Audiovisual
A picture is worth a thousand words
Everyone knows this. As a personal story, I remember when I told this to my grand uncle who used to be a copywriter in a communication agency. He almost got pissed. “So draw me a picture that means what you just said now”. I was very puzzled, and still am. I think he meant images do convey meaning but they cannot do everything, that you still need words and text. All good to me. A lot of people do this much better than me. Words can transport you in a story and therefore an experience, so can images and sound in their own way.
Film and Video
One of the most transportive media to date has remained the video experience. We all remember watching our first movie at the cinema. Films are multimedia by essence. They mix photography with sound, making them able to vacuum us in their story world without even noticing it, and they can even integrate words in the form of speech. Stories in the audiovisual form really subjugate our senses to the point that we become unconscious of our physical presence in the room in front of the screen. It’s about stories generating immersion.
Experiential
Physical
When we think of an experience, we usually think of something more than a movie, more like a physical place, such as a theme park, an art installation, or an event. Or maybe we are thinking of traveling, going somewhere on an adventure. This is fundamentally related to real-life.
Memorable
One of the craziest experiences I have done was the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey attraction at Universal Studios. I remember losing touch with reality and go on an intense magical journey in the world of Harry Potter. For a few seconds after leaving the attraction I was 8 years old again. As much as I loved the books and the movies of the franchise, this has remained the most memorable. It’s about extending the engagement beyond the mind as immersion.
Digital
Accessible
The problem of theme parks and immersive installations is that they are not as broadly accessible as a movie. I’ve always been looking at the new multi-sensory technology that would enable us to have the best of those both worlds. Not only for anyone to enjoy such an experience, but also for creators to be able to make their own without huge budgets.
Interactive
Virtual reality could be that solution. An all-in-one encompassing device for which we can design immersive experiences that are distributable. Definitely a plus for that. And there are even more accessible forms of media that can bring a similar experience. Interactive web design is one of them and has been used primarily for informative or applicative websites. But there is an opportunity out there for experiential websites. Web experiences that are not used for searching, using, nor playing. It’s about interactivity becoming immersion.
The Ambition
Audiovisual digital experiences
The web age offers amazing opportunities to bring new media content, at the intersection of films, themed rides, documentaries, and video games, while being possible to produce and be accessible to anyone. That kind of content would be useful to convey messages while being participatory and memorable. But what is the end-game? Making cultural and entertainment projects or impactful marketing and communication campaigns.
Discover in a next article what are the building blocks of an entertainment experience.