Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1313527
22 KEYFRAME That is, of course, a key reason why many of the men and women who have worked on programs with an interactive component find the experience as exciting as the viewers who actually get to engage with it. "It opens up a whole door of possibili- ties for the building of worlds, the building of franchises," says Dan Forgione, a veteran director and storyboard artist on such titles as The Boss Baby, The Adventures of Puss in Boots and Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja. "You can be building and extending stories beyond just time limit with infinite possibilities. Of course, there would have to be infinite money and budget. Somebody would have to pay for that, but from a storytelling standpoint, it's kind of a challenge." Forgione was one of three directors in charge of a team for the special event Boss Baby: Get That Baby! which offers its viewer 16 different endings. Three years ago, he worked on another DreamWorks interactive project, Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, when the format was still largely in its infancy. Now, new programs and established franchises are jumping into the CYOA pool with equal gusto. Producers of interactive episodes— which are almost always presented as special episodes of an established show— emphasize that the CYOA component is a new spin, not a gimmick. As Carla Engenbrecht, Director of Product Inno- vation, Interactive at Netflix insists: "We are storytellers first and foremost." "We're really excited to see what kinds of stories creators want to tell and what our members want to watch," Engelbrech says. "Now, we can share interactive rom-coms, horror, mysteries… it's really up to our creators and their imaginations." The Boss Baby adventure allows viewers to follow a story that serves as a training exercise determining their ultimate placement in Baby Corp. In Carmen Sandiego: To Steal or Not to Steal, the viewer guides the titular master thief through a heist while trying to figure out how to save her friends, as new choices pop up every few minutes. Skewing decidedly older, Batman: Death in the Family puts the fate of Robin literally in the player's hands when experienced on Blu-Ray. And it's not just animation. Netflix has recently produced You vs. Wild, an interactive episode of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which was considered every bit a game-changer. Going back further, animation lovers of a certain age can harken back to the early 1980s when gamers lined up outside of arcades (remember those?) to have a go at the newly released game Dragon's Lair. With animation by ex-Disney maven Don Bluth, the game put the player at the controls of an animated movie (for more on Dragon's Lair, read the sidebar). Interactive animation has come a long way in the ensuing decades. These days the choices are more numerous, the integration more seamless and the execution more sophisticated. Building an interactive program still takes a ton of labor and strategizing and the technical prowess of proprietary software that helps sync everything up and keep all of the decision points under control. Of great help is Netflix's Branch Manager software, developed for Bandersnatch, which helps creators keep track of their nonlinear story by allowing the input of video clips, storyboard and choice points. The F E AT U R E 22 KEYFRAME The Boss Baby interactive episode offered 16 different outcomes.