A group of grads from the Canadian Film Centre’s new media design program at Bell h@bitat believes it has devised a more sophisticated kind of convergent entertainment. Called Tightrope, the project is part film, part game and part documentary, and it was exhibited earlier this month at the Interactive Art Show at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, TX.

Tightrope is the brainchild of four former CFC residents: Samantha Hodder (writer for This Magazine and Report on Business), Karen Rehner (theatre designer on The Lion King), Colin Salter (lawyer/ producer) and Geoffrey Siskind (independent filmmaker and journalist for CBC Radio One).

Tightrope tells the story of legendary high-wire walker Karl Wallenda. In 1978 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the 73-year-old Wallenda decided to cap off his career by walking across a wire strung between two buildings 120 feet above traffic. Experienced on a computer screen, Tightrope provides still images that recount Wallenda’s story while recreating his final walk in a first-person virtual rendition. An audio track expresses his thoughts, guiding the user to, say, lean right or not drop the balancing pole.

Although the 13-minute Tightrope is driven by one individual, it was displayed at SXSW on a 20-foot-by-20-foot screen and two 42-inch plasma screens. Filmmakers – and there were many of them at the concurrent SXSW film festival – may generally sneer at the notion of video games as art, but Tightrope seeks to prove how the two forms can merge effectively.

‘One of our big challenges was to get people to actually feel an emotion while watching this box we call a computer,’ Siskind says. ‘We were able to get people to cry at the end of our piece. It’s not ironic or a gag piece, which is what you see a lot of on the Internet. Normally the interaction is trite and gets in the way of the story, where you’ll have a poll or whatever. What we tried to do is take the interaction and embed it in the story.’

Tightrope even got some positive feedback from legendary doc director D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, The War Room). ‘He was absolutely blown away,’ Siskind recalls. ‘He said, ‘It’s kind of like a film, only more interesting.’ ‘

Although the piece allows the viewer to control Wallenda’s final walk to some extent, Siskind doesn’t believe in the kind of interactivity that would allow for altering of history. Regardless of the user’s keyboard proficiency, the experience is rigged to end as it did – with Wallenda plunging to his death.

Tightrope presently exists in CD-ROM format, and its makers are seeking partners in DVD distribution. Siskind believes Sony PlayStation 2, which combines DVD and game capabilities, would be an ideal platform. *

-//tightrope.webjump.com