Project Development
The subject of this proposal is an interactive non-linear narrative. The Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’s Netflix TV show drives the project since it is a non-linear narrative film based on a book called “Choose Your Own Disaster” by Dana Schwartz. In a non-linear narrative, the secret to helping you uncover the character’s history and present, as well as to making the species outstand, can be storytelling. “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in the order- Jean Luc Godard” (Final Draft.2016, n.p). The non-linear narrative is a storytelling strategy where there is a representation of events in chronological order or logical order. Activity trends are usually jumping around, not a fixed sequence. The non-linear narrative keeps the audience guessing, leaving it to them to try and figure out what is going on. For example, Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000) has two sets of narratives running through the film, one in black and white and one in the coloured version.
The two narratives segmentation helps the audience see a piece of one narrative, followed the second one, and then back to the first. Memento coloured story display to the audience is through reverse making. The black and white clips start at the beginning, and the coloured clips start at the end this completely flips the narrative with the final clip transition from black and white to colour showing the end of the first narrative and the start if the second. Non-linear is not always complicated. For example, Robert Zemeckis’s film Forest Gump (1994); the story revolves around a man at a bus stop waiting for a bus and talking to people about how he came to be at the bus stop. The film is starting from the resolution (end) part. In entire the film, the viewers are jumping back and forth between moments of his past and him telling the story to new people at the bus stop. Therefore, breaking the narrative into a non-linear format. The convergence of media forms and the history of the film adaptations comprise of the core theoretical concepts supporting the project. Convergence leads to audience participation due to interaction. Besides, greater audience engagement helps at enhancing people perception regarding media. It also encourages social networking, whereby people share videos, music, and photos. The negative impact of convergence is that it leads to information overload, thus making the audience overwhelmed. The cross-selling media strategies drain audience capital, and the changing technology obstructs the viewer’s activities.
A TV show drove the concept of the idea by Netflix called Black Mirror released a standalone film on December 28, 2018, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which is an interactive episode of the Black Mirror show in Science Fiction Anthology. It was written by series producer Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. Netflix enters an environment involving video games and film and television in the Interactive Entertainment Zone, and although the organization is producing simple action shows for teenagers, Black Mirror emerges as the natural choice for a series that would improve this narrative strategy. The streaming service played with interactive children’s entertainment. It enabled young viewers to follow a storyline through their direction, with several questions with two choices each time that is answered by a TV remote or a mouse to click on the option. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is Netflix’s first-ever interactive movie for adults, which debuted on the service Friday. Set in 1984, “Bandersnatch” is the story of geeky teenager Stefan played by Fionn Whitehead, who sets out to turn a multiple-choice science-fiction book by the same title into a pioneering computer game that also presents the player with a series of choices (Roettgers. 2018, n.p). Since he found the fantasy book of his mother’s favourite, Stefan Butler is a young programmer who starts to incorporate it in a video game. Butler lives in an enticing bedroom and still resides with his father. As an alternative, Butler proposes selling the game to a game publisher run by Mohan Thakur. He meets the game designer Colin Ritman. Thakur is attempting to market Butler’s game called Bandersnatch, which corresponds to a real game of the period that was not renowned, and which gives Butler support to complete the game and to encourage a luxury advertising campaign.
Nevertheless, Butler does not make a choice to take on Thakur’s bid, but the audience does. Unlike most episodes of “Black Mirror,” “Bandersnatch” is not a film about the destructive ability of technology. It is an immersive storytelling function in a non-linear narrative where we control the storyline by basic A / B choices at critical times during the works. The decisions made in Choose Your Adventure novels, which popularised the form in the 1980s, turn to a page number where the readers can collect their narrative thread. These decisions in “Bandersnatch” range from choosing which cereals Butler to have for breakfast to selecting whether to jump from a balcony. The path leads up to an embracing of possible endings, some are sudden and unsatisfactory, and others expose the secrets of the plot. (If you do not choose an alternative, will select one for you, to unravel the mystery of the story) Many endings also encourage the audience to go back to the previous scene, suggesting that he or she has gone wrong (Parkin 2019, n.p). The interactive part that the audience gets to do is to make a choice; when the playthrough is over, the user has an option to go back and choose another method. The average time watching is 90 minutes, but the fastest way is 40 minutes. The identical image becomes split into 250 parts for 150 minutes. Bandersnatch has five primary endings, but there are yet there are several versions. A couple of examples the ending where Stefan puts out a terrible Game, the Netflix ending (and fourth wall break), and the ending where Stefan dies before finishing Bandersnatch. The current narrative entertainment consumption has led to the audience persuasion in adopting positive measures in society. It has eliminated media censorship. Despite that, it has led to the increment of misinformation due to propaganda spread.
