As part of the European project UPRAISE – Virtual Worlds Innovation Masters, the Ciberimaginario Research Group (URJC) has developed a training activity with students of the Master’s Programme in Film and TV Series Screenwriting to explore the potential of advanced digital technologies in narrative creation processes. The initiative, titled «Machos Alfa FanFic: Scenes You Never Saw», takes the Netflix series as a starting point to imagine unseen scenes from Season 5 set in Madrid’s Argüelles neighbourhood. Students capture these scenes on location using ArcGIS QuickCapture and compose them into a collaborative StoryMap.
From fan-made fiction to screenwriter’s tool
The activity fits within UPRAISE’s Education and Creativity vertical, which identifies the creative and educational sectors as key spaces for applying technologies such as extended reality, artificial intelligence and virtual environments. Along these lines, the project highlights the need to train hybrid profiles capable of designing immersive experiences in complex digital environments where technology, narrative and user participation converge.
FanFic —fan-authored fiction that expands the universe of an original work— is used here as a screenwriter’s creative lab: a way to experiment with characters, plots and techniques in new situations the series itself has not explored. The exercise operates simultaneously at three levels: creative (exploring screenwriting resources such as inciting incidents, anagnorisis, turning points or suspense scenes), transmedia (co-creation and fan experience) and business (narrative routes, sponsorships, user analytics).
The neighbourhood as narrative stage
The conceptual shift is significant: from a linear narrative centred on the traditional audiovisual script to an expanded narrative in which space takes on a structural function. Drawing on Madrid’s long-standing tradition of film and series routes —the city has dozens of documented cinematic locations—, students walk through Argüelles selecting specific sites and turning every corner, doorway or square into a potential scene from Machos Alfa. The territory stops being mere context and becomes an active element of the story.
With QuickCapture, each location is recorded with its GPS coordinates, a photograph and a narrative form where students define the scene’s title, the characters involved, the type of situation (couple conflict, masculinity crisis, unexpected vulnerability, clumsy redemption…) and the screenwriting device applied. The results are then integrated into an interactive StoryMap combining text, image and geolocation.
UPRAISE core competencies in action
The activity has made it possible to work in an integrated way on several of the competencies UPRAISE identifies as strategic: narrative design for immersive experiences, content creation for complex digital environments, critical thinking about technology use, and spatial thinking as a new form of knowledge representation. Writing is no longer conceived as a sequence of scenes but as the design of an experience in which the user navigates, explores and builds meaning.
This experience is also the first step in a broader arc: in a later session, the same characters will travel from physical to virtual space, where students will design immersive experiences in FrameVR under the premise «Before Becoming an Alpha». Same narrative universe, two complementary technologies: the street and the metaverse.
Ultimately, «Machos Alfa FanFic» brings UPRAISE’s strategic objectives into the classroom and turns training into a space for experimentation, where new ways of telling stories are tested —preparing future screenwriters for an environment in which creativity and technology can no longer be understood separately.
