Granted, I’ve spent today coming up with many ideas for this project. Most of which could never be realistically achieved in 5 weeks. However I’m going to put them up on here just in case one could develop into a plausable idea later on in the development stage. I’ll list them below and go into detail for each one seperately. Also it is worth remembering the simple theme given to the project which is “Us .vs Them”.
Idea 1: A changing film
This is one of my more ambitious idea’s but with careful planning could be scalled down to fit the brief. One of the main problems with films in general, not just at the cinema is repetitiveness. Not only in the sense that all films follow a set narrative and ironically alot of twists are expected and discovered before the film can show them in its own timeline. I’d struggle to make something that was unpredictable for a short film, as there would be little time to build up assumptions and statements for them to then be made eironious. However, I could make something interesting. My idea would be to show a film in 4 parts, each of those parts would have 4 different developments of narrative, but would be interchangeable and could still make sense. I’ll put a diagram below to illustrate my idea. And as the viewer watched, they could either choose which version they would like to watch or have the computer randomly choose one.
Part 1.a Part 2.a Part 3.a Part 4.a
Part 1.b Part 2.b Part 3.b Part 4.b
Part 1.c Part 2.c Part 3.c Part 4.c
Part 1.d Part 2.d Part 3.d Part 4.d
So for example, the viewer chooses to watch Part 1.a, which is a man walking down the road who gets to a junction. Each version of part 2 (a-d) would show a different path that man would take. I understand there would be extreme difficulty in making all the parts work together (and perhaps that is why I have not seen this done before) but it is an idea none the less. Simply from a numbers perspective, if you let the computer randomly generate which versions you saw, there are 256 different variations on the film which would solve the problem of having a predictable storyline. As long as I kept to fairly simple storyline, this IS doable and would make for a great piece of work as well as having great potential to be adapted into an instilation piece. In respect to the theme itself, something revolutionary is always appropriate, so perhaps something to do with someone deciding whether or not they join a cause. Maybe the different versions, shows a culture coming closer to a regime whereas the other ones show it moving away. It could even be that the degree of the change could also differ from version to version.
Idea 2: Interactive film
This sort of idea has been toyed with before, but has not been produced entirely well. A couple of example below show what can be done, some of which work well. I will note, that a few of these examples are games and I must consider that it could be very worthwhile exlporing the gap between gaming and filming and how much that could close over the next few years.
From the game God of War, which shows a cutscene from the game at the same time as keeping the player involved (violent!)
The company O2 advertising “interactive cinema” which could be false, but has at least a unique perspective
“The murder” an interactive film about superheroes. Much closer to what I’d would consider doing in regards to this idea
Lastly, some snipits of Heavy Rain. Something that is a game but begins to blur the distinction between that and a film
Out of these, the murder idea is at the very least feasable. However my idea would be to have the choices come up during the film (with visual cue’s beforehand to at least prepare the viewer) and that if the viewer missed them then the film would end earlier than expected. Much like an old adventure book where if you choose the wrong direction, you died. The difficult part would be to first establish a connection between the main protagonist and the viewer so they actually have some urge to carry the protagonist through the storyline. This sort of idea would work well with a chase or action sequence and thus would work even better within the “Us vs Them” theme. Certainly something to think about
I will post more idea’s that come up this week on here with hopefully more examples to show. For the moment these two are fairly strong and both at least warrant further research and development. I may also like to think about developing a story and then looking at a way to project the idea unless my idea warrants a specific style of story.
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