Kelly McErlean

PhD History of Art/Design

Title- Interactive Film

I began my research by looking into methods of broadcasting audiovisual materials online. The film industry has started using the internet as a major distribution tool. Many archives have been digitised and made available on the web.

Lev Manovich’s work (SoftCinema) led me to study the potential of interactive narrative. I developed an interactive film proposal that would employ the concepts ‘film as database’ and ‘spatial montage’. The former would require the development of a database of film clips with assigned parameters to allow them to be individually identified using metadata (having looked at various metadata systems I decided that Macromedia Director would be the most suitable platform to develop an interactive film. Its complex query language Lingo would allow tracking of individual user selections.). The presentation of clips during the film will be dependent on previous audience interactions. For the latter I used Eisenstein’s theory of montage to develop a model for presenting a series of images on the screen at the same time (with particular emphasis on his writings concerning the relationship between colour, text and music). I experimented with some scenes from a drama film and reedited linear footage to be presented as spatial montage. The results were very encouraging as the meaning of indsividual scenes could be changed by juxtaposing various clips on the screen at the same time.

I have made contact with a highly skilled Macromedia Director developer who has agreed to work on the interactive film project, developing the lingo script to track the individual audience decisions and creating the montage presentation of clips. I will write, direct and shoot the video myself. The first experimental film will be 1.5 mins duration. The second film will be a 15min short drama to be shot during the Summer 2004.

The parameters (metadata) to be assigned to the clips created several problems. I have decided to use Konstantin Stanislavski’s (1863-1938) approach to acting which focuses on the psychological motivation of the actor to define metadata constants that will allow clips to be ordered.

The majority of texts related to interactive narratives deal with games design and television-based reality shows. Therefore I have decided to return to fundamentals and my current research is concentrating on narratology. This will produce some basic narrative concepts that can be employed in the development of an interactive film.

Recent texts include,

‘Morphology of the Folktale’ V. Propp

‘Narratology’ Mieke Bal

‘The Conversations. Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film’ Michael Ondaatje

‘Internet Television’ Noam, Groebel, Gerbarg

‘New Media. A Critical Introduction’ Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, Kelly

‘The Film Sense’ Sergei Eisenstein

Online research links attached in separate sheet