Maureen Thomas

Interactive TV narratives: Opportunities, progress, and challenges

This article is motivated by the question whether television should do more than simply offer interactive services alongside (and separately from) traditional linear programs, in the context of its dominance being seriously challenged and threatened by interactive forms of screen media entertainment. It suggests: yes. Interactive narrativity, that is, the ability to interact with (and influence) stories whilst they are being told, represents one clear development path for interactive television. The capabilities of computing technology are ripe for exploring this new form of storytelling, from creation to commercial distribution. The article starts by looking at the relationship between narrativity and interactivity in the current context of screen media, and identifies clear signs of interest from certain European public broadcasters in interactive TV narratives. It then presents in detail four recent experimental interactive TV productions in the genres of drama, news, and documentary, developed in collaboration with public broadcasters, which illustrate the potential and richness of this new form of storytelling, but also highlight new technological capabilities necessary for such productions. A number of essential technological requirements are then discussed in more detail in the final part. The article suggests that the ShapeShifting Media Technology, employed in the implementation of the four productions, has made significant advances both at the technological and the creative ends in supporting the development of interactive TV narrativity, but, however, that further developments are required before being able to answer questions such as “Would end users want such a form of screen media entertainment?” and “Would it be effective for both end users and producers?”

ShapeShifting TV: interactive screen media narratives

This paper presents a paradigm, called ShapeShifting TV, for the realisation of interactive TV narratives or, more generally, of interactive screen-media narratives. These are productions whose narrations respond on the fly (i.e. in real time) to interaction from active viewers. ShapeShifting TV refers to productions made mainly with pre-recorded time-based material, in which variation is achieved by selecting and rearranging atomic elements of content (e.g. video clips) into individual narrations. The aimed quality of the productions (e.g. narrative continuity and aesthetics) is at least that of good traditional linear TV programmes. The artefact which determines the way individual stories unfold, called the narrative space, is authored and tested by experts before the delivery of the programme. However, the adaptation of narrations to input, at delivery time, is automatic. ShapeShifting TV is a generic paradigm; it is neither production nor genre specific. Furthermore, it is not confined to television; it is about screen media in general. ShapeShifting TV is founded on a computational language called Narrative Structure Language (NSL) and is accompanied by a comprehensive software system for authoring and delivery (which implements NSL). These were successfully employed to the creation of a number of ShapeShifting TV productions, which extended genres such as drama, documentary and news with interactivity. This paper defines the ShapeShifting TV paradigm, outlines NSL and the associated software, and presents two ShapeShifting TV productions.

Conceiving ShapeShifting TV: a computational language for truly-interactive TV

iTV does not yet have truly interactive programmes, that is programmes whose content adapts to the preferences of their viewers. In commercially deployed iTV productions, the programmes themselves are essentially linear and therefore non-interactive. In the research arena, the main bulk of work in computational support for interactive narratives focuses on wrapping interactions up in meaningful and interesting narratives, rather than on expanding traditional linear narratives with interactivity. This paper presents a validated approach to the development of truly interactive programmes called ShapeShifting TV. In focus is a representation language for narrative structures.

Stories in space: The concept of the story map

While 3D space has become almost ubiquitous in computer games that apply narrative techniques, theoretical frameworks and practical experiments about the use of virtual space are underdeveloped compared to the number of works that deal with literary textual pieces such as MUDs. Offering one element to fill this gap, the notion of a Story Map is introduced in this paper. The interactor’s experience of space and of the events in a Real-Time 3-Dimensional Virtual Environment (RT 3D VE) form a constant discourse and Story Maps are seen as a form of the interactor’s comprehension of this discourse. The Common Tales research project exemplifies the development of this theory before the value of the Story Map for MMORPG’s will be outlined.

Interactivity and digital environments: designing a storymap for gormenghast explore

This paper discusses the process of conceptualising and graphically mapping narrative into a 3D computer generated environment using the example of the experimental interactive drama production of Gormenghast Explore. This mapping is represented by a Storymap, which combines spatially organised and reconfigurable narrative. Combining architecture theory and practice with interactive design, this new approach illustrates how principles of urban planning and character development work together to create a new template for the digital landscape.

Digitality and immaterial culture: What did Viking women think?

The digital interactive audiovisual work, RuneCast, designed for installation-projection to supplement artefacts on display, suggests how digital media can be used to extend the museum visit. The oral composition techniques of the Viking age are adapted for computational narrativity, and authentic sung and spoken verse is interpreted through associative, kaleidoscopically reconfiguring, layered video and animation – evoking rather than documenting the ethos of the period it illuminates. Like its inspiration, the Eddaic poem, Voluspaa (Songs of the Seeress), RuneCasts voices are female, not only invoking the world of men, but also expressing and communicating that of Viking women.

Patterning reconfigurable narrative: interactive cinema as architectural elevation within 3D interactive digital environments

Abstract This paper addresses the process of patterning reconfigurable video narrative using architectural theory, through a case-study of practice-based research on the interactive, reconfigurable small-screen movie Gormenghast Explore. It focuses on the topography of cinematic narrative as architectural construction, refashioning Kevin Lynchs urban categories and Christian Norberg-Schulzs concept of place to support a design ontology for dramatic fictive narrativity. This architectural framework provides an effective representation for both navigable narrative content and 3D environment and interface.

Storytelling for the small screen: authoring and producing reconfigurable cinematic narrative for sit-back enjoyment

This paper describes the concept development and practical app- lication of tools for editing and reconfiguring video and sound to create stories using broadband application. The material developed is Gods in the Sky Choice, a fully working experimental pilot demonstrator produced as part of the NM2 (New Media for the New Millennium) Integrated Project (IP) of the European 6th Framework Programme Priority 2 (Information Society Technologies) Call 2: Cross-media content for leisure and entertainment

Flexible media: producing character-based reconfigurable drama

From Spring 2002 to Summer 2003 the Flexible media project and prototype experiment ran at Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS) and BTexact Technologies, Adastral Park UK. This pilot project aimed to explore and formulate new storyforms using reconfigurable digital media, and to develop new methods and best practice for producing and publishing them, focusing on digital video, both documentary and fiction. Original material was produced in student workshops at CUMIS (MPhil) and the Norwegian Film School, where the Flexible media toolkit was tested and developed to incorporate the needs of creative content production. This paper describes the project and experiment in some detail, identifying the restrictions within traditional media production processes, and the opportunities offered by a more flexible approach. It then presents a case study of the experimentation undertaken to develop new flexible media forms. The paper concludes that collaborative practice-based research is successfully providing creative professionals with new modes of expression and engagement with their audience.

Narrative expressive space

Drama and Narrative Narrative is fundamental to the way humans understand, remember, describe or imagine the world in literature in literature and in film [4][5][20][8][3]. Drama is an important engine for narrative [30][11]. Broadly speaking, drama results from the friction generated between the goals and actions of the constituents of a dynamic system instantiating emotional relationships. These relationships are usually based on the development of characters [29][17]. Such relationships, even when they are to do with inter-character conflicts, are located in specific places. This means that they are interlinked with and depend upon the spatial definition and functionality of the objective or subjective fictional representations of the world where they occur and through which they are presented.