Press Release: Scholz & Volkmer presents first interactive film on the web

An imposing villa at the sea, two attractive women, two mysterious men and two black E-Class T-Models. These are the main characters in "7 Years Later," the first interactive film from Mercedes-Benz developed by the German Agency Scholz & Volkmer and Filmed in Camps Bay, the exclusive villa quarter of Cape Town.
The film is emotionally engaging, with lovely interactivity, excellent photography and direction as well as sound design. We talked to the Agency to find out more.

It's not the first time that a movie has been developed online to promote an automotive brand, however this appears to be the very first "interactive" movie, where users can piece together individual action sequences of the film to develop their own story.

"We are thinking that it is important to use the specific possibilities of the Internet," Christoph Kehren, Project Manager at Scholz & Volkmer, told MarketingWonk. "The Internet is an interactive medium and the users want to be active and does not only want to passively consume a movie. Also, we wanted to create a community, where the users can talk about the different interpretations and storys of the movie. The interactive parts of the movie, are giving the users hints on how they may write in their storys."

The biggest challenge S&V had to face in producing "7 Years Later" was to integrate high resolution video material into a web site. They managed pretty well, with the usage of Flash MX making the whole application just 14 megabytes.