This afternoon I took a break from all the stuff I’ve been working on this weekend to see L’Auberge Espagnole, a really touching little film about a French economics student studying abroad in Barcelona. It was the perfect movie for me to see right now, as it totally tapped into both my own European experiences and my current 25-year-old confusions. The only thing that bugged me about the film is the way Audrey “Amelie” Toutou was used as a draw, when she was only a tertiary character in the film. She did a good job, sure, but she wasn’t on screen for very long at all, and her performance was just okay. I’m planning on catching Dirty Pretty Things when I get a chance, for a serious Toutou experience. L’Auberge, though, was just a great movie, one of those nifty films you add to your DVD collection so you can foist the “What!? You’ve never seen…” bit on your friends later.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
