| Anna Ringle |
COTTBUS, Germany (dpa) – The audience settles into their cinema seats, drinks at the ready and the film begins.
It’s about a guy called Lukas, who’s having problems with his girlfriend – she wants commitment, but he’s not ready for a family yet. And at the moment he doesn’t have time to think about it, he’s got a job interview.
By this point the audience has noticed that the film being shown at the Weltspiegel cinema in Cottbus, eastern Germany, is no ordinary film – it has turned into a computer game.
Directly in front of the screen there’s desk with a laptop on it. A game designer and a programmer sit side by side with someone who hasn’t yet seen the film, all three facing the audience.
Together they manoeuvre Lukas through his interview.
It’s put together like a quiz. The member of the audience guesses at the answers and the game designer explains the basics of the project to everybody else.
Auf der Suche (On the Hunt) being screened in the Weltspiegel Cinema in Cottbus, Germany, January 22. An audience member was invited to answer multiple-choice questions that influenced plot development. The man behind the experiement was 30-year-old Erik Schiesko
Olaf Poschk, a computer gamer, at the laptop just before the screening of Auf der Suche (On the Hunt) in the Weltspiegel Cinema. PHOTOS: DPA
For every question that appears on the laptop screen – and projected up onto the cinema screen – there are several possible answers.
When the audience member guesses the wrong answer, there are comic consequences for Lukas. In one scene the interviewer rips up his application in front of him, in another the secretary comes in and says she’s heard that the world is about to end.
Only when they click on the right answer does the game, and the film, go on.
The man behind this project, Auf der Suche (On the Hunt), is 30-year-old Erik Schiesko. He had already made several films, but never a combination of film and computer game.
At the film’s recent premiere, the audience enthusiastically joined in with guessing the answers before settling back into their seats when the film continued.
It’s a love story set in the old-time communist German Democratic Republic, revolving around a young couple planning to flee to the West.
The protagonist stumbles on the story decades later when, in his new job as a journalist, he comes across a picture of someone who looks incredibly like him in an archive.
Many of the film’s settings will be familiar to locals in Cottbus: the newsroom of the local newspaper, the Lausitzer Rundschau, which supported the project, an opencast mine and a Cottbus graveyard.
The computer and gaming industries are very interested in projects like Schiesko’s.
“Different media are increa-singly being fused through digitalisation and their aesthetic influence on each other is growing,” says Maximilian Schenk, director of the German Trade Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU).
“At the beginning it was often digital films, which, as a young medium, were heavily influenced by more established media like film.
“An interactive film like Auf der Suche is a nice example of how this influence increasingly plays out in both directions,” says Schenk.
Schniesko and his team cut their interactive film down to just over two hours for the premiere. Normally it would last twice as long, which could put off cinemas.
In any case, the film is only intended to be shown twice at the cinema and then made available free on the internet, though players are welcome to make a donation.
The interplay between com-puter games and film has been a talking point for some time. Recently there was an exhibition at Frankfurt’s Deutsches Film-museum (German film museum) focusing on it.
‘Film and Games: An interplay’ explored what connects the two media, what divides them and how they have influenced each other.
The German Film Distributors Association (VdF) says it’s open to interactive film projects, but doesn’t see them becoming a trend just yet.
“The response will show if there’s a demand for it,” says director Johannes Klingsporn.
And what did the audience make of it? There was lots of applause at the premiere.
“Can’t complain,” says one young man. Two women, who otherwise aren’t interested in ‘gaming’ also say they’d love the chance to have a go themselves.
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