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I couldn’t successfully upload the files as a webpage due to an FTP server issue, so I recorded the user experience from my own computer to get a sense for how it’s designed to play out on someone’s screen.

I am planning for my project to make to make the start of a you tube channel that will give how to videos on audio editing and some techniques that I have acquired while doing work in the DTC program. I also considered to use it as a channel to inform about audio effects and some of the uses that have been used in the past.

I also want to focus on the DAWs that are sort of becoming the industry standard in the music and audio industry. doing this I would do Logic Pro, Studio One, Ableton, and potentially pro tools depending on the future of that program.

Hey everyone,

I plan on creating a video similar to the style of Daniel Liss’s pandemic pantheon: a-z. My goal is to create montage, looped, video essay-like short film revolving around 23 facts about my perspective on life, a 23 year old college student whose moving out at the end of this week.

I’m not making this an egotistical project that’s all about me, because that’d be lame. I want to include thoughts or ideas that I have which many others share and hopefully connect to them on some level. I’ve begun writing a script for how this should play out and will be including some old footage I have alongside newly recorded pieces. I’m thinking of this project as a sort of check in point for myself on where I’m at in life.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to stay in a numerical order or choose random numbers to convey and connect ideas. I do want to connect ideas in clever ways as the numbers either increase or decrease to help keep the audience engaged with the content.

(I had to scrap the Cherry Blossoms at the Portland Waterfront Park idea. By the time I was able to get back down there for more footage the trees were bare pretty much and they weren’t looking as good as the first time I was down there. So, I refocused the video essay on the experience of the PlayStation Virtual Reality 2 headset.)

After watching Bandersnatch I think that it is safe to say that it was a very ambitious project with a clear artistic vision. It is clear how the interactive film achieved a lot of success. It makes it feel as if there is a real outcome to your decision, this weight makes the audience stop and think about the choices they have to make in fear of making the wrong call.

Letting the audience have partial influence over the outcomes in the story is a good way to engage the viewer to keep them hooked in the moment. This is something that many video games- more specifically, story games do to keep the player entertained. The more entertainment the media offers will directly impact the amount of time the player base spends. Games such as Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Fallout, and especially Telltale games like The Walking Dead have their audience in the palm of their hand, clocking in countless hours in each play session.

As for interactive cinema or the Bandersnatch style of film, I do not think that it is the future of film. I think there is a separate industry away from traditional cinema and video games where it resides as its own genre of media. I do, however, believe that interactive cinema will continue to evolve in the future.

Hello everyone,

I’d like to begin this post with a quote from Bill Viola’s writing that I feel perfectly illustrates Viola’s vision of the potential of technology.

“Leaping directly into the farther future for a moment, we can see the seeds of what some have described as the ultimate recording technology: total spatial storage, with the viewer wandering through some three-dimensional, possibly life-sized field of prerecorded or simulated scenes and events evolving in time.”

In truth, we have achieved this very situation he describes. It could be argued that modern day video games represent this vision, a three dimensional space where a “participant” explores a pre-rendered world as events unfold around them. If we choose to consider this vision solely in the form of cinema, then Bandersnatch is a prime example. The viewer is provided choices as the story progresses, changing the story dependent on the choices made, until the viewer kills the character or resets the story to previous decisions.
Yet, Bandersnatch can at times feel similar to the classic choose your own adventure stories many of us have experienced. The story becomes increasingly “meta”, totally shattering the fourth wall at points. It’s innovation comes in the repeated scenes with alternate choices resulting from the viewers other previous choices. This changes theme drastically compared to previous choose your own adventure works where the structure follows and rinse and repeat pattern. Which, as it turns out, is something Viola also discussed in terms of nonlinear story telling.

“As a start, we can propose new diagrams, such as the ‘matrix’ structure (fig. 31.4). This would be a non-linear array of information. The viewer could enter at any point, move in any direction, at any speed, pop in and out at place. All directions are equal. Viewing becomes exploring a territory, traveling through a data space.”

