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.

With the movie Bandersnatch we as the viewer can see some of the ways that “we approach making films and videotapes will drastically change.” I believe that not all movies or cinema will be interactive or be something that allows the viewer tactile interaction with the art form in the way that Bandersnatch does, but could be how to show or view ideas in a no linear format. Similar to how Hypertext works change how some view the way to write stories in a non linear way, this sort of interactive cinema can inspire writers and directors to approach their work in different ways.

All together I found Bandersnatch to an intriguing and entertaining way to experience a movie or video. There were times that I wasn’t wanting to make choices and watch how things play out but I feel that it didn’t hinder the experience as a whole.

I feel that in the coming future there can be a niche of video entertainment that can follow in Bandersnatch’s ways of interaction but could also interact with a sort of augmented reality were what each viewer is seen can be different and that some viewers can have a large difference between what they see.

Both the writing of Bill Viola and the Bandersnatch episode have similarities due to how there’s a connection between choice and outcomes. Both have references to memory and how memories can lead to making certain choices. After getting 4 of the 10 main endings, I was super entertained.

“It is of paramount importance now, as we watch the same education system that brought us through school (and the same communications system that gave us the wonderful world of commercial TV and AM radio) being mapped onto these new technologies, that we go back and take a deeper look at some of the older systems described in these pages. Artists not shackled to the fad and fashion treadmill of the art world, especially the art world of the past few years, will begin to see the new meaning that art history is taking on.” (Viola, Bill) I think this holds true to today and how things are evolving with ai technology.

I think this format is moving towards the video game industry. I think I see this playing out better for people who are sitting down to choose their own adventures and practice the multiple outcomes when they’re in a play a game kind of mood. Most people I know use movies to fall asleep to or watch for an escape.

-Quincy H

The interactive movie of Bandersnatch allows the viewer to take control of the narrative and allow them to create specific parts of the story by choosing between options. While some options are just basic decisions, a couple of the options end up changing the whole plot of the interactive movie entirely.

The beginning of the movie allows the viewer to learn how this movie works in comparison to regular movies by giving a simple “Which cereal do you want” choice between two different cereals. If a viewer does not choose fast enough, then it will proceed to choose for you. There is an option to reverse back to allow some options to be redone. This gives the viewer the choice to re-do some of the choices within the story and how the story is in the viewer’s hand to a specific degree. I ended up getting the first ending possible within Bandersnatch which is where the game releases but does not do that well. I then got sent back to try a different choice with the characters beginning to act differently. Viola states, “As a start, we can propose new diagrams, such as the “matrix’ structure 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 any place.” (pg. 12). As it is shown within Bandersnatch, the viewer could reach one of the final endings at any direction, speed, and just enter in after completing one of the many endings. Thus, giving me, as a viewer, to attempt to see the different choices within the movie.

I feel like this will become its own form of storytelling within cinema through the use of creating a story that has multiple endings. What would happen if you choose one decision rather than the other one, or what are the different outcomes within the story? This could allow the viewer to choose how to “watch” a movie how they want. As long as the writers of these types of films make sure that the story is compelling to watch, then the viewers will enjoy viewing the story to get as many different endings as possible.

First of all, I enjoyed the story of Bandersnatch and the way that it breaks the 4th wall, allowing the user become part of the story. It was fun and engaging for the most part, but I don’t fully believe that this was the “data space” that Bill Viola was thinking of.

“When I had my first experience with computer videotape editing in 1976, one demand this new way of working impressed upon me has remained significant. It is the idea of holism. I saw then that my piece was actually finished and in existence before it was executed on the VTRs. Digital computers and software technologies are holistic; they think in terms of whole structures. Word-processors allow one to write out, correct, and rearrange the whole letter before typing it. Data space is fluid and temporal, hardcopy is for real—an object is born and becomes fixed in time. Chiseling in stone may be the ultimate hard copy.”

This movie is fixed in time, with a set number of pathways for the viewer to navigate and each pathway coming back to a fixed amount of endings. What I take from this quote is that the data space Viola is talking about is fluid, it has a structure that changes or has the ability to be changed. Yes, the film’s endings could technically be changed, but there are only a few different alternatives, and each alternative is still a fixed ending. I think a truly holistic data space would be something that can actually be changed, for example, code in a program or website. The writer of the code is exploring the data space in a way that the viewer is not when watching Bandersnatch by actually changing the end product and nothing is “written in stone.”

I don’t think that this format is something that will become standard practice for cinema because of how much work it takes to create these alternate endings and because the amount of paths possible is not infinite, but gives the user the illusion of being infinite unless the user goes through each path until they have seen them all. Just like Stefan, the viewer thinks they are making choices but in the end come back to a fixed ending. I, personally, would rather sit down and watch a well written, entertaining movie or video that is linear in appearance and I think that most people would agree with me.