Interactive Cinema: 1960's to the Present

Changes, Challenges and Future

[Based on Kinoautomat (1967) and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2019)]

Films have been a popular form of entertainment since the last decade of the

twentieth century. From the first versions that were just continuously moving images of an

object in motion, films have developed into much complex entities involving technology. It

used to be a passive activity where the viewers lean back and watch, like many other

performing arts. But with the developments in technology and innovations in the field of

cinema, attempts to make it an audience inclusive activity began. Inspired by choose-your-

ending novels, filmmakers started to attempt making films where some sort of agency was

given over to the viewers in the unravelling of the plot. This genre of cinema is now referred

to as Interactive Cinema. First examples of this genre came out in the 1960’s as experiments

but it never caught on as a popular form. In this paper we will be examining how Interactive

Cinema has transformed over time from the 1960’s to the present. In order to do this, we will

consider Kinoautomat (1967), known as the first proper Interactive film and Black Mirror:

Bandersnatch (2019), the latest example. We shall also analyze the challenges of

producing an Interactive film and the varied levels of interaction and agency.

HISTORY

Cinema was introduced as motion pictures, short in length projected to an audience.

This is credited to Lumiere brothers. As time went on, the length increased and the techniques

used also changed. There were multiple genres, methods and forms in filmmaking. With the

advent of computers and other associated technology, cinema entered an entirely different

phase.

The concept of interactive films came from a genre of books that was popular in

the 20th century called Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. In these books one could choose how

the protagonist acts and the movement of the plot. Sometimes there were multiple endings

based on the decisions taken at different points in the story. It was also inspired the board 

games where the players decided among an array of steps forward.

Some experimental filmmakers felt that instead of just allowing the viewers to lean back and

watch the story unfold, it would be interesting to involve them in the progress of the story.

So, they decided to make the viewer ‘lean forward’ and actively participate in the experience.

Kinoautomat (1967) is considered as the first ever Interactive film. It wasn’t

‘interactive’ in today’s sense of the word. The interaction was limited to a few time points

during the film when the viewers are given the opportunity to decide what the protagonist

should do next. As the technology wasn’t as developed back then, the process involved a

moderator who would interfere in between the film screening and ask the viewers for a show

of hands. Based on the majority votes the decision was finalized.

Kinoautomat was first screened at the Expo ‘67 in Montreal, Canada.

It was directed by Raduz Cincera. It had five points of interaction where the audience

were given the agency to choose from alternatives. Such films were part of Expanded Cinema 

which explored areas and forms of cinema that were not part of the mainstream until then. 

Makers began to concentrate on the process of storytelling and the techniques used,

as much as the story itself. The way a movie was made came to be noted with more interest.

The genre caught on slowly in the late 60’s and 70’s with a few films being made

following the first. By the 80’s experiments with interactive movies began to increase with the

developments in technology. Cliff Hanger, Space Ace, and Mean Streets are examples of

Interactive films in the 80’s. Since then numerous films have tried passing on the agency to the

viewers on different levels.

In these interactive movies there are divisions based on the level of choice they provide the

 audience. Some of them give the viewers complete autonomy where each choice

made by them affects the outcome at the end. But most others are only partially interaction

based. This is in essence like a fake interaction where the choices of the crowd doesn’t affect

the final outcome of the story. For example, a story might have 5 points of interaction with

viewers but only one possible ending. So, whatever a set of viewers choose, the end will be

unaffected. It will be like taking different routes to reach the same destination. In the first case

it will be similar to actual navigation where a turn along the way might take you to a different

place.

With the arrival of personal computers, it began to be difficult to distinguish

between an interactive film and a video game. The only major difference was that in a game

the level of involvement was much higher than a film. During the first decades the choice was

collected by the pressing of buttons attached to the seats in the movie hall.

Later remote devices came to be used and now even motion sensor technology is

experimented for this process.

The world’s first live interactive movie was released in the year 2015. 'My One

Demand' produced by Blast Theory used responses from live viewers sent through

their mobile phones to help the protagonist make real time decisions.

Even though the genre was new and interesting the reception wasn’t very exciting.

