How is skate video transformed when the audience can input their preference into the video?

Link: https://vimeo.com/125685934

Informed by the previous exploration of audience interactivity, this sketch experiments with another conceptual idea surrounding the possibility for the audience to interact with skate video via hypothetical online tools and services. Resulting from brainstorming surrounding potential notions of interactivity for the final project, I was interested in the effect audience input might have on the narrative/non-narrative form of skate video.

To create this sketch, I used the footage captured for the previous sketch (Audience Selected Music) and used image and video editing software to create an imitation of a voting system. A combination of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop were used to develop a number scale system, enclosed by circles to resemble buttons. Also Sony Vegas was used to create a transition between layers of the image to create the desired changing colour effect. A screen recording was then taken of the rendered video during playback, in order to implement the presence of audience interaction via the appearance of the mouse icon. Timing the mouse movements with the transition of images proved to be difficult, however after much trial and error the desired effect was achieved reasonably successfully.

Although not present in this sketch, the audience member having the ability to vote for the quality of particular tricks could change the pathway of the narrative toward one of many options resulting from the audience member’s preference. Consequently in reference to our probe, the narrative form of skate video would be completely structured by the audience member and no longer by the producer. This would reshape the narrative structure of skate video but furthermore, it would create a hybrid of skate video and audience interactivity. However, I believe for this sketch to be more effective in its exploration it would require evidence of the audience vote submissions having a direct cause-effect relationship on the structure of the video, however this sketch still represents a simplified version of these notions in order to experiment with the concept.