Interactive cinema tries to give an audience an active role in the showing of movies. Another newer definition of interactive cinema is a

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

which is a hybrid between participation and viewing, giving the player – or viewer, as it were – a strong amount of control in the characters' decisions. It is compared to interactive film. This form of media recently has become more relevant. Companies like Netflix have even began coming out with releases that have this different way of consumption.

History

The earliest rudimentary examples of interactive cinema date back to the early 20th century, with "cinematic shooting gallery" games. They were similar to shooting gallery carnival games, except that players shot at a cinema screen displaying film footage of targets. They showed footage of targets, and when a player shot the screen at the right time, it would trigger a mechanism that temporarily pauses the film and registers a point. The first successful example of such a game was ''Life Targets'', released in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

in 1912. Cinematic shooting gallery games enjoyed short-lived popularity in several parts of Britain during the 1910s, and often had

safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

animals as targets, with footage recorded from British imperial colonies. Cinematic shooting gallery games declined some time after the 1910s. The 1967 Czechoslovak film '' Kinoautomat'' by the Czech director Radúz Činčera (presented in the Czech Pavilion at Expo 67 in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

) is the first cinema-like interactive movie. The availability of

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s for the display of interactive video has made it easier to produce interactive movies. A prominent pioneer of interactive cinema games is the successful

Hideo Kojima is a Japanese video game designer. Regarded as one of the pioneering auteurs of video games, he developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence, which in turn has had a significant influence on his game ...

(1963–present), whose gameplay often takes a priority to the storyline and long cutscenes. His 1994 game '' Policenauts'', a point-and-click adventure game which has shootout sequences (that make use of the lightgun peripheral on the

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the succes ...

version of the game), has a subtitle which reads "Interactive cinema" on the cover art of all versions of said game, which provides an early example of a prominent game-developer labelling a game as such. In 1999

Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

's '' Shenmue'' video game series won high praise for its implementation of interactive cinematic elements. Its designer Yu Suzuki stated that his goal "was to create a game that was intricate and lifelike by merging the cinematic qualities of movies and the interactivity of computer games". A recent incarnation of an idea similar to this one is ''

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a scale of temperature, temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the German-Polish physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accou ...

'' (censored version released in the US and Canada as ''Indigo Prophecy'') – a game dubbed as "interactive cinema" by its France-based developer, Quantic Dream. The first American interactive film released in 1992, '' I'm Your Man''. Certain Loews Theatres locations retrofitted with controllers allowed audiences to vote on decisions made by the main character. Although initially touted as the first step toward virtual-reality cinema, the experiment proved a failure, the equipment was removed from theaters by 1994.

References

{{Reflist Cinema

History

See also

References