26 April 2016
A littler earlier than usual to post, but I’m slowly gaining momentum in making sense of all of my research. I’m glad we got to pick a subject that suits our interests, because if it was to do with anything else, I could be in a touch of bother by now.
Although the suggestion of interactivity can be regarded as anything as much as pressing the play or stop button on a VCR, I’ve decided to stick with an angle relating moreso to the importance of the storyline and the need to maintain it’s essence, or the author’s intentions as I also like to refer to it. It’s certainly not the result I was expecting when I first approached the subject re Choose your own adventure, but I found that with the introduction of interactive media, the storyline can be altered to such a state that perhaps it doesn’t result in the original intentions provided by the author, and could actually threaten it’s intended effect. While we enjoy having the ability to control what we see and view, I’m finding there’s a high importance to be placed on remaining passive, and to remain surprised with the outcomes. Case and point, who isn’t loving the unpredictable GoT plot(s)?
One particular piece of research that has stood out for me so far is a group of practitioners who have actually created a new form of interactive narrative structure called a ‘detour narrative’. The storyline structure has a backbone, where the beginning and middle both remain the same, but throughout the plot lie ‘detours’, where the story (in this case, a short film) reveals an option for a window of time while the movie remains uninterrupted, and the viewer chooses to use the detour or continue with the ongoing plot. Either way it’s considered a detour point which returns back to the main storyline (backbone) at various points. This can happen a number of times throughout the movie, but in this case it was three times, where the final detour resulted in two alternative endings.
I can see that while the author still provides and maintains control of all content provided, there remains a level of ‘essence control’, but only if the detours are kept to a minimum. Perhaps this could be a solution to maintaining the essence? Keep it simple stupid?