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Lionsgate Entertainment World: A First Year of Many “Firsts”

Jeremy Thompson

One year ago, on July 31st, 2019, Lionsgate Entertainment World in Zhuhai, China opened its doors to the world. Created in partnership between Thinkwell with film studio Lionsgate, developer Lai Sun of Hong Kong, and park operator Village Roadshow, this one-of-a-kind indoor theme park features twenty unique guest activities including rides, shows, attractions, and interactive experiences inspired by popular Lionsgate blockbuster film franchises The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga, The Divergent Series, Now You See Me, Escape Plan, and Gods of Egypt. Thinkwell worked closely with computer animation house Framestore, VR attraction groups CAVU Designwerks and Dreamcraft Attractions, and many other global partners to bring the park to life.

To celebrate the first anniversary of that achievement, as well as the park’s recent June 2020 reopening under revised health and safety guidelines, we’ll take a look back at the extraordinary number of worldwide “firsts” Lionsgate Entertainment World represented.

Foremost among these “firsts” was that Lionsgate Entertainment World became the world’s first vertical theme park, at nearly 250,000 square feet (24,000 square meters) stacked over four levels.

What exactly does a vertical theme park mean? The concept isn’t entirely without precedent—other theme parks have included multi-level indoor zones, and several urban entertainment centers have included a mix of interactive experiences within a vertical design. But Lionsgate Entertainment World was the first to take the kinds of immersive environments and signature attractions you’d find at a major theme park, including roller coasters and dark rides, and design the entire experience within a 100% vertical framework.

This verticality required a radically different approach to many of the fundamentals of theme park design, particularly to the organization of the park and its theme zones. Many theme parks use a “hub and spoke” master plan to orient guests within the park, in which the various themed environments are organized radially around a central icon, allowing guests to intuitively orient themselves within the park.

The solution was to re-imagine the hub as an immense central atrium connecting all of the levels, by which guests could visually orient and physically move throughout the vertical space. The icon that attracts guests to this central space had to likewise fit the unique vertical philosophy of the park. Dubbed the “media chandelier,” this icon boasts a three-story, eight-ton, cylindrically shaped media installation using eight curved LED screens that are in constant motion. The glass and metal surfaces surrounding the atrium reflect the dynamic media, creating a 360-degree experience that’s not only an engineering marvel but also a mesmerizing sight to behold.

Lionsgate Entertainment World also provided an excellent opportunity to experiment with new technologies and storytelling techniques that could take advantage of the stacked vertical space. Engineering a vertical theme park meant that traditional large iron rides weren’t feasible, so Thinkwell had to devise more innovative media- and story-driven experiences to thrill its audience… which created many more “firsts” along the way!

Attractions based on virtual reality and gamified interactives, often associated with lower capacity upcharge experiences at theme parks, here are not only included in the base ticket price but serve as flagship experiences to represent Lionsgate’s most important franchises. These include The Twilight Saga: Midnight Ride, the world’s first high capacity interactive virtual reality experience to open as a major theme park attraction and the world’s first purpose-built VR roller coaster, Gods of Egypt: Battle for Eternity, that uses its vertical space limitations to its advantage.

Additional innovations in the park were realized when creating a 4D simulator ride based on The Hunger Games franchise. Mockingjay Flight Rebel Escape provided new 3D layering illusions and in-cabin effects. For the media-enhanced dark ride The Twilight Saga: Bella’s Journey, Thinkwell’s design and production team combined squinching media, animatronics, mapped projections, and physical scenery to create an incredible retelling of Bella’s story from the blockbuster film.

Yet other attractions were the first to use technology or interactive concepts as part of a signature theme park experience, from high-tech escape rooms (Escape Plan: Prison Break), a team-based VR walkthrough experience (Divergent: Dauntless Fear Simulator), and countless smaller gamified digital interactive experiences hidden throughout the themed environments.

The park’s dining and retail offerings are just as experiential, whether it’s getting a makeover at Capitol Couture & Cosmetics from The Hunger Games, or solving a mystery with media and magic while grabbing a drink in the Oculus Lounge, based on the Now You See Me franchise. Collectively, the experiences at Lionsgate Entertainment World represent perhaps the biggest achievement: to integrate a deep level of participatory, technology-enhanced interaction within the entire theme park design, representing the first-of-its-kind in an entirely new genre of immersive themed entertainment.

