headbin

The Soak Test

The reason that BDE (now known as ALTNet) didn't get interactive movies off the ground is because they didn't adapt their flics for how they saw the audience treating them. People didn't interact. They sat there, watched it as a film and then if it grabbed them they watched it again, maybe pressed a button or two. The rate of interaction was too fixed. The cartoon visuals were technically impressive but not as good as cheap Saturday morning stuff. The Multipath Movies didn't work.

Re-mixable films could work, if we get the soak test right. The film is the soak test. There's a hell of a lot of exposure to an idea in ten minutes, even five. If the audience leave with a feeling that they've only just scratched the surface of what the thing can do, and they liked it linearly, then the hackers will jump in.

I think people will see things they want to do with the film and I think the tone of the community will be raucous. There'll be no real way to unite people behind one cause or one style (other than the technical design) so it may as well be organised chaos. It should be easy to set up your own branch of the site for your people, your films. OK it's another one of those bloody personalised web sites. "Hi Bob" but I think they're pretty cool. The trick has to be subtlety. The system will try to know you but doesn't advertise the fact. The end-user license agreement that comes with the film will describe exactly what is being attempted. User opt in to play.

It would be cool if the aesthetic of the community site was the same as Blake's tech in the movie. Quick and dirty but scalable. I like websites I can set to zero images, minimal images and glossy. Three levels of visual setting.

Dino tea

One of the multi-path branches in the interactive screenplay had Blade facing off against the dinosaur that Axel accidently arouses. In a scene betraying unhealthy 3D Studio Max and Lewis Carroll influences, Blade slows the creature down using a teapot.

Searching for Blade

One of the original characters to get the chop was Sim, a data-miner sent by the Chief to find Blade. Here she is using the original Alta Vista Australia search engine (which in 1998 would return links to the screenplay if you typed in 'Blade Harkensen').

Covered in text

Jack Feldstein, my original script editor, felt the concept of a stadium crowd being "covered in text" could use an illustration. This is a live screenshot from Metatropolis in 1997, one of the original 3D avatar chat worlds produced by Activeworlds.

Materials produced for BDE

The written materials produced for Brilliant Digital (1997 - 1998):

Feature screenplay (draft one, draft two)

Interactive screenplay (final scene breakdown, draft screen breakdown, draft screenplay, flowchart)

Technical design document for multi-path movie.

Original treatment

This is the original treatment written November 1996 in Sydney for the Brilliant Digital interactive movie competition and subsequently sold to the company on winning the competition. I signed with BDE to deliver a feature-length interactive screenplay and technical specification in February 1997.

ten weeks in the headbin - a multi-path movie treatment

All rights to the project and associated IPR was regained in 2002.