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our website for david chase’s rock ‘n’ roll, coming-of-age feature not fade away, is now live. as hinted at in our previous post the site represents our first public foray into hollywood studio design work. paramount pictures came to us upon the recommendation of jon reiss, and requested that we create an award-winning website for them for a forthcoming feature film. they then provided us with some examples of the kinds of websites they felt were truly successful on a number of levels – their choices were excellent and we were excited by their expectations. in fact it was in every way one of the more exciting moments in our now-10 year life as a company, as we’d dreamed about such an opportunity since the moment we saw hi-res! flaunting their talents in a similar fashion 10 years earlier.

as is our usual way, we conceived of three differing, strong and complex approaches that we felt would capture at the very least the tonal nature of the film, as best we could determine from their words about the film alone. they were excited by our suggestions and not long after this we were given a chance to see the film at press screening in new york.

of all our ideas, paramount wanted to move forward with our suggestion of a a series of location-aware, fully soundtracked, living photographs that would be tailored to each of the site’s sections. to achieve this we first pitched the relatively new technique of creating PNG animations as a more compatible and controllable form of GIF animation – in essence, canvas-based video. it was a technique that we’d first noticed being used by jon skinner on the website for sublime text, and later, the apple website, and one that we knew we could adapt in order to bring the site comfortably to the iphone and ipad.

on top of this, because we could not use music from the film, we had approval on the creation of supporting soundscapes, custom radio recordings and also a full musical score in support of each animation. our trick, of course, being that each soundscape would be different depending on where you were looking at the site within the USA, and the weather outside at that time. each radio news report would be native to your location, should you have been alive in the 60s, and all the songs you heard on the radio would be imitations tracks of bands from the so-called british invasion of the US. in essence, we were striving to conjure up a disarmingly fragile series of moments in an otherwise rather raucous film, and these looping visual tangents would allow us to illustrate the various tonal elements of the film without having to seriously spoil any of it.

after making notes during the screening of the scenes we felt would be most suited to this idea, we were sent a quicktime reel of the scenes to produce compositions from.

we then started in earnest to create the soundscapes, radio recordings and music. gavin singleton, who runs our studio in london, headed up the audio production. he created a series of soundscape beds for each scene, and also cut up and mixed the other elements together as they were passed over to him. zach barocas, who manages our studio here in new york and who’s had previous work as a voiceover artist, recorded hundreds of custom, historical radio news and weather reports. adam shaw and pete newton, two trusted commercial composers from england, set about recording a series of rock ‘n’ roll songs in differing styles. giles and i then set about vetting the various elements, offering feedback where possible, in order to harmonize the audio with the visuals we were developing. it was perhaps the most exciting, unified team effort we’d invested our time in to date – a real showcase of all our various talents.

towards the end of production we found out it was in fact possible to use the music from the film, as long as we used only 30 second clips of it. this meant we had to replace our custom sound work with a player featuring short loops much like itunes does in its track previews.

the site is an unusual and beautiful site in many respects, and we are proud of it. we hope you enjoy the experience we’ve created. if you’re interested in taking a look at the site with the original sound engine still present (including locale-based news reports, custom rock songs and louder soundscapes), you can do so by clicking here. we’re calling it our director’s cut. we’re thankful to have been commissioned to build such an engine even if it was never used, and one day hope to be able to re-develop it for another project in some capacity.

we’re stoked to announce that we recently started working with paramount pictures. the first fruit to bear is a website for the debut feature film from david chase, creator of the sopranos. pictured is the teaser trailer site we were asked to create whilst we work on a larger website for the film. details are of course secret for now, but we’re excited about how its looking + where things are going. stay tuned for further updates in december, around the time the film is released!

you can view the teaser site here.

following the success of his direct-to-fan sale of his live at the beacon show, louis CK laid down a particularly effective outline for how one could sell media in the 21st century without middlemen: create, edit, and distribute yourself.  with the constant rate of advances in technology, this path will remain a mainstream option for the foreseeable future. it is abundantly clear that it is not only possible, but feasible and desirable as an artist to dispense with middlemen and control all aspects of how you interact with your fans.

with this in mind he approached us to once again assist him with the deployment of the next stage – selling tickets directly on his site.  we consulted with him on the options he had to do this, and ended up working with a ticketing partner who provided a white-label service.  our role in this was light: we provided integration advice and process changes to the site to bring ticketing into the fold.

the results speak for themselves: the tour sold $6 million of tickets in the first week.

