Videos

Highlight clips from the 2016 FoST Summit

In the spirit of participation and inspiration, the FoST Summit aims to break the fourth wall and make attendees a vital part of the event.

The streets of Snug Harbor reflect the light from the street lamps. VICKI enters the frame running, coming to a sudden stop against a lamppost. Her hand rests on her forehead in a feigned post of exhaustion. ROY enters, breathing hard.

Future of StoryTelling Founder & Director Charles Melcher on the age of immersion.

The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) Festival 2017 is here!

The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) was founded on the belief that stories—in the broadest sense of the word—shape the meaning and momentum of everyday life.

Koblin's remarkable oeuvre demonstrates in the most vivid ways imaginable the infinite artistic and narrative possibilities of crowdsourced digital creation and autonomous storytelling.

Gaming industry veteran Alan Gershenfeld partnered with Amy Fredeen of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council to transform IÐupiaq stories into an award-winning video game.

Master Production Designer Alex McDowell explores how lessons learned from fictional world-building can be applied to the real world.

When ordinary objects are imbued with the power to tell their own stories, they become active participants in their surroundings and transform the way we interact with the world around us.

Alexis McGill Johnson, Executive Director and cofounder of the Perception Institute, believes that in order to overcome implicit bias we need to look at the science of bias.

This film reveals Andrea Phillips's journey of discovery in becoming...

Using artificial intelligence to enhance digital stories will be a challenge, but Andrew Stern lays out the ground rules for making the most of AI in storytelling.

Matt Brown, CEO of The Imaginarium Studios and Andy Lanning, Executive Creative Director from Magic Leap discuss the exciting potential performance capture and MR will unlock for storytellers.

Angela Ahrendts shares how brands can effectively target millennials and engage global audiences through digitally-led authentic and emotive storytelling.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth explains how what we perceive isn’t an accurate reflection of a real, externally existing world—and what this means for storytelling.

Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo, thinks the power of video has a strong connection to the human desire for real and unedited experiences.

Barnaby Churchill Steel, cofounder of Marshmallow Laser Feast, believes the power of virtual reality lies in its ability to make the invisible visible and the impossible possible.

Our senses tell us stories about the world. Our perceptions evolved to interpret those stories—and understanding how will help us create meaning in our lives.

Physicist Benedetto Vigna explains how the mass production of tiny electronic sensors is allowing us to augment our senses like never before. We now have...

GE CMO Beth Comstock emphasizes that connecting with your audience through an authentic, personal story...

World-renowned architect Bjarke Ingels refers to his projects as “promiscuous hybrids”—they combine seemingly disparate elements and turn fiction into fact.

LARP (Live Action Role Playing) allows you to step into a character’s shoes and engage all of your senses alongside other people to create intense and emotionally engaging stories.

Bobby Jones, coauthor of Good is the New Cool, walks us through seven principles that brands need to follow in order to find their purpose and deliver on it.

Brent Bushnell, CEO and roustabout of Two Bit Circus, has developed the world's first permanent micro-amusement park.

For generations, the relationship between storyteller and audience has been largely one-sided, but...

Bands and brands have one thing in commonÑtheir consumers. Brands can't advertise like they used to, and bands need more than...

“People say teens don’t read…I have some evidence to suggest completely otherwise,” says Candice Faktor. Wattpad has revolutionized the way novels are created and consumed. As a social platform, Wattpad offers writers an outlet to share their voice and have their stories resonate with a larger community, while allowing global access through mobile devices.

Experience designers are taking cues from neuroscientists and purposefully activating certain senses in order to enhance experiences.

Chet Faliszek, who has written some of the most loved video games of all time, is creating a new kind of game—one that uses AI to create deep characters and a world that allows players complete agency.

Chris Charla explains how the democratization of game development tools is leading to an explosion of more diverse games with richer narratives.

Chris Milk's work challenges the boundaries of technology, integrates the digital world into the physical one, and feels, at its core, deeply personal and human.

Chris Plutte explains how sharing cross-cultural stories breaks down stereotypes and stigmas and builds empathy.

Societal problems like racism and inequality can often feel overwhelming. Clint Smith sees understanding and empathy as...

Corey May aims to break down the conventional tension between the "story" of the game and the "playing" of the game, with the goal of creating a more immersive video game experience.

Curtis Hickman, Chief Creative Officer and founder of The VOID, uses his background in magic to create fully immersive, location-based mixed reality experiences that merge virtual and physical environments.

OK Go’s stratospheric success represents an epoch-defining shift in the way music and music videos—which together constitute one of the most visceral kinds of storytelling—are made.