The complexities of the processes involved interferes with the viewing experience. The films

were screened at different festivals around the world but they were not commercially very

successful. The production of these films wasn’t easy either - especially the ones with multiple

endings. There were numerous combinations with the options provided and avoiding mix-ups

of these was a hard task on its own. Owing to these difficulties in making as well as watching,

interactive films never became part of the mainstream cinema. They always occupied the

fringes of the cinematic world usually assigned for such experimental genres. But now with

most advanced technologies Interactive films are once again on the rise. Maybe in the near

future viewer interaction might become an integral part of cinema itself. The latest popular

interactive film, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was widely well received by critics as well as

common viewers across the world.

KINOAUTOMAT (1967)

As mentioned earlier, Kinoautomat was the first proper interactive film. It was

directed by Raduz Cincera. It was part of the Expo 67 at Montreal, Canada. It was a

Czechoslovakian film. The interactivity in the film was limited. At 9 points along the story the

playing would be paused and the audience would be asked to vote for or against the

character’s next move. It was conceived as a dark comedy.

The film opens with a scene where an apartment is on fire. The main character Petr Novak 

makes different decisions with the help of the audience along the way. But ironically whatever 

the viewers choose the end result that remains unchanged is the building catching fire.

This as the director revealed later in interviews, was intended as a satire on democracy.

This indirectly questioned the relevancy of the voting process that the common people were 

involved in periodically. It was also seen as a take on determinism which is the belief that 

human beings control their fate. Another interpretation of this meaningless interactivity is the 

acceptance of the diversity of experiences in life. The film screened in the Expo was a dubbed 

version of the original. The shooting was done on a customized studio set as was the norm 

during the time. The seats of the movie hall were fixed with red and green switches which 

were used for the voting process. The title of the film was ‘One Man And His House’.

The interactive element in the film was made possible with the use of two projectors with

 different alternative cuts of the movie. The seats would display the color of the button 

pressed and then the moderator would count the color and arrive at the majority decision. 

Many critics reviewed it as an amazingly conceived film but the communist government in the 

country at that time wasn’t very impressed. One year after its successful release, the film was 

banned from being played in public. Thus the experimental film met with the same fate of 

many other Czech films of the new wave that tried to satirize and criticize the communist 

regime. When two options are given at each decision point each simultaneous point would

have double the number of options than the immediately previous point. To avoid such

complexity the screenplay was written so that whatever the viewer’s choice was, both the

pathways would meet at the next decision point. This fact wasn’t revealed at the time of

course due to the obvious reason that the enthusiasm would decline. After some years the 

film was screened across two TV channels at the same time and the audience realized that 

their decisions actually had no role in the movement of the plot. The director wasn’t 

supportive of this move and was later quoted as saying that he knew that the viewers would 

feel cheated. Some of the decision points where viewers were asked to vote were –

Whether Mr. Novak should let in a woman, locked out of her apartment and clad only in a

towel, just before his wife arrives home.

Whether Mr. Novak should ignore a policeman flagging him down while driving.

Whether Mr. Novak should rush into an apartment despite a tenant blocking his way.

Whether Mr. Novak should knock out a porter blocking his way when trying to point out a

small fire.

In the film Fourth Wall this movie is discussed as a satire on the rigged elections

conducted by the communist government. Studies based on the voting choices of different

sections was attempted some time later but had to be given up due to the lack of available 

data. In fact the only available information about the choices made by the audience was when 

a group of nuns watched the film and chose not to allow the half-naked lady enter the main

character’s flat.

Although Cincera created the concept, the project was a true collaboration between

many talented team members. The four big names were Cincera, Jurácek, Rohác and 

Svitácek, with Miroslav Hornícek contributing much to the stage act and script. 

Prof. Jaroslav Fric developed the technical system and Josef Svoboda consulted on 

the stage design. The often-raised criticism about this film was that making choices in an 

interactive narrative made from pre-made segments is hardly more sophisticated than 

pressing the required combination of buttons on a hot-drink vending machine.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch(2018)

When we move to the 2010’s science and technology has improved and innovations

like VR has evolved. The definition of interactivity has changed dramatically from that of the

1960’s. now passing on agency should be much more than just faking a interactive element.

People are used to video games where they are allowed to roam around and do whatever they

feel like. This is known as open world gaming. So now when a director plans to make an

interactive film, it has to actually involve people in the movement of the plot. There should be

multiple endings based on the choices made by the viewers.

Black Mirror is a series based on Science Fiction available on the streaming

platform Netflix. Bandersnatch was a film that was part of the series. It was written by series

creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade.

