I’m a storyteller who wants to support memory making; good memories shared with family and friends.
Goal
To build worlds where real people of diverse backgrounds and abilities can explore, learn, grow, and find joy.
About
My goal stems from my own yearning to find community. Our modern world is full of narratives structured to divide and silo, but there is a timeless magic in universal stories that unite. We can all learn from stories about heroes from communities with whom we do not personally identify. We can all learn from immersing ourselves in those stories and becoming the protagonist, experiencing what we wouldn’t in our day to day lives.
I’m a storyteller. I understand the power of narrative and my decisions are based in my values to construct narratives for good. My values uplift the notions of truth, kindness, love, respect, healthy boundaries, and a culture of consent rather than one of force or trickery.
From an early age, I started making career decisions based on my dream of building worlds in theme parks. My first decision along those lines was in choosing a high school. I decided to attend a charter school for math and science because I thought I needed to become an engineer to achieve this dream. However, writing was my strength. A little later I learned that my passion for writing was enough; that writers were needed in themed entertainment!
Since then, I’ve earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Screenwriting and Playwriting from Drexel University, participated in the Disney College Program, written and produced 10 years of material for my own company, 3240 Entertainment Group LLC, and worked professionally as a Narrative Designer for about 3 years.
With immersive entertainment and EDUtainment in mind, I returned to school to pursue a Dual Masters of Science in Information in Human Computer Interaction and User Experience and Library and Information Science, with a Graduate Minor in Digital Media. Now, more than ever, our technology and the information shared with it are shaping our real world, and I studied to explore the scope of storytelling in how it leads our everyday lives through tech.
Through my resume you will find that my background includes scriptwriting, management of theater and event audiences, specializing in event technology, designing narratives for interactive products, and financing and running a company of my own.
The world is changing, yet, I still desire to build worlds where real people can explore, learn, grow, and find joy as they make good memories with family and friends.
3240 Entertainment Group, LLC
I founded 3240 Entertainment Group, LLC to produce my transmedia story, Columbus Myth, while also providing a local skill-sharing network of creative professionals to teach their skills in free library workshops for underrepresented communities. It is my hope and vision to not only entertain, but educate and provide access for mobility and growth within the audiences who experience my work.
Design Process: I started with 10 characters including Justin, Dido, Lynda, Digits, Mona, Goose, Einstein, Castor, Columbus, and Paul. I developed each character to have unique backgrounds and a want and need, and I created a story for each character where they play a role as the protagonist. This created a complex social system of relationships, obstacles, misunderstandings, and secrets. I turned each character’s story into one episode of a 10-episode audio drama told from each character’s unique perspective of the special world. In the world of Columbus Myth, Image is illegal, so I started the transmedia story as an audio drama to reflect the nature of the narrative world. As elements of the world change, so does the medium in which the story is told, thus creating a meta experience for the audience.
Watch the video above which showcases 3240 Entertainment’s Top 10 Projects!
Kendra Dobson's Main Roles on Each Project
#10 - Game Dev Workshop - role(s); Project Manager, Producer
#9 - Audio Drama - role(s); Writer, Director, Editor
#8 - Comic Book - role(s); Writer, Project Manager
#7 - Comic Book Art Workshop - role(s); Project Manager, Producer
#6 - Video Game Art Workshop - role(s); Project Manager, Producer
#5 - Capture the Culture - role(s); Project Manager, Producer
#4 - Trust Me, Love - role(s); Writer, Producer
#3 - Augmented Reality - role(s); Writer, Producer
#2 - History All Around Us - role(s); Writer, Researcher, Creative Director, Interpretive Planner, Project Manager, Producer
#1 - Columbus Myth - - role(s); Author, Playwright, Narrative Designer, Screenwriter
Trust Me, Love
I wrote the play, Trust Me, Love, as part of my transmedia series, called Columbus Myth.
This transmedia series consists of an audio drama, video game, short film, comic book, stage play, AR experience, and most recently, a TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook social media shorts daily series.
In this fictional story, an audience is needed to legalize image. So, after listening to the audio drama and playing the video game, called Publizenego, our REAL audience responds to the call to action by showing up to a live stage play where the story continues. Once image is legalized in my fictional tale, the story continues through a short film, augmented reality, social media, and more.
White Rabbit of CoShow.
I wrote the script for White Rabbit of CoShow, and I also directed this short film.
The idea behind using a variety of mediums to tell the story of Columbus Myth was a deliberate choice of mine that supports the narrative. We begin in a world where image is illegal, so naturally, the story begins as a radio play.
When a rebellious artist, Justin, draws a picture for his crush, the story begins to take shape in a medium where the audience is an agent of change. The story continues through a video game because the audience can take action towards a plot to coerce their population into legalizing image. Once image is legal, we pick up with Castor’s point of view in this short film, White Rabbit of CoShow.
Daily Prose.
In place of posting what I had for lunch, I started the new habit of posting a bit of prose, daily.
In themed entertainment, my goal is to give audiences agency to explore the concept of a story through interaction, and I can see how our social media has the power to move audiences.
I recently earned my Dual Masters of Science in Human Computer Interaction and User Experience, and Library and Information Science with a Graduate Minor in Digital Media to aid in my understanding of how our technology narrates our daily lives. Daily, I merge my skills in storytelling with the study of human expression through technology.
History All Around Us
My friends at augzoo LLC approached me with a project idea. They wanted to create a location-based augmented reality experience at Wooldridge Square in Austin, TX with an animated Booker T. Washington orating the speech he gave there in 1911.
Please see my interpretive plan for History All Around Us.
Design Process for History All Around Us:
First, I needed to find the speech. Looking everywhere, I did not find the specific speech that Washington gave in Austin in 1911. I knew then, that if I could find the speech and create an audio recording with a voice actor, I would be creating media from history that was nearly impossible to find, and therefore creating access for audiences to learn from events that were once documented, but lost to time.
I emailed Ted Eubanks, an interpretive planner in Austin, who had recently completed a plaque in Wooldridge Square detailing Booker T. Washington’s speech. Eubanks sent me a copy of an old newspaper clipping from 1911 that documented Washington’s speech word for word.
The article was titled, Park Appears a Huge Chocolate Drop, and it was originally published September 30th, 1911, in The Austin Statesman. The text was difficult to read due to the font, and after a few hours of deciphering I had typed out each word, however some words were illegible.
However, with the words now typed out, I could search the web sentence by sentence to find missing words. I was able to fill in missing words this way as Google searches uncovered digitized books written by Washington.
Washington reused several of his speeches in the books he had written, so I could fill in missing words from his speech by reading what he had written in his books.
From there, I created a script that a voice actor could use to dramatize the historic speech.
From there, I served as the Project Manager, Creative Director and Producer of History All Around Us by acting as the creative lead that held all functional teams together, making sure that the animator, augmented reality team, voice actors, and interpretive planner were all telling the same story. Please follow the link to see my interpretive plan for History All Around Us.
My CV
See more at linkedin.com/in/kendradobson/.