That’s a lot of firsts for a single theme park to achieve in its first year of operation, yet as we celebrate one year of Lionsgate Entertainment World, and reflect on all the ups and downs the world has seen during that time, we know that it isn’t so much the primacy of “being first” that’s important, but the inspiration it gives to those who might follow.

Connecting Pixels and Theme Parks Part 1: Attraction Design and Thirty Flights of Loving (2012)

Jeremy Thompson

The crossover between theme park design and video game design is no secret. Besides sharing many of the same fans and, more recently, intellectual properties, both are unique among art forms in that they require a degree of audience agency to navigate their spaces and advance their stories. However, because absolute freedom of agency would be nearly impossible to combine with effective storytelling, both theme park designers and game designers each have their own set of tools and techniques to help guide players or guests through their story-worlds in ways that are both efficient and entertaining.

How do you control viewsheds so people will be clued in on where to go next in what’s otherwise an open-world environment? How do you make that mountain appear bigger or further away than it actually is? When do you give people more agency, and when do you want to restrict them through a carefully crafted story beat?

As a theme park designer, it’s always exciting to play a video game and recognize techniques we use in our practical environments inside a virtual game environment. We even often look to video games for inspiration in solving some of our own design challenges.

There are two games in particular that I often find myself referencing when I think about what qualities could signal the future of theme park design; the first in relation to linear storytelling as on a dark ride, the second in relation to environmental storytelling as in a themed land. Both are relatively experimental independent titles that buck many of the established norms of gameplay and storytelling, and I highly recommend both whether you’re interested in theme park or video game design or simply looking for a fun distraction while we’re all trying to socially distance.

* * *

The first of these games is Thirty Flights of Loving, which debuted in 2012 by Blendo Games (essentially a one-man effort by Brendon Chung), self-described as a “Video Game Short Story”:

The game takes approximately fifteen minutes to complete, and is almost entirely linear with extremely limited player agency; you can decide when to move forward, but not how to move forward. It tells the story of a budding yet potentially dangerous romance at the center of a planned airport heist that goes wrong. Although told entirely from a first-person POV, Thirty Flights of Loving wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, in particular the work of Wong Kar-wai (Chungking Express, Ashes of Time), with its nonlinear storyline, bold color palette, inventive choreography, and elusive narrative that combines popular genre storytelling with arthouse flair.

Yet the limited agency it does afford to the player’s first-person perspective is essential to making this more than just a first-person short film. I feel more invested in the fate of the characters, even if that fate is ultimately out of my hands. The self-directed pace allows me to linger over small details that build the world during slower-paced scenes. A similar effect plays out in dark ride attraction design. Even though I have no control over which direction the vehicle goes, I do feel some responsibility within the story because I’m not removed to a third-person perspective like I am in cinema. I must have played through Thirty Flights of Loving at least a dozen times. Individual scenes played out with intoxicating precision and emotional clarity, yet reassembling the entire non-linear storyline left me with more questions than answers. Of course, like a good dark ride, this encouraged me to experience it again to find alternate interpretations.

After a couple of plays, I realized that the structure of the game could be almost perfectly adapted as an attraction design for a dark ride.

It begins with a long queue-like passageway through several connected rooms into a hidden safehouse, all of which conveys essential exposition about the characters and world they inhabit, through techniques familiar to theme park fans: “found” objects and props laid out in a deliberately sequential order, framed news clippings to pause and read, even a short “preshow” animated sequence introducing the two primary supporting characters. (In a developer commentary, Chung even directly states his influence by theme park design techniques such as forced perspective to build these sets in digital space.) The intro sequence ends when you climb inside a seaplane (like a ride vehicle) and you’re immediately launched into the narrative action.

Likewise, once things come to a (literal) crashing halt at the end of the main narrative, you’re unexpectedly thrown into a museum hallway filled with “artifacts” from the story, which you wander through, free to chew over some of the lingering questions these exhibits present, or to just rush straight to the final endpoint. One would expect the theme park version to contain a gift shop in this exit corridor, but putting that aside, this slightly surreal sequence does provide inspiration for how an exit corridor could be used as the true “final beat” of an attraction’s storyline, and not just a means to return guests to the midway.

