Ziggy Marley Interactive Interview

Ziggy was the first interactive interview that we shot. He was extremely good-natured even though he could see we were still figuring some of this stuff out.

We shot Ziggy at Spin The Bottle, Tad Low's production company, with lights and 2 cameras in about 45 minutes. We envisaged (still envisage!) a celebrity interview of 30 minutes that gives the user a more enjoyable, personal interview experience than just watching an interview video from start to finish.

Our original script envisaged users typing text and Ziggy responding in video but (1) celebrities have limited time for interviews, (2) it is hard to predict and record enough responses to be able to give users quality answers, (3) users expect "Google"-type intelligence in response to text input which is very hard to do, and (4) some users type inappropriate/crazy questions. It is far better that the celebrity ask the user a "closed" question such as "Do you want to hear a track from my new album?" than an open question such as "What do you want to talk about?" Text input can still work (see the "What is your favorite color" question in the Jean Beauvoir application) but user expectations should be clearly set. This is not AI; these are interactive video experiences.

Back then we were using Flash to play video but we were adding the other screen elements using HTML/Ajax and we were told that the design/layout of the screen looked old-fashioned.

What is shown here is not the original version, but a newer version using Interactive XML, which was not released as a technology until 6 months later.