One of six typical traditional documentary type is the participatory mode, and the primary feature of this mode is ‘the filmmakers does interact with his or her subjects rather than unobtrusively observe them’(Nichols, 2007 p.179). Such as the representative documentary <Chronicle of a summer>.
There is also a participatory type in the interactive documentary, although any interactive behaviour can be seen as a participatory method because of the development of the Internet. But the ‘participatory’ in an interactive documentary means the audience could change the content and structure of the project through their editing or their own videos. In the interactive documentary project <Global Lives>, the audience could not only upload the new videos to enrich the project topic, but also could change the project structure. This interactive documentary designed to ‘explore the diversity of human experience through the medium of video, and encourage discussion, reflection, and inquiry about the wide variety of cultures, ethnicities, languages, and religions on this planet’ (Global Lives Project 2010, Artist’s Statement). There is no ‘ending’ in a traditional perspective in the participatory interactive documentary. The project presents an evolutionary status. The interactive behaviour in the interactive documentary is physics, as Lister (2009) presented, the audience has the ability to directly change the video or the text they are involved in. The interactive is no longer people one-way control on the computers, the interactive reflected between the audience and the whole project. The audience changes the project through their interactive behaviour, at the same time, the project influenced their feeling and emotion.
The creator of an interactive narration is not the original filmmaker or the audience who provide the content, the interaction between the project and receiver is the true storyteller. On the other hand, the project changed its structure, and the other hand, it influenced the inner thinking of the audience. The most interesting point is, we used to think how the traditional documentary adapts and develop in the new media platform before, but the interactive documentary breaks the limitation of the tradition, it develops based on the new media platform and explore the boundary and possibility of the documentary constantly.
REFERENCE LIST:
Global Lives Project 2009, Artist’s Statement from 2010 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Exhibit, Global Lives Project, viewed 11 March 2018, <http://globallives.org/about/overview/>.
Lister, M 2009, New media: A critical introduction. Taylor & Francis.
Nichols, B 2017, Introduction to documentary. Indiana University Press.