As for that main narrative, its brevity and elusiveness is perhaps why I find it such a compelling parallel to dark ride storytelling. Trying to tell a complete story in a few minutes across a limited number of scenes is tough, and many dark rides fall into the trap of trying to condense a story by stripping everything down to the narrative’s bones, resulting in an experience that can feel hurried and confusing. Thirty Flights of Loving, by contrast, borrows the lessons of successful short fiction by using its limited time to establish tone and emotional pacing amid what’s otherwise an exceedingly simple story of a tragic romance. For all its crazy action, the scene I best remember takes place in the early dawn light as the lead characters silently share a box of tangerines on a balcony… a communal moment of tranquility the game’s designer included to recall his own memories of sharing tangerines with family.

“Story” is more than just a narrative, and the game’s focus on crafting emotionally resonant moments within a narrative structure that could be rearranged like a Rubik’s cube is what kept me coming back, again and again. And that kind of repeatability is what every attraction design should aspire to.

If Thirty Flights of Loving provided an inspired insight into linear interactive storytelling within the relatively compact confines of attraction design, the next part will examine a very different game for inspiration on the expansive open possibilities of design for an entire theme park. Look for the second half of this series to be published next week!

The Grove: Google Experience Center

Thinkwell Group

The Grove Experience Center has recently been awarded a 2020 World Class Center Award from ABPM, as well as an IES Award of Merit for Interior Lighting Design. Congratulations to our teams and partners who brought this incredible project to life!

Google had developed and built a variety of brand and corporate briefing centers around the world, aimed at different tiers of customers and types of engagement, from their BrandLabs for more hands-on workshops to Google Partner Plexes for high-level executive briefings. When they identified a gap for their biggest and broadest tier of customers, they came to Thinkwell to design a first-of-its-kind corporate briefing center that could host a wide range of customer and partner focused events.

A new Google campus in Redwood City, California, became home to The Grove, Google Experience Studio’s latest and largest space. For the design, Thinkwell and the Google Experience Studio team took inspiration from the redwood forests of Northern California, a stunning locale unique to the region. The goal was to create an innovative, accessible, and authentic space that built in flexibility while showcasing Google’s position at the cutting edge of technology. Guests to The Grove shouldn’t just walk away excited, but transformed.

Every element of the guest experience at The Grove is intended to be distinctive and memorable, immersing guests in an incredible fusion of nature and technology for an unforgettable guest journey. Thinkwell began by looking to the flora and fauna of the redwood forests. From the immense Redwood Chandelier in the lobby—a massive, custom sculptural and lighting installation built from 3D scans of actual redwoods—to the trillium-bedecked ceiling of the studio space, each room is shaped by playful and beautiful designs drawn from real native plants and animals. The soundscape, lighting, and even scent are carefully crafted to build an inspiring and enveloping experience.

And of course, no Google space would be complete without exciting, technology-driven wows—but Thinkwell’s goal was to ensure the technology was always in service of the story, fully integrating it with the center’s environment to provide interactive and playful moments. Guests might encounter thematic tales of growth and scale when they sit around the Digital Campfire, surrounded by the reactive lighting installation of towering trees and a canopy overhead, or delight in discovering the reactions of the Redwood Trail, an interactive tunnel that uses machine learning algorithms to improvise and play sound and music live based on guest movement and the circadian rhythms of the redwood forest.

From meeting rooms with seamlessly integrated Google technology to subtle design touches inspired by native plants and trees, Thinkwell was excited to explore every detail at The Grove to shape a one-of-a-kind and intensively guest-centric experience.

All Your Favorite Attractions Are Problematic

Cynthia Sharpe

First, it was the rework of the Redhead in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Now, Disney has announced that they will be replacing Disneyland’s Splash Mountain with a Princess and the Frog themed attraction, which picks up after the end of the movie and weaves a new story (akin to the Frozen ride reskin of Maelstrom at EPCOT, versus the movie recap experience of Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure).

Obviously, no matter what warm, fuzzy memories we have of Splash Mountain, no matter how much Disney tried to round the edges of the overt racism, the reality is, it’s based on such a stupendously racist and white supremacist storyline that Disney refuses to air Song of the South and so boy howdy was it beyond time for it to go. One of the chief problems we encounter as creatives in location-based entertainment is this clash of memory, “that’s just how it was back then,” “it will cost so much/upset the fans to change it” versus the knowledge that it’s harmful and needs to change.

