| INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE REACTION. SEPTEMBER 21st, 2006 It’s funny to think back and recall how movies used to work, it was usually the beginning, the middle action, the development, the conclusion, and then the end (the only end), but after times kept changing, audiences weren’t happy any longer with just seeing a story that ended and left you to the imagination of what happened thereafter. We can easily appreciate the work that the writers were going through in order to do something else with those stories, therefore they began to develop a continuation of the story… and then a continuation of the continuation, and so on. But that not being enough with such hunger for knowing more, and enjoying more of the stories that people liked the most, we can witness now a days that the new style of this type of media is the development of a story with multiple conclusions, a story where the audience plays a participatory action in the movie, by being subjected to having to choose which ending was more appealing to them. Then Murtaugh goes on to explain the importance of the participation of different parts of a narrative in the outcome of the same. The different levels of interaction between actors in a narrative are described by citing examples of Star Trek, and the way this narrative places people in places where they have to juggle with their imagination, and with new and unexpected experiences, in which they are told they cannot participate because they will cause the future of the cultures they encountered. It’s important to also account for the relevance the presence of a camera has in a set where a story is being narrated and recorded. The same as well as other outside forces foreign to the story such as other personnel around the scene, may also influence the development and outcome of a story. Inevitably it is primordial as Murtaugh’s book describes, how much of that foreign presence affecting the story has to be accounted, but I believe the filmmaker will never accomplish a 100% clean record of what they are trying to make, after all, it’s film, and it will never replicate the real life. But going back to creating interactivity in video, it is also said that in order to make this happen for the viewer, he/she has to become a part of it, a character in the story. I believe that ideally the user’s choices influence greatly the development of the story. This is a question that is constantly being asked, because most of the interactive video or applications we experience these days, are just a game to make the user seem like they are affecting a situation, but in reality the outcome is the same whether their choices to arrive to it are different. I’m not one hundred percent sure of what the reading says that it’s usually a negative outcome to the development of the story when the participant is able to change the plot of the story. I think this thought or more tests should be developed further before this conclusion is taken. CD MAKING I believe that it’s true what Murtaugh says about CD playing, that instead of having to look for content, It should just play automatically, since that’s the main goal, and it will skip a step that most of the times is unnecessary
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• Interactive Technology Master's Program _ New York University• American Graphic Design Award - December 2004• Alumni Art Show WCSU - 2004 |