One year after her first Google+ Hangout concert, Daria Musk is singing for some 2 million fans...

David Carey, President of Hearst Magazines, looks ahead to the future of publishing and digital strategy, while reflecting on how he guided the world’s largest publisher of monthly magazines through its transition to the digital age.

David Droga, founder and creative chairman of Droga5, believes good strategy is a creative’s best friend.

David Weinberger identifies the cardinal challenge of the storyteller in the age of networked knowledge: to expose us to points of view other than our own, to free us from the "echo chamber" of narratives that merely reinforce what we already know or believe.

Derek DelGaudio, writer, performance artist, and magician, investigates how magic can still exist in a world where technology can unveil even the most hidden of secrets.

Douglas Eck, research scientist and lead for Google Brain's Magenta team, is teaching computers how to generate their own music, video, images, and text.

For the first time in human history, science and technology have caught up with the imagination, introducing tools to decode the mind.

Dr. Michael Wesch studies how our evolution from a literate culture to a digital one can return us to our heritage of collaborative storytelling...

Eddy Moretti, Chief Creative Officer at VICE, argues that the past decade has been defined by changes in access to information.

After the election of Donald Trump, an international conversation began around the role of the media, and broader themes of authority, and truth.

Fabien Riggall created Secret Cinema with the intention of letting audiences "step inside the world of a film." The audience becomes the hero and the stageÑthey interact with one another and with the film, bringing the adventure to life.

Felix Barrett's productions transform existing architectural spaces into interactive theater pieces in order to disrupt the traditional, formulaic, and passive theater model. They demand the attention of all five senses.

The promise of augmented reality is not to replace our reality, but to enhance our natural environments and facilitate greater learning and communication than ever.

D. Fox Harrell, Professor of Digital Media in Comparative Media Studies and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, is working to create new forms of computational narrative that are free from human biases and stereotypes.

When Franklin Leonard created the Black List, he started remaking Hollywood into a place where content rules and diversity is rewarded.

By layering digital information over the real world, augmented reality transforms the entire world into an interface we can intuitively discover and interact with.

Gigi Pritzker, CEO of Madison Wells Media (MWM), believes that when creators cross-pollinate between film, TV, live events, VR, etc., they are able to work more efficiently and grow their brand in more engaging ways.

Disney animator Glen Keane created some of the world's most memorable characters; now he shares the secrets to his success and his excitement about the potential of new technologies.

Grace Boyle, founder and Director of The Feelies, believes that opening up greater realms of our perception for storytelling–painting with more of that sensory palette–can allow audiences to form intuition and connect with the experiences of others and the world around them.

The ability to receive real-time feedback from fans gave self-published author Hugh Howey a space to create that resulted in a New York Times best-selling novel.

Social media has profoundly changed how people consume content, says Ian Schafer. Today, the biggest stories are the ones light and nimble enough to travel far and wide across the vast shared communities of social media.

Jade Raymond, Group General Manager for Electronic Arts, has overseen the development of some of the gaming world’s most successful franchises and explores what it means to blur the line between creator and audience.

Jaime Robinson has pioneered a series of "social films" that rely on audience participation via social media platforms. The creation of the story becomes a collaborative process, rather than a one-directional presentation.

Online and mobile platforms have allowed everyday people to share experiences with an audience on a scale never before...

Smartphones have put a radio in every pocket, making audio storytelling more emotional, educational, and effective than ever before.

How can individuals explore information, think independently and creatively and express their ideas if they feel they are being monitored?

Jamie Gutfreund has drawn up a full personality profile for the people who will soon be ruling the world: Generation Z.

Stories are always evolving, now more than everÑand today, we can finally actively engage with fictional worlds as we experience them.

Jeffrey Seller has devoted his life to creating powerful stories on the stage. He believes that in our present digital age, the unique excitement of live entertainment is more valuable than ever.

We assume happiness is stable, an endpoint to achieve. But Jennifer Aaker and her colleagues have discovered our ideas of happiness change over the course of our lives.

Dr. Jennifer Aaker studies the psychology of time, money and happiness.

Cress discusses why Nat Geo’s approach is to engage people around shared passions, and to spotlight the individuals who have something to teach us. The goal, always, is to create opportunities for audiences to join the discussion.

Jim Marggraff is paving the way for a future in which we navigate the digital world primarily through sight, the same way we do the natural world.

For Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, empathy has been the driving force in both his career and his approach to product design.

As head of Comedy, Drama, and Virtual Reality at Amazon Studios, Joe Lewis is one of the visionaries spearheading the new paradigm for how we watch television—one that is becoming increasingly immersive.

