Isadora!

I have recently learnt how to use a new software package called 'Isadora' which to my surprise, I found that I was able to use with confidence as apposed to the usual confusion regarding new software that has been presented to me in previous modules...

Isadora is a programme that enables users to change the direction of the content they are viewing, whether that be in film or performances such as dance created by Visual Artists. In many ways, film is no longer fashioned in just a linear narrative and with cinema now in a digital and electronic age, filmmakers are able to interact with their audience in a way that suits them. Using Isadora is just another interesting way of being able to interact and engage with their audience on a different platform.

Isadora can be seen in all it's glory within nightclubs and is also used by Video Performance Artists to create and manipulate images in real time. Concerts and nightclubs use Isadora by synching together images and music that is then played over huge televisions/projectors to the audience.

It can be seen below at festivals such as Glastonbury:

I discovered that when using Isadora, the possibilities of what you are able to create by manipulating images and video is extensive. Even though there are still many building blocks that I have yet to discover through the programme, I was able to create a short interactive narrative experience that worked! 

Having been set a mini brief and with keeping to the Halloween tradition, I was (in groups of four) to research and come up with a narrative based on this theme. This was only a little test in using Isadora and so I was to keep the narrative short whilst it still being interactive and engaging. 

When hearing the words 'as limitless as your imagination', I would normally panic and go blank for a few seconds however, recently I have kept my calm and focused on the task at hand. I guess this is due to being in my third and final year now and I know that panicking at this point would be the worst thing to do...

So within the group we decided upon the notion of a point of view haunted house trail. The user would click play by hitting the space bar which would 'enter' them into the interactive experience. The experience is essentially then a point of view of the user in a haunted house ride. The user then 'hops' into the haunted house cart which rides along until it hits a point and stops. The screen then pops up asking if the user would like a 'trick or treat', to which the user selects 'A' or 'B' according to what option they would prefer. From this, the user would them either get a terrifying scare or something as cute as a cat dressed up as a banana. Either way, the experience is interacting with the audience and engaging them on a different level other than simply watching a film. This experience would then repeat itself another three times where by there would be different scares and delights, depending on your horror threshold. 

I downloaded all of the footage used from YouTube and created the font from a website called dafont.com which looked like so: 

After getting our heads around the software, I found Isadora quite fun to use. I liked the possibilities of being able to manipulate images to what you want and also, being able to synchronise it along with music of your choice. The only downside to it was that we were not able to save our work because it was only a demo so I am unable to post my work up on here for you to use my interactive experience, however I do have a couple of photos that I snapped with our finished piece. It looks confusing and it was, at first.