Non-Linear Narrative
I wasn’t sure if todays class would be another workshop or a lesson so I asked David in an email. He informed me he would be going over non-linear narrative but at this point I had already decided on staying home. However, I can assure you it wasn’t out of laziness. I still do work for my old job and was recently given the blueprints for a new construction mansion. I actually prefer estimating full new houses vs smaller miscellaneous jobs so I was excited for this one. The only downside is that my boss is hoping to review this estimate with me, the company owner and the architect on Thursday so I need to be ultra prepared. That being said, I still feel guilty for skipping class today so to partly make up for my absence, I am going to learn exactly what a non-linear narrative entails.
Wikipedia says that non-linear narrative is when “the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line.” Quentin Tarantino significantly popularized this technique with his films such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and the Hateful Eight. In an interview Quentin says “audiences, as long as they’re in good hands, they like being curious, they don’t like to be told everything… If they think the story teller will eventually take care of them, they can wait.” What I think Quentin means here is that as long as the viewer trusts the story teller to eventually tell them, they don’t want to know everything right away, they enjoy trying to piece together the narrative from the limited information they have. I experienced this recently when I saw The Watcher. Its a psychological thriller on Netflix based on a true story about a family moving into a new house. Everything starts out great, with a sort of too good to be true element as you follow a happy family begin a new chapter of their life in the house of their dreams. Disturbing unexplained events begin to occur and ramp up exponentially throughout the series. Grasping onto every new piece of information, you are cascaded with red herrings as the story gains a new level of mystery each episode. It feels like the more you learn, the less you know. This was so addicting that I watched the whole series in one sitting. The story was linear for the most part but did incorporate some nonlinear aspects as some events would be told through a characters recollection or flashbacks. My one complaint with this series is the ending. What kept me so glued was the future relief of the mystery being inevitably solved. This never happened leaving me very unsatisfied. At first I was mad that I had just invested all that time in something with no return and I still mainly feel that way, however I am beginning to see why the story teller chose this path. The true story that the series was based off was also unsolved and I think that the story teller wanted to share the same frustration that the real people must’ve felt. He wanted to put us in their shoes, no matter how bitter and unsatisfying they were. The reason I wanted to discuss The Watcher so heavily is that I feel like it shares a very similar element to a lot of non-linear narratives. That element being, manipulating the viewer to create their own story from the very limited information they have. The viewer feels a desire to understand so they dive down rabbit hole after rabbit hole with every new piece of information. A lot of non-linear stories slowly unfold giving the viewer just enough oxygen (information) to survive but not enough to satisfy them. Demanding their full attention as they don’t want to miss a precious bubble as it quickly floats by.
I have an idea for a psychological interactive thriller that I would love to explore. I’m not sure yet if VR would add more than it would subtract here so I haven’t determined detail yet. The main overview is this:
It is a POV from the perspective of a man (you) going crazy. It starts with hyper realistic dreams that you don’t know are dreams until you wake up. They start out fairly harmless but ramp up throughout the movie as they go from weird dreams to traumatic nightmares. It causes you to never feel comfortable because you never fully know if you are in one or not. An example would be you wake up and are preparing breakfast with your wife, you are talking to her as she cuts a bagel. She looks up at you and says “I’ve always wanted to try this” before abruptly pulling her arm back and stabbing herself through the neck with the blade. You instantly wake up in a panic as you realize that none of it was real. Maybe the next day you are preparing breakfast with her and she looks at you and says “I’ve always wanted to try this” in the same tone causing you to panic for a split second as you prepare for the coming brutality. Nothing happens though, it was just coincidence. Maybe you even are given the option as to leap over and grab the knife out of her hand vs sitting and doing nothing. Leaping over causes her to jump maybe cutting her hand in the process. She is mad and confused and says something like “What the fuck!! Why did you do that?!!” you apologize as you vaguely explain how you just got panicked because of the crazy dreams you’ve been having. She understands and forgives you as she shows a great sense of empathy and love. This relationship is a very healthy one, there is none of that pointless anxiety birthing secret keeping that happens so often in shows where the audience is left screaming “TELL THEM” at there TV. This is a realistic, healthy relationship, one that you feel couldn’t have a messy ending as both parties are so communicative. As the series goes on, the dreams get crazier and crazier. As you begin to get less and less sleep, you get more and more paranoid. Maybe people in real life start referencing things from the dreams that you didn’t tell them yet, making you slowly believe