Film, Toronto Film Festival 2007
CFC and NFB Debut Interactive Film
Earlier this week I watched a sneak peak of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive dramatic feature film. Co-produced for $1.3 million by Toronto's Canadian Film Centre and the National Film Board of Canada, Late Fragment would be an excellent film if it were a traditional, linear, passive experience; but the fact it can be experienced in a seemingly infinite number of ways at the whim of the individual viewer makes it simply amazing, if not a cinematic breakthrough.
To understand exactly what is meant by interactive film, it's important to think beyond something as simple and familiar as Choose Your Own Adventure or Meanwhile, a project created over a year ago by students of the CFC Media Lab (previous coverage).
Late Fragment, which at its roots is a story about three strangers whose lives are fractured by thoughts and acts of seething violence, brings with it its own language about what an interactive film is and can be. There are 3 acts, 9 chapters, 3 endings, 139 scenes, 380 components, 10 loops and 10 rabbit holes. In one chapter alone, there are 3.26 billion story trajectories along which audiences can go.
The full running time of the film is 168 minutes and the sneak peak I saw was about 40 minutes which means I have lots of unanswered questions and can't wait to see the final product when it debuts during this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
The FREE screenings will take place at Camera Bar (1028 Queen Street West). There will be six two hour performative screenings, meaning that the interactive elements will be determined by the producers so audience members simply sit back and watch the film. These take place on September 10th and 12th at 7, 9 and 11pm. Personal viewing stations will also be available where individuals can interact with and play their own version of the film.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely the film will ever be screened outside of film festivals but a DVD will be available around November of this year.
More info on the film's web site and the Facebook Group.
Discussion
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From your response, I gather you've got something of a footing in the film and/or interactive media industry. A careful look at Late Fragment's narrative material aside, I'm just disappointed that you can't seem to see what the film could mean. When was the last time you saw the NFB take the reins on a million dollar interactive film? Sounds 'breakthrough' to me!
What kind of a future do you see for interactive artists/creatives (or filmmakers, if you'd like to be specific) in this country if after a first experiment in the form with major funding and support, you're willing to throw in the towel?
If you thought this film was too narratively simplistic... wouldn't it be great for EVERYONE concerned (audiences, creators, funders... hell, even theorists and armchair critics) if you went out and created something SUPERIOR? Genie Award winners don't complain when something amazing wins the following year!
Given that this is a first 'mainstream' go at the form in Canada, why be so negative about people having a positive reaction to a new and unique experience? Did you sit down for hours with Myst in 1993, all the while criticizing yourself for getting 'sucked in' by such an exhausting, repetitive and simplistic one-click interface? Of course not.
I didn't receive the impression that the film was about "doing something because the filmmakers could." If that was the case, it would have been a Flash minigame on some microsite: hit the troubled characters for points!
You criticize the story for being too simplistic, but wouldn't it have been a lot more simplistic if it had taken the form of any film parading through the Scotiabank Theatre on any given weekend? It certainly wasn't Superbad, it wasn't Jackass, it wasn't Robin Williams bumbling his way through another feel-good comedy. Wouldn't THAT have been the easy way out, not an attempt at a complex and richly interwoven drama of tortured souls and tangential existence?
I think the choices made about the narrative aspects of Late Fragment, specifics aside, were pretty ballsy... certainly NOT something randomly strung over an interactive framework to make it feel 'real.'
I think by criticizing the story, claiming it's something to distract us from the 'ceaseless exploration' of DVD tech, you're missing the point of an attempt at symbiosis, one that IS truly unique and inspiring - ESPECIALLY in Canada!
Not to draw delusions of grandeur, but... The Wizard of Oz hasn't turned out to be seen as a corny way to sell Technicolor. Prequels aside, Star Wars isn't thought of as a special effects extravaganza sold on the virtue of ho-hum narrative mythology. Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera WAS largely about experimenting with film aesthetics and form... but it was used to make a point about urbanization, Soviet society, the industrialization of experience.
Late Fragment may rank among those pinnacles of technological innovation in cinema... or it may not. But that's not really the point.
Looking at the story or technology on its own might be a misdirected idea - I think that the NFB and CFC making an attempt to look at the two in harmony is a brave step, and hopefully one that bold artists will continue to make. Why criticize people for trying?
As for the ceasless exploration of a DVD...look, there is absolutely NOTHING about late fragment that compels a user to "click" except that you can. It's not like clicking propels you forward in the narrative...time does, and that actually makes it pretty linear. And that brings us back to my point...it's derivative (even though its Canadian) its a gratuitous use of an already experimented with technology, and the real innovation should have occured in the writing...giving the user a real, unquenchable need to "click" in order to effect the story itself. Story is the experience...or are you suggesting that the experience is the story. Technology should never get in the way.
As for the whole Canadian vibe in your response...I guess I am one of those folks who consistently expects good things from our industry not the kind of person who is excited when it happens once in a blue moon. In the immutable words of the Superbad loving Perez Hilton..."Golf Claps"...indeed
Obviously we have two competing opinions right in this very blog! Hooray!
anyway,
This may not be the greatest of stories, and i agree the gun thing just turns me off. It's unfortunate that guns and violence fuel this kind of interaction.
well I went to see the movie, and was touched, moved interested, and became a fragment of it... THAT is what the directors intended
the movie artistically does what a good movie and acting should, not everybody like or understand Cronnenberg but he IS a genius,
relax is just a film
and SPEAK FOR YOURSELF!!!!!as all the people viewing it are
FU