As one of the world’s top experts on how advertising is evolving in today’s digital world, Joe Marchese explores how new digital tools can target consumers with strong content that truly engages them.

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Inc. and creator of Pokémon GO, is coming up with new forms of entertainment that are helping us return to our natural, social states.

John Maeda discusses how successful leaders apply design thinking and start with storylistening before they get to storytelling.

John S. Johnson explores how computational social science and data science are giving storytellers unprecedented tools to accurately assess the social impacts of their storiesÑand become better storytellers in the process.

With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, Jonah Sachs explores...

Jonathan Josephson, founder and CTO of Quantum Interface, envisions a world in which devices react to people's natural movements.

Jose Antonio Vargas, founder and CEO of Define American, is using he power of storytelling and his unique background to shift the conversation on immigration, citizenship, and identity in America.

Jules Urbach is engineering a world in which anyone can be a creator and anything you imagine can be effortlessly brought to life in fantastic visual detail.

Justin Sanchez, director of the Biotechnologies Office for DARPA, is changing the future of how humans use their brains.

Karen Palmer, an award-winning multidisciplinary immersive filmmaker, believes a new type of storytelling is needed in order to shift people’s perspectives and make a difference in the world.

Karina Wilsher, Global COO of Anomaly, believes that in order to produce content that better reflects our world, brands need to harness the differing viewpoints and life experiences of their team.

Unlike theater or a concert, where the audience watches together, TV provided...

The great challenge in the Big Data era is understanding the stories the numbers tell and, just as important, connecting the right people with the right stories.

In the vast, amorphous group of people formerly known as the "audience," Lance Weiler sees thousands of imaginations waiting to be ignited, thousands of...

We all have our own personal narratives and a desire to find meaning in our lives. Sharing these stories has the potential to inspire conversations and unlock deeper insights.

Linc Gasking, cofounder of 8i, is bringing the world of AR to your phone with 8i's Holo app.

Linda Boff, CMO of GE, believes corporations need to be human in order to market themselves effectively.

Lisa Donovan, one of the cofounders of Maker Studios and a self-made YouTube star, believes that self-produced content is causing a sea change in the film and TV industry.

Loc Dao, chief digital officer of the National Film Board of Canada, is spearheading the NFB's approach to interactive and digital storytelling.

Mixed reality brings digital content into your real world, opening unprecedented opportunities to enhance emotional connection through storytelling.

We've always told stories—it's part of our humanity—but how those stories are created and shared is changing all the time.

Games are engines for making stories, says Margaret Robertson. We need to let them go free range. If you build a captivating world and give players interesting rules, then they'll tell a thousand stories for you.

Popova believes it's the storyteller's role to interpret information and shape it into wisdom for the rest of the culture to share.

Marije Vogelzang uses food as a storytelling device to explore people's memories and communicate their stories, taking advantage of taste and smell's unique power to bypass the processing parts of our brain and connect with our emotional self.

Mark Sagar, CEO of Soul Machines, wants you to imagine a future with emotionally intelligent, digital humans.

Virtual reality has the opportunity to change people’s lives and allow them to see what is possible.

Artist Matt Adams's work playfully explores the storytelling potential of new technologies. His present fascination is big data. How will stories...

Melissa Bell sheds light on how to find digital-advertising strategies that work for advertisers, news organizations, and readers, with trust and transparency at the core.

Meow Wolf cofounder and director Vince Kadlubek and senior creative producer Marsi Gray discuss the company's new Omega Mart experience in Las Vegas and how immersive storytelling holds the potential to transform individuals and society.

Cofounder and head of brand at RYOT, Molly Swenson is revolutionizing the way that news stories are told.

The cognitive system IBM Watson and its powerful machine learning have been put to use for everything from business applications to creating recipes. Nancy Pearson explores how Watson can be used as a creative tool and put to use by human storytellers.

Nonny de la Peña is an immersive journalism pioneer who uses virtual reality to tell nonfiction narratives. Witnessing these powerful stories firsthand evokes a personal and emotional reaction that is not as easily harnessed by traditional journalism.

Paul Zak studies the neurochemical roots of decision-making and behavioral economics, and offers...

Virtual reality directly engages with you, and making it interactive opens up new frontiers for learning, communication, and storytelling.

Philip Rosedale anticipates a future where we spend most of our waking time in virtual worlds. His company, High Fidelity, is creating the building blocks of a virtual universe.

Rachel Shechtman has taken lessons from digital retailÑthe importance of community engagement and constant reinventionÑand used them to make a physical space into a full-fledged experience.

