Faculty Research
Research Initiatives
Change Making Media Lab
The Change Making Media Lab [CMML] is an emerging organization whose mission is to foster positive social and environmental change by promoting research on effective media techniques and creating strategic high-impact cinema, television and multi-media visual imagery to inspire individuals, organizations and communities into action.
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Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab
The USC Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab is a research space and think tank where new concepts in game design, play, and usability can be developed, prototyped and play tested in an environment separate from the timelines and constraints of commercial game development. Under the direction of Associate Professor Tracy Fullerton, the goal of the lab is to nurture concepts that push games beyond their currently defined genres, markets and play patterns and to make breakthroughs in these areas that will be valuable to lab sponsors and the industry on the whole.
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Entertainment Technology Center
The Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California [ETC-USC] is an Organized Research Unit within the School of Cinematic Arts. Its mission is to study entertainment technology developments that are critical to the creative community, production companies, content owners, distributors and exhibitors and technology companies.
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IMD Co-Design Lab
The Interactive Media Division (IMD) Collaborative Design Lab (Co-Design Lab) supports the research projects of IMD faculty on new modes of interactivity. Founded and directed by Anne Balsamo since 2007, the lab currently supports several faculty research efforts in stereographic cinema (Perry Hoberman), immersive media (Mark Bolas), mobile storytelling (Scott S. Fisher), tangible culture (Anne Balsamo), and public interactives (Anne Balsamo). The lab also hosts several novel interacitves including a state-of-the-art gesture-based interactive system called "The G-Speak System" that was donated to SCA by Oblong Industries. During 2008-2009, Anne Balsamo and her research team worked on a MacArthur Foundation-sponsored research project on the "Future of Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age." During 2009-2010, Balsamo and IMD colleagues and students will design and prototype new modes of public interactives.
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Institute for Multimedia Literacy
The Institute for Multimedia Literacy is an organized research unit dedicated to developing educational programs and conducting research on the changing nature of literacy in a networked culture. The IML’s educational programs promote effective and expressive communication and scholarly production through the use of multiple media applications and tools. The IML also supports faculty-directed research that seeks to transform the nature of scholarship within the disciplines.
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Labyrinth Project
The Labyrinth Project is a research initiative on interactive narrative. Created and led by cultural theorist Marsha Kinder since 1997, Labyrinth has been working at the pressure point between theory and practice. With digital media artists Rosemary Comella, Kristy H.A. Kang and Scott Mahoy, Kinder has been producing award-winning database documentaries that juxtapose fictional and historical narratives in provocative ways. In the process they have invented a new form of digital scholarship that combines cultural history and artistic practice. They design their works as interactive transmedia networks—installations, DVD-ROMs, and Web sites—that grow out of productive collaborations with artists, scholars, scientists, students, archivists, museums and other cultural institutions.
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USC Games Institute
The USC Games Institute is a recently developed Organized Research Unit that serves as an internal nexus to bring together game-related research and development threads at USC, and serves externally as a portal between USC and industry to provide a single point of access to USC research in this area. A primary mission of the USC Games Institute is to provide an interdisciplinary venue for research, development and education on the future of interactive games, with focus on science, technology, and design for both entertainment and serious purpose.
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Warner Bros Archives
Donated to USC by Warner Communications in 1977, the USC Warner Bros. Archives (WBA) is the largest and possibly the richest single studio collection of paper documents in the world. It is the only collection to bring production, distribution and exhibition records together to document the activities of a vertically integrated studio. In the archives' collection, the making of many classic films — including The Jazz Singer, Casablanca and Rebel Without a Cause — is documented from story acquisition through theatrical release, including daily contributions of actors, directors, producers and writers.
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Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
The Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive is comprised of approximately 70,000 motion picture negatives, magnetic sound elements, release prints and a growing percentage of moving image materials in digital formats. The archive's collection of USC student films provides a unique opportunity for current production students to study the works of USC alumni to find inspiration, renewed confidence and a sense of history. The student film collection houses both the original camera negative and release prints of many USC alumni who have become leaders in the film industry today, as well as the works of many other young filmmakers who are soon to make their distinctive marks on the motion picture and television industry. The archive also holds a research collection of commercial feature films, television programs, educational films and shorts to support the school's academic mission.
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