Movie viewers getting more control
Movies really are about giving up control.
In the ideal experience, you sit in a dark room and become totally immersed in what’s happening on the screen. Choice doesn’t enter into it. Thought doesn’t enter into it. If you’re in the hands of a masterful storyteller, you should feel you’re vicariously living another life.
Yet as the movie world orbits into an increasingly high-tech universe, consumers are finding they have more control over what they consider a night at the movies.
Some of these changes are so basic that you may not even think about them, such as the fact that popular movies now play in so many theaters on so many screens that you no longer have to plan around start times and a long drive. And if you’ve taken advantage of buying advance tickets online or over the phone, all the better.
Meanwhile, DVDs have caught on so quickly that viewers feel cheated if they’re not allowed to make certain choices: Do you want to watch the movie with the director explaining every shot? Do you want to view alternative endings? How about some deleted scenes?
These expectations, unthinkable a few years ago, show how our movie-viewing habits have diverged from our experiences with almost any other art form. Can you imagine buying a “special edition” of your favorite novel that features a selection of paragraphs that the author chose to cut? Have you ever been to a play where, after the curtain call, the actors performed scenes that had been eliminated because they didn’t work?
Thanks to the popularity of DVDs, a mutant strain of movies is being spawned. Consumer purchases of DVDs totaled more than $12 billion in 2003, up from 2002’s $8.7 billion. Home video sales now account for nearly 60% of Hollywood’s revenue, with consumers spending $4.3 billion last year renting DVDs, up 53% from 2002. The Toronto-based DKP Effects Inc. produced a straight-to-DVD interactive animated movie last year called “Scourge of Worlds,” which is based on the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.
“It seems that DVD was the right medium at the right time to allow a whole new way of storytelling, which is based on choice,” said John Morch, DKP’s vice president of business development.
The movie, which Morch said cost $3 million to make, stops in numerous places so the viewer can decide whether the heroes should, say, fight a battle or retreat. Each decision sends the action down a different path, like a video game without active playing.
“It’s 2 hours and 14 minutes long entirely, and there are theoretically 996 ways to go,” Morch said. “There’s four different endings. If you make bad choices, the movie lasts about 18 minutes. If you make better choices, the movie lasts about 45 minutes. Through our very informal polls of customers, we’re seeing [viewers watch] an average of 20-22 times to complete the experience.”
To capitalize the disc’s success, DKP in April will release, yes, a “collector’s edition” of “Scourge of Worlds” featuring two additional endings and a making-of featurette.
Of course, at the forefront of any major technology shift is the reportedly $10-billion-a-year porn industry. Digital Playground launched its “Virtual Sex With ... “ interactive porn DVD series in 1998. The movies are shot from the viewer/virtual participant’s point of view, and, as the box says, “You choose the sexual positions! You choose the camera angles!”
For those who prefer their action rated PG, even when it originally was rated R, companies such as CleanFilms.com, CleanFlicks.com and Family Flix use computer-editing technology to excise what they consider objectionable content from commercially released films.
Want to see “I Know What You Did Last Summer” without the gore or “Mulholland Drive” without the nudity or “Bad Boys II” without the swearing and violence? I have no idea why you would, but these companies will sell or rent you “family” versions on VHS or DVD. (The Directors Guild of America is suing these companies for copyright infringement, asking a federal judge in Denver to halt the practice of “cleaning” movies.)
The ultimate question is, what happens as the workers gain control over the means of production? Movies now can be created almost entirely on a computer, such as the Sundance Film Festival entry “Tarnation,” Jonathan Caouette’s hypnotic, wrenching personal documentary about growing up amid mental illness.
Using home movies and Apple’s comes-with-the-computer iMovie software, Caouette reported making this lyrical work for a mere $218. John Cameron Mitchell, the “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” creator who came aboard “Tarnation” as a producer, said they’re now trying to decide whether to hook up with a distributor or to release the film themselves.
“Tarnation” producer Stephen Winter foresees a day when filmmakers cut out the middleman entirely and, like file-sharing music services, just deal directly with the consumer.
“I think peer-to-peer consuming of media is definitely going to be happening,” Winter said. “There are only so many theaters in the world and so many distributors, but there are so many stories that need to be told.”
And having more control over what you see can only be a plus -- even if you let go once the lights go down.