The episode begins with a brief tutorial of how it’s going to work: viewers are instructed

on how to use their remotes or controls to choose the “left” and “right” choices that will 

display on the screen, and each choice alters the narrative that then unfolds. A 10-second

timer runs when the options are presented to you, and if you don’t make a choice in that time,

a default selection is made. Black Mirror creator and writer Charlie Brooker chose the default

path himself, and if viewers opt out of participating, they’ll be presented with “the most basic

version of the story.”

All told there are five main endings with multiple variants of each, and to see each

ending play out, you’ll have to make different choices that then lead you down a different path.

The default path runs for approximately 90 minutes in length, but per a deep-dive into the

making of Bandersnatch, it could take up to two and a half hours to fully “play” the film up to

its endpoint.

The story itself was concocted specifically for this “Choose Your Own Adventure”

format, and it takes place in the 1980s and stars Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead as Stefon, a

young programmer who has hopes of creating a best-selling, text-based computer game

inspired by a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style novel that was given to him as a child. Co-

stars include Will Poulter, Craig Parkinson, Alice Lowe, and Asim Chaudhry. To execute 

Bandersnatch, which Brooker wrote himself, they turned to director David Slade, who helmed 

the Season 4 episode “Metalhead”. The interactive choices begin with simple tasks, like 

picking what the protagonist, Stefan, will eat for breakfast or what music he will listen to. 

Those choices are meant to poke fun at the dated choose-your-own-adventure offerings that 

launched the genre (“We thought we’d have a bit of a gag and slightly mess with you a bit,” 

said Brooker) while also easing the viewer into the ethically complex - and, of course,

nihilistic - decisions that are in store. As Bandersnatch begins to explore the sliding door 

elements of Stefan’s choices and the power of free will, the viewer will quickly realize

what the Black Mirror duo means when they say that their idea could only work as an 

interactive.

There are over a trillion different permutations of the narrative, based on the

various choices you make for Stefan, some of which represent major forks in the road, while

others are merely window dressing. In most cases, when the viewer reaches an ending, the

interactive film gives the player the option to redo a last critical choice as to be able to explore

these endings, or they can alternatively view the film's credits. In some cases, the same 

segment is reachable in multiple different ways, but will present the viewer with different 

choices based on the way they reached the segment. In other cases, certain loops guide 

viewers to a specific narrative regardless of the choices they make. Some endings may 

become impossible to reach based on choices made by the viewer, unless they opt to

restart the film. This action will erase all stored information about which options they

had selected while watching the episode on that device.

Plot

In England in July 1984, a young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) dreams of 

adapting a "choose your own adventure" book called Bandersnatch by tragic writer

Jerome F. Davies (Jeff Minter) into what he hopes will be a revolutionary adventure video

game. The game involves traversing a graphical maze of corridors while avoiding a creature

called Pax, and at times making choices by an on-screen instruction. Butler produces the 

game for video game company Tuckersoft, which is run by Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) 

and employs the famous game creator Colin Ritman (Will Poulter). Butler is given the choice 

of accepting or rejecting help from the company in developing the game. If Butler accepts the

offer, Ritman says he chose the "wrong path". The game is released months later and critically

panned as "designed by committee". Butler considers trying again, and the film returns to the

day of the offer, the viewer being given the same choice. Otherwise, Butler begins to work on 

the game on his own from his bedroom, given a September deadline by Thakur so Tuckersoft 

can publish it for Christmas sales. Fighting through the game's software bugs, Butler gets

increasingly stressed out and hostile to his father Peter (Craig Parkinson). Throughout this 

period, Butler visits Dr. R. Haynes' (Alice Lowe) clinic for therapy. The viewer may have Butler 

explain to Dr. Haynes about his mother's death when he was five; Peter had taken his stuffed 

rabbit toy, believing boys his age should not be playing with dolls, and Butler's stubbornness 

to refuse to leave without it forced his mother to take a later train, which derailed and killed 

several passengers including her. Butler since feels responsible for her death, and sees 

completing the adaption of Bandersnatch, one of the books she owned, as a means to atone 

for her death. Dr. Haynes prescribes Butler medicine, which the viewer can choose to either 

have Butler take or flush down the toilet. The viewer may have the option to have Butler take 

an invitation to visit Ritman's flat, where he lives with his girlfriend Kitty (Tallulah Haddon) and 

infant daughter Pearl. There, the pair take hallucinogens, and Ritman then talks about secret 

government mind-control programs, alternate timelines, and different paths. To demonstrate 

his theories on alternate realities, Ritman demands Butler, via the viewer, determine which one 

of them should jump off the balcony. If Butler jumps, he dies and the game is finished by 

Tuckersoft and poorly reviewed. If Ritman jumps, the whole encounter is revealed to be a 

dream but Ritman will be mysteriously absent in future scenes.

