asterisk at the heart of interactive media (astricon 2014)

ASTERISK AT THE HEART OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA A behind-the-scenes look at interactive web series “Emilie”

About me

• VP & CTO at Ubity, a cloud-based business unified communications service provider and platform

• Have been using Asterisk since 2007

•  Involved in several interactive media and art projects that use telecommunications (telephony, text messaging, etc.) to engage and interact with the audience

ASTERISK AT THE HEART OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA

About “Emilie” •  A three-part transmedia (multi-platform) romantic comedy

“experience” launched in February 2013

•  Has won several awards and nominations:

Ø SXSW Interactive Awards 2014 “Finalist” (Film & TV) Ø Webby Awards 2014 “Finalist” (Best Use Of Interactive Video, Experimental

And Weird) Ø Geneva International Film Festival 2013 “Grand Prize” (Best TV Series, Web &

Transmedia) Ø Gémeaux 2013 “Grand Prize” (Best Original Interactive Show) Ø NUMIX 2013 “Grand Prize” (Best Interactive Production) Ø Toronto DigiAwards 2013 “Finalist” (Best In Cross-Platform) Ø Prix Italia 2013 “Finalist” (Best New Content For The Multi-Screen Television) Ø Banff World Media Festival 2013 “Finalist” (Best Cross-Platform Project) Ø Boomerang Awards 2013 “Grand Prize” (Best Website or Application)


Transmedia experience?

•  Telling a story, or creating an experience across multiple platforms or formats

•  The end goal being…

•  Have the audience care more about the story and its characters •  Get and keep their attention! •  Hook them back in after they’re done watching the first episode


Part 1 – “Taxi Apollon” •  Launched on Valentine’s day 2013 •  Justin Apollon, a cab driver turned cupid, offers to “spread

the love” by calling your lover, friend or coworker and deliver a heartfelt (and hilarious) message on your behalf


Part 1 – Interactivity elements

• Voice detection to detect if a human had answered, and make it sound like a conversation

• Video sequences synchronized with telephony events (ringing, voicemail, answer)

• Customized greeting based on how the user is related to the person we are calling


Part 1 – Transmedia elements •  The web experience allowed us to gather

information that would later be used to hook the user back into the story

•  The use of telephony took the experience out in the “real world” and allowed it to spread widely

•  A facebook app also helped to spread the word

•  Video testimonials of “satisfied customers” gave hints on what was to come


Part 2 – Interactive web series •  Four-episode interactive web series that follows the men in

Emilie’s life (ex-boyfriends, childhood best friend, fiancé) just before her wedding and big move abroad


Part 2 – The main goals

①  Avoid being cheesy and predictable at all cost – ask the user as little information as possible!

②  Avoid using the phone merely just as a remote control

(e.g. “hit 4 to go left, 6 to go right”)

③  Make sure the experience can be enjoyed by as many people, and on as many devices (smart and dumb) as possible


Part 2 – How to avoid “cheesiness” • Our team was involved very early in the process – early

enough that the script and dialogues could still be altered to adjust to the limitations of telecommunications

•  Focus on the more plausible, “real world” interactions that humans have between each other (call, text, e-mail) and with their phones (voicemail, videos)

• Ask for as little information as possible, so the audience doesn’t expect the interactivity elements


We didn’t want to ask users for their phone number…


Instead, we have the users initiate the first contact by calling us so we can gather their phone number (CallerID) and associate it with their web session.

It does not work with blocked CallerID, and it can get tricky in settings where several users share a CallerID (office).

Part 2 – Making it widely available Geography

•  Different sets of phone numbers (to call and text characters on the screen) were made available for users in Canada, the U.S., the UK, France and Switzerland

•  We didn’t want the users to have to pay long distance fees to call the characters – it got tricky in Canada!

Technology •  Support for “dumb phones” (e.g. landline)

•  The most important interactivity points rely on voice or DTMF •  Responses to text messages received from characters not necessary •  Fallback to an in-video “smartphone analog” in certain situations

•  Should we use speech recognition, or speech detection?


We didn’t want to ask users for their location… but had to anyway.


GeoIP lookups are useful to determine a user’s country of origin, but not so much for the city – something that was especially important for our Canadian users!

20 different sets of local phone numbers were needed in Canada in order to cover most regions.

How can we interact with the user? Voice Have the user call, or be called, and “talk” in real-time with a character on the screen


Demonstration (dangerous demo?)


How can we interact with the user?

Digits (DTMF) Have the digits pressed by a user in an automated voice menu (e.g. voicemail) trigger video sequences, or actions on screen in real-time


Demonstration



Text message (SMS) Have the user text back and forth in real-time with a character on screen


How can we interact with the user? Mobile as a second screen Have the user watch a livestream (on smartphone) of something that is filmed by a character on the screen



E-mail Have a character on screen send the user an e-mail in real-time


Technical components

•  Flash (video) / ActionScript

•  Javascript / Node.js

•  Flask (Python) REST API with AMI library

• Asterisk


Technical issues or concerns Pairing a caller with a web session •  Using temporarily assigned phone numbers taken from a pool Perfect timing •  Making sure that the audio track from the video is in sync with

the audio of the call with the user Talking to the user •  Using speech detection vs. recognition

Limitations with mobile carriers/devices •  Certain mobile carriers or devices can’t display CallerID name ASTERISK AT THE HEART OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Relevance of “traditional” telephony in today’s interactive media

• Still very relevant, as two-thirds of the world’s mobiles are dumb phones (aka “feature phones”)

• Medium of choice to reach the largest amount of people worldwide, especially in emerging countries that have better access to mobile phones than computers connected to the Internet

•  3G/4G mobile Internet is spreading, but voice, DTMF and SMS still remain the common denominators


Part 3 – Movie

Released during the summer of 2013 (sadly not interactive… ;-)


Any questions?


Thank you!

•  Taxi Apollon (french) http://www.taxi-apollon.com/

• Emilie (french, but with english subtitles) http://emilie.radio-canada.ca/

[email protected] @sysreq linkedin.com/in/sebastiencouture


asterisk at the heart of interactive media (astricon 2014)

Technology

heart of interactive

sxsw interactive awards

interactive web series

episode interactive

web experience

grand prize best tv

grand prize best website

transmedia experience