We get it. It’s an investment. A huge one. Just like any of a number of other resorts, rides, shows, and exhibitions around the U.S., not to mention the world. To give them their due, Disney also has amply demonstrated they know how to concede curatorial authority, as it were. Their intentionality around Expedition Everest as well as core elements of the original Animal Kingdom demonstrates it can be done. Joe Rohde, in his talk at the 2012 THEA awards by the Themed Entertainment Association spoke at length about the Aulani design process, how authenticity and respect were placed ahead of ease and preconceived notions, and actually how easy design decisions can be when they are strongly rooted in authentic, clear direction informed by the actual people and place and not one’s own hot take on the source material.

Don’t get us wrong: we are, no matter how fond our memories are of Splash Mountain, heartened to see Disney take this step. Reworking Splash Mountain is also an absolute rabbit hole (pun not really intended) because once your eyes are opened to the ways – both subtle and categorically unsubtle – that racism pervades narrative tropes and beloved experiences, it’s overwhelming. The soft-focus memories of Dumbo crash up against the knowledge that the lead crow is quite literally named Jim Crow. As you eyeroll at the corny humor of your Jungle Cruise skipper, your boat bobs around a corner and to a horrifyingly racist vignette. It goes on and on: Peter Pan’s original source material was dizzyingly racist about Indigenous people and the ride does not shy away from it; the Enchanted Tiki Room falls into the trap of so much white-washed, culturally-appropriative Polynesia theming; the European children on It’s a Small World are white as can be (and there are Middle Eastern kids on flying carpets); the Africa outpost in Epcot reduces a vibrant swath of an entire continent to a beverage stop, trinket market, and a few drums. These experiences have always been harmful, and it’s an insidious outcome of white privilege to be blind to it. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

This isn’t just a Disney problem. This is an everywhere problem. Racism is everywhere. The normalization of racist tropes is everywhere, from what we collect and how we display it in museums to countless “Wild West” zones in amusement parks to big iconic experiences like Splash Mountain, and thousands of moments in between. We are guilty of it in our body of work, too – there are projects we’ve worked on that, in hindsight, we should have done a little differently. When it comes to what stories are told in our parks and our museums, a large part of that is who’s had a place at the table, for the majority of our industry’s history, to make creative decisions, to greenlight and fund projects, to decide what has value or make a team pause and take stock of what they’re really saying with the stories they’re telling and how they’re telling them. It’s affected by processes and policies, too. At Thinkwell, we’re keenly aware that no matter how good our intentions in the past, we have fallen short at times, and it’s on us to examine what we do and how we do it to ensure we don’t perpetuate racism in our work.

The harmful experiences in location-based entertainment of the past 20-30 years that we cannot unsee weren’t done out of a ‘let’s be racist, it’ll be great!’ mentality. We’re not condemning the creative minds behind these places or experiences. It’s unlikely that the team behind Port Orleans Riverside, as they designed cast member costumes in time for its 1992 opening, thought through the ramifications of their choices in a resort designed to evoke the grand “big houses” of plantations in the Louisiana Bayou (in fact, the resort was initially named Dixie Landings). But the reality is, their ‘mousekeeping’ staff is largely BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), and they’re wearing outfits evocative of enslaved people who were assigned to “the big house”’ on a plantation. If you want a real wake-up call moment, stand on one of the lovely, immaculately landscaped paths in the beautiful antebellum south themed resort at shift change, and watch the staff emerge from the stately, pillared houses.

The re-envisioning of Splash Mountain isn’t reactionary: it is another step in a major, beloved, respected company’s commitment to do better, even at the expense of angered fans and significant capital expenditure. In the current economic climate, spending money to redo existing things probably doesn’t sound like the best plan. But we are the makers of dreams. We are the creators of heroes and villains, we breathe life into whole new worlds and reinvigorate beloved places. Why shouldn’t we spend the time, effort, and yes money, making the places we already have welcoming and inclusive? Why shouldn’t we say ‘this is racist, and it’s wrong of us to keep putting it out there for the public as entertainment or something to aspire to, so we’re fixing it’?

Congratulations to Disney for acknowledging it’s time to change. We look forward to seeing what they – and the rest of the industry, ourselves included – tackle next.

1. Except in Japan, as that park is not owned by Disney and thus they do not have direct control over its content to make a change such as this.

Outdoor Events in the Post-COVID-19 World

Cory Watson, Vice President & Executive Producer, Thinkwell Media

As the world begins to re-emerge from COVID-19 quarantine, we see a resurgence in demand for shared, in-person experiences that follow strict health and safety protocols. Both the Pop-up and Touring Outdoor Event sectors offer opportunities for innovation to meet the needs of the “new normal” era.

