Abstract. Using the cinema screen for interactivity purposes offers hundreds of possibilities for advertising and communication. In this paper we present an interactive system that allows large audiences to interact with cinema screens through a mobile application. The system also allows the issuance of interactive messages by the cinema, thus facilitating the promotion of future films and special offers related to the room and /or its sponsors.
The architecture incorporates technologies that enable spectators of the movie to interact with their mobile devices with other spectators in real time. The system can be integrated with any digital film or be projected directly from a computer. The games for the proposed system can be easily customized by a game editor application. Briefly, the system allows games, challenges, etc. with and against other spectators to win prizes and receive information of interest, before the screening of the film experience.
Keywords. Interactivity, Gaming, Digital Cinema, Competitivity.
Introduction
Interactive games have been used for entertainment purposes extended. However, only in recent years have placed within the reach of most people. In an Interactive environment, users conduct social and interpersonal interaction through networks and interfaces rather than through face-to-face communication (Liaw, & Huang, 2012). The interactive environments have the aim to attract the user attention with a special purpose; the communication into the interactive environment could be asynchronous or synchronous. The synchronous communication occurs in real time, requiring the full attention of users for interaction. Whereas that in an asynchronous communication, users interact at their own convenience and control the pace, this type of communication is ideal when it is not necessary to know the user’s response.
One technique to ensure the user’s attention in an interactive environment could be Gamification. In 2010, emerged a strong tend called gamification, which applies elements associated with video games like game mechanics and game dynamics in applications that are not games. Gamification has the goal to increase the participation of people and to promote certain user behaviors. Gamification has been applied mainly in the area of marketing but its functionality is not limited, it has spread to other areas such as health, government, education to name a few.
Although gamification is not a technique for learning purposes, contributes greatly to the user learning (Wood, & Reiners, 2012) by reinforcing previously learned behavior through visual storytelling and visual cues. Gamification allows the users to explore information in a way that doesn’t feel like a typical class, the retaining information is the result to use gamification techniques (Landers, & Callan, 2011) (Miller, 2013). Interactive activities continually provide challenges to users, thus involving a process of active learning to master the mechanics (Dominguez et al, 2013).
Under these two domains: Gamification and Interactive environment, this paper presents an innovative technology that allows viewers of a movie theater to interact by their mobile phones, tablets and other devices with other viewers in real time and through a movie screen. The set of all these elements creates a huge board game. The system creates an interactive environment between large audiences and the cinema screen through a mobile application and signal processing. The system deploys easily customizable games for each room or session. Each game is adapted to the specific audience that will attend the screening.
The system convey customizable messages to viewers through interactive games and intended that viewers capture the main ideas about a topic in a fun and uncomplicated way.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a brief description of related works. Section 3 presents an overview of the system. And finally, the concluding remarks are presented.
Related Work
The interactive environments are created with different purposes and in some cases their creation facilitate the lives of people in the real world (Blythe, Monk, & Doughty, 2005), (Cook, & Das, 2007), (Abascal & Nicolle, 2005), helping to solve different types of needs.
To create a interactive environment is necessary to have clear a 2 aspects: 1) What is the objective to develop the interactive environment and 2) What items will interact within the environment?
In the literature it’s found interesting developments about interactive environments for different purposes, for example to control the environment of a home or office from any device, as developed by (Myers, 2005), in this paper the author presents a research project called Pebbles, an application that enable to use devices such as mobile phones and palm-size computers like Palm Organizers and PocketPCs as remote controls for computers and household and office appliances.
Other interactive environments have educational purposes, these environments support the learning process at different levels. An Interactive Multimodal Environment (IME) called Stanza Logo-Motoria was developed by (Zanolla et al, 2013). Stanza was designed to support learning in primary schools. Stanza analyzes the full-body movements and gestures of the users in real time within a sensorised physical environment. This system helps teachers to deal with students with severe disabilities who need to learn through alternative methodologies and tools often designed specifically for them. The modular software architecture of Stanza enables teachers to adapt the environment to different educational contexts, simple strategies of mapping, and the possibility to easily customize the multimedia contents.
Other example is the prototype created by (Tomi, & Rambli, 2013), which is an interactive mobile augmented reality magical playbook for preschool children. This prototype has the goal to teach the numbers by using an old folklore literature: The Thirsty Crow, via mobile augmented reality application and an interactive physical book interface design.
Finally, interactive entertainment environments are mentioned, which allow people to interact with each other through various means with entertainment purposes.
Them and Us is a game based around herding, where each player has a different role within the group, the roles are herders, rebels and leaders. Them and Us was designed and presented by (Chamberlain et al, 2012), an indoor pervasive game which uses theatrical processes to encourage social interaction within the confines of the game. The aim is to move around the space and herd virtual balls into a box. The game is represented visually on a projection screen. Players can work together to move the balls around, attempt to stop each other from getting the balls in the box and create merged shapes by doing teamwork. The game enable to a group of people interact with one other in a single space, while location-based technology register the locative-nature of the social interactions formed in that space.
MobilePaperAccess is a ubiquitous paper-based interface presented by (Zhou, David, & Chalon, 2012).The MobilePaperAccess goal is to create a true contextualization based on the user’s location, which is more effective and adaptive to users’ information needs by taking advantage of dynamic and physical environmental characteristics. MobilePaperAccess allows mobile interactions based on an Environment Dependent Interface (EDI). MobilePaperAccess is based in a small screen attached to a goggle to provide visual information, a webcam to pick the input signal, and a laptop as the calculating device. MobilePaperAccess’s users can interact with a paper using fingers, masks and pages.
Such as the state of art shows, recent studies create interactive environments by mixing the real world with the digital for different purposes. They prompt the user to interact with environments and items that otherwise would not be interesting. The proposed system in this paper aims to carry this philosophy to the cinemas to achieve the audience interaction via their mobiles device. The system captures the attention of the audience, opening a gap for business advertising easily and effectively.
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