Recently I have been talking to a few documentary filmmakers about how video lives in the interactive space.  As people are increasingly wondering if the web will supersede television, naturally filmmakers are looking to the web to understand how video projects and stories can work online.

Over the last few years it has been incredibly exciting to see the development and exploration of interactive video.  Technology made so many things possible that were impossible before:  bandwidth increased and was more widely distributed; more sophisticated codecs (compression/decompression software) enabling delivery of smaller file sizes without compromising quality; and faster computers facilitating the decompression of those video files fast enough to be watchable.

At the same time, Flash programming (the majority of animated and video material you see on the web) grew in leaps and bounds for the first time making it possibly to interact with video in a different way than you could with television.

Beyond simple video players that you can start and stop, programming capabilities now allow you to treat video pieces as objects.  This means you can now make those pieces do things and respond to actions you might do with your mouse.

For example, imagine three layers of video sitting on top of one another.  The two top layers are each of a person shot on greenscreen, so we are able to make their backgrounds transparent.  The bottom layer could be a different background altogether.  To the average viewer looking at it, you would see two people in a room as if it had been shot all at once in the same shot.

Depending on how you interact with the video objects – in this case the two people, you could potentially make those video pieces do different things.  Click on a person once, he suddenly jumps, click and drag the other person and he walks in the direction you are dragging him. It is even possible that if you caused the two video objects to overlap, a new kind of unexpected action could be programmed to happen, such as they start to dance together.  And that is just the simple version.

While it would be complex to plan, you could potentially have a really rich interactive experience blending the best of both worlds: the richly emotional and human aspects of video with the more interactive “learn forward” aspect of the web.  People no longer would have to sit and passively watch, but could actually interact, and direct their own experience.  This is what is so exciting about the web and why people are drawn to it.  People are in control and can make things happen. Ultimately this is the final goal of marketers in particular: Engagement.

But I have been thinking about the experience of content of video itself under the different conditions.  People often equate television watching with a passive experience.  This has been the main differentiator between television and the video experience online. But in fact, while watching a television series or a film in a cinema, our minds are active and engaged.  We are often predicting what will happen next, trying to interpret the meaning of a look, or trying to piece together elements of a story to make sense of it.  Storytelling can be a shorthand version of a world that compels our participation in order to fill in the gaps and make meaning.

It lead me to wonder whether the experience of relating to a story that simply plays from beginning to end is quite the same as an interactive video experience. In long form film, story elements are what attract our focus.   We hardly notice the edits from one shot to the next, we rarely think about the 20 or so people behind the camera waiting for the director to call cut at the end of the take.

Any time we are distracted from the illusion of the story world, whether it’s a hole of the logic of the narrative, or something technical that doesn’t belong, the integrity of the story breaks, and we develop distance to the story world. Historically, some filmmakers have used this technique to “wake up” the audience from the “spell” they are under.  Jean-Luc Godard was famous for this in his films when he challenged our expectations of the traditional narrative process at every turn.  Some documentary filmmakers highlight the filmmaking techniques as a way to remind us that we are watching a film and encourage objectivity.

Of course, emotional engagement is not black and white.  We are capable to switching back and forth. Even within traditional storytelling, some narrative forms draw us in more tightly than others.  Comedies for example, by their very nature, are more distancing.  We don’t expect a character to get truly hurt despite being put through seemingly painful situations. But the more we are broken from the world of the story itself, the less relevant the emotional experience is to us, the weaker the spell.  Some filmmakers say that when they start to notice the technical aspects of the filmmaking, the film is not working as it should.

The interactive world, then, forces this break on us.  The simple act having to reach for your mouse, of seeing and directing the cursor on the screen breaks the illusion and reminds us were are no longer in the story world.  The story world becomes distanced, and the figures more like puppets than archetypal reflections of ourselves and the people we know.

It can’t help but bring us crashing back into our own worlds, sitting at our computers and interrupts the emotional experience that the “passive” experience of watching a story provides. Without the emotional experience – which may be a central reason why people see films in the first place, we don’t gain the satisfaction of emotional closure.  Emotional closure be key.  Narrative helps us make sense of life and reassures us that there is a purpose to all the struggle and conflict we experience.

I’m not suggesting we should avoid the combination interactivity and video.  But we might want to more clearly understand what engagement really means rather than blindly accept that the interactivity means engagement.

We might look at under what circumstances interactive video works best.  Storytelling through film delivers a particular kind of emotional experience, but obviously is not the only kind of experience there is. Interactive films experiences might lean more towards a gaming model, for example.  Empathy with the characters may take a back seat to the play experience, discovery, testing of skills, creating, winning and so on.  Interactive video might be a great vehicle for delivering information in a more engaging way such as with teaching modules.

