by Caroline Gerdolle , published on 3.09.2009

The excellent box office results in the US last year despite a historic election campaign, the economic crisis and a no less historic record of illegal downloads are leading us to believe that the war of the screens might not be exactly where we thought.

If illegal downloads didn’t make up for the increased demand for films, this low cost “travel” far from daily reality, at an unbeatable price, might make us realize that the price of cinema its not its greatest drawback, and offering it for free is not a real problem. Coexistence is certainly possible and could even be wanted by all if we succeed in creating a synergic association of multimedia and cinema to develop the audience around an imaginary world.

In the multi-sceen context of our lives, the greatest drawback of a feature film would be its isolation and short duration: the space and the time allotted to a fiction, as well as a returning audience, are crucial in order to build the audience a film deserves. The creators of TV series in the US and the UK understood that very early on, and these programs with international audiences have to undergo many screen tests, but they also benefit from their exposure time, which is much longer then that of a feature film. Fueled by the audience’s specific feedback, since it has a more or less free access to the programs, multimedia creations could follow in the tracks of this type of television, which can afford, with more time and space, to be less consensual and take more risks: isn’t today’s American television production often more so than its film production, the home of subversive heroes and audacious writing that constantly surprise, enthrall us, and win our loyalty?

In order to transfer the idea of an audience that builds over time to feature films, with the space and interactivity of multimedia but without taking films away from the theatres, the only solution is the specific extension of the world of the story to other media. Media-cinema would then be linked to other screens through its multi-facetted story. Today, a feature film is present in multi-media for its promotion, but it’s the film and not the universe of the story that crosses over to our little screens in the form of teasers or news about famous actors. An ARG is an interactive extension of the world of the story and involves a potentially international audience in the film’s universe without showing anything that could potentially ruin the effect of surprise of the plot. The promotional efficiency of this specific multimedia presence in multimedia is a pretty sure bet.

This way, in order to diffract a story across all types of media, the bases don’t change: an edit of images and sounds depicting an imaginary world where a real audience will want to spend some time. However, the multimedia user is active and takes his place in the story and the ARG like he would in a community. To be truly interested, he has to learn not only how to take, but also how to enrich the community. To address the user and allow him to respond, the writing and the directing style will then have to leave behind the traditional convention of the story that requires that the story “ignores” its own access and its broadcasting medium, making it inexistent. The story developed in a cross-media project will call upon the many talents and media that the user has access to. The audience’s involvement will only happen through the creation of content that’s as specific and pertinent to multimedia as feature films are to movie theatres.

It’s up to the stories to reconcile the media, which will behave like highlanders. Finding oppositions to these differences is not mandatory. We could reach parity politics that would waste talents when in fact, it’s only up to us to avoid sharing what can be multiplied by the emulation of complementary skills.

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Caroline Gerdolle Auteur