The jury is still out on whether James Cameron’s eagerly anticipated new movie Avatar will live up the hype. The Rubber office is split down the middle between those eager to see it and those who were left feeling under whelmed by the trailer.
However, everyone has been bowled over by a new interactive version of the trailer. As you watch the trailer, hotspots appear which stop the trailer and enable the viewer to click on a character or point of interest in the scene to find out more.
If you click on one of these hotspots, a making of video begins playing with character information, art design and the fictional technology from the movie. With one click the video will stop and the trailer resumes playing where you left it.
Equally impressive is the integration of Avatar’s Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube feeds. The app will update with news as anticipation builds in advance of Avatar’s December release.
The trailer, which requires you to download an Adobe AIR program so the Avatar app can be downloaded to your desktop, is slick, intuitive and bursting with content. As far as we’re concerned, it’s very very cool.
Let us know what you think? Is the new trailer as good as we think it is?
It’s not the first time the technology associated with Avatar has impressed me. Earlier this year, Avatar toys featuring an augmented reality experience had me chomping at the bit to get my hands on one. Check out the video below to see more.
For decades, movies were very one-way; the audience would sit in front of the screen and absorb the movie in front of them. Today, we have the option of becoming involved with a particular movie even weeks or months before we see it. Through social media outlets like Flickr, YouTube or Twitter and with interactive applications like the Avatar trailer, we are able to watch and absorb information about the film and share our opinions with our peers and directly with the production companies. I wrote more about the interactive Avatar trailer here: http://popculture2point0.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/avatar-and-the-interactive-trailer/
Cheers for the comment Lauren. Yes, audiences are becoming more involved in movies pre-release. Next logical step seems to be actually shaping the movies themselves pre-release a la ‘Snakes on a Plane’.