal resource for students of filmmaking, screenwriting, media studies, RTVF, game design, VR and AR design, theater, and journalism who are interested in navigating a career pathway in the exciting field of interactive storytelling.

Sylke Rene Meyer is a writer, director, media artist, performer, educator, and co-founder of the performance group Studio206 in Berlin (2007), extended in LA (2019). In 2018, she also co-founded the performance group "Family Room Collective" in Los Angeles. She is a Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology at California State University in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Aldana is a musician, media artist, and educator. Their projects have involved the combination of electronic music, interactive visuals, and the creative use and manipulation of myriad forms of digital media as forms of resistance. They are a graduate student in Television, Film, and Media Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.