Memento
Davis, Peter
This project is an attempt at creating an interactive narrative. As someone deeply interested in cinema, the idea of creating such a narrative was, at first, not particularly appealing to me. I had two concerns: The first was that by allowing users to choose the direction of the story, I would be compromising my own creative vision of it. As an artist, that is something I find very difficult to do. My second concern was that even basic user interaction would interrupt the organic flow that is so necessary in a compelling story.
My solution was to concentrate on creating a method of interaction that would be as seamless as possible. (The idea of creative control I'll leave for another project.) Because I was more interested in the method of interaction than in the story, itself, I chose a narrative that would be conducive to "skipping around", as we are prone to do when the remote is in our hand.
The film Memento tells the story of a man with no short-term memory who is trying to find his wife's killer. The non-sequential use of time in the film - both literal and conceptual - had one notable effect; I really had no idea what actually happened, which made it for this project, since there was no way anyone could screw up this story by skipping around. Additionally, different elements that appear onscreen throughout the film (photographs, a license plate, bullets) are clues to other parts of the story.
Using these two characteristics, navigating the story becomes very simple simple. When a certain element flashes, a divergent path is indicated. The user can then choose, via the remote, whether to explore that path. Once all scenes are have been viewed, the story is done, and the viewer can try to unravel the mystery. What is shown in this project is simply a short demo of how this would work.
Credits
Memento
New Market Films (2002)
