The upcoming conference 5D: The Future of Immersive Design identifies 5D as a new approach called immersive design, which uses digital tools to design immersively in virtual space.

Alex McDowell (Watchmen, Bee Movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Minority Report), the production designer who's been on the cutting edge of the new paradigm shift for digital workflow, discusses the new conference that he's spearheaded: 5D: The Future of Immersive Design (http://www.5dconference.com), Oct. 4-5 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, California State University at Long Beach. The keynote speaker is Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, who will discuss the cultural process of convergence. Autodesk is the presenting sponsor, and AWN is sponsoring one of the workshops, "Pervasive Previs: How to Achieve More Immersive Visualization," moderated by VFXWorld editor Bill Desowitz, Oct. 4 from 1:00-3:00 pm. Desowitz gets a 5D sneak peek from McDowell.

Bill Desowitz: Let's start with what 5D is and how it relates to this conference.

Alex McDowell: 5D is a conference based on the notion that design practice is changing to a large extent on the rapid change in technology and digital tools. And as designers have adopted more and more the 3D visual design tools, they have actually created commonality between various forms of media, so what 5D does is identify a new approach to design called immersive design, which uses digital tools to design immersively in virtual space, creating a collaborative workspace that effectively pre-envisions and visualizes the final product for the immersive experience. So there's a much closer connection between the design experience and the design practice and the user experience and the user practice. So immersive design effectively describes both the beginning process and the end result of the process, and its relationship to the audience or user.

And in the process of describing and defining the immersive design approach to this broader field, we've had to define the space within which the immersive designer works and can move freely. So traditionally there has been a separation between five distinct forms of narrative media: film, television, animation, interactive and gaming and architecture. Because of the development of this new toolset and a new mindset for the designer, the artificial boundaries -- the membrane between each of those different media -- has essentially dissolved.

BD: A convergence…

AM: Exactly. So there's a convergence between these large and separate industries, at least on the landscape of design. And it may be simply described as a practice of world building that is applied equally to each of those spaces. You design and build a world in architecture for the occupier to experience. You design and build a world in gaming for the user to become immersed in. And you design and build a world in animation, TV or film, again, for the audience to be immersed in, even if the experiences are radically different.

Alex McDowell spearheads the conference. The production designer has been on the cutting edge of the new paradigm shift for digital workflow and recently worked on the highly-anticipated Watchmen. © Warner Bros.

BD: And this is different from many the other disciplines...

AM: Right. It's not the same for a director or a cinematographer or a writer: the people who have traditionally strong and central roles in film but don't necessarily maintain those same roles in games and interactive media. But a designer essentially does. If one imagines a narrative developed in a multiplayer space, for example, that is architecturally mediated, so there's an architect designer in building the environments virtually, there's a narrative involved that is user-driven. How do you build that narrative or how do you control that narrative? And how do you write stories completely in an immersive, interactive, non-linear space? You do it by making the environment intelligent. You do it by making the environment a trigger for story. And that's a very different idea from the traditional linear approach to storytelling.

BD: Let's talk about the new digital workflow paradigm.

AM: There is no linear and there really is no pre-production, production and post-production anymore. There is just a single environment within which the film, the game, the piece of architecture is developed, and it starts with a core idea and one builds on that section by section. As ideas become more concrete, you essentially add more detail to that central idea. It expands in a completely non-linear way globally in all directions, feeding information out and receiving information in to the central design hub, which is a collaborative space that allows a director and a game designer or an architect or an engineer: all of the people who are involved in making that piece of art or that product. They are all able to dip in and out of this immersive, non-linear workspace. And it develops intuitively. It's much closer in many ways to the traditional fine arts practice than the far more [conventional], media-based practice like 2D animation or traditional filmmaking or traditional architecture.