interactive television
“television only better”
bid-up tv
developing interactive television
artists or technicians ?
2001 a tale of two movies
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
•
•
Animation/ Fantasy/ Adventure/ Sci-Fi/
Action
voice actors:
– Ming-Na
– Alec Baldwin
– Ving Rhames
– Steve Buscemi
– Peri Gilpin
– Donald Sutherland
– James Woods
– Jean Simmons
Shrek
•
•
Adventure/ Romance/ Animation/ Fantasy/
Family/ Comedy
voice actors
– Mike Myers
– Eddie Murphy
– Cameron Diaz
– John Lithgow
– Vincent Cassel
– Peter Dennis
– Clive Pearse
– Jim Cummings
gollum
"The stuff I'm doing on set is more demonstrating to the
animators...trying to indicate to them how I see the character being
played on the floor."
Andy Serkis
transferable skills
artists & technicians
talking design - bridging the gap
• patterns
• remediation
• narrative
design patterns
the problem ….
“ If I knew where I got my ideas,
I’d be there right now getting them.”
Milt Gross, 1930’s cartoonist
….. a solution ?
“Most simply, a pattern is a named problem/solution pair
that can be applied in new contexts, with advice on how
to apply it in novel situations and discussion of its tradeoffs”
Craig Larman
Applying UML and Patterns
… structured language
‘A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design’, Jan Borchers (2001)
• Name - communicate the idea behind the pattern
• Ranking - how valid the pattern author believes the pattern to be.
• zero, one or two stars
• Illustration - communicate the idea of the pattern.
• Problem - ‘….you are doing something and discover a problem.”
• Forces - a further elaboration of the problem
• positives and negatives
• Examples - real world examples.
• Solution - generalise the key points from the examples and suggest
how they may be applied to similar problems.
• Diagram - show the main idea of the pattern in a schematic way.
• Relationships - a brief description of which patterns relate to others.
… only a medium
“Indeed this ageless character has nothing, in the end, to do
with languages. The language, and the processes which
stem from it, merely release the fundamental order which is
native to us. They do not teach us, they only remind us of
what we know already …….”
Christopher Alexander
A Timeless Way of Building (1979)
“Clearly, one pattern format does not fit all. What does fit all
is the general concept of patterns as a vehicle for capturing
and conveying expertise, whatever the field”
John Vlissides
Patterns : the top ten misconceptions (1997)
… about critical design
“… don't be surprised if your first reaction to some of the
patterns is, "Duh, everybody knows that one." … Not every
pattern will be new to you, but hopefully every pattern will
encourage you to think about its problem.”
Chris Hecker & Zachary Booth Simpson
gamasutra.com
remediation
concepts of remediation
“What is new about new media comes from the ways in which they
refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion
themselves to answer the challenge of new media.”
(Bolter & Grusin, 1999)
immediacy & hypermediacy ……..… transparency & opacity ….…... lie
back & lean forward
“… our culture wants to both multiply its media and to erase all traces
of mediation”
(Bolter & Grusin, 1999)
polygons
Lara Croft in her latest incarnation in Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
is composed of 5,000 polygons a concept that can be traced through
Dutch artist Crispyn van der Passe (1643) to Plato’s Timaeus (360
BC) )
perspective
In video games such as Doom perspective is calculated to rules
originally developed by Filippo Brunelleschi (1420) though perspective in
painting was addressed in the Dionysian theatre in Athens during the 5th
Century BC.
widescreen
Wheatfields under Thunderclouds, 1890
Wheatfield with Crows, 1890
In 1890, Van Gogh painted a large number of landscapes, all on unusual,
elongated canvases (100 x 50 cm)
"The Wedding Portrait” By Franz Hal
Wedding Portrait (1622)
Metropolis (1927)
interactive narrative
telling a story
•
•
•
Fabula (Story) - What Happened ?
– chronological sequence of events in a narrative
– the raw, paraphrasable, synopsizable core of the story
Sjuzhet (Discourse) - How is it told ?
• mode of re-presenting the events
• narrative techniques, media, metaphor, camera angles, the reordering of the temporal sequence etc
• the media, the narrative techniques, etc..
Example - the tale of a courtesan who renounces her lover as an act of true
love, becomes ill with a terminal disease and is reunited with her lover
shortly before dying.
