Interactive Film Resources
On this resources page, you can review books and articles about interactive film. You can find the first interactive films, how to make interactivity in movies, their shortcomings, and solutions, and the theories and solutions put forward to increase the focus in interactive films. You can also find an article in these sources written on Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. You can access the pdf of many of the sources. You may need to purchase some books and articles to be able to review them.
BOOKS
Interactive Digital Narrative
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Description of the book:
The book is concerned with narrative in digital media that changes according to user input—Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN). It provides a broad overview of current issues and future directions in this multi-disciplinary field that includes humanities-based and computational perspectives. It assembles the voices of leading researchers and practitioners like Janet Murray, Marie-Laure Ryan, Scott Rettberg and Martin Rieser. In three sections, it covers history, theoretical perspectives and varieties of practice including narrative game design, with a special focus on changes in the power relationship between audience and author enabled by interactivity. After discussing the historical development of diverse forms, the book presents theoretical standpoints including a semiotic perspective, a proposal for a specific theoretical framework and an inquiry into the role of artificial intelligence. Finally, it analyses varieties of current practice from digital poetry to location-based applications, artistic experiments and expanded remakes of older narrative game titles.
Hyper – Narrative Interactive Cinema
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Description of the book:
Hyper narrative interactive cinema refers to the possibility for users or "interactors" to shift at different points in an evolving film narrative to other film narrative trajectories. Such works have resulted so far in interactor distraction rather than sustained engagement. Contrary to post-modern textual and cognitive presumptions, film immersion and computer game theories, this study uses dual coding theory, cognitive load theory, and constructivist narrative film theory to claim that interactive hyper-narrative distraction results from cognitive and behavioral multi-tasking, which lead to split attention problems that cannot be cognitively handled. Focus is upon split attention resulting from the non-critical use of de-centered and non-cohering hyper-narrative and audio-visual formations, and from interaction. For hyper-narrative interactive cinema to sustain deep engagement, multi-tasking split attention problems inhering in such computer-based works have to be managed, and - most importantly - made to enhance rather than reduce engagement. This book outlines some viable solutions to construct deep cognitive-emotional engagement of interactors with hyper-narrative interactive cinema.
The Educational Technology Anthology Series – Interactive Video
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ARTICLES
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and how Netflix manipulates us, the new gods
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Description of the book:
This film review of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, released by Netflix in 2018, discusses the nature of the interactive genre, focusing on its current and future effects on data mining, product placement, and programmatic advertising, highlighting the new, evolving role played by the viewer.
Interactive Dramaturgies: New Approaches in Multimedia Content and Design
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Abstract of the article:
Interactive media allow and at the same time require new forms of dramaturgy. Heide Hagebölling develops a new understanding of dramaturgy - so-called "Interactive Dramaturgy" or "Expanded Dramaturgy". Beyond the traditional concept "Interactive Dramaturgies" is focussing on aesthetic, narrative, structural, and communicative elements that develop in interactive situations and multimedia environments. A collection of original contributions by internationally renowned multimedia authors, designers, and artists outline design concepts and strategies. Outstanding case studies and media projects are analyzed, covering a broad range of both applications and genres: culture, art, and education; museums and exhibitions; film, TV, games, and entertainment; augmented reality and hybrid environments. "Interactive dramaturgies" go beyond the well-established term of interactive storytelling. They carefully define and create the rules of altered roles and required competencies of both authors and users in a new communicational setting. The publication provides designers, authors, artists, theoreticians, media critics, and students interested in interactive media with new approaches and views in multimedia content and design. Prof. Roy Ascott, University of Plymouth; University of California, L.A.: "Indispensable to anyone wishing to understand the multi-dimensional complexities and challenges of interactive media at its cutting edge, Heide Hagebölling’s book is a brilliant collection of writings from many inspired and inspiring sources. The context of dramaturgy, in which these texts are set, fruitfully elicits propositions and reflections over a wide range of significant issues: from innovative narrative structures, interactive games, and new approaches to film, TV and theatre, to radical learning strategies, museum design and navigation, creativity in data space, and the central issues of content building." Key Topics: Interactive Dramaturgies Cultural Learning Museum&Media MediaTecture&HybridSpaces Gaming&Interaction Interactive Film&Television Web-based Literature&Stories Men-Machine Interaction Interactive Content Design Key Elements: Non-linearity, orientation, and navigation Space and time in interactive media Individual reception and multi-user-platform Narrative perspectives and individual views Polyformal concepts Hypermedia Augmented reality and hybrid spaces Interface design Multi- and intermedia Networks and open structures Design for intercultural communication Heide Hagebölling, media-designer and communication scientist, is Professor for Video and Interactive Media at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany, of which she is a co-founder. Her professional and academic work covers aspects of art, culture, and media.
