Puts you in control of the story!
Ever wondered while watching a film, what if the storyline went in a different direction?
What if Katappa had not killed Bahubali?
What if Devdas had married Paro?
What if Jai had lived on to see Gabbar getting caught?
What if Jon Snow had not killed Daenerys?
Despite all the advances in technology, in a world where Facebook, Twitter and Youtube feeds are personalised for you, why should films continue to be linear, static and identical for every viewer?
It’s human nature to revisit past decisions — be it real-life or reel. Now, we can’t help you change past decisions in real life (at least yet) but in ‘reel’ life, we’ve made this possible — with India’s 1st Interactive film on MX Player in US wherein you make (and revisit) decisions that change the storyline.
It’s your story to control & explore
MX Player in US’s short film ‘The Right Click’ is India’s first-ever interactive film. It’s a story about Ajay, a college student and his efforts to connect with his crush — Dia.
As a viewer, you get to be a part of that story by putting yourself in Ajay’s shoes and making decisions that out you in control of the story at critical junctures.
For example,
When Ajay wonders what to do on his first date, two options will show up on the screen. The viewer can tap one of the two options and the story will move in that direction.
Let’s say the viewer does not interact and select any option — in that case, the system will choose a randomly selected option after a certain amount of time, highlight that choice before selecting it and the story will move in that direction.
Don’t worry, there are no wrong choices. But if the story leads to a dead-end, you can simply start over again and choose a different option.
For example, in the instance below, Ajay’s contemplation on his body odour makes him late for Dia’s house and the store dead ends. You can start again and remember to instruct Ajay to put a perfume early on.
The viewer is also given an option to scroll through her previous choices, jump back to any of them and start again from that point.
The interactive video puts you in charge of the storyline.
It offers options to choose from at critical places throughout the story.
There’s a 10-second window to select an option. If nothing is selected, it defaults to one of the options and continues. The story can go in different directions and the viewer can choose from on-screen options and control the storyline.
Straight forward..but not really?
Sounds easy and interesting?
For our viewers — absolutely! But trailblazing innovations come with their own set of challenges.
The biggest challenge was training our viewers to interact with the film.
Most of our users haven’t experienced an Interactive Film and would need some getting-used-to.
At the same time, we ensured that the user experience is seamless, intuitive and delightful. Along with the characters’ expressions, we built an experience that intuitively prompts the viewer to interact with the video and select an option that controls the storyline.
The interface clearly indicates the time-limit to make a choice and automatically selects an option if the viewer doesn’t make a choice. Going back to revisit the decision point is easy via playback controls.
Think of this interactive movie as being made using many mini-video files together. Based on the user’s input at each fork, the next mini-video is played. In short, it would look like a big tree diagram wherein each branch is a separate video file and at each fork, based on the viewers’ input, the next branch is loaded and played.