– La Dame aux Camélias (1848) - Novel
– La Dame aux Camélias (1852) - Play
– La Traviata (1853) - Opera
– Camille (1926 ) - Silent Movie
– Camille (1936) - Movie
– Moulin Rouge (2001) - Musical
telling a story: continued
• Diegesis
– the world created by the narrative
• Diachronic Story
– what happened before (the back story)
• Synchronic Story
– happens in the “present” (ongoing narrative)
towards interactive television narratives
“…television narratives have to be popular in heterogeneous societies
amongst audiences with different and often conflicting social interests
and experiences. So television narrative must be more open and
multiple than the singular folk narrative with its comparatively tight
closure.”
(Fiske, 1987)
“As a variety of multiform stories make clear, print and motion picture
stories are pushing past linear formats not out of mere playfulness but
in an effort to give expression to the characteristically twentieth-century
perception of life as composed of parallel possibilities…its alternate
versions of reality are now part of the way we think, part of the way we
experience the world.”
(Murray, 1997)
types of interactive fiction (my ordering)
• Enhanced narrative
• Nodal narrative
• Multipath narrative
• Parallel narrative
• Multimodal Narrative
• Topographic narrative
• Algorithmic narrative
(Favre, 2002)
putting it all together
identifying patterns of interactive narrative
used in leisure & entertainment media
nodal narrative
• A type of linear storytelling that offers several interactive segments,
called nodes, along its course.
– Viewers cease to be passive and are asked to interact with the
story
– Engage with the story but not change it
• iTV
– Winky Dink (simulated interaction)
– Colin & Trouble in Space
• http://i-media.soc.napier.ac.uk/casestudy1/index.html
• DVD
– Harry Potter - Chamber of Secrets
multipath narrative
•
Change story direction and/or outcome
Examples:
– Literature
• Fighting Fantasy Series (1980s)
• Asterix to the Rescue (1986)
• What Next Ted ? (2001)
– DVD
• I’m your Man – 1992 (multiple endings)
• Harry Potter - Chamber of Secrets: Bonus DVD (2003)
– The Forbidden Forest
– Tour of Diagon Alley
– Video Game
• Tomb Raider – Lara Croft and the Angel of Darkness
• Silent Hill series
– WWW
• Escape from L.A. (1995)
• Web Premiere Toons - http://www.cartoonnetwork.com
parallel narrative
•
aka Perspective Narrative or Multiform Stories
– Character based - e.g. follow a particular character
– Location based - e.g. view different camera angles
Examples
– iTV
• D Dag (1999)- character based - 4 channels
• Nudlar & 08ers (1996) - location based - 2 characters/2 channels
• Chomeurs (2002)- character based (choose narrator) - 1 channel
– iRadio
• Dark House (2003) - 3 characters
– Video Games
• The Bouncer (2000) - beat’em up - three characters
• EverGrace (2001) - adventure - 2 characters
• Enter The Matrix (2003) - action/adventure - two characters
– Narrative closely linked to movies and anime
– Share same characters, locations, scenes and dialogue.
• Many games incorporate multiple camera angles
multimodal narrative
• Tell a story across several media
• ALL EXISTING MEDIA can be used and combined to create a
multimodal narrative experience : a TV program, a web site, a
mobile phone service, an email campaign, the press, advertising,
postcards, fax, billboards, etc
• Not all media need be interactive
Examples
• The Salon - Channel 4, E4, WWW
• Bid-Up TV - Digital, Telephone, WWW
• Perfect Dark - N64 & GameBoy
• Pokemon - N64 & Gameboy
• The Matrix - Film, WWW, DVD, Video Game, Manga etc
• XIII - Comic, Video Game
• The Thing - Movie, Video Game
topographic narrative
• Based on the exploration of locations rather than a chronology of
events
• Video Games
– Quest types games
• Zelda - Ocarina of Time
• Myst
• Tomb Raider
algorithmic narrative
• Not planned (or written) in advance but self-generated
• Created by their viewers/readers/users as they interact with
narrative material or with each others.
• A set of rules or principles rather than narrative elements or
characters
• Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game ((MMORPG)
MMORPG).
Example: Ultima Online
– The world's first and most successful online game.
– Offers players the opportunity to live a parallel life in the virtual
world of Britannia.
– Borrows heavily from classic fantasy role-playing games such as
Dungeons & Dragons.
artefacts - patterns & case studies
• i-media.soc.napier.ac.uk
– demonstrate
• Nodal & Parallel Narrative
• Multipath Narrative
summary
• A pattern approach provides a valuable
contribution to the overall design solution
• Seek inspiration from design solutions in other
media
• The concept of patterns is more important than
developing pattern catalogues - ability to identify
patterns is the key.