To watch from distance: An interactive film model based on Brechtian film theory
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Abstract of the article:
With the emergence of new media, interactive film projects have mainly struggled to resolve the contradiction between dramatic structures and interaction. Dramatic film presents identification with the main character, where the viewer is constantly oppressed by the narrative, and therefore lost in illusion. In this context, when we bring on the scene interaction, the drama apparently starts to lose its power. In this article, a new interactive film model based on Brechtian film theory is proposed. This model presents a new way of spatiotemporal construction where different audiovisual combinations can be viewed successively, and this way the viewer can actively construct his/her own story. Theoretical framework of the Brechtian interactive film model is supported by an interactive film application, named Academia. The main feature of the model is that, while interaction is very simple, the continuity of the narrative is preserved and the film requiring an intellectual level of interpretation.
Cinematic interaction: From kinoautomat to cause and effect
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Abstract of the article:
The world's first interactive movie was created in Czechoslovakia and called Kinoautomat. After achieving world fame at the Expo'67 in Montreal, this pioneering work of interactive narrative quickly disappeared from memory. Inspired by my own long-standing personal interest in interactive film, I set out to discover as much as possible about the Kinoautomat, with the ultimate aim of making an interactive DVD from the original materials. Although the process has involved considerable archaeology it has proved ultimately successful and has had the additional result of fuelling a new dimension to my own personal work – the ‘live’ performance of an interactive film show called Cause and Effect in which the audience are encouraged to interact in various ways with the different films presented.
Interactive Cinema: Engagement and Interaction
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Abstract of the article:
Technologies that were initially developed to be applied within the domain of video games are currently being used in experiments to explore their meaning and possibilities for cinema and cinema audiences. In this position paper we examine how narrativity, interactivity and engagement are mutually reshaped within this new domain of media entertainment, addressing both the production and the user experience of new types of interactive cinematography. We work towards research questions that will direct our future studies and introduce the term lean in to address the kind of engagement style that applies to users within this new domain.
What might arise from reconsidering the concept of interactive film?
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Abstract of the article:
To date, an interactive film form has been conceived of in terms of branching; multi-linear narratives predominantly drawing on the mechanics of the computer games industry. The interactive engagements that have been produced within this framework have failed to revolutionise either the gaming or the film industry, leading the director Peter Jackson to remark on the announcement of his deal with Microsoft to develop the form, that his team still have to work out how to do it (Waters 2006). Might this apparent stalling in the production process actually arise from an incomplete consideration of the potential of interactive film? Film and interactive experiences have much to offer each other beyond simply altering the narrative structure of a linear story. In this light, a rethinking of the modes of address afforded by an interactive environment, both in new media and more traditional narrative form, highlights a new territory that might be created by merging their agendas, rather than attempting to reconcile their forms.
Tools for an interactive virtual cinema
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Abstract of the article:
This paper describes our experiments with narrative structure in nonlinear, interactive and networked forms of media. Through these explorations, we have begun to anticipate what types of tools will be useful to tell stories in multi-user 3D immersive environments incorporating synthetic actors.
Because of the complex nature of this work, which attempts to create a broad fusion of artistic, social, and technical ideas, this paper is also structured differently from a traditional research paper. Many parts of this paper use poetic and allusive techniques to describe the work; generally, we have chosen the particular vocabulary which most succinctly describes the ideas at hand.
Real-time Cinematic Camera Control for Interactive Narratives
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Abstract of the article:
New interactive media works based upon audio-visual material often result in distraction rather than sustained engagement. Contrary to postmodern textual and cognitive presumptions, this study uses dual coding theory, cognitive load theory, and constructivist narrative film theory, to claim that distraction results from cognitive and behavioural multi-tasking which lead to split attention problems that cannot be cognitively handled. Focus is upon split attention resulting from the non-critical use of split screens, from decentred, non-cohering audio-visual and multi-narrative formations, and from interaction. The analysis of several new media works, existing tools and models, particularly those pertaining to narrative- oriented `interactive films', instantiates these claims. For narrative interactive audio-visual texts to sustain deep, wide-ranged engagement, multi-tasking split attention problems inhering in computer-based works have to be managed, and - most importantly - made to enhance rather than reduce engagement. This article outlines some major problems and offers viable solutions.