1. Introduction
We will talk about a lot of topics about interactive movies that we have been hearing frequently in recent years. Thanks to this article, you can learn about the first interactive films, the editing of interactive films, why interactive films are preferred, the ability to analyse interactive films and many more.
2. What is interactive video
Unlike linear videos, interactive videos enable viewers to interact with videos through a variety of tools. You can add buttons, audio files, drawings, clickable areas and many other interaction tools in interactive videos, where you can answer and give feedback based on the answers given, and you can offer different experiences to your target audience.
In this way, interactive videos customize the viewers' experiences. As viewers experience this difference, you can more easily reveal the main idea of your interactive content.
Click to see what you can do with Cinema8 interactive elements.
3. History of interactive film making
Interactive film genre entered our lives with the film industry in the 1960s. The world's first interactive film, Kinoautomat (1967), met the audience at Czech Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. The director of the film is Raduz Cincera.
In the following years, Dragon's Lair (1983), I'm Your Man (1992), Mr. Payback (1995), and Ride For Your Life (1995) different interactive films such as met with the audience.
Bandersnatch, a movie of Netflix's Black Mirror series, was released in 2018. After the release of Bandersnatch, the interest in interactive films has increased again. While the place of linear film art is always separate, interactive films offer a new experience to the audience. It leaves the responsibility of the story and characters of the movie to the audience. Good-bad results, ethical-moral issues are left to the choice of the viewer and integrated into the film's story. In addition, it brings interactive art to film art, although it is a different experience for the audience. In the first years of interactive films, the audience determined how the film would progress through the green-red buttons given to them in movie theaters. Then, interactive movies continued with DVD technology.
4. Old everything new again
Many new films appeared in the interactive film genre that appeared in the 1960s. Interactive film created a different genre for the cinema audience. While the audience cannot be a participant in the film in linear films, the audience has become able to determine the course of the film in interactive films. Interactive films, which create a different experience for the audience, continued to be made. However, it was much less in number than linear films. Interactive films started to gain popularity after Netflix's Bandersnatch in December 2018. It began to be used in many industries, including the film industry.
In addition to movies, it is also preferred to short entertainment videos. Entertainment videos made on different platforms are now meeting with the audience as interactive video.
5. Industrial transformation on digital channels
In 2007, Netflix started offering movies over the Internet with streaming media. Over time, the streaming service continued to grow. As of January 2016, Netflix is available in more than 190 countries.
Netflix started offering watch movies to the audience in 2007 over the internet. It started to expand its services in the following years and continued to serve over 190 countries with fluid media technology in 2016. Netflix started producing its own series and movies during this time. In 2016, he released over 120 original series and movies. This rapid rise of Netflix has begun to leave TVs behind, and the TV audience is now starting to prefer Netflix. The role of being an alternative to television in this rise of Netflix is huge. The audience continued to increase because the audience found original series and movies that they could not find on TV.
After this rise of Netflix, companies such as Amazon Prime Video and Hulu also entered this field and started to offer series-movie service with fluid media technology.
The production companies that wanted to offer original productions to their audience started to produce content for these platforms as well as cinema.
During this time, Netflix has produced and continues to produce a lot of content in the interactive movie genre.
6. Engagement & focus benefits on interactive films
In Linear movies, the viewer interacts with the movie only as a viewer. He reads the film by integrating the events and characters' behavior within the film in the context of the subject. Sometimes, the audience ask, "What would happen if things did not develop like this?", "What would happen if the character did not do this behavior?" questions like. The screenwriter and director may want the audience to think this way. This situation changes in interactive films. Thanks to the interactive points, the audience determines how the events will develop. Likewise, the audience determines what the characters will do in critical moments.
Having this responsibility in the audience ensures that the audience is more involved in the event and selects their own right and continues the film.
This allows the viewer to watch interactive films by focusing and participanding within the film. In other words, it makes it a part of the movie. The audience discovers with the movie and creates its own journey.
7. Use case
Interactive films
With interactive movies, you can make your audience a part of your movie. You can mobilize about the topics you want to make your audience think or participate.
If your movie is about the journey of a hero who saves the world, you can make your audience become the hero of the movie. You can let your audience find what are the right steps to save the world in this challenging journey.
You can watch Bandersnatch, which is a production of Netflix.
Short entertainment videos
Entertainment videos are frequently consumed today. Short entertainment videos are watched and produced on many subjects including different concepts. Among these, the most watched video types; product review, how-to videos, vlogs, comedy, game videos, makeup videos, food videos, recommendation videos, memes videos, top list videos, box opening videos, question & answer videos, training videos and prank videos. Interactive versions of these videos are loved by the audience and participation rates are increasing.
Companies that produce videos make these videos interactive and bring them together with their audience. The fact that entertainment videos are interactive invites the viewer to join the video.
Come on, it's a platform of interactive entertainment videos. Here you can easily browse through videos by recording.
8. Interactivity types on video content for film industry
Gamification
You can add gamification elements to your movie. This will increase your audience's focus on your movie. You can also enhance the feel of your movie, thanks to gamification elements. You can use gamification elements that you may need according to your movie's setup.
Timer
If there is a critical scene competing against time in the movie, the audience can compete against the time with the hero of the movie. You can add the timer element, a gamification element, to this critical scene of your movie. You can do this during the interactive editing process via the interactive platform.
