Feature: Make your own film by tuning a knob

A vintage radio resembled black box with a knob in the front allows audience to create their own vision of films in second.

This unique interactive video installation gathered a crowd of people trying and creating their own version of film on Saturday night at the 2016 IndieCade Festival at University of Southern California (USC) campus in Los Angeles.

Created by Zhan Chang and her team mates, a film related interactive game show named "700 to 730" allows the audience to create a montage within a story about a 7-year-old Chinese girl as she lives with her grandparents in a senior apartment.

The audience is invited to enter a theatre space, by tuning the knob of the wooden black box, people can alter the shot currently playing on the screen. Each audience interacts with the controller differently, thus creating a distinct montage experience unique to them. This device helps audience have different interpretations to a film.

Zhan is a Chinese nationality international student of School of Cinematic Arts at USC. Majored in Game and Interactive Media Design, Zhan designed a new kind of interactive game that combined with film, which is more like a "one person theater."

"As an introvert and heavy thinker who enjoys finding my own existence in the painfulness of constant reflection and exploration, I spent most of my college life exploring these notions and interacting with my inner voice. As a media artist, I was fascinated by various media technology and their potential to make art," said Zhan.

"Missing details in visual art or other representational 'shortcuts' require the user to fill in the missing information. Narrative techniques such as 'film montage' bridges the gap between unrelated images", she added.

"So everyone basically sees a different film depends on how they interact with it," Zhan told Xinhua.

"I think one of the big objectives for Zhan's project was to really redesign, redefine games and think about a kind of interactivity. It's not just about traditional games; this one is really a successful exploration for doing a kind of combination of games and movies and all kinds of new ideas," said Scott Fisher who is a Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

IndieCade, as the biggest event dedicated to celebrating independent games in the US, was held on USC this year from this Thursday to Sunday. Now in its 9th year, over 200 latest innovative independent games were showcasing at the festival, including digital, VR, table, multi-media, physical games and more. All games were available for the attendees to play and review.

"There is an opportunity to bring people together and highlight games that otherwise people did not see, and to show that our games are not made by the same kind of people," Stephanie Barish, CEO and one of the founders of IndieCade, told Xinhua on Saturday, "if you walk around you will see very divers people making games."

"IndieCade really encourages people to explore and experiment with new media and new technology of storytelling," Zhan said, "I am working on different types of technology and that is how IndieCade consider my work to be experimental in a way and worth showing here."

Besides of showcasing independent games, IndieCade also hosted multiple conferences where industry leaders, professionals and artists were invited to share their stories.

In this November, IndieCade will also take place in Paris, France, which will be the first IndieCade Europe. Endit