The way forward begins with accepting and leaning into that new reality. As the world reopens, maintaining health and safety for all guests will be top priority. But that won’t diminish the need to serve people what they crave: time with others, whether that’s the guests they go out with, or the performers they come to see. In-person experiences can provide a regenerative break from lockdown-induced “screen-burnout” and physical isolation.

Outdoor events in particular are poised for a strong comeback–given the CDC’s latest guidelines indicating that outdoor air circulation mitigates virus transmission–and are thus particularly ripe for reinvention.

There are many possibilities, but let’s look at just one example. Imagine a fresh, traveling take on the (mostly extinct) drive-in movie experience.

Is there consumer appetite for a drive-in revival in a fixed, year round location? That’s uncertain. But the appeal of a traveling show that comes to town during certain times of year is hard to question, with the accompanying aura it brings of a special, communal, limited time offering. Call it the Drive-In Spectacular.

Imagine harnessing the safety of people gathering together in their cars, with the retro nostalgia of drive-ins of old. Take it further and add a dedicated app for ordering gourmet food-truck meals delivered to your spot by drone or P.P.E.-wearing car hops. Pipe state-of-the-art sound via mobile devices directly into car sound systems. Most importantly, expand the canvas beyond just movies to encompass music concerts, theatrical productions, dance performances, and more. Create “safe space” assigned parking spots, where each group of guests or family could put out beach chairs or stand and tailgate around their car, while maintaining a safe distance from their fellow guests in adjacent, marked off berths.

Leverage the live element and liberate actors and performers to circulate in between the cars at a safe distance, adding more levels of immersive interaction beyond the traditional (and static) stage/audience relationship. Populate the area with multiple massive screens to ensure optimal sight lines for the movie or show taking place. Brand the festival and create an exclusive fan-event atmosphere.

Live shows during the day, movies at night, make it an experiential festival that refreshes and renews, but this time all from the safety of a mobile protective pod you already own: your car.

That’s just one of countless ideas for the outdoor event space. Here’s another: how about utilizing the latest lidar scanning and auto-calibrating projector technology to bring mapping shows to your favorite local landmarks–or even into your neighborhood? Ticketed admission to an experience that would display breathtaking visual and audio content–always mapped around a different location–making every performance unique and highly shareable.

Specially designed media could allow local artists to contribute, or even kids in the audience who submit work in advance, adding to the memorable custom feel of the show. Come away with your own digitally unlocked video recording of the experience as keepsake, or an accompanying AR app that lets you take a portion of the show you saw and overlay it into your own home environment.

Shifting our lens from the outdoor to the indoor pop-up realm, we can see another unique set of opportunities in the post-quarantine era. Locking people up in confined spaces doesn’t sound that appealing or safe right now. Why not evolve the traditional escape room into an ‘escape adventure’ or ‘escape quest’?

Exploit disused mall or other retail space to create a multi-room, pulsed experience where self-selected groups move through multiple spaces. They’ll solve contact-free riddles, games, and puzzles and try to spot “I Spy”-style clues in the designed spaces around them. Audio-visual prompts texture the guest journey and keep them on their toes. Remove the crammed together, let’s-touch-everything aspect and open the experience up to become more of an on-the-move challenge. Play to the need for masks indoors and weave it into the narrative — perhaps guests are moving through an archeological site where nothing can be disturbed, or part of a medical survey team investigating a biological weapons facility leak.

When we look at all these opportunities for re-envisioning what we do, one thing is clear. Continuous innovation is going to be required if we want to survive and thrive on the uncertain but hopeful road ahead.

Virtual Reality & The New Compromise

Matt Parker, Creative Director, Thinkwell Group

A Vision, Compromised

For years, the promise of digital immersion and alternate realities permeated its way into the zeitgeist of popular futurism. Yet it wasn’t until American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey revived the VR industry with the release of the Oculus Rift in 2012, paving the way for a new standard in enterprise, education, and entertainment. Virtual reality promised a bold experience, an inclusive platform, and a seamless bridge connecting our world to the virtual one. Companies from around the world sprung up overnight, chasing trends and financial forecasts, hoping to take home a piece of the prize. Fast-forward to 2020, and while virtual reality continues to spark interest in enthusiasts and hard-core gamers, it remains stifled by a range of detractors such as cost, comfort, locomotion, and hygiene.