As the deadline to deliver the game to Thakur looms, with strange errors still present in the 

game, Butler begins to feel he is being controlled by outside forces, putting into

question how much he trusts his father and Dr. Haynes. Butler finds his life mirroring that of

Davies, seeing recurring imagery of a "branching pathway" symbol, which seemingly led to

Davies beheading his own wife. As he begins to mentally break down and tries to fight against

an unseen agent controlling his actions, the viewer has multiple options to explain to Butler,

from his 1984 computer screen, who has been controlling him, one of which being that they

are making these decisions for him via Netflix service in the 21st century. The viewer may

discover a locked safe that either contains Butler's old toy rabbit, or documents about him 

being monitored as part of an experiment.

There are numerous possible endings, of which the following is only a partial list.

One path leads to Butler fighting his therapist during a session, after which it is revealed that

he is in a movie set and that his "dad" is a fellow actor. One set of choices leads to Butler

following Ritman's advice, seemingly crossing through a mirror to his five-year-old self (A.J.

Houghton) to go along with his mother to "die" in the derailment, causing Butler's body to

suddenly die in the present. In other paths, the viewer has the option to make Butler kill his

father, then bury or chop up his father's body and, when given the option, to kill Ritman or

Thakur. Burying the body leads to Butler being jailed before release of the game; chopping

up and not letting his therapist know about the murder leads to the successful release of

the game, but Butler goes to prison shortly afterwards leading to all copies of the game

being pulled from shelves and pulped.

In some endings, the viewer is shown the critical reaction to the Bandersnatch game and

the fate of Tuckersoft. Other endings conclude in the present day with a grown-up Pearl

(Laura Evelyn), now a programmer for Netflix, attempting to adapt it into an interactive film, 

which leads her to start experiencing the same "branching path" imagery seen by both

Davies and Butler. At Netflix's suggestion, Brooker wrote the 170-page script in Twine, a tool 

for writing interactive fiction, also utilizing Scrivener, Final Draft and multiple versions

of Microsoft Notepad. The basic structure of the film took the most time to write, and the 

script underwent seven different versions. As the first Netflix interactive content for adults,

Bandersnatch required more complex choices than previous interactive works, leading

Netflix staff to create a bespoke tool which they named Branch Manager, but this only became

available to Brooker a few months into the episode's development. The film will progress with

a predetermined default choice if the user does not respond in the short window given. If no

choices are selected, the viewer will get the most basic version of the story, as determined by

Brooker.

The term "bandersnatch" originates from a fictional creature created by Lewis

Carroll, which appears in his 1870s poems "Jabberwocky" and "The Hunting of the Snark".

The film makes several allusions to Carroll's works. Part of Butler's motivation is to find his

stuffed rabbit toy which leads him to discover deeper secrets, comparable to Alice's quest to

find the White Rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Ritman and his girlfriend Kitty

lead Butler into a psychedelic experience in their flat, correlating to the Mad Hatter's tea party

from the same story, with Kitty's appearance even similar to that of the Hatter. At one point,

Butler travels through a mirror, or literally following the action suggested by the title of

Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. The design of the Pax is similar to the original Peter

Newell drawing of the Bandersnatch.

The film received generally favourable reviews from critics, but some felt the interactivity

was too much of a gimmick to support a proper Black Mirror episode. Some critics

expressed concern on impact of the interactive nature of the work on Black Mirror's typical

themes.

In February, technology policy researcher Michael Veale requested the data that

Netflix stored about his viewings of Bandersnatch under the General Data Protection

Regulation. He criticised that the data, detailing every choice he had made, was not

anonymised and taken without explicit consent from the user. A 2019 paper by researchers at 

the Indian Institute of Technology Madras demonstrated how to infer viewers' choices in 

Bandersnatch through network packet analysis with 96% accuracy. The paper noted that this 

could be used to reveal viewer preferences "from benign (e.g., their food and music 

preferences) to sensitive (e.g., their affinity to violence and political inclination)", and noted

a technical solution Netflix could implement.

