From the Silver Screen to Cybercinema: Conceptions of Space in Interactive Narrative Design

As technological development in computer processing speed and screen resolution advance and the limitations of bandwidth are removed, designers are challenged to incorporate cinematic elements into their interactive digital environments– transforming the ways in which their ideas are communicated, and more importantly, experienced by the user. This paper presents an experimental approach to teaching interactive digital design that fuses traditional filmic concepts of screen space, narrative structure and audience engagement with the programming capabilities of Macromedia Flash to create web-based “storytelling systems” that allow the user to select and construct their own time-based experience from a set of provided data ingredients. It emphasizes user experience in its approach to audience engagement and interactive narrative structure. INTRODUCTION As digital technology and its venues for distribution alter the ways in which designers can reach their audience, design educators are challenged to present innovative modes of visual communication that prepare students for the full promise of interactive digital design. At the University of Cincinnati, students in my Digital Design III class are creating interactive web-based exploratory environments in which the user can construct narrative sequences from a set of thematically related data ingredients in the form of digital animation, video, and audio clips. Their ultimate objective in this process is to design an interactive system that provides a rewarding narrative experience for the user. This methodology transfers traditional filmic concepts of split screen or multiple screens with visual interface design, emphasizing multiple active frames/windows in the graphic user interface. It utilizes Flash Actionscript to immerse the user in exploratory environments. It delineates, however, audience engagement in traditional film narrative, where the creator has control over all aspects of the story, from interactive narrative, where the designer willingly relinquishes absolute control over narrative development in order to engage its user. In doing so, digital designers must view the story as constituent elements of a system rather than a fixed linear narrative. In this context designers are more like architects than authors, constructing a database of narrative possibilities that exist within the framework of a conceptual environment. By linking the elements of this database in a particular order, the user can perceive and/or conceive the narrative, generating a unique work that subverts the passive, voyeuristic role in which audiences experience traditional time-based narrative media and reshaping the relationship between the designer and the user. This pedagogical approach to webbased interactive narrative design is formed around in-class projects that emphasize theoretical principles, design processes, and technical skills. This paper is focused on those classroom explorations. SCREEN SPACE AND THE CINEMATIC NARRATIVE “All of the features of framing are present in every framed image. Paintings, photographs, comic strips and other images all furnish instances of aspect ratios, in-frame and out-of-frame relations, angle, height, level, and distance of the frame’s vantage point. Just as painting before it, cinema presented us with familiar images of visible reality — interiors, landscapes, human characters — arranged within a rectangular frame.” David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson