While the description of “interactive” feels like a defunct buzzword from the 2000s (“engage with our brand by playing this interactive game”) the field itself has developed in leaps and bounds.
The gaming industry leads the way, as it throws players into increasingly elaborate situations, while interactive TV such as I'm a Celebrity means we can play God with real-life people, which is fun.
Cinema is still catching up, but its latest breakthrough comes in the form of Late Shift, describing itself as "the world's first cinematic interactive movie". Created by Swiss start-up CtrlMovie and written by Michael R Johnson, who penned Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, it's a crime thriller movie following the adventures of Matt, played by Joe Sowerbutts (I Capture the Castles), as a student caught up in a heist.
With the emphasis on its concept rather than its cinematic value, the fancy part is that it can be watched in a theatre setting, with the audience’s majority vote having knock-on effects as the non-linear story is formed, leading to one of seven outcomes.
The £1.2m-budget film, created with three times as much footage as a normal movie, has its UK premiere on April 2nd as part of the London Games Festival (which, by the way, features lots of this interactive stuff, but much more importantly, it will turn Trafalgar Square into a giant Monopoly board). Then in May, it heads over to Cannes Film Festival where it will be screened to the wider international industry.
For the rest of us, it’s available as an app from iTunes only; the intro is free and if you’re drawn into the story, you can buy the rest for £7.99 (€10). Just make sure you have the 4.7GB of memory needed – and nimble deciding fingers.
