WHO - your life into a movie
Background
Traditional story telling techniques used in cinema are generally one-way lean-back experiences. We go to a cinema, we sit down and watch the director's vision unfold.
I love going to the cinema. The very process of leaning-back and going with the flow is key to the cinema-going experience - we are offered an hour and half of escapism in return for the price of admission. And what's wrong with that? Nothing!
That said, I for one am excited by new opportunities to combine traditional storytelling with interactivity, and this is something I am very keen to experiment with and discuss. Hence, my development of the WHO project.
Project Description
The WHO project aims to formalise a loose interactive framework that will allow anyone to contribute and participate in the story we will create together.
The Concept:
- 3 films based on the ordinary lives of 3 different characters.
- 3 creative teams - one for each character.
- several cross-over points were one characters actions have an impact on another character.
- several jump-off points were users have the option to jump from one narrative to another.
- in each episode a new character is introduced to the audience.
- the audience is invited to participate in the development of the WHO project by submitting a short video suggesting the personality or actions of a new character.
The Pilot:
In the pilot, I have tried to very gently combine the traditional with the interactive. For example, when you watch the pilot you will follow one character/story at a time. There are cross-over points (with the other characters/stories) built into the film but these are not "jump-off points".
When you do decide to jump between stories you will realise that there are elements (named cross-over points) in one story that are a direct result of another story, and this effects the direction of future narratives.
Examples:
- If character A makes a phone call to character B, A and B will both have to be speaking on the phone at some point in their own film.
- If character B leaves an object out of place this can have an influence on A’s routine.
Other Information:
This project is cross platform (web, mobile, DVD players, HD systems) and it supports subtitles and additional audio tracks.
Creative Parameters:
- We start with 3 different characters/story arcs.
- Each character/story arc is to be developed by a different team of writers and directors.
- Each of these 3 different character/story arcs must meet in the jump-off points allowing the audience to jump from one to another.
- There are elements/actions in one narrative that can indirectly influence the other(s). They are named cross-over points.
- All the characters/story arcs must meet at the end (meeting point) of each episode in order to allow the audience to propose a new character that will be added to the next episode.
- Ideas generated by the audience are then developed by each creative team and an actor will be selected to play the role created.
High quality submissions will be invited to not only participate in the development process but may also be offered the opportunity to act and play the role of the character they created. We aim for the webisode to act as a talent finder and offer people real-world production experience.
>> Please click here to launch the project. <<
The concept:
About the structure:
"The structure of a traditional movie looks like a plain line with a certain amount of little dots representing plot points. Plot points are important events that change the narrative situation. The popular notion of what an interactive movie should be is about making these points nodes, so that the straight line turns into a tree with forking paths. The important decisions in a story are no longer made by its hero but by the viewer himself. That means a movie would be interrupted from time to time for the viewers to choose among two or more possibilities of how the story goes on. The traditional model of viewer identification with a central character turns into a unity of viewer and hero: we can call it the kiss-it-or-shoot-it-model.
Already for economic reasons, this model seems rather unsuitable, since it not only increases the amount of final footage required, but also limits distribution to specially equipped cinemas. Considering the growing number of Imax cinemas, it is surprising that the Kino-Automat remained a curiosity in cinema history. One reason might be that the apparently motionless cinema audience is actually quite active. The resolution of a 35mm film, compared with that of television or video, can occupy a much bigger part of the viewer's visual field without revealing its material. In the cinema, the viewer's eyes are constantly moving in order to grasp the entire screen, whereas the monitor fixes the view and finally sends the brain to sleep. In order to avoid that problem, TV and computer programs require us to constantly act - be it to zap, phone, write, fire or go shopping."
Birk Weiberg - Beyond Interactive Cinema - www.keyframe.org
Although the narrative's basic structure is the one presented above, this framework supports many other narrative structures based on the following simple structures or elementary cells. These can be combined to create more complex narrative structures.
a,b,c are independent narratives.
The WHO project was planned to be used as an experimental training tool for film students and digital artists. By participating you will learn how to collaborate on the development and production of synchronised narratives, whilst having the freedom to create your own ideas (narratives).
The jump-off points, cross-over points and meeting points are creative parameters that allow each narrative to be integrated within the story structure of your choice.
WHO - your life into a movie by Diogo Pessoa de Andrade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.
Based on a work at arte-digital.org.
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