review of It's All In Your Hands

It’s All In Your Hands was launched in July of 2006 by creator Brad Winderbaum, USC Film School grad and director of the indie movie The Futurist. Brad developed the site as a forum for his interactive dramas. After each episode, viewers are invited to vote on the fate of the protagonist. When the results are tallied, the plots of the dramas change accordingly.

Surging after the success of the pilot series Satacracy 88, It’s All In Your Hands now boasts four continuous serial dramas and a dedicated and growing fan base. The creator, cast and crew, along with a band of writers and directors, won a 2007 People’s Voice Webby award for drama.

Brad Winderbaum’s experiment feels like an acid-induced Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. The site allows viewers to decide after each episode whether she takes the red or blue pill, whether he picks the hot sex kitten or the quiet girl-next-door.

Two to five-minute episodes make up the monthly installments for four ongoing plots: Satacracy 88, a 12 Monkeys-like conspiracy involving a mysterious pill; Find Me, one geek’s online dating journey; Moonshine, which feels like The Twilight Zone in LA; and Blankslate, in which a man wakes up with amnesia.

Because the ep

isodes are only about five minutes long, waiting for more than a month for the next installment can seem like a chore, but the voting is always fun and the shows are bizarre enough to keep even the most ADD-ridden minds intrigued (case in point, see the first episode of Moonshine for a taste of this cool and trippy tale about a journalist on the trail of aliens in LA). The site is easy to navigate, with great info on the cast and crew, the history and the process of making the site, as well as the episodes. With It’s All In Your Hands, Winderbaum has given the audience a chance to influence the action, and the empowerment feels good. Think the hot heroine should kill her boyfriend when he forces her to take the evil pill? Me too. Let’s make it happen.

Though Satacracy 88 is the star of the site, as it was the first of Winderbaum’s projects, I found myself most excited about Find Me, which is like Blind Date meets American Idol without the glory of either Roger Lodge or Randy Jackson.

Each month, viewers follow Spencer, the hapless yet charming hero, on his dates with women of our choosing. From the first episode, it is clear America is not going to choose Miko (aka Kim Chee), the cure Korean, or her terrible raps about our hero. But can Spencer right the ship when he discovers that his newfound Janet is actually the sister of recently spurned Emily?