If ever there was a concern about the hygienic nature of virtual reality, COVID-19 has shattered consumer confidence and left owners and operators reticent in the face of future development. However, virtual reality will not end with COVID, but instead will find new opportunities in a post-pandemic world, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the technology as it evolves into its next chapter.

Lessons Learned

In 2019, Thinkwell Group opened the first of its kind, indoor, vertical theme park, Lionsgate Entertainment World, in Zhuhai, China. With three, purpose-built, virtual reality attractions, we learned a great deal from our in-field observations and guest reviews about the benefits and challenges of virtual reality.

Immersion is king. Yet, transportive environments are only a piece of the puzzle. True immersion stems from guest embodiment and real-world physics. Whether wielding a flashlight, steering a motorbike, or solving puzzles, every interaction must carry the burden of the real world or risk breaking the illusion. In addition, real-time media proved far more engaging than pre-rendered content, allowing guests the opportunity to take agency of their world and create a personalized and repeatable experience.

Conversely, we learned about some of the limitations and challenges from our creative partners and guests. Accessibility remains a constant goal for designers, ensuring that all guests can experience safe and comfortable moments together. However, due to the size, weight and form factor of many early generation headsets, guests with limited visual acuity or physical mobility found it challenging to maintain an optimal posture or retain a clear, focused, and immersive visual environment throughout the experience. Thankfully, there continues to be a wave of emerging technology that caters to guest accessibility. While many are still in their infancy, we know that these challenges are not insurmountable, but rather, they are stepping stones along the path to an optimal guest experience.

Looking Ahead

As we look ahead to a post-COVID world, there will undoubtedly be a shift in education, enterprise and entertainment. From visualization in the form of remote collaboration, to annotation in the form of real-time, remote instructions, to storytelling, and a new wave of haptic immersion; students, educators, and professionals are at the precipice of a new era in experiential engagement thanks to advances in emerging technologies.

When it’s time to untether and venture outside, additional emerging technologies can transform public spaces without the use or necessity of limiting hardware. Technologies such as mapped projection, mixed reality glasses, and digital characters or environments can enhance our physical surroundings without the use of single-serving, cumbersome devices. However, there remain three key takeaways for any activation or attraction to remain successful: friendly competition, inclusivity and immersion.

In the days, months and years to follow, social etiquette will shift, industries will evolve and technology will advance. We will remove our masks, we will interact, and together, we will smile. People are inherently social creatures and we at Thinkwell will continue to explore safe, effective, and memorable experiences to bring people together, wherever in the world life takes us.

Telecommuting Lessons 2.0

Cynthia Sharpe

I’ve telecommuted since before webcams and smartphones.

I thought this would be no big deal for me. A day that ends in y, as it were.

My husband is a molecular evolutionary geneticist who works in drug discovery and zoonotic diseases. I’m trained as a human geneticist. We watched events unfurl across the globe. And we knew.

We started to prepare, even while we lived like it was all going to be fine. We knew that when it finally hit here, it wouldn’t be just a few weeks of shutdown.

2 months of every prescription, minimum.

A battery-operated nebulizer for our teenager, who has intractable asthma.

Cleaning up the pantry and freezers, sorting, organizing, buying, stashing. While at the same time buying Broadway tickets for the college tour to Philadelphia and NYC and sunscreen for a cruise to the Caribbean.

Watching. Reading. Plugging data into models.

Hushed conversations late at night. How long do we wait to cancel our trips? Are his parents ok? Does my mom have enough food, enough prescriptions? When do we go no-contact with her, given her health conditions? When do we move my best friend into our guest room so she’s not alone through this?

Telecommuting was supposed to be the easy part for me, the thing I knew how to handle and was already good at. I made a GIF-filled deck to help ease the transition for my colleagues who found themselves abruptly living in my world. Simple rules and tools to make telecommuting go smoothly and maintain your sanity.

I didn’t count on just how deeply everything would be thrown out of whack. How nothing would be normal. I had done the intellectual algebra but not the human calculus of what an ongoing, global-scale trauma would really mean.

I hadn’t realized how utterly disruptive it would be to me, emotionally and physically, to have people in my space all the time and not be able to escape it. That I’d be rumbling with my teenager, worn thin from his school doggedly still holding every single class per the schedule and slathering on the quizzes and projects and essays, for the last cup of coffee. Or that I’d be creeping down the stairs so as not to interrupt my husband, trying to maintain the morale of his faculty, staff, and students in Zoom after Zoom from our dining room.

