ANDREW GOES OUTSIDE was a PGA Innovation Award-nominated interactive online series conceived and performed during the height of the COVID crisis. I led creative direction on the project as part of Some Evil Studio, overseeing our three-person design and engineering team, and was the lead performer throughout the six-week series.
The experience began simply and quietly. A small number of people who'd previously signed up to learn about new Some Evil Studio projects received a single direct email from "Andrew," asking people to tune in at a specific date and time on goesoutside.tv to help him with an urgent problem.
During the first live broadcast, the Andrew character reveals that he's in a very different pandemic — one where a much deadlier disease has ravaged the outside world — and after several years without in-person contact, someone has shown up at his door, hurt and alone. What should he do?
EXPERIENCE & TECHNICAL DESIGN
Both the custom technical platform and experience were designed to make the audience active co-protagonists in this story. Each episode built off the audience's previous decisions and focal points, using a combination of scripted, parallel-scripted, and wholly improvised moments to move Andrew forward through the story.
Because existing streaming services couldn't support effective realtime communication without significant latency, I co-led development of a bespoke web platform and streaming video pipeline that supported <400ms of end-to-end latency via our custom cloud-based relay. Here, audiences could navigate through Andrew's eyes: Broadcasts were either held in his workroom — where four live camera feeds provided multiple angles to explore information — or streamed from a GoPro strapped to Andrew's quarantine suit.
On goesoutside.tv, audiences could interact at the level that felt most comfortable to them. They could watch live broadcasts or catch up on recordings posted to YouTube; they could also make suggestions through the text chat, or opt in to being a "radio operator" and voice chat live with Andrew.
ANDREW GOES OUTSIDE explored themes of societal separation, loneliness, isolation, and connection — all very familiar subjects to those under COVID-19 lockdown protocols during Spring and Summer 2020. Over the course of twelve livestreamed broadcasts, text and email interactions, and (for San Francisco locals) the option of live interceptions, audiences guided Andrew through his topsy-turvy pandemic world, offering advice, tracking down clues and solving puzzles, and helping him figure out who he could trust.
