Author: flipper01

The Hill Valley Project

hvp_header
A few years ago, me and 2 other dudes (Martin Rose and Tom Hartshorn) had an idea that went a bit like this: “Hey, let’s run Back to the Future live on Twitter”.
It’s 2 years later and we’ve done it – www.theHillValleyProject.com.
We registered 50 separate twitter accounts for all the characters (and some of the objects) in the film, and starting on October 25th at 7.45am (the exact time and date the film starts), they all started telling the story of the film in real time. It takes 6 days for the whole story to play out.
Here’s a few choice tweets:

 


We took it all a bit further with things like setting up foursquare locations and having characters check in…


…and giving Lorraine an obsession with instagram selfies and hashtags:

We even gave Biff a match.com account:


One of the many reason we did this (most of them were around the theme of Back to the Future being awesome) was to raise awareness and encourage donations to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. They’re trying to speed up the time it takes to get newly developed drugs to market by concentrating on one specific part of the process and helping to provide support and access to research when and where it’s needed.
So, how did we do it? Well, Tom had already done a very similar project a few years back running Home Alone on twitter over Christmas, so we had a rough idea, but working out the times all for the tweets was a massive task. There’s lots of times in the story you just have to hit, like the time the car first time travels, or the lighting strike on the clock tower, so we had those as starting points. The rest we worked out by events like the school day starting, or looking at the position of the sun and working that out for California at that time of year.
We then had to re-write the entire film in tweets, adding in any screen shots that looked like they could be Twitpics, links to YouTube videos for the soundtrack and just making the tweets sound like tweets with the odd #LOL, ;-), and the occasional #FML. We ended up with 1211 tweets, all hand written and all cross references each other with @replies.
We gave each account it’s own biography, background image, profile image and cover image.
profiles
We then entered the whole lot into a social media management system that was logged in to all the accounts and set each tweet to send at the desired time.
The system only went wrong once when I noticed we’d entered in all the dates a day out of sync when Marty wakes up on the first day before he goes to meet doc in the car park in 1985. I fixed this by using a technique of utter blind panic, and switching to manually tweeting all accounts for a couple of hours in the early hours of Saturday morning – I managed to get far enough ahead in the end to re-arrange and re-import the rest of the tweets. I felt a bit like this moment:

 


It all went down very well with Gizmodo calling us Brilliant Wackos.
giz
Questlove Jenkins become a bit of a super fan tweeting about the project and then re-tweeting some of the characters:

 


OK Go liked it as well, which was nice:

 


And I was interviewed on *THE* Back to the Future Pod-cast, the Flux Capaci-Cast.
Even though it’s all played out now, you can still witness it in all it’s glory here: storify.com/flipper01/thehillvalleyproject

By the way, if you’re looking for a place to stay in the UK with a large group, please try this site.

Bacon Don’t Buffer

 
We made a video with a proper film star and a bloke off the telly! This project was for a partnership with EE and Google. EE wanted to promote watching video on 4G while Google wanted to promote watching longer videos on YouTube – so we decided to make a genuine piece of YouTube video content that illustrates this rather than your usual advert.
 
(See it here if you’re outside the UK)
 

 
I wrote and Creative-Directed it, with some writing help from Mark Bushnell who came up with the “no this is a bacon sandwich” line, much loved by the YouTube comments. We worked closely with Jamie’s team to design the 2 sandwiches, and make sure the content we were creating felt like a genuine Jamie Oliver Food Tube episode – the video only exists on Jamie’s channel after all, not EE’s.
 
It was a pretty hectic half day shoot, but Kevin is of course an absolute pro, and Jamie did a great job getting Kevin and crew excited. It’s hard to believe but the chainsaw was actually Jamie’s idea, not mine.
 

 
For the close-ups, we worked with a great chef who’s hands and arms (after some shaving and hair dying) matched Kevin’s perfectly, we even got a double for Kevin’s wedding ring for him. My proudest moment was stepping in as the stunt man (or the only person stupid enough) to hold the loaf while it was being chainsawed in half.
 

