Creative Uses for Video Interactivity

Choose a Different Ending is a popular video on You Tube that uses interactivity as an integral element.  The interactivity gives the viewer the ability to control the plot and create whatever story they want to see.

If you watch the video, you’ll see that at critical points in the story, the viewer gets to choose what the main character does.  Does he take the knife or not? Does he join the argument or not? To control the story, the viewer clicks one of several interactive links sitting on top of the video, hypervideo links if you will.

Depending on what the viewer chooses, the story jumps to another page and another video on You Tube that continues along that plot line.  Each segment ends with interactive links coming up that give the viewer a choice.  Clicking the link immediately takes you to that segment on You Tube.  I didn’t want to take the time to count every one, but there were probably about twenty-five segments total.  The video makers created a scenario for each possible viewer selection and hyperlinked them with clickable links right inside the video.

The video was done in a point-of-view (POV) shot with the camera operator actually being the main character.  The POV shot is a technique commonly used to make the viewer feel like he is inside the movie.  The POV shot and the interactivity work well together.

I went through the entire story line twice, once choosing the most aggressive action and the second time choosing the tamest action.  I indeed got very different endings.  The first story had me doomed to a life in prison; the second time I was left happy and free.

What’s the Point?

It might seem like this was all done for fun and games to give an online video viewer something new to play with.  Now that’s not a bad idea, but in this particular case, the video producers were trying to simulate an experience in conflict escalation and how personal choice can lead to either getting in trouble or staying clean.

Chose a Different Ending was produced by the Metropolitan Police Service in London and advertised on their companion website, Drop the Weapons.  The storyline of a young teenager getting involved in a knife fight is their way of reaching out to an at-risk population who might very well face the exact same circumstances as the POV character in the video.

This is an extremely creative use of video interactivity and no doubt the technique will become more common.  Videos games and other more-controlled video environments have also used interactivity to give the viewer more choice and control over the storyline.

Buy This Subservient Chicken Sandwich

One of the most commercially successful applications of interactive video online was Burger King and their “Subservient Chicken” video, which amounted to an advertisement but Burger King manage to make viewers feel like it was a fun game to share with friends.

Subservient chicken is really clever and this video became highly viral. The viewer could type in any activity and the chicken would do it.  No doubt the producers had tons of fun trying to anticipate what people would ask of the chicken.

Creative uses of video interactivity will continue to lead all video producers (and their viewers) down an exciting road of possibilities.  Incorporating interactivity opens up such a wide range of creative possibilities to engage viewers.  Think of how popular Jim Jab’s video are where viewers can submit their own still image and it automatically gets inserted into a video.  They even added interactivity to the extremely popular Evolution of Dance, which yours truly had some fun with.

For my own personal interactivity needs, I use the Veeple service.  They are more geared toward people like me, online business owners who want something affordable and easy to use.

I upload my finished videos to Veeple and add the interactive hot spots using their simple editor.  The video stays there, Veeple hosts it with full analytics on their Amazon S3 based servers.

If you are interested in having me help you create you own interactive video, please contact me for personal instruction and consulting.

If you want to read more on this subject, here is an article on future of interactive tv from the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips

Lorraine Grula

Internet Video Gal