So it turns out the best instrument to accompany an orchestra playing Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory (also known as the Battle Symphony) is a set of 193 live cannons.
Category: Uncategorized
Secret Cinema – Blade Runner
All kinds of awesome from Secret Cinema as usual. This time our shuttle bus taking us to the space port for our flight to the Off World Colonies was pulled over by some Blade Runner dude and diverted to a holding area as a Replicant uprising had caused all flights to be cancelled. We ended up in a dystopian Los Angeles, circa 2019, complete with snake merchants, eye makers, noodle bars, strip clubs and everything you need to make a pretty damn believable slice of the Blade Runner world.
Jason took a Voight-Kampff test, turns out he’s human, who’d have thought? I was rather pleased with my home brew lighty up umbrella. A good time was had by all – except for that stripper replicant who got shot to bits as we filed into the cinema, down-town LA in 2019 is a rough area.
Here’s some pics we took, or just pour yourself some whiskey and watch the slide show below.
All the Time In The World at Pokexhibition
Our short film ‘All the Time in the World’ is finally (just about) finished, and we gave it’s world premier at the Pokexhibiton on Wednesday. The Exhibition is full of stuff by people who work at Poke who might not normally get to display this kind of thing. There’s work from developers, managers, directors, designers and strategists – and whadayaknow? It seems we’re all creative little makers. A real mixed bag of work as well; painting, film, embroidery, steam powered remote control tank, a wig, pop promo, animation, a tweeting typewriter… all sorts. The work will be up on display for another couple of weeks, if you’re anywhere near Poke (trendy Shoreditch) pop in for a cup of tea and a look round.
RFB&H Company Photo
We turned the clocks back to 1960 to have a Mad Men styled day at Poke. Lots of whiskey, lots of sexist emails, and lots of smart attire. Click here for a nice big hi-res version.
That’s a Cappuccino!
Last week we had a Hack Day at Poke. We were split into teams of about 6 or 7 and given 24 hours to come up with a ‘working thing with a URL’ that’s something to do with the theme: FOOD. The team I was in came up with That’s a Cappuccino! – A campaign to put an end to people ordering a Cappuccino but receiving a Latte. There’s lots of ways to get a cappuccino wrong, but we narrowed it down to the basic ‘golden ratio’ of what it should be made of:
1 part espresso, 1 part steamed milk, 1 part foam.
With this in mind we’ve built a map, that anybody can contribute to, that simply labels places as “That’s a cappuccino!” or “That’s not a cappuccino!”. We also wrote an open letter to some major cappuccino venders (including Starbucks, Costa and, naturally, The Wild Bean Cafe) asking them how the ensure their cappuccinos are of the correct stanrd and if they’d like to get involved in the campaign and where. Here’s the letter.
Our film unit ran about all over over London interviewing baristas about what they think makes the perfect cappuccino, and they even got to meet Gwilym Davies, the UK and world champion barista who is a jolly nice champ and has officially backed our project:
It turned out to be a pretty massive project for 24 hours but we devided and conquered and… didn’t win in the end (The Holy Sandwich won, well done you lot), but there’s still a chance we can get a prize for the most traffic on our site, as well as improving your next cappuccino – so go check out our site, and get adding to that map.
Our team (the Golden Ratio) are: Me!, Chris Meachin, Iain Tait, Chris Reeves (the other one), Aina Ørebech, Kate Ducham and Nicky Gibson.
Big in China
For some reason the gods of the Internet smiled on me and allowed me to stumble over this. Somebody in China has ripped our Beach Cops video (of us on Segways in Santa Monica being awesome) and repurposed it as an ad for Segways in China. AWESOME-R!
Quick Draw Saloon – opening night!
Tonight it’s the V&A Village Fete grand opening, and us lot at Stuff Club (which is a gang of do-ers at Poke) have built the Quick Draw Saloon. Come along tonight or tomorrow and pit your speed drawing skills against another pen slinger. There’s a prize for the winner, and something else for the looser.
Light Speed to Endor
Finally got round to doing some back-ups at the weekend and found this timelapse video we shot ages ago on a jolly ’round Romford. It’s been on Vimeo for a while but I don’t think we ever blogged it. So now we have – hooray! It’s got my favourite sound effects ever in it (play with headphones on, hit the full-screen button and press your nose to the screen for maximum enjoyment).
TV’s Chris Boardman
Today, we at Poke bid a fond farewell to TV’s Chris Boardman. During his year break from uni here at Poke we have worked him to within an inch of his life. Which is of course how all student placements should be handled. He’s heading back up north to finish his learnings (see: slacking). We dearly hope he graces our door again, so we can work him even harder. He’s responsible for the speedy development of the interactive map we created for the Design Museum and various other behind the scenes development breakthroughs. We put together this video installation down in the mess hall to honour the chap. See you soon Boarders!
Unto Others in Virgin Shorts
You’ve probably already seen this, but now it’s in the Virgin Media short film competition. If we win it we will be become the richer than our wildest dreams and shall eat peacock eggs for breakfast. So rate it 5 shiny stars and we’ll give you 7 million pounds each if we win*.
*actually we won’t, get stuffed.