The basis of the creation of the interactive film relies on a book called “Choose Your Own Disaster” by Dana Schwartz. It is about a wild, funny, and unflinchingly frank autobiography about the terrible and shift of life of a young woman in the hope of finding herself in the form of Never Have I Ever and the style of adulthood. What Dana Schwartz does in her book uses the personality testing framework to revisit all the disasters she experienced in her 20s. The interactive film will put the character in a couple of situations, and the viewer would have a couple of choices to choose from, and in the end, it will show the audience what their personality is. The way it will be projected is the user would watch it on a computer screen with headphones on to block the surrounding sounds and click on choice based on the situation the character doings. The theme of the project is that destiny cannot be controlled and changed. There will be both a dark and a happy ending. The program utilization includes either UNITY and Unreal engine 4 for the interactive side, and the editing Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and Audition.
The convergence of media forms and the history of the film adaptations comprise of the core theoretical concepts supporting the project. The first one is media convergence is the unified mass media – newspaper, Television, radio, the Web, and mobile and immersive technologies across different digital media platforms. Media integration. Media convergence is the incorporation of multiple media types into one medium for a diverse interaction (Jenkins and Deuze. 2008, n.p). The combination of powerful computers, the transfer to digital platforms, and the development of high-speed computer networks have led us to do something new. The old-time and space constraints are entirely gone. Almost anything, anywhere, or anytime you can view, listen to, or read. The ancient meanings that divided radio, television, wires, newspapers, and film have been forever. The 1990s brought a convergence of ownership and created media groups such as Disney, Viacom, and Sony. From the user side, our preferred delivery systems have recently changed on the web–newspapers are now providing graphics, TVs, and webcams for radio talk (Ololadeganiyualabi, 2014). Media convergence, new forms of digital use have emerged: consumers may enhance knowledge through technology encounter-based sharing and have the ability to interact with the web itself, as well as with the content provider and other users. Technology advances have also contributed to inexpensive production facilities off the rack (Nilsson, Nuldén, and Olsson. 2001, n.p). Convergence leads to audience participation due to interaction. Besides, greater audience engagement helps at enhancing people perception regarding media. It also encourages social networking, whereby people share videos, music, and photos. The negative impact of convergence is that it leads to information overload, thus making the audience overwhelmed. The cross-selling media strategies drain audience capital, and the changing technology obstructs the viewer’s activities.
The second core theoretical concept in the history of film adaptation; The film industry has not developed anything to adapt content previously published in another field. Classical Greek composers developed stories conveyed by an oral tradition; Shakespeare found fitting supplies for his works from diverse sources. And as soon as cinema makers realized that a beautiful story in moveable images needed to have a good story, it became common to adapt novels, plays, and short stories. Shortly afterwards, these modifications received massive critique and development of numerous thinking schemes (Du, n.d.). One of the first films to transform from a book to a movie was Alice in Wonderland thirty-seven years after the album has released. Cecil Hepworth directed it and lasted ten minutes, followed by it’s a sixteen-scene picture released on April 1, 1903.
In conclusion, an interactive non-linear narrative is a storytelling strategy comprising of representation of events in chronological order or logical order. The creation of the interactive film comes from a book called “Choose Your Own Disaster” by Dana by Dana Schwartz. Lastly, the theoretical core concepts are a convergence of media forms and the history of film adaptations.
Reference List
Du, E. (n.d.). The historical development of film adaptation. University of the Philippines, Diliman.
Final Draft®. (2016). What Is Nonlinear Storytelling? [online] Available at: https://www.finaldraft.com/learn/final-draft-blog/what-is-nonlinear-storytelling/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2020].
Forest Gump. (1994). [film] Directed by R. Zemeckis.
Jenkins, H., and Deuze, M. (2008). Editorial. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(1), pp.5-12.
Memento. (2000). [film] Directed by C. Nolan.
Nilsson, A., Nuldén, U., and Olsson, D. (2001). Mobile Media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 7(1), pp.34-38.
Parkin, S. (2019). The “Bandersnatch” episode of “Black Mirror” and the Pitfalls of Interactive Fiction. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/bandersnatch-and-the-pitfalls-of-interactive-fiction [Accessed January 3, 2020].
Roettgers, J. (2018). Netflix Takes Interactive Storytelling to the Next Level with ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.’ [online] Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-black-mirror-bandersnatch-interactive-1203096171/ [Accessed January 3, 2020].
Ololadeganiyualabi. (2014). THE CONCEPT OF MEDIA CONVERGENCE. [online] Available at: https://ololadeganiyualabi.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/the-concept-of-media-convergence/ [Accessed 3 Jan. 2020].