|
The celebrated building is no stranger to celebrity, either. Overthe years, the distinctive bunker has played host to Hollywoodtalent like Bob Hope and Errol Flynn. But between 1983 and 1994 itwas better known to theatregoers as Il Vittoriale -- the centrallocation for Tamara, a unique play about politics and scandal in'20s Italy. Unlike most conventional theatre, Tamara had a brilliant selling point. Staged in the American Legionbuilding, the play asked its audience to follow the actors as theymoved from room to room. You didn't simply sit and watch the dramathat unfolds as Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka is seduced byItalian poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, you became part of it. With as many as nine parallel stories running in 13 different roomsover three floors, the audience had to make choices: would youfollow mysterious chauffeur Mario? Or were you intrigued by thearch seducer D'Annunzio? Did you want to know the story behind thehouse's pretty maid, or was the fascist policeman a moreinteresting character? Depending on what you chose and where youwent, you might witness a suicide on the first floor but miss alesbian tryst that was happening downstairs in the scullery. Moses Znaimer, the Canadian TV producer who bankrolled thelong-running $550,000 production, liked to describe it as "a livingmovie." Reviewers compared it to a cross between Dynasty and Disneyland. The New York Times suggested it was like watching"a movie in which each theatregoer does the editing without everseeing the rushes". For the NEMO team, Tamara was more than just a play. It was also the blueprint for the kindof movie-video game they were grappling with. Over the course of aweekend in 1985, Axlon employees Rob Fulop and Jim Riley watchedthree performances, hoping to piece together its multi-strand plotby repeat attendance. At around $80 a ticket it wasn't cheap, yet the price was worthpaying. "It was the first design model that made sense," recallsFulop. "We decided you could let the user be the camera, just locka camera down into a room and let people walk in and out of thescene." For Riley, who'd previously worked with laserdisctechnology at MCA, the play mirrored the kind of interactiveexperiences he'd been experimenting with. Tamara became the basis for a five-minute demo of NEMO's live-action videocapabilities called Scene of the Crime , co-created by Fulop and Riley. Styled as an Agatha Christie-stylewhodunit, the demo was a radical re-imagining of what a video gamecould be. Instead of moving 8-bit pixels around a screen, you were beingasked to drive a narrative, each choice leading you to anotherpiece of filmed footage featuring real-life actors. Just as Tamara had offered different perspectives on the story, so Scene of the Crime jumped between characters and points of view as the player triedto solve the mystery by watching and interacting with video clips. As far as Hasbro's executives were concerned, they were witnessingthe evolution of the industry Atari had started. The console,attached to a VCR that it used to load the data from VHS tapes,looked nothing like the Nintendo NES. And neither did the game itplayed. "The immediate assumption was that this was a huge leap in videogames," recalls Fulop. "They were like, 'Wow, just imagine videogames with live footage.'" After watching Scene of the Crime 's rather adult whodunit plot unfold, Hasbro's suits offered justone instruction: "This is great. Now go and make it for kids." Zitoand his team were about to become filmmakers. It was a huge step. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as China Microneedle Fractional RF , Spider Vein Removal Machine Manufacturer, and more. For more , please visit Diode Laser Hair Removal today!
Related Articles -
China Microneedle Fractional RF, Spider Vein Removal Machine Manufacturer,
|
