A Storytelling Platform for the Digital Age

Portal Entertainment and Immersion: by Julian McCrea

‘In the distant future they will have what I call ‘the Tickles’. People will go into a big darkened auditorium and they will be mass-hypnotized. Instead of identifying themselves with the characters on screen, they will be that character, and when they buy their ticket, they will be able to choose which character to be. They will suffer all of the agonies  and enjoy the romance with a beautiful woman or handsome man. I call them ‘the Tickles’ because when a character is tickled, the audience will feel it. Then, the lights come up and it’s all over.’ Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

Alfred Hitchcock, son of a greengrocer, started off in theatre and moved into film, the new medium of his age, changing how we told stories. In November 2010, with a background working on Doctor Who, I asked myself the questions: How would Alfred tell a story today?

We don’t think it would be a film. We think it would be a story that used all the devices available to us today to tell that story. 

And we would take part in them.

With that in mind, we created Portal Entertainment: a UK-based premium digital entertainment company that makes ‘immersive entertainment’: stories where the audience take part in them (or ‘Tickles’ as Alfred would put it). We have begun, with the CIKTN’s help to build Immersion: a storytelling platform that allows us to change the direction of a story based on the audience’s anxiety level. But before we talk about the company let’s talk about the journey we have been on…

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