Why video whizzkid Neill Andrews thought the ruminant might just work.

A goat, a plate of cheese and some Italian pick-up lines are just some of the random ideas that made it into Neill Andrews' online video "A Moment with Riccardo Novaro" in the lead-up to our Marriage of Figaro season. Then there's a rehearsal clip where Riccardo is leaping around the stage wearing a cape like a mad Mediterranean Dracula, Wade Kernot comments that he's "just a big man in tights" and Aidan Lang is riffing on the idea that Mozart was turned on by the idea of a woman playing a boy kissing another woman.

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It's hard to know who's having the most fun. For Neill, it's another way of bringing new media to NZO and its audience (he did similar behind-the-scenes videos for Eugene Onegin). A graduate of Wellington's film school, he made short films and mastered the diverse skills of directing, producing, writing and editing before heading to Australia. There, he worked for online content production company The Conscience Organisation and discovered the power of online media. "Lots of businesses don't understand online space," he says, "Conscience brought branded online content to the masses in Australia and showed people that it's not an add-on, it's a place where brands bring you entertainment." Working for such megacorporations as Coca-Cola, he would shoot a concert from the point of view of a person going to an event then meeting the stars afterwards. "It traced the experience and excitement for that person but not as a traditional TV commercial. TV ads can knock you on the head but people have a choice: they can turn stuff off it they don't like it."

God forbid that we should call the Opera a brand, but Neill - now back in New Zealand - has applied these same rules to his work for us and wants to do a similar thing for Macbeth. "I want to work with a member of the cast, wake up with that person, go to rehearsals and be taken through his or her day - getting what it's like to be a part of the production and offering a sense of who they are. It's about people - the people are the show. I want viewers to say, "Wow, that might be an option!"

Neill, who talks very fast so that he can fit this interview into a life crammed with video production, weekend DJing and family life with Jessica and 20-month-old twins Jack and Isabella, has it all clear in his head. "I shoot a lot of stuff and edit a lot. The better it is going in, the better it is coming out. It can't be boring - I don't want a reason for people to push 'pause', so I have a rule of about three minutes or less. It's interesting that New Zealand Opera had the foresight to try something like this but Aidan got it straight away. He has an amazing number of screws loose, which is what you need to have!"

Diana Balham, Publications Editor