Choice is Not Immersion – Why ‘Bandersnatch’ is Less Immersive than ‘Bird Box’

Technology provides new ways of experiencing narrative media, but our emotional immersion depends on the ability for our awareness to exist within the experience. “Bandersnatch” tries to do this through its meta-storyline and partially succeeds. But as long as we have to press buttons, narrative immersion is compromised by interactivity. This talk of Alexis Kirke, film composer and lecturer, examines these issues in so-called immersive media, and discusses ways to reduce this problem, including the real-time automated measuring of viewer reactions using AI, to make path selections for us.