A choose your own adventure video

You’ve just started reading a blog post. It is dark outside. You hear an owl hoot. You keep reading. Suddenly in the distance you hear a scream. You look up.

Choice: Do you go outside? (turn to page 2)

Or: Do you keep reading the blog? (go to page 27)

I got well into these books for a while. I liked the fact I could decide where I would go next.

I think the modern day equivalent is interactive videos. Ones where you are given choices, and the story develops based on your choices.

For the past few months, I’ve worked on an interactive video project with SGOSS - the School Governor recruitment charity. We’ll take a more detailed look at the ace campaign - which stars two of Torchbox Olly’s children and their friend - and its results in more detail in a future blog but for today I’d like to focus on the platform we used to make it happen.

Choice: Do you have a go at the interactive video now? (hit the play button below)

Or: Do you keep reading the blog (just scroll down a bit please)

So when it came to building the video, we could have used YouTube Annotations. But they don’t work on tablet or mobile. We could have programmed it ourselves. But that could have been tricky and time consuming. We chose to use Rapt Media’s platform which allows you to build interactive videos quickly and cost effectively (as we were working with a charity, Rapt gave a discount on their white label product).

I guess you always face challenges when developing content and I was pleased with the support Rapt gave us when we needed it, including out of hours.

The video has done really well so far. It gives people the chance to make the sort of decisions which School Governors have to make on a day to day basis.

It allows the story to be told in a compelling way and a way which the user feels involved in.

The aim is to recruit new School Governors and early indications are it is doing exactly that. To find out more, please visit Rapt Media's website.

If you think interactive video could help bring your organisation's story to life, please get in touch.