BBC’s Clare Tavernor Discusses ‘Backstage Pass: Run The Jewels’
“Backstage Pass: Run the Jewels” is one of the more innovative documentary projects I’ve come across. The interactive film, funded and published through BBC’s experimental Taster imprint, documents the rap group Run the Jewels’ sold-out London concert from December 2014. The piece is difficult to classify — it’s part concert film, part backstage interview, and entirely interactive.
The project follows something of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” structure, as the viewer is prompted to determine the direction the documentary will take. Viewers can choose the interview subject and topic, to see additional biographical information about each member, to skip the interviews and go straight to the concert footage, or even to insert animated talking cat heads over the duo (the group will soon release Meow the Jewels — a charity album of remixes with beats constructed entirely from audio samples of cats).
The interactivity engages the viewer in a way that traditional online documentaries do not. Depending on the viewer’s choices, the piece can take anywhere from about 10 to 25 minutes to get through. An online documentary will rarely hold my attention for nearly half an hour, but I found that this piece did because of its interactivity. Constantly being prompted to make choices and feeling in control keeps the viewer engaged throughout.
I caught up with Director Clare Tavernor on FaceTime last month to discuss the project.
Tavernor, whose day job is making more traditional music documentaries for BBC, said that the inspiration for the piece came during a BBC workshopping session for future media. Tavernor found herself drawn to Interlude, an interactive video editing program represented at the meeting. Interlude’s seamless and unobtrusive interactive elements appealed to Tavernor. “I think that often with interactivity it’s a bit clunky, and I think that you kind of lose people because it doesn’t immediately do the thing you want it to do, or you have to wait because they’ve dressed it up in some kind of a snazzy graphic that actually isn’t the content, but is a transition moment,” Tavernor said. “In Interlude, everything that you’re seeing is content.”
The seamless quality creates an immersive viewer experience. After a short loading screen before “Backstage Pass” begins, the action is uninterrupted throughout. At the end of a segment, when the next scene awaits the viewer’s choice, instead of a still screen, a subtle loop relating to the just-finished scene appears as the choices flash on screen — for example, Killer Mike and El-P making drinks in the green room.
“The thing that frustrates me about the current climate is that there’s less and less music coverage on mainstream [television] channels, because so much of it is being generated by bands themselves or being made by fans,” Tavernor said. “We’re quite bad at doing new music.” Interactivity presented an opportunity to work through this problem. As a web-only project, Tavernor wasn’t burdened with a mandate to appeal to a broad audience, which she told me was “quite liberating.” A traditional television documentary would require a full background segment on the group. “For a fan, it’s kind of boring to sit through, because they know that already, so the brilliant thing about interactivity is that you can give control to the viewer. They can decide if they want the backstory.” In “Backstage Pass,” viewers have the option to pull up additional biographical information about the duo, information that hardcore fans already know and might want to skip. “Content-wise, and editorially, it’s all led by — as a fan — the things I would want,” said Tavernor.
This viewer-tailored experience is the aspect of interactive documentary storytelling that may prove most effective in other forms of journalism. The same principle would allow news documentaries to offer more — or less — background information to viewers on a given topic. In a news context, something as simple as a pop-up button that brings up a map of Syria and a brief history of the country’s civil war could give some viewers the information they need to not feel lost during a video. Likewise, initiated viewers might be given the option of skipping over background information they already know. Interactivity lets the viewer tailor the viewing experience to their own preferences, which I think sets a piece up for maximum reach and impact.
“Backstage Pass: Run the Jewels” was Tavernor’s first foray into interactive filmmaking, but she hopes that it won’t be her last. She said she’d like to continue the “Backstage Pass” concept, perhaps as a traditional television program with an interactive online companion.
