World Building is a narrative design methodology. Media and other industries demand new stories and structures — no longer driven by linear, productionline processes. The worlds we build are laboratories for new ideas: immersive experiments in storytelling as an ongoing, emergent condition.

World builders collaborate across disciplines and with emerging synthetic intelligence, prototyping multiple futures and designing spatial environments that support shifting, adaptive, and interconnected stories.

In IML 575, we invite students to engage fully with world building in the intricate world of Planet JUNK.

Students dismantle the world they currently inhabit and build a society 300 years in the future — developing new systems, cultures, environments, and stories that move beyond linear narrative. The storyworld they generate does more than imagine the future: it tests possibilities, reframes the familiar, and expands how we ideate, collaborate, prototype, and build.

At the end of the semester, each student produces individual narrative journeys from the world of JUNK that seed immersive and virtual production.

IML 575 is a 2-unit elective open to graduate and PhD students, with SCA division's priority. No D-clearance is needed to enroll. Undergraduate enrollment is permitted on a case-by-case basis with departmental advisor approval. Skills in game engine, 3D modeling, animation, and AI are encouraged but not essential.

IML 575 is strongly recommended as a pathway to virtual production courses CTPR 544, CTPR 514, CTPR 524, CTPR 533, and CTPR 587.

 

Contact Information

Name: Division of Media Arts and Practice
Email: map@cinema.usc.edu
Phone: 213.821.5700