Dialog Box

How interactivity and storytelling sell a movie

Coming soon to a screen near you: The lean forward experience

by D. Garrett Nantz

Film trailers are designed to condense and highlight what is contained in a cinematic story. The trailer pushes to the surface the certain ingredients that will effectively draw audiences to see the movie. These ingredients could be its humor, the chemistry among the actors, mystery, historical significance, or dramatic presentation.

The movie trailer has a monumental task of moving through all the emotions and ideas in what is usually a three-minute timeframe. Nowadays people are hungry to spend more time in the film experience before going to the theater. This is where the Internet and Flash fit in beautifully.

The reason Flash is so successful at delivering the movie experience on the web is this: Different types of media (and the technologies that deliver them) can coexist easily, each individually enhancing the message through a non-linear approach. The ability to add and combine photos, video, audio, and text with animation, and then code to add interactivity, lifts storytelling to an all-new level.

Bringing a film to the web
At Big Spaceship, when we begin working on a movie website, we read the script and make notes about the characters and world that will make up the approximately 120 pages of the final website. To understand the themes of the movie, we ask many questions.

For example, when reading the script for Sony Pictures' "The Legend of Zorro", we asked ourselves, "This movie has some great action sequences. How can we add a sense of adventure? The characters and the relationships are quite strong. Is there a way we can show this? And who is the target audience?"

Figure 1: "The Legend of Zorro" website

Once people have read the script, we brainstorm about how to tie themes to web features that we believe will make the public crave seeing the movie. We sometimes call the first brainstorming meeting blue skying because we let no idea, no matter how grand or small, left unsaid. Afterwards, we examine the notes from that meeting and pick the best idea to put into a proposal. (I guess this is when we come back down to earth and become a little more realistic in our ideas.) But no matter what the budget of the project, we polish every animation and each piece of code, video, sound and pixel over and over until it just feels right.

With Flash, we have the ability to create so many "nooks and crannies" as part of the online movie trailer experience. We create these smaller areas to inform and entertain users and to give them the opportunity to personalize their experience.

It is important to understand how Flash can accomplish these goals. First, you can use Flash to inform the audience by housing a collection of thoughts and documentation from the movie. Secondly, you can entertain them through quirky transitions, fun text animations, video and powerful music. Last, Flash lets you involve users in a personalized experience with user-customizable options, interactivity, games, and community areas.

Elements of a movie website
When we begin designing at Big Spaceship, we know there are certain elements that all basic movie websites share. They include a synopsis, production notes, cast and crew bios, and photos and video clips from the film. These sections are commonly referred to as an electronic press kit.

Since the demand to offer more has been growing, we include various downloads such as wallpapers, buddy icons, posters, and screensavers as well to feed the Internet-hungry public.

In the customizable features area, we might give users the power to upload a photo of themselves, letting them become a part of the online experience.

For example, on Warner Bros' Starsky and Hutch site, people could customize their own photos with various wigs, hats, and facial hair. Another popular feature we like to include is a customizable wallpaper creator that we call the desktop machine. With this, users can choose which combinations of actors, props, and background to create their own unique downloadable wallpaper.

If we determine that a game would be appropriate, we examine possible types of game play that would best represent the film. For us, Flash games are serious business. We spend months planning and crafting 3-D animated characters with full, immersive environments wrapped in an elegant interface. Designers, animators, sound designers, producers, and coders help bring the game to life.

Figure 2: The Elektra Ninja Assassin game

For our multiplayer projects, we usually build an in-game chat where users can trash-talk while their chosen character battles against other users.

Combining After Effects with Flash
Often the movies that we are designing for the web are still in production, so getting assets (other than photos) is understandably difficult. In our first projects, this seemed challenging given the fact that our job is to create compelling experiences for a movie that we actually don't have much access to.

This is where After Effects fills in an important role with our sites. We can take a few still images and add smoke, fire, water, and other subtleties to add realism to the movement. Then, we can blend that video back into Flash with other graphics and text.

My first Flash video project was Gangs of New York from Miramax. Flash MX had just be released and after we demonstrated some tests we had created with the new product, the client saw just how powerful adding video to the Flash project was. What once was a still image suddenly felt more alive.

And now for another "here-we-go-again" moment: Flash 8 has added what I thought was impossible - video with transparent and semi-transparent areas. With After Effects, we have always been able to composite different videos and graphics on top of one another. However, once exported to Flash, the composite became a boring opaque rectangle that could not blend with multiple backgrounds in Flash. That has all changed with Flash 8. Now I can finally see through parts of my video and composite different images behind it.

The creative possibilities between After Effects and Flash have grown to have a very beautiful relationship. The first major web project that we are releasing with Flash 8 is Sony Pictures' Underworld:Evolution. So far the work we have done has really shown off how effective adding After Effects to the Flash workflow can be.