 
The video reached 2.5 million views within 2 weeks, and is Jamie’s most watched YouTube video by quite a margin. I know we’re not supposed to read the YouTube comments but it’s great to see so many like “First ad on YouTube I haven’t actually skipped”.

Future Cinema: Saturday Night Fever

 
For Future Cinema’s production of Saturday Night Fever, we created the website for the 2001 Odyssey club, the hippest disco joint in town. Working with Stephen Emslie and James Tiplady (a really jolly good new member of the team), we designed a system that allowed people to book their entrance time to the venue, as well as set them up with a character to play as for the night.
 
Each character was a member of one of 5 New York gangs from the ’70s, and they were given a briefing on how to behave for their gang as well as how to dress. They were also given a unique New York ID card to print out and bring with them which got them into the club and helped them meet up with fellow gang members.

Making a Lego GoPro Time Lapse Dolly

 
We got a Pizza oven! …and this time-lapse film of us building the stand for it is made using a little dolly unit I built for our GoPro. We’ve always wanted to have a simple small unit to plonk on a table during breakfast and slowly trundle forward, but such a device simple doesn’t seem to exist. So making one seems to be the only option.
 
Here’s a few prototypes:
 

 
First I tried building a little winch with a super geared down motor, and a trolley for the GoPro made of Lego. It worked, but it was cumbersome, and tricky to set-up.
 
Then I put the winch on the trolley and used it to power the wheels. Much better, but it was too fast and a bit noisy.
 
For the final design (although I’m sure I’ll tweak it again), I rebuilt the motor and gears using an old Lego motor and all the cogs I could find in our Lego box that’s sat in the cupboard since we were kids. Now it’s super slow, and the Lego motor runs almost silent. Oh Lego, is there nothing you can’t do?
 
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “But what does it look like if you strap an infrared filter to the GoPro and set it off on it’s jolly way down the garden path?”. Well it looks a bit like this:
 

 
Here’s the brave little soldier in action:
 

Secret Cinema: Brazil

 

Since before we started working with Secret Cinema, we’d always come out of one of their shows after a great night and say “when are they going to man up and do Brazil?”. They manned up.

 

 

We were involved very early on this one (as usual collaborating with mega developer Stephen Emslie), we helped concept and create the pre-narative experience audience members take part in during the month leading up to the show. How they interacted with the system directly influenced their final show experience.

 

The moment any audience member bought a ticket, they became employees of G.O.O.D., a fictional company that mimics the bureaucratic and brutal themes of the film (remember we can’t blow the cover of what the film actually is yet). Employees are given access to the company intranet after filling a deliberately lengthy appraisal form. Here they can keep abreast of all company developments, as well as access a G.O.O.D. subsidiary division called D.R.E.A.M.S, a research company that all employees have to record their dreams with.

 

appraisal

 

intranet-home

 

dreams

 

Employees are also tasked to form connections with their colleagues by collecting Social Identification Numbers from each other using the commenting system to increase their rank in the company.

 

connection

 

A few days before the show, each employee is informed they have been transferred to a new department and given instructions of the proper dress code required for their new role.

 

tranfer

 

On the night of the show, employees are instructed to report to G.O.O.D. HQ, a 13 story office block in Croydon (where some of Brazil was shot), and G.O.O.D. is revealed as the Government Office Of Data, a play on the Ministry of Information from the film. Depending on your transfer, there were 27 possible starting points to your journey through the show, each with a different story and experience.

 


 

We created 60 consoles for the Department of Records, which all employees logged into using their password gained from the intranet. They can then browse all manner of files, videos and games. Each rank of employee is given a different mission to carry out within the 13 story building.

 



 

The system referenced the shared office spaces in the film by splitting the screen in two. Pairs of employees shared each console, waiting for their side of the screen to burst back into life.