I didn’t anticipate the dissonance of seeing my colleagues not as a group in a conference room with their easy camaraderie, but as a Brady Bunch game board of isolation and anxiety. Or the awkwardness of seeing into their personal lives so intimately – the child meltdowns overheard, the roommates walking behind, the master bedrooms and garages turned into offices.

I didn’t foresee the explosion of demands on my time. The digital content, the webinars and info sessions, the happy hours and online conferences, the ‘you should see this!’ pieces telling me who’s put what cool thing online. And so I really didn’t foresee the screen fatigue.

I didn’t know to dread the paralysis. The harrowing feeling of staring at a blank Google document and being unable to get out a single word, as my brain was running complex calculations of when I was able to get an Instacart order slot for and did we have enough milk to make it till then and did we have enough bleach wipes given the decontamination process my husband has to put himself and everything he touched through every time he comes home from making sure the laboratories are still okay and functioning.

But I also didn’t count on the sweetness of getting more time with my teenager, of our gawky pas de deux in our awkwardly laid out kitchen when our lunch breaks overlap and we cook together. On my husband’s demented dedication to doing something weird in the house every two weeks, transforming it into a cruise ship, an Italian restaurant, a champagne bar. On being forced to play on the new foosball table which now lives right next to our kitchen table, instead of staying at my desk and just working working working.

I didn’t anticipate the little gestures of humanity. The meetings that turned into a genuine ‘how are you doing’ and not a reflexive ‘good and you’ call and response. The clients’ kindness and generosity of spirit as we all doggedly try to plow through. The vulnerability that we would all finally show one another.

I have found myself telling colleagues and peers, as they confess their fears and perceived failings to me in all of this, that they are not, right now, ‘working from home’. They are working at home during a crisis, and that ‘productivity’ might look and feel different right now and that’s okay and human.

I knew the basics. Real pants. Keep a schedule. Mute your mic. Lock the door and communicate your meeting schedule.

But now I know the basics aren’t so basic.

Real pants, but cut yourself slack when it’s all so overwhelming and the thought of one more thing to do makes you want to burst into tears.

Keep a schedule, but be good to yourself when you can’t fit it all in, when things derail.

Mute your mic, and forgive yourself when you don’t and your conference call can clearly hear precisely what your 17-year-old has to say about the college applications process and it is loaded with f-bombs.

Lock the door and communicate your meeting schedule, but shrug and say ‘welcome to my house!’ when you’re on-camera and get interrupted.

And most of all. Extend grace to yourself. Celebrate the tiny wins with your colleagues. Because we are all living and working through a wildly unsettled time, and to actually be accomplishing work is an achievement in and of itself.

Bonus points if you do it in real pants.

Post-script: I wrote this in response to Craig asking me what was different about telecommuting now versus how I usually work, at the end of May. Everything is now amplified. The urgency of protesting police brutality and how systemic racism oppresses people of color in this country, of working towards actual, lasting change makes proofreading a document or sitting in a meeting feel even more alien than it did during the first several weeks of COVID quarantine. And I say that as a white woman of immense privilege; I cannot understand how traumatizing this period is for my colleagues and peers of color.

To my white colleagues in the industry: I know you’re tapped out from COVID and its personal and professional impacts, but you can’t shy away from the work of addressing systemic racism and unconscious bias. Goodness knows I’m interrogating myself and where I have failed, abided by bias structures and helped maintain them, and other hard, hard questions. This isn’t just one more thing on your to-do list. You can’t fix systemic racism alone. But you’ve gotta do the work. If you’re looking for reading suggestions, see the resources I pulled together in support of my talk at SATE 2019. Showing Up for Racial Justice has chapters nationwide, check their website to find the chapter nearest you and additional resources, training, and ways to get involved. Feel free to do it in pj pants, even unshowered. Just do it.

A Thinkwellian’s 3 City Trip Itinerary: Jeremy Thompson

Jeremy Thompson

As we enter week 14 of working from home, we’re continuing with our fictional travel series, where we’ve invited a few Thinkwellians to research places they would want to visit on a fictional, whirlwind business trip to three cities around the world. Last month, we heard from writer Sara Biel as she explored Toronto, Canada; Dublin, Ireland; and Seoul, South Korea. This week, we’ve asked Jeremy Thompson, a writer in our Content Department, to head off on his fictional business trip to Vancouver, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; and Vienna, Austria. Let’s see what he would experience in these cities…

Vancouver

I have a soft spot for classic amusements. They quite literally don’t build them like they used to, and I love to compare the different technologies and philosophies of how to design a roller coaster or dark ride from 50 to 100 years ago. Vancouver is home to a 1958 vintage wood coaster at their Playland park, creatively named “Coaster.” It’s one of only two coasters in the world that still uses the original single-bench, articulating vehicle design that was the inspiration for many super-flexible modern roller coasters trains. That’s my must-do.

