Melbourne Theatre Company
Creating Melbourne Theatre Company's Digital Stage
- UX Design
- Tessitura Integration
- Video Integration
Melbourne Theatre Company
We have been privileged to work with this exciting, world-leading theatre company for nearly a decade.
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Melbourne Theatre Company is the oldest professional theatre company in Australia.
They were one of the first clients using our Tessitura-integrated BlocksOffice ecommerce path, and we fully redesigned their site in 2018. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the MTC’s plans for a streaming service, they came to us.
The challenge
Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) was looking for a solution that would enable its patrons and potential new audiences to purchase a single video for on-demand rental viewing.
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There were a few core requirements:
- Customer accounts, transactions and payments should be stored in Tessitura to avoid duplication.
- Customers must be able to access media immediately after purchase.
- The solution must either be embeddable in the existing website or branded to match.
- Video viewing must be able to be restricted to a specified time (e.g. 48 hour 'rental' periods).
- Content should be geoblockable, due to licensing requirements.
- It should be possible to send direct video access links to certain patrons.
The launch of MTC Digital Theatre went really smoothly and was well received. Thank you to the whole Made team who worked on getting this project up – we can’t believe a year ago this seemed to be a far off reality, and now it’s live!
What we did
We built a viewing experience using the JWPlayer API, paired with the Tessitura API for user credentials and access.
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The implementation included creating a new video page within MTC’s Silverstripe CMS which allows users to view details of the video and purchase the video online via the BlocksOffice purchase path. Users were able to purchase the video and watch it directly and immediately through the MTC website.
Users were given a viewing time of 48 hours, which was relayed to them via a pop-up message. Content was geo-restricted to Australia, and this was implemented using an integration with Geo Targetly.
Every time a patron attempts to watch a video, the system checks their order history to validate whether they have purchased access to that particular video. Additionally, the history of watched videos is stored in Tessitura, to control the 48-hour viewing time restriction. JWPlayer functionality was used to allow 'casting' of video content to smart devices.
The first MTC Digital Theatre video to go on sale was Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, which was available to rent on demand for a limited season.
At time of writing, MTC's production of Berlin, by Joanna Murray-Smith, is available for streaming within Australia. See the whole season here.
Impact
92% of surveyed constituents indicated they were satisfied or very satisfied with the MTC Digital Theatre platform.
What we did.
- Strategic definition
- Tessitura integration
- Video integration
- User experience concept
- CMS development