Rachel Tipograph, CEO of MikMak, walks us through some best practices for how brands can create social media content that leads to sales.

User-generated online videos are “the world’s largest natural resource.” News organizations and brands must learn how to take advantage of this.

Technology is becoming more emotionally intelligent. Soon, our digital stories will adapt and change based on the audience’s reactions.

Richelle Parham and her team of marketers can look at the transaction history of eBay's millions of sellers and buyers, look at the relationships they build with each other, and see stories emerge.

Cartoon Network is leading a radical shift away from classic episodic TV storytelling toward a more collaborative, participatory process that threads stories over many digital platforms.

Robert Wong never imagined he would be influencing the future of scientific development—and yet he does just that, breaking down the boundary between art and science by creating stories that inspire engineers and the technology they build.

MIT professor Rosalind Picard is the foremost expert on "affective computing." Her groundbreaking research uses computers...

Ryan Leslie, creator of Superphone, believes that technology can help us better track and optimize our social interactions, making sure that we’re investing in the right relationships— which in turn can help us achieve our life goals and become our best selves.

In his work as Chief Technology Officer of the USC Shoah Foundation, Sam Gustman has pioneered data preservation techniques that will allow the testimonies of 55,000 genocide survivors to exist and be accessible for future generations.

Sarah Wood, Cofounder and COO of marketing technology company Unruly, debunks common myths about what it takes to make a video go viral.

Virtual reality's new storytellers are just beginning to understand how to break down the fourth wall and make you the center of the story.

Scott Dadich offers a guide to a new ecosystem where web, mobile, tablet, and print content support each otherÑand take advantage of each platform's strength.

With interactive digital programs and apps like Bjork's Biophilia, Scott Snibbe aims to reconnect music with its audience. His work...

Powerful experiences arise when audiences are encouraged to direct stories themselvesÑcreating surprising, impactful narratives that even their creators couldn't imagine.

Successful marketing is a combination of art and hard data science that results in personally resonant narratives.

Shannon Loftis designs video game technology that centers “around full-body motion”– reading the movements, facial expressions, and even the heartbeat of the player.

Sherwin Siy works at the intersection where the laws governing copyright and sale of physical goods collide with the growing demands of...

Sri Kosuri and a team of Harvard synthetic-biology researchers successfully encoded the contents of an entire digital book—words, images, Java files, and more—in about a milligram of living DNA.

Steve Stoute, founder and CEO of Translation, considers how diversity and inclusion have informed his role as a marketer and communicator.

Dr. Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, director of the Games and Virtual Environments Lab at the University of Georgia, has found that we are more likely to perceive a VR experience as one that actually happened to us, therefore giving it the capacity to shape our future behavior in a way that other media cannot.

Susan Bonds, CEO and Cofounder of 42 Entertainment, is a trailblazer in the field of "connected immersion." Her team creates stories that...

Technology now lets anyone easily create high-quality 3D models, democratizing digital creation and erasing the line between the physical and the virtual.

Filmmaker and Webby Award Founder Tiffany Shlain compares the Internet to a child's developing brain. The Internet is in an early stage of development, and...

Tim Kring, writer of the hit TV series Heroes, discusses his latest project, "The Conspiracy for Good," an exploration in leveraging audience engagement to create positive social action.

Mobile "phone-and-drone" journalism is changing the way news is...

Big brands are putting stories firstÑproducing multiple content streams covering a broad range of genresÑand are taking over the societal niche once occupied by traditional TV networks.

Netflix VP of Product Innovation Todd Yellin and his team devised a system to cut through the clutter and match viewers with the stories they'll love.

Technological advances have made it possible for films to be interactive, putting the power...

Vince Kadlubek, CEO of Meow Wolf, believes that we are living in a crisis of imagination, where so much of the world is copied and pasted—but with the rise of immersive formats like AR, all of that is about to change.

Vivienne Ming, CEO of Socos, believes that technology can help us be our best selves by augmenting our potential.

Wendy Calhoun, writer and executive producer at Edgewood Place Entertainment, refuses to tell color-blind stories.

Jonah, Ze, and Michael are collaborating to reinvent what it means to be a media company in the twenty-first century.

In 2012, Adobe approached FoST with the desire to change the perception of its company, both internally and externally. They wanted to supplement their stature as a software developer for creative professionals by delivering an inspiring message that would resonate with a general audience and bolster a sense of pride within the company.

Game narratives must be willing to leave room for the player as co-creator in order to create more fully immersive, emotionally-resonant story experiences.