Pandemic: An Interactive Film
- Submitting institution
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University of Worcester
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- Bradburn_02
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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https://eprints.worc.ac.uk/7843/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Pandemic is an interactive film created for the 2018 Frankenstein 200 Festival at the Science Museum in London that puts the audience in control of a psychological thriller and invites them to consider complex ethical questions. The film follows the story of Dr Moritz as she negotiates the spread of a pandemic resulting in mass heart failure. Along the way, Dr Moritz has to make difficult moral and bioethical decisions (specifically concerning animal testing and medical chimeras) in the creation of a hybrid creature which might provide donor organs to critically ill human patients. During performances of the film the audience votes to choose what Dr Moritz should do at various points in the story. The outcomes of these votes alter the trajectory of the story each time the film is screened/performed. Pandemic asks the question: how much suffering can we witness to alleviate unseen suffering? Can we accept putting a small number of creatures through an awful experience to save the lives of people who we never meet? Following Bradburn’s previous research on knowledge and attitudes to mental health Pandemic seeks to understand the role of interactivity in engendering empathy with characters and subsequent effects on attitude change.
As an interdisciplinary creative practice research output, Pandemic brings narrative filmmaking, the branching structure of interactive games, and psychological theory together in highly innovative ways. The film draws on the heuristic-systematic model (HSM), a theory of persuasion which postulates that the validity of a persuasive message can be assessed in two different ways - systematic processing (which involves careful scrutiny) and heuristic processing (which involves often quick decisions). In order to facilitate the development of knowledge of ethical questions,
Pandemic offers the audience the opportunity to make quick heuristic decisions on its controversial topic and to experience their immediate effects.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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