This vision is revolutionary thinking. It places the responsibility of creating a cohesive story to the viewer or participant. If all the information becomes accessible at any point, all the time, the line begins with the viewer and follows them through their journey.

Blog Prompt:  Bill Viola, writing in 1982 at the very start of digital video editing and video storage in a computer, speculates about the future possibilities of “data space” as a kind of potential space that can be explored by a “participant.” How does his vision compare with the branching Netflix movie Bandersnatch? Is Bandersnatch entertaining or tedious?  Does the work point to future possibilities for cinema and storytelling? How do Viola’s ideas, drawing on sacred arts of the past, challenge the simple “choose-your-own-adventure” approach to the nonlinear potentials of digital cinema?  Where do you think this technology is headed? Please quote from the reading.

“Something extraordinary is occurring today, in the 1980s, which ties together all these threads. The computer is merging with video. The potential offspring of this marriage is only beginning to be realized. Leaping directly into the farther future for a moment, we can see the seeds of what some have described as the ultimate recording technology: total spatial storage, with the viewer wandering through some three-dimensional, possibly life-sized field of prerecorded or simulated scenes and events evolving in time. At present, the interactive video discs currently on the market have already begun to address some of these possibilities. Making a program for interactive video disc involves the ordering and structuring (i.e., editing) of much more information than will actually be seen by an individual when he or she sits down to play the program. All possible pathways, or branches, that a viewer (“participant” is a better word) may take through the material must already exist at some
place on the disc. Entire prerecorded sections of video may never be encountered by a given observer.”

“Bandersnatch” shows how stories can change based on viewer choices, making watching more interactive. While this idea is fresh and interesting, some people find it tiring because there are so many different endings to keep up with. This mix of reactions shows the ups and downs of making stories like this.

Viola’s thoughts on storytelling predicted things like “Bandersnatch,” pointing to a future where stories might be more about exploring and participating than just watching. This could change how we think about movies and digital stories, making them more about joining in and less about just looking on.

Overall, Viola’s ideas and thoughts, were spot on.

Data spaces, in computation, are defined by Wikipedia as “an abstraction in data management that aim to overcome some of the problems encountered in data integration system”. In the context of Bill Viola’s piece “Will There Be Condominiums in Dataspace?”, the term takes on an additional meaning: data, be it media or information, that remains fluidly influenced by the shape of its environment. Put simply, that we will begin to see an increased interactivity in the media we engage with as our new hyper-digital data space becomes more affording of audience engagement. In Viola’s words: “Soon, the way we approach making films and videotapes will drastically change. The notion of a “master” edit and “original” footage will disappear. Editing will become the writing of a software program that will tell the computer how to arrange (i.e., shot order, cuts, dissolves, wipes, etc.) the information on the disc, playing it back in the specified sequence in real time or allowing the viewer to intervene”.

While Bandersnatch is not the purest ideal of what Viola’s work preaches, it comes very close to achieving it. Strictly speaking, Bandersnatch does already exist in a pre-existing form. “Fixed in time”, as Viola puts it. It has already been filmed, produced, and programmed to react in certain ways. Like with all CYOA media, there is a certain degree of pre-determinism even in a narrative where you can “choose your own adventure”. Although you get to choose the path, the optional paths and their consequences have already been designed long before you ever touched it. However, it does still hold true to the principle of Viola’s vision by allowing the story to change and evolve in tandem with the audience’s participation, the information and story itself shaped by its relationship to the viewer. As such, no two viewers will have the exact same experience.

The logical progression of this technology would be to omit the limitations of the CYOA genre and allow for stories to tell themselves – that is, to find a way that the same story can be infinitely edited and changed by the one experiencing it. The closest approximation to this would be NovelAI, an AI writing assistant that writes the story alongside you, and changes its future prompt fulfillment based on edits and additions you’ve made. Fluid, endlessly changing media that is relentlessly shaped and reshaped by your contributions to it – the TTRPG of the digital age, in a way. If such a thing were to be implemented as a new form of media, CYOA-based storytelling could be elevated from simply choosing your adventure to collaboratively helping to create it.