Fellow beardwearer, Lee McEwan, recently posted a write up of an outburst from Peter Greenaway against the conservatism of
filmmakers and cinema audiences. Greenaway (above right) opines that
the current form of narrative cinema will soon be as dead as the silent movie, to be replaced by something much more involving: "I
believe we will have an interactive cinema which will make Star
Wars look like a 16th-century lantern lecture."
This is a subject that we've been pondering long and hard here at Staufenberger Towers, because we recently spent some time helping a UK broadcaster understand what TV content will look like in
the future. Specifically, what might it look like when you turbocharge
existing telly with superfast broadband interactivity?
As is often the case with these what will new technologies mean for us? type questions, it's easy to be seduced by the idea that because things can change, they will.
In the TV world, an oft suggested change is the rise of the non-linear narrative. Broadband internet interactivity, so the argument goes, will free audiences from the restrictions of stories that proceed along preordained lines imposed by the author(s). Instead, interactive narratives will offer an immersive, participative experience in which audiences choose what happens and in what order and...well, you get the picture.
Whilst broadcasters will start exploring the idea (you might argue that Big Brother style reality shows are a non-fiction equivalent), we believe that participatory narrative fiction will only ever be a (sometimes amazing) sideshow to the main attraction. Here are four reasons why.
1. Participative narratives have not taken off in other media. Kids' books, like Castle of Fear, that enable the reader to choose alternative directions in the story have been around for a while. They are undoubtedly popular, but as a narrative form they inhabit a niche within a total market dominated by traditional storytelling.
Similarly, Punchdrunk's approach to theatre production, one in which audience members move around and through the narrative's events in whichever order they choose (look at their website for a fuller explanation), is a vital and provocative alternative to the traditional dramatic form. But whilst their productions receive rave reviews, you don't get the sense that this will be the dominant form of theatre in the future.
2. Technically, it's difficult to do properly in TV. The standard gonzo brainstorm idea is this: wouldn't it be, like, absolutely brilliant, yeah, if people could choose what happens in Coronation Street?
Well, let's just think about that for a moment. With a little under thirty minutes of action, and one of fifteen or so characters making choices every minute, there are potentially thousands of different dramatic possibilities in each episode, because each new direction for one character, means numerous potential responses from others and so on. How do you shoot that?
So fully participative interaction on an individual basis won't work. There then follows - theoretically - a number of not-so-fully participative ways of influencing the direction of the narrative. But when you stop and think of the production implications (how would you enable audiences to choose the ending of each episode, for example? Or rather, how would you be in a place to deliver it once they'd chosen it?), these don't seem particularly viable either.
When actors are replaced by CGI avatars this whole area might begin to work. But that's a long way off. (At least, it is for a soap like Coronation Street. Beowulf used a similar approach, but I'm guessing that took a year or two to create a couple of hours of story). And until that point, the occasional alternative ending will continue to be the exception rather than the rule.
3. Not everyone wants to participate. We have no proof of this but we believe that something akin to the 1% rule applies to listening to/viewing/experiencing narratives. And TV in general. That is, that the bulk of any audience will want just to watch and/or listen; absorb the story and let themselves be consumed by it. Of this total audience, there will be a minority that wants to participate in some way. Vote for an eviction, for example, or watch an alternative ending. And - if the parallel works - a very small minority (the 1%) will want to be involved with creating and shaping that narrative.
So, a narrative that is predicated on audience interaction - one that cannot exist without audience interaction - is likely to be less satisfying than one in which the interactivity is optional. Or rather, one in which interactivity is optional will be more satisfying to more people, simply because it has the flexibility to give different things to different people.
4. People like to be told stories. For thousands of years people have liked listening to stories. And there have always been people whose role, or job, it was to tell stories. Where once stories were conveyed orally by, for example, travelling poets in preliterate Greece, today we have novelists, filmmakers, screenwriters and playwrights, comic book artists, even blog writers, who fashion narratives that the rest of us consume in some packaged form.
If people have enjoyed stories in a relatively passive way for thousands of years, we suspect that it's going to be a while before we start losing the inclination in significant numbers.
So it should be clear where we sit on the debate. No doubt time will prove us ridiculously backward looking, but we thought we'd stick our necks out and share.
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