Film Courage: Can we talk about the six types of audience roles? The first one is a visitor.
Margaret Kerrison, Immersive Storyteller, Narrative Director and Writer: The visitor is
what you think of when you have an art gallery or a museum where the visitor comes in and they enjoy
and appreciate works of art or objects or they come to learn, they come to appreciate a place,
but they don't play a role in the story of the experience, they are visitors to the
place where the environment, the story world is not affected by their presence. This is the
most common type of experience where people will go to everything from a playground to a
museum. They're visiting a place and they don't have an active role to play in the experience.
Film Courage: This is passive?
Margaret: Yes.
Film Courage: Number two is The Spectator, this also sounds passive.
Margaret: A spectator is a more passive participant as well. You could think of
sporting events or concerts but there's a little bit of participation in that
they can respond to the performer or to the athlete that they can clap, they can scream,
they can shout their support all of them or boo, so there's a little bit more participation
but it's it's still somewhat passive it's not as participatory as other forms of visitors.
Film Courage: Number three is participant-immersive.
Margaret: When you think about some of the immersive experiences out there
where they have projection mapping around a space and the environment reacts
towards the participant that goes into this immersive space. Maybe you touch something and
there's like fish in a digital fish in an aquarium let's say and if you touch, you can feed the fish
by like touching on the wall or something like that. There is a form of participation
that requires you to engage with the immersive environment around you. It doesn't change the
story in a drastic way but it responds to you as you touch or perhaps whatever kind of action that
you do to create something that may have a small consequence but nothing that is going to change
the outcome of the entire experience or the story. It's a light touch, light touch participation.
Film Courage: Participant Interactive.
Margaret: A participant interactive is a little more engaging perhaps it's a crank that you have
to turn in order for this invention or this machine to work maybe it's some buttons that
you have to push maybe it's handles that you have to pull and look through and discover
so there's a sense that it is interactive that you are required to take some action in order to
fully experience the story and the world and it's a great way for kids to explore the world around
them so I love seeing museums and places where kids can just touch everything and interact with
things so that they can learn about it science museums is a really great example of that and
just really engaging actively participatory type of activities where you can really see
results and consequences answers to your to your actions number five hero so hero is one in which
if you go through this experience and the story world the characters the experiences around you
have a direct consequence to your actions so if you are going to meet with a character in a town
let's say in this world whatever you say or do with this particular character is going to have
very big consequences to the world so this is really the most extreme form of immersive
storytelling how can you as a creator put your visitor into a hero role where they can change
the consequences of the story and the world and again I go back to video games gaming where you
truly have this opportunity to change the the true Choose Your Own Adventure type of format
where you can change the outcome of your story and other characters outcomes as well is the
most extreme form of immersion of Storytelling that you can do and I think we have yet to really
see an experience where they it fully does that where you can truly create an outcome
that is personal extremely personal to you it's difficult and challenging because you have mass
groups of people visitors audiences coming to a place so how can you create a story that's
tailored only to you and personalized only to you when you're in this setting with crowds of people
and so there are different ways that you can do it there's some that makes it a truly personal
experience or just you and one other person if you think about like some of the experiences
out there in the world when you're traveling let's say and you have a private guide who takes you to
through a safari or whatever it is right there's there's varying ways for you to be the hero of
that story in that Journey but it's it's still one that we're we've touched the surface of an
immersive storytelling and I think we have a long way to go to really create something that is truly
that truly makes you feel like you are the hero of the story and I'm really excited to see where
it can take us and then creator last but not least this is one that I think gosh when I think about
wear immersive storytelling can go and how I'm seeing the trends of what my kid and the younger
generations are doing in their own free time things like Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite
where and being YouTubers there is a desire to create and express yourself in your own way
how do we create an immersive storytelling experience or world where we can embrace you
as a creator and this is perhaps touching on the Metaverse or touching on something
that AR [augmented reality] or something that is more virtual but is there a world where there is
a combination of like the physical the digital the virtual where it feels like perhaps there's
no boundaries anymore right and it for a lot of people that can be really scary to think
about what's real and what's not but when I see what's what's emerging in this world and how we
all want to have that sense of ownership and a sense of creation I think that this
is really going to be what's going to be very exciting in this particular format of immersive
storytelling how can you create a world that is specific to you and have visitors perhaps come
to your world experience the story that you set up we see that in TV and movies and video games
maybe we can see that in the physical world maybe we can see that in a way that is scalable
that other people from some other part of the world can come and experience the world that
you've created and how do you create something invite others to come and co-create with you
how do you create environments that change with time that evolve over time that perhaps does it
organically I know that it's something that I'm very excited to see because it really pushes
how we think about how we perceive the world and what is all my life since I
was a child I think there's always been multiple worlds that I live in in my head
and imagine if there is going to be a landscape where you can go in and out of those worlds as
you please that it doesn't just live in your head that it can be manifested into something
that other people can see and share and that you can continually change and evolve into
an ecosystem that other people can come in and collaborate as well and again we're seeing it
in video games we're seeing in all this but how do we how can we bring that into the physical world.