Movie/Gamer Fans; Philosophy Types: The Future of Narrative (New Yorker article)

Cafe Society
1

The article is called “The Movie with a Thousand Plots” by Raffi Khatchadourian. Link here: The Movie with a Thousand Plotlines | The New Yorker.

It is about the viability of game-like multi-thread narratives that involve viewer choice. It is about a platform called Treehouse by a startup called Eko that was started by an Israeli musician who made a video with alternate paths, then got more excited about the video than the music :wink:

What’s interesting / new to my understanding:

  • This Treehouse platform seems to be a truly new tool to use to build multi-strand narratives.

  • This platform appears to be getting a lot of backing.

  • In hearing Directors who discuss using it, they appear to be finding ways to innovate and grow the structure of multi-strand movies that do not feel like games. One example is a Rashoman-style film that maintains the same basic dialogue but includes splitting Realities where you can follow different perspectives of the same events.

One key sentence jumped out at me:

[QUOTE=The New Yorker]
Employees at Bloch’s company (note: the one developing Treehouse) envision a future where viewers gather around the water cooler to discuss the differences in what they watched, rather than to parse a shared dramatic experience. It is hard not to see in this vision, on some level, the prospect of entertainment as selfie.
[/QUOTE]

That’s a huge difference: watching a movie and comparing POVs on what we saw vs. creating our own version of the narrative and comparing our choices and our uniquely-made narrative.

Anyone else read the article? It feels like there are huge implications for how we view narrative and how we share experiences. The article is hypothesizing that this medium could be the big new art form of the 21st century - no doubt gamers and others have been thinking about this for decades but it seems a bit closer to reality now.

Finally, I really have to wonder: if this multi-thread narrative structure gets traction, I wonder how it will change how Humans think about the Big Questions. As the Internet and social media have become integrated into our world, we are using the perspectives we have gained by looking at Big Data, online crowdsourcing and networking, etc. to view our world very differently. How might this multi-thread narrative platform change how we view ourselves?

2

I read the article yesterday. I find the prospect of watching an interactive movie as described in the article horrifying. The idea toward the end of the movie sensing my reactions and customizing itself without any choice by me is even more horrifying.

3

I know!! The article describes incorporating eye tracking and other biomedical sensing to gauge our interests. They describe a test film where male and female hotties walk into a room together and the film branches based on which actor you exhibit the most interest in.

It sounds like a weird invasion of privacy more than a way to be entertained.

4

As someone who has never played a video game, I realize that I am nowhere near the target market for this method of story-telling, but I was surprised at how revolting the idea seemed to me.