Storytelling
All stages of filmmaking are devoted and important stages. However, if your story is not effective enough, it doesn't matter if all the other stages are perfect. The interactive points you want to add to your story should make sense. What a simple interactive point you can add to practice the first interactive points of the movie. The next interactive points should be on the stage where the viewer will want to make a choice. Depending on your scenario, you can add interactive spots to the scenes that will change the course of the movie, so that the audience can make this choice. With interactive points, you can make the audience feel themselves in a puzzle. Depending on your scenario and editing, you can impress the viewer in different ways and make it a part of your interactive movie.
While creating your story, you can read the points that you should pay attention to while creating your interactive points and writing your script in the next title, “Creating complex fictions”.
9. Creating complex fictions and create the right content
Fiction
Interactive films have 2 different editing stages. One of them is fiction at the post-production stage and the other is interactive fiction.
Post-production editing is an important stage that every movie goes through. If you are interested in filmmaking, you already know this stage.
Interactive editing is the editing stage that enables the film to become interactive. Interactive abilities that you can add to fiction will change according to the platform you use. Some of these capabilities are as follows;
- Jumping from any second of the video to another,
- Adding buttons into the video,
- Designing the questions in interactive points,
- Redirecting to any link from the video,
- To receive written feedback in the video,
- To be able to use countdown device in any second of the video,
- According to the branching structure of the video, calculating all the selections in the video and directing them to different finals,
- To be able to score in the video.
Having different interactive capabilities provided by the platform allows you to use your creativity comfortably. After uploading your post-production video to the interactive video production platform, you can complete the editing of your interactive video in accordance with your scenario with these skills.
Scenario
When making an interactive film or short film, it is necessary to proceed with solid steps to avoid confusion. Whether your movie is an animation or a real video, you need to clarify your script. Before you can write the script for your interactive movie, you must create the draft script. On the draft scenario, you should determine how your script will start, how the events will develop, in which scenes you will be able to switch to alternative scenes (branching) with interactive and alternative finals. While doing this, you should consider all scenes and identify all alternative scenes. You can do this more easily and error-free by creating your branching structure.
Creating branching (Algorithm)
In order for complex fiction to be created, you should extract the algorithm of your scenario ideas, that is, the branching structure. To do this, you can create a draft before you write the script completely. When creating the draft, you can first determine which alternative scenarios the questions in the interactive points in the script will go to. You must determine which scenes you can go to after which election scene. There should be no exposed scenes. Adding too many alternative scenes can make it harder for your script to reach its finals. Or you may have to write a lot of alternative finals. You should pay attention to this situation. To avoid this situation, while working on your draft script, focus exactly on what kind of movie you want to be and try to stick to it while creating alternative scenes.
Determination of alternative finals
You need to set your alternative finals at the draft scenario stage. Increasing your alternative final number means that your movie gets longer and longer. You also need a lot of alternative intermediate scenes. This means that you have to be much more careful when creating your script and writing your script.
Writing the script
After completing all of these steps, you can start writing your script with the help of your branching structure.
While writing your script, you should name your alternative scenes as "alternative a scene", "alternative b scene". You should also write the note of which scene was taken after each alternative scene in your script. This will be explanatory for those who read a scenario with alternative scenes written. If you pay attention to these points, no matter how long your script is, you can easily write and edit it.
10. Analysing video insight & content consumption rates, ROI on film contents
Why do you need video statistics in interactive movies?
In its simplest sense, it allows you to see in detail whether your movie or short entertainment videos are watched by your audience, which parts they like or dislike. This will be a good feedback for your next movies or short entertainment videos.
You can discover your viewers' preferences
Due to the nature of interactive films, not every scene of the film is watched because the interactive points offer the audience 2 or 3 different alternative scenes. When the audience chooses one of these scenes, they cannot watch the others. Of course, this situation may change according to the script and fiction of the movie. You can learn the orientation of the audience according to their choices in interactive points. Let's think if you made a zombie movie. Does your audience want to save the world from zombies or want to be a zombie? You can find the answer to this question with Cinema8 Analytics. You can see in detail which answer he gave at which interactive point and which finalist he went to. Perhaps this could create a prediction for your upcoming interactive film projects. Besides, what your audience likes, what scenes he wants to watch, how he wants the movie to end, and you can easily get the answer to his questions with Cinema8 Analytics.
11. Measure, analyze, and optimize
You can learn the topics and scenes your viewers prefer in the movie and create an insight. Besides, you can get much more detailed reports.
You can find out where your viewers are from the world
Cinema8 provides very detailed information on the analytics of interactive films.
You can find out which country and city of your interactive movies are watched more by people. You can see the location of each of your users. And it's not just that. You can also see which device your viewers are watching your movie through. You can see which times are watched in which country and how many seconds the movie is watching. You can find out which episodes of your interactive movie, how many times each viewer watches. You can see the number of views and interaction of your movie.
Are your movies or short entertainment videos watched again?
One of the favourite signs of your interactive movie or short entertainment video is that it is watched again. With Cinema8, you can easily see the re-view rate. You can also see these data not only from general data, but also from audience-based data.
Cinema8 Analytics offers this and much more. Moreover, you can download these reports to your computer.
12. Tools & platforms
In recent years, interactive video production platforms and tools have started to serve for users who want to make interactive video themselves. Some companies also make interactive videos for their customers with their agencies.
Some of these offer platforms where you can make your own interactive videos, while others are agencies that make your interactive videos. If you wish, you can review the companies that provide these services. Here are some of these companies;
- Cinema8
- Wirewax
- Eko
- HapYak
- HiHaHo