ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the methods, structures and techniques for designing and delivering interactive films and demonstrating how several identifiable models of interactive cinema are directly related to the underlying technologies which have created them. It discusses systems with integrated interaction that can change what happens next during a viewing, and an interactive film will be understood as a representation of primarily prerecorded moving-image sequences, the display of which can be affected by the audience or a performer. The development of interactive cinema has inevitably been shaped by evolving technologies, since it requires a nonlinear audiovisual delivery system as well as an interface technology to allow choices to be made, making it a type of special format cinema. The advent of QuickTime technology, combined with fast hard drives on which to store the video files, brought digital video to the home computer.