 

Of course, just as in the film, you can hack the system to watch a selection of classic films or TV shows, as well as access high level integration reports (as long as Mr. Kurtzman doesn’t catch you).

 

 

Hidden away on the top floor was a secret console where employees could ‘delete’ themselves, freeing them from the system. If they tried to log into the intranet after the show they would just see a rolling video of clouds… there was also a secret method to ‘undelete’ yourself, as you can never truly escape the clutches of G.O.O.D.

 


sky

 

All of this was just part of an amazing show from Secret Cinema that spanned the entire 13 floors and basement, with countless adventures to be sought out or stumbled upon throughout the night, culminating in a stunning theatrical finale in the central core of the building.

 

 

More photos over on our Flickr here.

Future Cinema: Casablanca

 

For Future Cinema’s beautiful production of Casablanca we created the ‘French Protectorate of Morocco’ – as usual, the heroic Stephen Emslie was on development duties.

 

The site allowed people who had bought tickets for the show to book their table at Rick’s Americain, the best Bar in Casablanca.

 

book a table

 

Once they’ve booked their table, we generated a new European identity for them. They were assigned one of 6 nationalities, along with a new name from that country. This is all on a ID card they printed out, attach a photo, and brought it along to the show.

 

id2

 

Future Cinema events are normally slightly more casual than Secret Cinema (although put together by the same people), so we deliberately made this a very simple system compared to the more richer online experiences we do for Secret Cinema. This seemed to really pay off, everybody went to town with their IDs.

 

ids

Poke Christmas Fireplace

 

This Christmas, we built built an animating fireplace in Poke’s lobby. Using the excellent Pixel Fireplace software by Ted Martins, the fire is a living pixely thing, that needs feeding with logs, and can do many things like roast pixel marshmallows or pixel hot-dogs. The pleasant sound of a crackling pixel wood fire echoed around the lobby all of December.

 

A few more photos here.

 

Secret Cinema: The Shawshank Redemption

 

For Secret Cinema’s production of The Shawshank Redemption we helped out with the pre-narrative and designed the digital system that led the audience from buying a ticket, to being in a court room having your life stripped away from you.

 

Weeks before you attended the show, our microsite for the fictional State of Oak Hampton, took your ticket number and delivered you your new life. This would be in the form of a FaceBook cover image detailing your new name and particulars. Everyone was from America, and everyone was male (as in the film). The system, developed by our always excellent pal Stephen Emslie, generated over 12,500 realistic men’s names and profiles. You could also use a Twibbon to style your profile photo so it appears to be stapled to your profile.

 

 

Extended versions of these profiles were then printed out and handed to you when you receive your sentence in court. Which we then used throughout the experience for example if you’re dragged before the parole board, or attend a work gang.

 

The site was a very non-nonsense institutional feeling experience, with a simple form for your details and links out to further news and information from the State of Oak Hampton. Learning from our work with the Prometheus show, we streamlined the options available to the audience to make it as simple as possible, but still a unique and mysterious experience for all.

 

The Big Sale

 

We entered this year’s 48 Hour Film Project competition, which, as the name suggests, means you have 48 hours to make a film. To make sure there’s no head-starts we’re all given a strict briefing on the Friday night at the Prince Charles Cinema before we deliver our final films on the Sunday night. This years brief said that we needed to include the following in the film:

 

– a character named named Charlie Cipriani who is a minor celebrity
– some sort of cream
– a line of dialogue”Let me tell you a secret”
– a randomly assigned genre, we got Romance

 

We worked with Eze Asnaghi, so this is an official Bingo Pictures production! It was a very hectic 48 hours and I don’t think we’d ever have attempted a film like this without the strict brief, but we’re all really pleased with what we got. We even won an award; Best Ensemble Acting! Which is due to our great actors Gavin Lennon and Caroline Roussel-Barucco (Caroline hadn’t even met any of us until the day of the shoot, what a trooper). Lot’s more people to thank, but you’ll have to watch the film to see their names in the end credits ;-)