Since we are going to use the platform/tool Eko to create our interactive film, I had found two articles that introducing the various possibilities of Eko, and why it is the most appropriate tool for our plan.
By using Eko, creators could make audiovisual artworks that could have a more active relationship with viewers, which in an Eko film, the viewer has the freedom to decide the flow of the story by clicks, swipes, rewind, etc., to highly-engage with the film, as well as through its multi-path feature, they could gain an explorable, personal and unique experience. Statistic shown that Eko audiences are highly-engaged and glued to the experiences with engagement rates over 70% and retention times of 200% – 300%.
“There’s an entire generation who are as much creators as they are consumers. They’re creators because they shape their stories through social media, through their relationships with their friends, and with the world… Eko allows them to shape their stories, to be in control of the characters, the plot, the outcomes — to use their imagination, to collaborate. Eko stories represent a new medium geared toward a generation whose choices matter.”
Yoni Bloch, the CEO of Eko
Also being stated in the weekly reading, digital media had changed the consumption patterns of teenagers and young adults these days, rather than waiting for their favourite programmes in front of the TV set, they would tend to binge-watch drama series on Video-on-demand services and watching videos on YouTube all day long. Compare with the past generation, they seems to have a more in-depth and active involvement in different media, since what they are watching was found and chose by their own.
Kubota (2016) had used the phrase “audience-directed narrative feature” to conclude the platform Eko, since it composed audio and video into a simultaneous object, allowing authors to structure their works as sets of streams to be navigated by the viewer through the interface. At the same time, the platform creates a playback system where the viewer/player is free to change audiovisual streams at defined decision making points, which opens a broad range of potential uses for the platform, including music videos, brand promotions, and interactive narratives.
Thoughts
These articles gave us the idea of what Eko really is and what it could use for in detail (I will further explain it later), which the platform had seemingly brought audience-directed films into a new level. This platform presented a new form of interactivity that viewer has the complete freedom to decide the plot of story, and the construction of their own watching experience, especially through the above mentioned playback system, viewers could experience the project in different ways: watching the video in linear, or encounter it in a non-linear sequence that deliberately discover all the outcomes that each decision could lead one by one.
Article References:
Interlude Becomes Eko. (2016, December 15). PR Newswire, p. PR Newswire, Dec 15, 2016.
Kubota, T. (2016). Choose Wisely. Film Comment, 52(6), 20-21.