But how does this address questions for filmmakers looking to create dramatic narratives or documentaries?

I think even if IPTV were to entirely highjack television, I think there will still be a market for long form storytelling itself.  And the computer may not be its only destination.  Television may be losing some of its dominant ground, especially where advertising is concerned, I am not at all convinced its going the way of the dinosaurs.  Cinema took quite a beating, but despite a predictions to the contrary, television, videos and DVDs did not entirely eliminate movie theatres as was predicted.

Maybe interactive video just depends on the nature of the project and exactly what you want the user/viewer to experience and the extent that interactivity fits within the experience.  I haven’t quite decided.  HBO’s Voyeur online campaign was so compelling that people got frustrated when there wasn’t more.

However, it might be interesting to consider that the story world as experienced through the narrative, and the world in which the user may hold in his mind later (or earlier) as being separate.  The ideas that resonate stay with us.  That mind-world of the story might be expressed or matured more completely through a variety of online experiences.  As an example, I wish the web was in the state it is now when the X-files were around.  I would have loved to follow Scully or Mulder on Twitter.  I would have loved to read more deeply the official “cover-up” tactics in a “press-release” blog, or discovered the smoking man somewhere on a forum.  None of this would have detracted from the tv series.

More exciting, is how suited the documentary project is to live through social media. It is always a challenge for filmmakers to leave parts of their films on the cutting room floor, or to not have the opportunity to film the most remarkable parts of the story.  Documentary projects might be considered as more than one-off projects, but movements that are embraced by their audience and can continue to live on and develop, whether through forums or through videos responses to the initial project.

It may no longer be how film lives online, so much as how the entire experience of media can work together to develop a richer world of the story.

I was super excited to see this TED talk by Dan Ariely since I just finished his book, “Predictably Irrational”.

The next thing I viewed right after was an e-marketer article on brand appeal. Try watching the TED video and then viewing this article and see if it affects you in the same way.

E-marker article: Brand Appeal Among Young Adults

Looking at the E-marketing article I wondered what drove their answers. I wondered to what degree the respondents chose their answers based on what they really felt and whether their actual actions in the market place told different story about people find truly desirable.

I also wondered what brands came to mind when they were filling in their answers. When Malcolm Gladwell describes the Hushpuppies tipping point in his book, “Tipping Point”. I can’t help but think that “good quality” was not central to driving the trend. I also thought of the different types of shoppers, those who look for the cheapest thing, those who look for products that represent their uniqueness, and those who impulse buy and how that factored into the survey.

Without having access to how the survey was conducted or what the actual questions were, I mulled over what the perceived differences between the trustworthiness of a brand (55%) and brand authenticity (33%). What about “popularity” (46%), “people are talking about it” (32%), and “friends like it” (25%)? And is “it works well” different from “good quality”. Is “it works well” referring to usability where as good quality implies the ability for the brand’s products to hold up to wear and tear?

Sometimes when we fill in a survey we choose what we think or what seems right, but reality those answers do not reflect our decisions and actions that closely.. For example, if a survey asked us if we were more likely to buy a product if that donated to a good cause, one would think we are more likely to say yes. But when we are in the store trying to make a decision, how much does cause marketing actually impact choosing one brand over another?

Making decisions is a challenge for people. Not only because we don’t know what our preference are very well as Dan Ariely states, but also because those preference are continually being influenced and modified by what is happening at any given moment.

Not so long ago I was asked to fill in a survey that would partly determine my communication style and the best way to communicate to me. It asked things like whether I chose to sit at the head of the table, chose to sit beside someone or on my own. But depending on the context I choose to do all those things and it could vary from whether I am leading the meeting, to what the purpose of the meeting is, to who I know and what kinds of people I think they are, to the room set up.

The challenge with surveys is in getting the right kind of information and psychological surveys are often written in a way to try to account for that. But providing solid contest is a challenge unless you engage in a conversation with someone, and even in that case it is a challenge.

Closed-ended questions force people into decisions, which may not accurately reflect what they actually think in a particular situation. But closed-ended question are preferred because the data can be processed and insights can be made from that data, or possible tell us something we didn’t know. It can make us look at things in a different way, see what is working or not working. At a minimum it at least points us in a direction. Open-ended questions can tell us more, or give us answers we may not have thought to ask. But opened-ended questions can be very time consuming to aggregate.

The great thing about the kind of work that Dan Ariely does is that often the experiments involve observing behavior which is definitive. But again, this kind of information is specific and hard to obtain for most of us and not always relevant to helping make marketing decisions.

The value of listening to people participating in social media is that you are more likely to get, or have the opportunity to probe for, the context of a comment. But like open-ended questions, this activity is very time consuming. While marketers are looking at social media as a cheaper more effective way to reach people, the time it takes to engage in the Conversation may not always be accurately estimated.