that everyone is in on it and against you. The paranoia peaks when your wife starts to do this too. It starts out slowly with something that’s easily shrugged off but never the less it plants the seed. As it progresses that seed grows until eventually you decide not to tell your wife about something. This begins the true isolation and full on plunge into paranoia. What keeps the viewer interested is that they are fed just enough information to believe that they ARE the right one and everyone IS out to get them. You know that you are getting paranoid and going crazy and you know to fight it but every time you do you are met with more evidence that you are actually onto something. By making this story interactive I feel like I could greatly take control of the balance of trusting them vs trusting yourself. For instance, it starts out about 99% trusting them until around midway through where its about 52% trusting them. You begin to nose dive as the scale tips and you are trusting yourself more than them. As you look for more and more evidence you fight it, but are met with counter information that makes you question if the first thing was true or not while simultaneously questioning the second piece of information. You are not just watching someone go crazy, you ARE the person. You decide whether or not to keep things from your wife, you decide whether or not to spy on people, you decide whether or not to lunge forward and snatch the knife out of your wife’s hand. You decide how long to fight the paranoia for but if you continue to resist submission, the evidence becomes harder and harder to ignore and eventually you feel like you might as well as least check. I think a cool aspect would be no matter what side you are on, it always feels like the wrong side. And if you convert to the other side it feels like the right decision up until you’ve done something that you can’t take back and your whole plan crumples with one piece of solid disproving information. Maybe then if you go back to the first side, right as you settle in you learn that the piece of information you got that disproved everything actually might have been false and it launches you right back into questioning everything. I think it would be cool to have a bunch of different endings that essentially span from it ALL being in your head and you being completely wrong, to it ALL being true and you really were onto something. You always get the opposite ending to what you believed though, so if you want it to all be true that they are out to get you, you fight the paranoia and trust everyone until maybe eventually they capture you are sacrifice you in some cult ritual,, orrrr if you want the ending to be that where they WERE all normal, then you dive deep into isolation and paranoia. I would also throw in some easter egg story lines that are only found through a succession of very specific choices. Some fun ones might be where you join and lead the cult that was once preying on you, or where you become a serial killer, or where you convince your wife its all true even though its just paranoia, ruining both of your lives, or where you “beat” the paranoia and have a kid only for him to ultimately vanish with signs pointing towards the cult that you thought was just in your head. This would be a super extensive project but I feel could set the bar for what interactive films COULD be while also educating / giving perspective of what paranoia is like. It would also be incredibly scary, particularly the nightmare dreams. It would be very hard as it would be a first person film to add the non-linear element but I feel like it would still be important to incorporate it. Maybe this would be in form of a day dream or flashback or life flashing before your eyes or a real dream that you wake up from and explain to your wife “hey remember that time blah blah blah… I just had the weirdest dream about it”. Just little bits of information to help build the groundwork for each character and help the viewer understand them better and understand why they do what they do. A good one would be looking at your wife, you feel like you are on the brink of proving your “crazy” theories correct but she is sobbing and saying if you don’t drop it she will leave you. As you look at her face you have a compilation flash before your eyes of all the amazing memories you’ve shared together and all the previous battles you’ve fought yet overcome anyway. Music would be playing and it the audio of each precious moment would seep into the next. It would be heartbreaking and convince most to drop the theories and choose her. Either choice would soon have you regretting it though.
Currently sitting in Kelvins class as he teaches everyone about NURBS. I remember learning about NURBS at the beginning of the year with Escape Studios. The teacher tried to show us how to create a banana and it was a disaster. Maya kept throwing up bugs and I remember being really concerned that this program was the “industry standard”. I only used them one other time and it was to create a pot for a potted plant. It actually worked pretty well but other than that I always avoid them. I created a pumpkin with polygons and it turned out pretty good, I’m hoping we texture them at some point as it would be so satisfying. If not, maybe I’ll just texture on my own.
Yesterday in Pierre’s class we had time to work on our own projects. I organized my Eevo interactive structure and then spent the remainder of class watching tutorials on importing google maps to a 3D model in Unity. It seems fairly straight forward but will definitely take some serious computer power. I’m excited to give it a go, I think it’ll open up some doors for new effects. You can mimic drone shots to a lower quality but with the right filters and maybe speed of the video, people might not notice.