Reflections of a documentary filmmaker creating an interactive work
Reflections of a Documentary Filmmaker Creating an Interactive Work
Figure 16: Homepage of the *Texan Eels on Wheels* website. http://www.texaneelsonwheels.com/#WebOpeningMenu (photo and graphics: Gilles Tassé)
I recognize from the outset that my background as a filmmaker and documentarian influenced the development of the interactive structure of my web documentary and my aesthetic choices in graphic composition. The approach I adopted during the design and media construction of my interactive documentary object is certainly more filmic than graphic; the work's communicative potential lies largely in the videographic testimonies. This is likely due, in part, to the available audiovisual material, composed of interviews and documentation of actions and locations, but also to the nature of my career as a filmmaker, in which I have always favored a sober approach, close to *cinéma vérité*, without excessive stylistic effects.
However, even though I notice strong similarities between my approach to interactive creation and the development of my linear works, I observe a significant difference. In film production, the narrative structure is created during editing. In interactive cinema, the navigation structure is established by the interface, and the narrative takes shape afterwards, in response to the interactive gestures performed by the spect-actor. It was during the design of this welcome space and this offer of action presented on the screen that I felt both the most called upon as a creator and the most disrupted in my habits as a filmmaker.
The creation of an interface is akin to developing the structure of a story, a screenplay, or even the technical breakdown of a film—each element is designed in anticipation of and according to the narrative and informational qualities of a future work, and each element influences every other element. Even if all these stages are established with the greatest care and meticulousness, they are all subject to the two subsequent production stages, filming and especially editing, which definitively structure the work. This time, I did not have access to the ultimate stage of editing—interaction becoming the structuring act—and I could therefore not give definitive form to my communicative intentions. I had to surrender control of the narrative flow to the spect-actor, while having firmly established a series of narrative possibilities and an interface consistent with my communicative intentions.
In the same way, although I consider that my interactive object prompts a quality of reflexive presence in the spect-actor similar to that allowed by documentary cinema (rather than a predisposition to action usually found in games and multimedia experimentation), I again note an important divergence. When I had to judge and test the quality of my creative work, and I assumed the role of spect-actor, I noticed a significant difference in the attitude and posture I adopted during my experimentation (compared to that which I have during a simple viewing of a linear work). This occurred even while I was in a mode of media listening and reception (more or less passive), without having the immediate intention of performing a gesture to trigger a narrative or informational detour.
The quality of spectatorship I adopted was different. I was no longer just involved in wanting to know what happens next and understanding the information I was receiving, but I was establishing links in advance between what I had seen and what I intended to experience next. Possessing a new sense of responsibility toward the experimentation to which I submitted myself, I felt narratively, intellectually, and emotionally engaged at different degrees of temporal, narrative, or cognitive involvement. Somewhat like during a frank and animated discussion, where the quality of listening feeds the reflections and the relevance of the replies being constructed, in anticipation of their utterance and reception. I believe that this multi-level involvement will be even more marked for a spect-actor directly affected by issues related to spinal cord trauma.
I submit that the spect-actor of the interactive documentary work adopts a position similar to the posture I adopt as a filmmaker when editing a film. They must consider the media assets at their disposal and construct their own narrative and reflective structure. However, they carry out this process differently, as the form they construct evolves following the progression of their understanding of the audiovisual material they discover, and which I myself have placed at their disposal. As a creator, I therefore share with them this space for reflection on a reality and on the society from which it is extracted, thus collaborating in turn in this dialogue on the real.
I believe, therefore, that my documentary and interactive object enables and promotes this collaboration in a dialogue and reflection on the real between a creator and their spect-actor. The navigational interactivity inscribed in the work seems to participate in the evolution of the understanding of the issues observed by making the spect-actor responsible for and conscious of their media and informational experimentation. I consider that this posture offered to the spect-actor predisposes them to want to reflect on the issues to which they are exposed. This particular posture is the result of my work as a filmmaker and communicator; and the preservation of this predisposition to reflection thus becomes, in my opinion, the primary responsibility of the filmmaker creating interactive documentaries.
I also had other communication objectives when developing my object. I wanted to respond to and use to my advantage the modern viewer's propensity for exchange and communication, engaged simultaneously by different media devices. I am curious to observe this interactive characteristic of my object that I developed and built around Facebook. I will see the effectiveness of this approach through the experimentation of the work. Without this important feature, my interactive documentary would be deprived of the advantages of communication and exchange provided by the Web. It would be somewhat like older works distributed on CD-ROM or DVD, limited and less performant.
Ideally, I would have liked to study other interactive possibilities offered by the experimentation of a work on the Web, Internet connectivity, and the mobility of new media devices. I am particularly interested by geolocalization, which appears to me to be a tool for reflection and exploration of the real with great possibilities. I would also have been curious to explore the possibilities of interactive construction allowing the spect-actor to modify the audiovisual quality of the information they receive by choosing for themselves, for example, the presence of cutaway shots, voice-overs, music, text, etc. However, as limited as my object may seem, its realization required me to utilize all my technical and conceptualization abilities. In the end, my work successfully fulfilled the mandate I assigned to it: that is, to adequately support and stimulate my reflection on this new documentary form, to allow me to better understand the collaboration it requires from its creator and its spect-actor, and to offer the latter a space conducive to reflection.