CHANGES AND EVOLUTION

From the close analysis of both the movies we understand that the scenario of

interactivity has undergone numerous changes in these five decades since the first 

experiment.

The makers of Kinoautomat didn’t have an example to follow. Neither did they know how to

technically achieve such a feat or what to expect from the audience. Now with the

developments and rapid changes in the field of computers everyone is exposed to interactivity

in one form or the other in their everyday life. Therefore, the primitive kind of interaction and

agency would not satisfy any kind of viewers. Making of an interactive film, thus has become

a very complex process involving a great deal of technology. While there was only limited

interactivity in the first film now people’s choices actually matter. The creators of

Bandersnatch claim that there are billions of permutations of choices available within the film.

There are also multiple endings for the film and five among them are considered the relevant

ones.

The mode of interaction has also changed. From counting the number of votes from a

crowd of viewers it has evolved to choices that appear on one’s personal computer screen.

Now the selections multiply on each decision points.

CHALLENGES AND TESTS

The makers of interactive films in the contemporary times have a tough task at

hand. They have to cater to the interests of the viewers who are already used to different 

levels of interactivity. If the viewer feels that his choices are not making any relevant changes 

in the development of the plot, they will feel betrayed. Every decision that they make on 

behalf of the central character having a different outcome, like in real life, is almost 

impossible to achieve.

Therefore, the solution is to make the viewer feel that their agency is valid, with the available

resources. Even the screenwriting for an interactive film is a challenging task. The multiple

pathways through which the plot develops has to be carefully crafted so that there are no

confusions and complexities related to this. There is even dedicated software for writing

interactive scripts.

All pre-production and production processes associated with an interactive movie

can be extremely challenging and exhaustive. Simple confusions at the time of making can be

costly and time consuming. The processes like editing would also require special attention. If

the movie is of 2 hours the material required would be many times more. In the case of

Bandersnatch, the original movie is one and a half hour long while playing all other 

alternatives will take up to 6 hours.

FUTURE PROSPECTS

Following the first interactive movie, many filmmakers tried their hand in this field.

I’m your Man, Mr.Payback etc are examples of such films. But none of them were good 

enough to continue the legacy of interactive films. Nor where they received enthusiastically by 

the viewers. Interactive films despite the fact that they ae expensive, came and went for 

decades. The advent of DVD technology gave these theatrical failures a second life. People

could skip through and play their desired choice. But even in this format these movies lacked

the ability to impress the audience.

The reception of such movies is also in question. Releasing it in theatres is a

difficult task. There would be specific requirements like remote devices for such screenings.

The best option is to release it on streaming sites so that people could watch them from 

home conveniently.

Will the evolutions in existing technology like VR and new innovations contribute

towards transforming the interactive genre into an integral part of the movie industry? Fifty

years of one-off experiments and expensive, failed attempts to bring this idea to the 

mainstream might not inspire much confidence. But you could say the same thing about 3D 

movies, which spent decades as a gimmick generally relegated to B-movies before 

technological advances in the mid-2000s made it the industry standard for animated movies 

and blockbusters. Someone is bound to get this right eventually.

CONCLUSIONS

By looking closely at two interactive films that released more than fifty years apart,

we have understood many realities. The making of an interactive film is a complex and difficult

process whichever time period we are talking about. As the technologies develop it may seem

that the task becomes easier. But in reality, the challenges they have to overcome also 

increases. There are different types of interactivity. In some the agency given to the viewer is

meaningless as the plot is singular and already fixed. It is actually pseudo interactivity. But in

some other cases the choices made by the viewers actually affect the development of the 

plot. Current technology has made ‘nonlinear’ the default mode for most media, but film has 

largely resisted nonlinearity (save in storytelling) or ceding control to the audience.

Cinema’s a group activity — even if you go alone, you are part of an audience, while gaming is 

solo by default, with group engagement optional. A medium will tend towards the form of 

storytelling best suited to it, and we shall wait and see whether Interactivity will catch on

in the field of Cinema. It has all the potential to be a mainstream genre especially with

the rapidly evolving technology but we’ll have to wait and see whether anyone grabs the

opportunity and exploit this fresh field.

__________________

REFERENCES

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Burgos, Danielle. “A Brief History of Interactive Film” www.endcrawl.com,

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https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_Mirror:_Bandersnatch&oldid=927150930

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