Interactive Videos
Interactive videos allow for unparalleled viewer engagement. This might be telling a story by branching through a series of decisions, or by rendering dynamic content into a real video, with a highly personalised output. Hocus Pocus is one of the leading London animation studios for interactive video production, creating the film content and programming the software to make it all come to life.
Late in 2018, Netflix released Black Mirror’sBandersnatch, an interactive film about a young programmer at a major gaming company. Throughout the film, you must make every one of Stefan’s major decisions, and each of your choices alter the narrative he experiences, which has five endings and over one trillion story combinations.
Netflix’s first foray into interactive video production has created real buzz and attention for this engaging storytelling device. The technique has also been used by musicians, advertisers and marketers with some great success. One of our favourite examples is from Major Lazer which is available here.
As well as branching narratives, interactive video production can also take live content that can be rendered into the video itself. So this forms some sort of personalised content. Here’s an example of a personalised video we made with GED films for Shell:
What Does Interactive Video Production Cost?
Every interactive video project is different – or at least should be – so there’s no such thing as a standard price. As with most creative & film production, you’ll find a big range of prices and standards of videos.
Interactive videos have the added complexity of making elements within the video interactive or personalised after the picture has been approved. With the ever increasing tech capabilities the amount of interactive or personalisation achievable is really down to you imagination and budget. That being said, if your video only has a couple of interactive elements the increase in cost is relatively minimal.
We think our work is priced competitively, but we do have high standards and employ some really great talent. Our team have over a decade of working together, so we have experience of coming up with solutions for a range of budgets.
How Long Does It Take to Make an Interactive Video?
Of course it depends on how ambitious we’re being with the production, but for a 1 minute film with some motion graphic elements we’d expect that to take around 5 weeks to complete the production and a little longer to complete the build of the interactive elements.
Interactive film production lends itself to a live action driven creative, it seems to lend more weight to the story than animation. So then of course the ambition of the story to be shot will dictate the overall production time.