The relationship between form and content in interactive cinema: The analysis of Bandersnatch

Thanks to the spread of digitalization and then the internet, our relationship with the flow of information has entered a process of transformation from passive to active. Today, while the issue of how the audience perceives the content presented in a completed form in medium including many communication and art fields, especially the cinema, remains important; the issue of how the audience can be involved in the creation process before content is completed remains as a discussion topic in front of us. In this direction, examples are accumulating where we see that the interactivity feature, which has been integrated into video games and social media applications for a long time, is tried to be adapted to cinema with high efficiency. Among these examples, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which is the first adult interactive film to reach mainstream audience, is a production worth working with both in form and content. In addition to the studies in which interactive films are handled from various perspectives, it can be realized that it is a necessity to focus on and define the artistic features of the interactive structure. For this purpose, in this study, we trace how the traditional dichotomy of form and content, which is the most classical discussion of cinema, will be handled in interactive films. Interactive narrative, which differs from the classical narrative structure with both its structure that gives control to the audience and its branching story possibilities, is a topic that continues to be created a theoretical framework for defining aesthetic elements and determining the relationship between them. In this study, in which we try to build a bridge between the most classical theories and the newest ones, a detailed structural analysis of the Black Mirror: Bandersnatch film has been made with the method of content analysis.