The Effect of Modern Digital Media on Viewer Experience
By Haley Valente
Today’s creators of modern digital media have had to come up with numerous ways for viewers to stay engaged with their content through interactive media. This leads to a deeper understanding of the work, and allows the audience to feel as though they are part of the world that has been created. The interactive movie on Netflix, “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” is an example of how creators of digital narratives today use different forms of storytelling to give the viewers an overarching theme or idea, and to engage the audience to be a part of their work. More importantly, this age of digital media allows the creators to immerse audiences even more into the world that they have designed, giving us the ability to literally decide where the narrative goes. This provides one of the most interactive forms of media that can be experienced these days, and completely alters and enhances the experience that viewers get from the narrative by allowing us to feel like we are a part of the story.
In this specific movie, the viewers are presented with two choices at given times in the duration of the film; they start out as small things that seem like they don’t matter, for example, which cereal Stefan, the main character, will eat for breakfast. As the story continues, we are presented with more complex decisions, like should he accept a job offer, or turn it down. Depending on the prior decision, viewers can be redirected back to the beginning of the narrative because those choices led Stefan down an undesirable path, whether it be because he died or he failed based on these decisions. This causes the viewers to think: which decision was it that I need to change? Throughout our everyday lives, we are constantly making these small choices, thinking they’re meaningless, and this narrative tackles that common belief. Is it really pointless? Would your whole life be different if you chose a different song to listen to on the bus? These are the types of things that this narrative makes us think about, because in this particular interactive media, the viewer can’t go back and change their previous choices. The only way to make a different choice is if Netflix redirects you, as mentioned before, or if you completely restart the movie. While being able to immerse us into this digital world and feel like we’re making decisions for ourselves, the creators are making the audience realize how important decisions actually can be, and really makes you think about your choices more seriously.
Because these choices spark a lot of curiosity, this is one of the ways that this narrative pulls us in as viewers. If I went back and made the opposite decisions than I had last time, what would the outcome be? Could I reach the same outcome with only a few different decisions? This is something that people today tend to think about: the unknown that comes with making choices, the chain of events that can determine any major thing in a person’s life. This type of narrative is a way to make the viewers think about these decisions and understand that every choice in your life is vital to your future, whether big or small.
Another way that this narrative immerses the viewer into their world is that when you’re watching the movie, there is no time bar on the bottom when you hover over the screen. When we watch movies, we usually see how much time we’ve already watched, and how much we have left, letting us know how much time total we’re spending in this fictional world. In this particular movie, since viewers can potentially spend hours interacting by continuing through and seeking out all of the endings for Stefan, the length of the movie depends on those choices. It has the opposite effect, where we are unsure of how much time we will spend trying to get to the end until we get there, making it easier for us to get lost in the world that they created.
A part in this movie that is important to the narrative happens in the middle, when we as the controller of the narrative are given a choice to “tell” Stefan that he is being controlled through his actions. This option honestly surprised me when I first saw it, because it is always fascinating when on screen the actor is somehow acknowledging that this isn’t real, which ironically, I think, makes it seem more real to the viewer, like we really are controlling his life.
This leads into an important point about this type of interactive narrative: that giving us the option to choose for someone else tells us a lot about ourselves. Do we choose to make Stefan kill his dad? Or fight with his therapist? Do we let him sacrifice his friend and inspiration’s life instead of his own? Interactive media like this opens up a whole new psychological realm, because while making these decisions, we subconsciously know which one we want to make for him, as a fictional character. Knowing that no one will actually be hurt or affected gives viewers a way to be able to make those types of decisions without any real consequences, and it’s interesting to question whether or not we as the controller of the narrative make these decisions based on what we would choose for our lives, or pick different choices because we know it isn’t real and won’t really affect anyone.
Another interesting part of this movie is how in the main narrative, one of the parts that never changes no matter what your decisions are, is that Stefan is working on creating a video game of the same stature. The players get to choose the next thing that happens, based off of a book of the same title he read as a child, and him creating the game is what a lot of the narrative decisions are centered around, and where a lot of the complex decisions come into play. The interesting thing about him creating this video game is that the movie is set in 1984, which makes it seem like the plot is telling us that what Stefan is trying to achieve has already been invented because we are literally doing it as we are watching him. It’s a unique way for the creators to play on the fact that this was eventually something that was going to be implemented in modern media.
“Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” showcases multiple ways that we as viewers are able to be immersed in digital narratives today, and is a creative way of allowing us to be a part of the narrative. The way that the creators set this movie up gives the audience the opportunity to make choices for someone else, and to see the consequences and different outcomes based on those choices. Immersive and interactive media like this can tell us a lot about ourselves, and can affect the story and viewer experience by giving us the opportunity to control the story that we are watching. Being able to make the decisions for how the narrative will play out makes viewers feel more engaged with the narrative, and is a very cool way of immersing viewers into a form of media while also highlighting how important the decisions in our lives can be.
