Phil Pauley Blog

Thursday 14 February 2013

Franchise the future: A mission to engage an emerging generation?

Pheonix - Image by Adam Potter
Pheonix - Image by Adam Potter
In our last blog, we talked about the possibility of enticing the power of the entertainment industry to combine the mass appeal of the Harry Potter phenomenon with the social conscience of the Eden Project – a tall order you may say!

Since that last entry was written, parts of the world have continued to experience the devastating effects of weather irregularities and global concerns have continued to rise. As previously stated, our team at PAULEY strongly believe that in order to help contribute towards a better world, we need to actively engage people in new and innovative ways. Furthermore, we are pleased to announce that great progress has been made on our exciting and inspirational journey.

Not only are notable media organisations beginning to take an interest in our proposal, but so too are a growing number of future-focused creative professionals and amateurs from around the world. Armed with a renewed enthusiasm for a sustainable future and a love of creativity and interactive multi-media (realised in the work @pauleyinteract) we are striving to build a community of like-minded individuals and organisations as a foundation for our vision.

We aim to achieve this by creating a new breed of entertainment franchise with a fictional Sci-fi narrative based around real earth and space science satellite data combined with inspirational futuristic designs and imagery. The proposed story is an epic space adventure odyssey aimed at young adults; A unique mix of fact and fiction, it is based in a future where space travel, alien engagement and underwater habitation are fundamental. A good synopsis might be Harry Potter meets Star Wars where the plot has been best described as a classic futuristic adventure to re-establish moral order in the face of adversity. With a respectful nod towards the forefathers of classic space adventure, the narrative highlights just how unique our planet and its inhabitants are; Inspiring a new generation to the cause of earth and space sciences rooted in global citizenship.

Dune Atreides - Image by Angel Alonso
Having approached and submitted the draft film treatment to contacts at Disney (Star Wars franchise) and The Blair Partnership (Harry Potter franchise), we have received extremely positive feedback that has highlighted original content and multi-platform engagement opportunities. By combining a futuristic story line and the possibilities to engage that multimedia offers, we are hopeful that the scope of the franchise will extend to the creation of not only a book and film series, but to science based multi-media experiences like video games and educational experiences too.

Characters within the story will be seen playing the same 3D puzzle, driving and engaging in combat simulations, made available to a potential global audience. This audience in turn, will be encouraged to generate and submit new ideas for characters, story lines and interactive experiences via the web and social media, creating the first open source creative community within the industry which has the potential to be self sustaining across the decades. Any new ideas selected from the global submissions to feature in any part of the franchise will be accredited and promoted to the wider audience.

Maccormack Police Force - Image by Neil Maccormack
PAULEY have been very excited to be working alongside Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy to develop an interactive 3-D map of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The primary objective of the collaboration is to develop mechanisms to engage the public in the complex data held on the make-up of our universe. Initially developing a Hipparcos catalogue simulation, we utilised data from approximately 120,000 stars within the Milky Way, including accurate location, size, age, colour and dimension data. This digital model allows users to investigate the universe, flying through constellations and between the stars. The European Space Agency are investing 600 million euros over a five year period into the GAIA Project tasked with the investigation, collaboration and visualisation of the Galactic stellar population.

Our Galaxy mapped from data provided by the European Space Agency's Hipparcos Satelite      
Our entertainment franchise aims to utilise this data in a unique way. We propose to open this 3D map of our universe to the general public. Registered individuals will be able to take ownership of a Planet, Star System or Galaxy. It will bear that individuals name (as well as its scientific classification) or a name selected by that individual. The new community will be encouraged to explore specifics about their new homes, who or what, if anything might live there and what their world might look like…

We are currently receiving concept and character submissions from dozens of designers from all over the world and are thrilled by the level of interest starting to take shape in support of the project. Although the core objective of the project is to educate and steer the younger generations towards sustainability by using a ‘popular’ futuristic theme, there is also the potential to use any revenue generated off the back of the project to fund life-changing projects across the globe and enable like minded individuals to interact with each other across the universe!

Bittler People - Image by Bernard Bittler
To find out more about the project and to see a selection of artwork submissions, please see http://www.philpauley.co.uk/Sci-Fi/.