“Interactive cinema allows the audience to influence or change elements of the film, so their experience can be different to others.” (Kirke, 2020).  Pretty much every other movie has the same ending, the layout can’t be changed, there's no different paths the story can take and it’s all fixed. This is where interactive film differs as it’s literally the opposite, giving the audience that option to influence the movie. This appeals to the audience because they could end up having a whole other experience to someone else which makes the film more interesting as people will want to find the good ending or bad ending or just try to get new unique expiranice. 

 

(Kinoautomat: One Man and His House, 1967) was the first interactive film made by Raduz Cincera and was first screened at Expo 67, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. At the Expo they put buttons on the seat where the audience sat, there were 127 seats, one button was green and the other was red, the buttons were there so the audience could have a majority vote as to what the actor would do. The film itself centres around Mr. Novak who finds himself in various situations that represent moral dilemmas. After the first screening the movie went on to screen at HemisFair ‘68, San Antonio, United States then Kino Sventozer, Prague, Czechoslovakia (1971), Expo ‘74, Spokane, United States, National Film Theatre, London, England (2006), Kino Sventozer, Prague, Czech Republic (2007), Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England (2009 March), Filmfest DC, Washington, DC, United States (2009 April), Vilnius Film Shorts, Vilnius, Lithuania (2012), Unicon, Trnava, Slovakia (2019). The movie is also now dubbed into English and can be shown in Czech or English, French, Italian and German (with subtitles). 

 

Moving on the film (Clue, 1985) also has multiple endings. It is a movie based around the board game Cluedo which is a murder mystery game for three to six players (it was made in 1943 by Anthoney E. Pratt). The movie has three different endings so when it came out in cinemas/theatres different ones would show a different ending, however being a unique movie it didn’t exactly do very well money wise earning $14.6 million at the box office against it’s budget of $15 million in the US. The plot is that six random people arrive at a mansion in New England through each receiving an ominous invitation, further on a seventh person arrives called Mr. Boddy who blackmails each of the six guests and then proceeds to give each of them a weapon consisting of a candlestick, a knife, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope and a wrench/spanner. Mr. Boddy then demands someone to kill the butler who is called Wadsworth then he turns off the lights to which someone shoots a gun and the lights then turn on to show the dead body of Mr. Boddy not Wadsworth. After a series of events happen causing more deaths and mystery which then eventually leads to one of the three endings. In Ending A Yvette (the maid) murdered the cook and Mr. Boddy on orders from Miss Scarlet, for whom she once worked as a sex worker. Scarlet then proceeds to kill Yvette and the other victims as she is planning to sell the guests’ secrets, she goes to kill Wadsworth however there are no more bullets in the guns she’s using, seeing this Wadsworth disarms Scarlet just as the police raid the house. Then the evangelist revealed to be the police chief congratulates Wadsworth who is actually an undercover FBI agent. In Ending B Mrs. Peacock killed all the victims to cover up the fact that she took bribes from foreign powers. She then holds the remaining guests and Wadsworth at gunpoint to ensure her escape to which Wadsworth for some reason decides to reveal the fact that he’s an undercover FBI agent (I generally still don’t understand how he thought that was a good idea). While going to her escape car Mrs. Peacock is surprised by the police chief who is the evangelist as the police are raiding the house. He then arrests her. In Ending C apart from Mr. Green everyone has killed someone, Professor Plum missed Mr. Boddy with the revolver but then killed him later with the candlestick, Mrs. Peacock stabbed the cook who was a former employee of hers, Colonel Mustard bludgeoned the motorist who was his driver during World War II, Mrs. White strangled Yvette out of jealousy and hatred due to her having an affair with her husband who Mrs. White also killed and Miss. Scarlet clubbed the cop that she was bribing. Wadsworth reveals that he killed the singing telegram girl who Professor Plum had an affair with, he then reveals that he is the real Mr. Boddy and that the Mr. Boddy that Professor Plum killed was the butler. He then proceeds to carry on blackmailing the guests to which Mr. Green pulls out his own revolver and kills Mr. Boddy who then reveals himself to be an undercover FBI agent assigned with getting close to Mr. Boddy before bringing in the authorities to arrest the others as the evangelist is revealed to be the police chief. There was originally going to be a fourth ending however the director Jonathan Lynn decided to take it out “It really wasn’t very good. I looked at it and I thought, ‘No, no, no, we’ve got to get rid of that’”. In the unused forth ending Wadsworth committed all of the murder due to his desire for perfection as he failed at being the perfect husband and perfect butler he decided to be the perfect murderer instead, while getting arrested by the police and the FBI he escapes, driving a police car however three police dogs jump at him from the back it thats the end. The theatre was given one of the three endings and when it came out on VHS and DVD you got all three endings with it. This movie isn’t as interactive as for example (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, 2018) or Kinoautomat but it started to show interactive movies fully digitally as before Kinoautomat was shown on stage as the audience watched.

 

“An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players’ ideas or actions.” (Alternate reality game, 2021). It’s defined by a lot of player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves through players responses. An example of this is the movie (Cloverfield, 2008) where they made The Clover ARG which is the multimedia created for the film through primary use of the internet, as well as other media. They pretty much used multiple different sites and blogs and used them to promote the movie. 

 

3D movies have been a thing for a long while with the movie (Avatar, 2009) boosting it in popularity. 3D films are enhanced filmed content that displays what looks like a 3 dimensional movie. The films are obviously on a 2 dimensional screen however the audience wear special glasses that give them the 3D effects. However 4D is better as it targets other senses 3D films cover the sense of sight but 4D films enhance the sense of touch and smell, usually they include snow machines, mist, moving chairs and water like in Shrek 4-D there’s a waterfall scene which is made more tense by the fact that they add water droplets that land on the audience. Smell wise they usually spray stuff into the room making it smell a certain way sometimes the audience even get gently whipped or strong puffs of air to make it feel more interactive. In cineworld and other cinemas they even have their own room dedicated to 4D experience. 

 

With today's modern technology interactive movies have come a long way since the likes of Kinoautomat and Clue. With popular streaming platforms like Netflix releasing interactive films such as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and the interactive Bear Grylls show called (You vs. Wild, 2019). These films simply take the idea of Kinoautomat’s button idea and implements it into the screen. Typically the viewer will get the option between two on screen choices which they simply have to press the screen and their option takes them to their desired outcome. Even the gaming industry has made interactive films which sound it like it doesn’t make sense however the PS4 game (Erica, 2019) which is about a girl who has nightmares about her past and gradually she starts to unravel the truth about her family’s past, it starts off with the character Erica trying to identify her father's killer through her nightmares and eventually goes to Delphi House which is an asylum that her parents used to work and she eventually finds out some deep and nasty secrets about the place and her parents. The interactive part of this game is that at certain important scenes the player has to make a choice that unravels a certain narrative.