Viewers customize interactive Facebook-based “Social Film”

When it comes to entertainment, regular readers of Springwise may have noticed a growing trend whereby user interactivity is not only encouraged, but is made compulsory in order to reveal certain content. Recently we spotted Bluebrain’s location-based album, and now we’ve discovered Murmur’s “Social Film” — Him, Her and Them — which relies on the viewer/user to alter the viewing experience for their Facebook friends. The film, which runs as an app in Facebook, is a composite of traditional film footage and interactive scenes. Telling the story of a young man’s encounter with a group of thugs, the film footage was shot in high definition in New York city. The narrative, says Hal Siegel, the film’s Director and Co-Founder of Murmur, is “really about power, and how our notions of power are shaped through our relationships, and also through media.” The interactive scenes, meanwhile, are made up of a series of still images relevant to the narrative of the film, which Facebook users are able to add captions to. These captions will then be made viewable to any of their Facebook friends who also watch the film. Thus, in Siegel’s own words, “there is no one film”. A trailer can be viewed here, and the app can be accessed here. As interactivity becomes an increasingly important part of entertainment experiences, we wonder how long it will be before experiences such as these become the norm. Those working in entertainment, can you afford to still be creating purely passive experiences? (Related: App enables live video direction across multiple mobile devices — Location-aware album creates unique listening experience — Multi-touch digital books for iPhone and iPad.)