Brandon Generator on immersion.

It’s no secret to anyone that knows me what a huge fan of Edgar Wright I am. He, along with a handful of others, have hauled populist British cinema away from the Richard Curtis inspired safety zone and into a daring new space (no offense to Mr. Curtis). From the hilarious/sad/terrifying ‘zom-rom-com’ Shaun of the Dead to the eyeball-searing exuberance of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Edgar is constantly challenging the idea of what is expected from a bankable writer-director.It might come as a surprise to some, then, that in another life Mr. Wright might have been a Creative Technologist. It’s clear from his very entertaining Twitter account that he’s fascinated with technology and Web 2.0 (he also makes some pretty spicy selections on his This Is My Jam account, too), and his latest project – ‘The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator’, is a fascinating project which blends crowd-sourced creativity with narrative verve to produce something which promotes an interesting new approach to storytelling and asks the question “What does immersion mean?” in the digital age.In his own words:

A online comic of sorts, written by me, illustrated by the very talented Tommy Lee Edwards, narrated by the one and only Julian Barratt and featuring a new and hypnotic score by the amazing David Holmes.So, is it a comic? An animation? A little movie? Yes, to all three.

The project is designed to show off the capabilities of HTML5 and Internet Explorer 9’s unique application thereof. However what’s truly innovative about the project is that certain narrative, musical, and location elements are suggested and designed by the viewer, which Edgar and his team then implement based on user response. It’s a fascinating inversion of Reuben Feel’s modus operandi, which is audience-as-cast, instead placing the audience into the Director’s chair. As far as I know, they don’t get their name on the back of the chair. (+1 for Reuben Feels!)The storytelling approach is similar to how we design our own experiences – there is an underlying narrative, a story we want to tell, but how the conclusion is reached is shaped entirely by the participants. It’s not necessarily a journey from A to B – there’s potential for a C, D or E in there, too, and the guests themselves provide the bits in between (the B#?). In our case, it might be actors improvising an entire new scene, but in Brandon Generator’s case it’s the audience collaborating with the creators to shape what happens to Brandon, and how.What interests me the most about this project is how it could be taken a step further to combine the digital experience with the real world. With the advent of live-streaming and everyone and his dog having a Twitter account, could Immersive Theatre be combined with this type of storytelling to provide a live narrative experience which the audience not only takes part in, but directs as well?We’re no strangers to implementing digital technology in our work - In fact, we love to do so (See here and here for examples), but could the next step be having home-users directing the live experience from their armchairs in every corner of the world? We already integrate social media into our work, as an output, a way for our participants to share the experience they’ve had. Imagine if social media, or a Brandon Generator variant, was the input for an immersive theatre experience. You immerse the participants, but you invest countless thousands of others in what happens to those participants.  A live, crowd-sourced, fully immersive and interactive soap opera (or horror film, or comedy, or film-noir, or or or…).It’s jolly exciting, and we can't stop thinking about the possibilities. Well done Mr. Wright. Watch the first two episodes of The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator!