Welcome to Los Angeles 2020:

The water level has risen 4 feet, transportation consists of a green rail system, and the Occupy Movement runs the local government.

That was the scenario presented at a live and interactive conference called The Science of Fiction: World Building in Action, held on Saturday at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in conjunction with the 5D Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to new methods of storytelling based on cutting-edge technology. Alex McDowell—USC professor, production designer (his latest film, Man of Steel, opens June 14), and cofounder of the 5D Institute—challenged attendees from the worlds of science, entertainment, technology, and academia to immerse themselves in this vision of the future and create L.A. 2.0.

This exercise is part of what McDowell calls world building—a creative process that involves not only conceptualizing an imagined physical setting, but also that setting's politics, culture, and technology, along with its inhabitants' individual and collective behavior and philosophy. The thinking is, if you create a "container," as the 5D Institute calls it, for a narrative with all of these factors built in, then you open up new creative possibilities for a screenwriter, director, or set designer. "We are moving into a landscape where art and science, design and engineering are inseparable," McDowell says. "At their intersection lies world building, the new creative laboratory for the future of immersive, narrative practice."

McDowell has been leading the world-building charge for years. The veteran production designer of The Crow: City of Angels, Fight Club, and Watchmen was one of the first to realize that the 20th-century analog model of filmmaking—preproduction, production, and postproduction—was giving way to a nonlinear work flow that offered a new symbiotic relationship between writer, director, designer, and the other filmmakers. For example, he and Steven Spielberg designed Minority Report's futuristic Washington, D.C., before the script was even completed. The g-speak point-and-touch interface of that world in turn influenced revisions of the script.

The participants at the USC-hosted conference, which included Warner Bros.' head of VFX Chris Defaria, transmedia guru Henry Jenkins, designer Tali Krakowsky, and John Underkoffler, who created Minority Report's g-speak interface, split into five groups, each responsible for various facets of L.A. 2020. I was a member of the Biology of Fiction and the Culture of Fiction groups—tasked with conceptualizing how human biology would differ in this L.A., and how future technology would shape its culture.

It was fascinating for our biology team to figure out the rules and behavior of L.A. 2020—how people would react as individuals and in groups in a technology-controlled society of wearable computers with head-mounted displays, pulse wristbands that recommend the best travel routes based on emotional states, bioluminescent tattoos, and bio-hacking devices to thwart invasions of privacy. My Culture of Fiction group came up with an LED entertainment system for the mass-transit trains, pop-up theaters for small groups, and larger venues for virtual-reality events. The group also envisioned education as a strictly online social media activity, organic food for the wealthy, and synthetic yet visually alluring food for the masses. The other groups included Architecture of Fiction, Design of Fiction, and the Reality of Fiction, which dreamt up genetically modified pets known as petzillas as well as clothes that harvest water vapor and transmit it to the body, thereby removing the need to physically drink.

McDowell divides the process of world building into Inception (in which the world is developed), Prototyping (in which it is tested and visualized), Manufacturing (in which it is produced and captured), and Finishing (in which it is completed in post and experienced by its audience). While the interactive conference I participated in represents only the Inception phase, world building's successive steps bring more and more people into the collaboration—writers, set designers, and artists all working together to create a compelling, visually interesting narrative within this container. A screenwriter, for example, could create a narrative that tackles the balance of utopia and dystopia in this future L.A., focusing on the impact of differing food quality between social classes, while small details such as clothes, dialect, and overall design could be informed by concepts created by the Reality of Fiction and Design of Fiction groups.

As the LA 2020 project continues to evolve in transmedia projects at USC and the 5D Institute, it may start to shape the city. After all, as Intel futurist John Seely Brown notes, "World building is the reality of the future."

Bill Desowitz is the founder and editor of Immersed in Movies.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io