Using Star Wars IV: A New Hope, as a backboard, the creators turn to the fans to pitch in to a fascinating reel of “do it yourself” clips to be sliced together to create a different film. Star Wars Uncut achieves this convergence and immersion from spectator to film in many ways. I will analyze convergence as it involves the old and new as applied to the text, the spectator, and the media. I will also place a heavy emphasis on the spectator’s interaction with the original film by immersion as it is used to create a new film through active and participatory audience spectatorship, digital swimming and the creation of belief.
CONVERGENCE OF THE OLD AND NEW
Within this particular film there is a definite convergence of media from different sources. However, there is an interesting and fascinating convergence of old and new media. For example, the original Star Wars appeared in the 1970’s. Star Wars’ popularity branched beyond the generation that lived during its hay-day in so much that 40 years after its release, old and new audiences (children and adults alike) experience and enjoy the phenomena that is this media system. Convergence culture aims that “old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect… the work and play that spectators perform in the new media system.” Not only is an old text being applied to new media (the ability to create and splice image and layer on sound and music) but also the older audience and their media converging on the newer audience as they work and play and perform within Jenkin’s convergence. In addition to the convergence of old and new media, keep in mind that the new text (the individual spectator clips) is brand new and during several moments of Star Wars Uncut, dialogue, sounds, and music from the original text is laced on. The film’s original recorded sound is more than 40 years old and has converged with the new media in a participatory way.
IMMERSION: PARTICIPATORY AUDIENCE SPECTATORSHIP
Star Wars Uncut’s purpose was to allow the audience to partake in the creation and imagination of the original Star Wars film. This active audience engages closely with the original text and a text image of their own. Murray emphasizes an “immersion” into the text and by so doing there is a creation of participatory theatre. Much like Multi-Use Domain or Live Action Role Playing, Star Wars fans collect, create, imagine, and fantasize themselves within the world of the story. In Star Wars Uncut, the audience is asked to actively participate in “the well-defined roles that provide the means for each individual participant to actively create belief in the illusory world.” Within this participatory culture, spectators “gradually learn to do what actors do, to enact emotionally authentic experiences that we are not ‘real’” which supports the indivuality of each clip’s attempt to re-create an experience that has been designed emotionally and esthetically in Star Wars. This also involves structuring the world as a visit. Spectators (as they now take positions as creators) explore a world in which there are constraints, order, and codification of moments within the original film. Each spectator is now limited with time and space, but instead of participating as just an audience member, they experience it through this immersive world.
IMMERSION: DIGITAL SWIMMING
In addition to Murray’s virtual world analysis and its relationship to immersion, there are three experiences Murray provides that apply to Star Wars Uncut. Because immersion is likened unto the physical experience of being submerged in water, the same applies to being submerged in the world and reality of the test. Digital swimming constitutes the enjoyment of immersion as a participatory activity. As stated above, this film project is a large form of audience participation. However, most fluently is the ability to swim and experience the entire world (instead of just dipping your feet). This means that the spectator enters into the space, giving us access to emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that are not necessarily there in real life. How often is it that we come face to face with the force or Darth Vader? The audience interaction with the creation of each clip symbolizes the ability to be immersed and participate in a new world.
IMMERSION: CREATION OF BELIEF
Lastly, this particular film project emphasized Murray’s immersive phrase “the creation of belief”. The clips do not appear realistic or accurate to the original. Most of them are low quality and/or inaudible. So why would spectators be so fully immersed the ability to create a belief? The spectators simply do not want to suspend disbelief so much because they actively create it. The creative process “brings out cognitive, cultural, and psychological templates to every story as we assess the characters and anticipate the way the story is likely to go.” Many of the spectators have memorized quotes, character movements, plot points, sound and music motifs that they have in that place the way the story is supposed to go. The belief that is created is not based on the quality of the medium of the story, but on the immersive real-ness to their participatory involvement. Furthermore, the digital art mediums are an invention of belief-creating virtual objects that heighten our participation by giving us something very satisfying to do.
In conclusion, spectator participation is beyond just facilitating as an audience member. Star Wars Uncut provides a foreground at which spectators can converge and immerse themselves into Star Wars in multiple ways.
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