Alexandra Freeman

Soon after I started work as researcher on Walking with Beasts, Executive Producer Tim Haines said that he was keen to experiment with interactive TV technology to see if there was any possibility of producing anything interactive for Beasts, which was 'only' two years down the line. I started attending meetings with him at Bush House with the interactive TV developers. At first it seemed that current technology would only allow an added text service, but then Gary Hayes suggested that we could use 'multistreaming'. This meant running two digital channels simultaneously with the main broadcast on BBC1, and using text prompts on the digital broadcast of BBC1 to encourage people to press their handset buttons in order to watch small sections of either of the two concurrent channels, which were naturally initially designated as 'making of' and 'science of' footage.

In order to develop this possibility further, producer Marc Goodchild was brought onto the project. I worked closely with Marc and designer Paul Baguley to produce a short prototype of the three streams, and we struggled to overcome various complications. At this early stage we were severely restricted in our scope because only two additional channels were available, and initially these were to be BBC Knowledge and BBC Choice so that the extra information itself had to form two complete and meaningful programmes as well as being carefully timed to match prompts on the main channel.

Despite these problems, Marc managed to secure funding for the production of the interactive series over the next few months, and the availability of digital bandwidth also increased, allowing us greater flexibility with our ideas. Showing the prototype to a few of the technical team who were to be involved with programming the final project we discovered that there was an inherent problem with the multistream concept: the main programme was so absorbing that no one wanted to 'change channels' and miss anything!

This sudden realisation plus the new information that we could use the digital bandwidth a little more freely merged together in my mind with some ideas I had mulled over a year or more before and an instant solution came to mind.

Instead of simply offering viewers the opportunity to leave the main programme and be immersed in the science by way of interviews with scientists, which would only suit a minority of the audience, we could offer a series of options of increasing depth and distance from the main programme:

For those who found themselves asking 'how do they know that?' constantly throughout the main programme, but who were otherwise immersed by the narrative thread, we could supply subtle text facts that would appear at the bottom of the screen. Some of these would supply further scientific information on what was being shown or described by the narration, and others would provide memorable 'wow!' facts.

For those who enjoyed the animation but were frustrated by the style of the main narrative, we could provide an alternative narration. An extra audio track would take up very little extra bandwidth but potentially provide a very important option.

For the most scientifically interested members of the audience (or those who had watched the main programme before), there could be the option as we had originally planned, to leave the main programme and view an interview with a researcher who could show relevant fossils or discuss a topic in greater detail than allowed by either of the other options. In order to allow viewers selecting this option to keep up with the main programme, we had already decided that this should be shown as picture-in-picture in the corner of the screen, and the interviews cut to match them with relevant comments as much as possible.

These suggestions proved popular with the rest of the team, and was agreed as the final plan, with the addition of a further 'half-channel' of 'making of' footage and production staff interviews (presented in the same way as the science interviews), plus early animation drafts and storyboards, timed to fit with the final version showing on the main channel.

Only digital satellite has the bandwidth necessary to carry additional channels, and yet the text facts and alternative narration could both be broadcast on digital cable, and I wrote special text facts for the limited capacity of digital terrestrial TV.

Marc Goodchild, Michael Lachmann and Gina Kocjancic directed the 'science of' and 'making of' interviews whilst I took responsibility for the alternative narration and text facts.

The challenge of the extra information was not to replicate what was in either the main narration script, or on the interview channels. The main problem with the text facts was simply to keep them coming thick and fast enough on the screen. This necessitated an extra 120 facts per programme not contained in any of the other interactive options! The 'science scripts' were even more challenging. I was keen that they would be in a different style from the main narrative which was very much telling the story of individual animals, and would instead use the same pictures to illustrate a different story. I chose a story from mammalian evolution and the changes in the earth over the last 65 million years ago to be told by each of the episodes of Walking with Beasts.

We made a short 10 minute prototype, which Marc presented to the BAFTA committee, and which won us the BAFTA for 'Best Enhancement to a Linear Medium'. During and after transmission, we had very good feedback from members of the public who used the interactive elements (especially those who had the 'full service' on digital satellite). The biggest drawback was that the service was not available to everyone, but it was only one means of accessing further information about the series. Whilst the interactive TV platform was ideal for passive intake of further information, especially that which was closely linked with the individual scenes in the series, the website was ideal for a more active interactivity and coverage of issues more generally associated with Beasts. So although we were careful to maintain as much consistency between the platforms as possible, I was also keen that we played to the strengths of each platform and didn't try simply to 'reversion' the same material for each.

We are now hoping to produce a 'box set' of DVDs carrying the full interactive version of Walking with Beasts. Although these may not be commercially available, I hope that we may be able to supply them to educational institutions and public centres around the country to make the content as widely accessible as possible.