Apart from that, I’ll probably just try to eat as diverse a swath of the city’s cuisine as I can find. Eater.com is a good resource for navigating the local culinary scene in a way that’s both forward-looking and inclusive. Plus they’re not afraid to tackle larger political or social issues facing restaurants in their city.

I also use Atlas Obscura quite a bit to look for any unusual places nearby. The more obscure and spontaneous, the better. I found a “doll hospital” when I was walking around Lisbon last year and it was like walking through a horror movie mash-up of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Chucky movies. “This is the plastic surgery ward,” the guide informed me with complete sincerity. I loved it. Who knows what else I’ll find in Vancouver.

Melbourne

As a similarly sized city in the anglosphere world, I expect my time in Melbourne will be quite similar to my previous stop in Vancouver, with the added fun of a heaping amount of jetlag. I’ll keep my sightseeing to a minimum to concentrate on whatever the project assignment is… but if I do have a bit of free time while I’m not in a somnambulatory state, Melbourne is home to the world’s second-oldest roller coaster, and the oldest continuously operated roller coaster.

The Scenic Railway at Luna Park opened in 1912, where it’s one of extremely few left in the world that still operates with an on-board brakeman to control the speed, as this was before modern safety features to lock the train on the tracks. That’s how rides back in those days were “interactive.” Normally the brakeman will run the coaster at a conservative speed… but if you tip them extra they know exactly how fast they can let it fly before they risk a derailment. Now that’s a real thrill!

Vienna

I’m lucky to have visited Vienna when I was in college, so a lot of the sights that would be on my list I already got to check off. Most notably the Wiener Prater, which is essentially the European Coney Island where vendors all compete against each other to devise the most over-the-top insane carny rides to sell more tickets. It also has the “Riesenrad” Ferris wheel that Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten rode in The Third Man. However, there was one less famous destination I didn’t learn about until after my original departure, which would instantly make my top priority on a future trip: Haus Wittgenstein.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein helped build this house in the 1920s, which is still there today as the cultural department of the Bulgarian Embassy.

Wittgenstein was one of the more colorful 20th-century philosophers. He wrote his first book (Tractatus) from the trenches during WWI, declared he solved all of the philosophy with it, and went on to become a schoolhouse teacher in the Alps. Later in life, he released a second book (Philosophical Investigations) that largely refuted his first, but between that period his wealthy sister hired him to help build this house in Vienna.

Wittgenstein took to the project. He said of this house, “I am not interested in erecting a building, but in presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings.” He drove the leading architect to exhaustion with demands, like raising an already completed ceiling by 30mm so the room had the exact proportions he wanted. They went years over schedule, and when his sister refused to pay for more changes he bought a lottery ticket in the hope to finish it. When it was finally done, it was so austere that no one wanted to live in it… Wittgenstein included.

It’s a tragi-comic story, really. I myself went to school for philosophy so that I could design theme parks. The story of this house, about pouring one’s philosophy into a built space you can inhabit and breathe the air around you, as well as hopelessly chasing a vision of perfection that has never existed before, I think speaks to some level of how we all hope to see our lives reflected in the projects we undertake. Nobody should want to emulate Wittgenstein’s quixotic quest, yet that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have the ambition to at least dream what our own personal Haus Wittgenstein might look like, whatever form that may take.

Thinkwell’s First (And Only) Online Film Festival – Collaboration Film

Jacob Williams

Last week, we debuted our eight individual film submissions from our First (And Only) Online Film Festival. Today, we’re excited to share the festival’s finale with our very own Thinkwell Group collaboration film!

For this progressive film, 12 Thinkwellians collaborated on a short film that includes clips spanning the globe. The catch: each entrant couldn’t see anyone else’s’ work as parts were in progress, so they had no idea what the final product would be. All submissions were shot with safe social distancing efforts and edited together by our Thinkwell Media team.

Now, enjoy the premiere of our collaboration film, In Progress!

If you missed the previous films, you can view them all here:

Winner and Runner Up

Film Submissions Part Two

Film Submissions Part Three