But surveys, like social or behavioral experiments, are still fascinating. Sometimes the outcome is what we expect. Sometimes not. In this article, what the most interesting to me was the writer’s surprise that “good quality” should top the list as rated by young adults. Given the extent of how marketing savvy this group is, I would expect the “coolness” factor to be viewed more critically than it may have years ago. Or at least, I can imagine that is what they might like to communicate.

I have had the honour of doing a number of shoots with Tony Chapman, president of Capital C. Capital C did not start off as a digital agency and when I first starting doing work with them years ago; they only had a few people on their digital team. So it truly is a pleasure to listen to a president of an established agency who gets it. Here is a favourite:

I love the internet. There is no question that it has brought much happiness in my life. It’s finding these odd gems that really puts the icing on the cake for me. If you have ever been a David Lynch fan, and ever saw Dirty Dancing, you’ll have an appreciation for this.

When I first saw this video I thought that Google has just made our fulfilling our hunting drives that much more… well, fulfilling.  Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the offered options, I wanted more.  But see what you think.

This is smart.  How to handpick potential evangelists.

Saturn knows they have good cars.  They know that if they get them in front of the right people, people will love them.  Saturn was looking to engage people on a more tactile level with the cars.  In addition they wanted to promote its product integration partnership with a new TV show that targets Saturn’s core audience.   So Saturn decided to hold over a thousand of the parties using third party vendor with a lareg, Houseparty.com who have a large opt-in list and the resources to orchestrate several house parties simultaneously.

Houseparty.com provides an opportunity for their members to host parties easily with perks: they can get free stuff, sneak peaks, best offers, etc. and members can apply to the parties they are interested in.   The catch?  Hosts are chosen based on their responses to online questions.

Saturn screened over 10,000 host applicants and chose hosts on the basis of social influence (such as what their social and online behavior was, whether they blogged and if so, how often, etc.,) as well as choosing people from an identified demographic.

Saturn tied the house parties to the premier of the TV show as well as providing party packs that included unique gifts, discounts and brand themed party games as an enticement to the guests.  In addition they loaned out about 350 Saturn vehicles to use during the party.

Saturn issued pre and post surveys to the groups, asked hosts and guests to double opt-in to received further communication, and monitored blog responses.

Some of the results as reported by Marketing Sherpa:

“We were able to reach an entirely new audience for Saturn, and expose them not only to our vehicles, but to the overall Saturn experience,” says Lisa Gilpin, Saturn Advertising and Media Integration Manager.

Five Saturn vehicles were purchased as a direct result of the Saturn house parties. About 233 people went to a Saturn dealership to test-drive a vehicle.

- The house parties inspired 2,911 blog posts and 3,303 photo uploads.

- 78% or 11,258 hosts and guests opted-in for future communication from Saturn.

- Total reach of the house parties, including blog readers, was 814,050 people.

40% of the house parties lasted three hours, which translates to three hours of one-on-one immersion in the brand.

Other stats:

- 89% of party hosts said their opinion of Saturn was favorable in the post-party survey, while only 47% rated it as favorable pre-party.

- 81% of party guests said their overall opinion of Saturn was either “better” or “much better” as a result of the party experience.

- Guests’ familiarity with Saturn increased by 38% as a result of the house parties.

- Guests’ likelihood to test-drive a Saturn increased by 25%

“Our goal was to have this group become advocates for our brand, and based on both quantitative and qualitative measures, we absolutely accomplished that goal,” Gilpin says. “We would definitely consider another party.”

An era used to mean a long and distinct period of history.  But with things changing at such a rapid pace, maybe a long time is shorter than it used to be.

Forrester Research writes, “technologies trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will follow, resulting in five distinct waves, they consist of:

The Five Eras of the Social Web:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services”

There is some interesting social history behind this. In the absence of any marketing, rumour got out on the Internet about an upcoming film with Samuel Jackson called, “Snakes on a Plane”.   Prior to any marketing “Snakes on a Blog” was created in the hopes the fan would be an “invited guest to the world premiere of the movie that is destined to change the world”. It became a hub of fan activity and eventually over 8000 other blogs and sites linked to it.

Fans insisted that Samuel Jackson say this line, “I have had it with these mother-fucking snakes on this mother-fucking plane”.  New Line knew it would have to cater to its fan base. They changed the movie and included the line. In the process the movie lost its PG-13 rating.

But what I bet they didn’t plan on at the time was how the TV version of this line would go viral. Lol.

Anyone who loves parkour or free running might enjoy this for the same reasons. While there is an odd choice of music used in this – melancholy for an edgy urban sport, and the storytelling could have been tightened, I found I watched it right to the end.

I love this.