Cannes Lions
AMC NETWORKS INC., New York / AMC / 2022
Overview
Entries
Credits
Background
FearHQ, where Your Christmas Carol was produced and shown, is an experimental channel on Twitch with the aim of melding the production and vision of a media company with the kineticism and intimacy of live-streaming.
As an end-of-year showcase of this idea, Your Christmas Carol was made to bring high-end film production to Twitch in a way that had never been done before. Its goal was to push the boundaries of live-entertainment and capitalize on the unique engagement opportunities that the Twitch platform allows.
Idea
Your Christmas Carol was an interactive, live retelling of the Charles Dickens classic where the audience took on the role of a modern-day Scrooge. They guided his dialogue and decisions as he encountered various spirits, and ultimately, the audience chose his final fate.
The core inspiration behind the idea was to combine live theatre with a choose-your-own-adventure game. The improvised structure of the show allowed the story to shift at every pivotal moment, based on immediate audience input. We wanted to take a morality story that everyone knew, and give narrative control to thousands of people watching at home, in order to see how they would communally make it their own. Would Scrooge see the error of his ways like in the original? Or would he continue about his merry humbug way? Who could say? None of us knew until the moment it was happening.
Strategy
In order to make Your Christmas Carol a success, we focused on two areas: production and interactivity.
We needed to showcase the striking visuals of high-end film production in order to stand out from other Twitch streams. Timed lighting cues, magical-realism inspired production design, and an interesting location were vital to give viewers something they had never seen before on a live-stream platform.
We also had to stand out from film production, and make Your Christmas Carol uniquely Twitch. That meant a focus on interactivity. Understandability is always a challenge in live-streaming where new audience members join throughout the show, so we minimized the need for explanation by having only two dialogue options to vote between each time, but we maximized impact by having a new choice to vote on every five minutes. So, the barrier to participate was low, but the consistency of choices created constant and meaningful engagement.
Execution
Our time with the location was limited, so set-decoration, lighting, and blocking were all done the day before.
In order to make sure we’d have a strong enough signal to broadcast the stream, we built a custom Teradek backpack that the cinematographer wore. This allowed them to move freely around the house so we could simulate the feeling of someone exploring their home.
For the choice system, we built a custom tool that was integrated into the backend of our Twitch channel. We’d type out the options, they’d come on screen, and the audience would type “A” or “B” in chat, depending on which they wanted. Our tool live calculated the percentage of votes and told us the winner. The director then communicated the winning choice to the actor.
The choices began tonally parallel, but soon branched in order to follow the “apathy vs empathy” tropes of the morality tale.
Outcome
This project exceeded our expectations in terms of reach and engagement. The dynamic interactivity led to a deeper engagement with the viewers and the results were extremely positive.
The event itself was less than two hours, but garnered over 323 thousand live views - and peaked at almost 13 thousand concurrent viewers. Those are amazing numbers for Twitch. Moreover, the click through rate when we were on the front page was over 15 times the Twitch average, and it received 750% more chat messages than the channel average. So, people were drawn in by the visuals and stuck around to participate in the consistent interactivity, which resulted in fantastic engagement numbers.
It’s also served as a template for our audience of what they can expect from the channel and has given us a great model to build on for further innovation and growth.
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