…

ticketing is something we’re fascinated with, inasmuch as it affects anyone who loves live music (or many other forms of art).  louis CK is exceptional in his stature in the entertainment world, but i’d like to expand on our thoughts in this area and the difficulties an independent artist faces getting something like this working for them.

most would agree that ticketing is the natural next frontier when it comes to disintermediation. ticket sales are ruled by a small group of companies who exercise tight control over the market and do so at the expense of fans, fueling – or more correctly, driving – a rapid inflation in ticket prices over the last decade and, with the dominance of online ticketing, the corollaries that fans love to loathe: “convenience”, venue, and delivery fees, frequently increasing a ticket price by some 30-40%. fans are forced to swallow these as part of the overall cost of a live show, despite often tenuous or non-existent reasons for the fees.  such price hikes and added fees push younger and poorer fans out of the market, decrease the frequency with which all fans can see shows, and increase the revenue gained by both the ticket broker and the venue.  needless to say, the latter item is paid more attention by brokers and those running venues.

it is also needless to say that as a company we find this highly distasteful. it impoverishes culture by excluding people; the effects of this impoverishment are intangible and cannot be given a monetary value – but run deep.

being able to sell tickets direct to one’s fans sounds such a simple thing: find a venue, book it, and sell tickets. in practice, it is much more difficult for two reasons: firstly, venues are often contracted exclusively to a single ticket broker, meaning that they are contractually forbidden to host an act who does not use that broker. secondly, the high ticket fees guarantee an extra cushion of revenue for the venue. even if you find a venue unencumbered by existing contractual restrictions, you must ask them to forego extra revenue by using your own tickets. moreover, you are also asking them to support a disruptive ticket model, for which they risk the displeasure of their ticketing partners.  to make such a request right now, therefore, you need to be a standout act who is worth the trouble. louis CK‘s tour is planned for a variety of independent venues across the US who have agreed to host him.

a secondary benefit of selling direct is the ability to dictate the terms on which the tickets are sold.  louis CK‘s terms were to provide all tickets at one flat price of $45 with a zero-tolerance policy of scalping. this drives a highly equal distribution of tickets: in theory, it means you’re unable to jump the queue if you simply have more money than another fan, so everyone gets an equal shot at a ticket (and indeed at the front row) regardless of their means.  likewise, fans can resell tickets – provided you sell for the same $45 you paid, without any markup, to prevent scalping.  these two rules provide for a level of fairness and equal access in the ticket market which is rare and highly welcome.

the first time the work of louis CK really hit our radar was when we heard him ask the former US secretary of defense donald rumsfeld, live on US radio, if he was a lizard. it was a question he’d put forward just moments after suggesting that collectively rumsfeld and dick cheney (former US vice-president) were in fact lizards from outer space that eat human flesh. of course we had been casual fans before of louis’s work before, but it was this delicious moment that really turned our heads – the reason being that it reminded us hugely of the late great bill hicks, whose work has had a massive influence on our work at version industries.

we first met louis backstage at one of his recent shows in new york – the very same shows that became his most recent special, live at the beacon theater, which we have since been put in charge of releasing online. it was the gregory brothers who had recommended us for the job and after some initial phone calls and emails with louis’s management, we soon found ourselves sitting on couches opposite louis backstage at the beacon theater. louis was very clear on how he wanted to go about things and we initially served as a sounding board for his various ideas. we explained what each of his suggested directions would entail and what limitations, if any, he might face. he then told us that he was about to go on national television and not just announce the project, but also give the date it was to go live. there was not a second to lose.

in terms of design, it was a fairly low-profile job. louis made it clear after the first round of site designs we submitted that he wanted a less-flashy, more honest and trustworthy-feeling design. he knew this was mostly about people feeling safe about spending; up to this point his design aesthetic had been quite simple and raw, and he didn’t want to confuse people by straying too far from that. given this, we kept the red, black and white tones of his previous website but aimed for the more moody, atmospheric feeling design we felt best suited for viewing a film. we then proceeded to condense the content of the site right down to only that which people needed to “buy the thing” with. “buy the thing” was just one of the many wonderful colloquialisms louis asked that we use instead of the regular tone of language you tend to expect on an e-commerce site. our favourite of these was perhaps the naming schema he had us develop for when people forgot their passwords: try it yourself and you’ll likely end up with a new password of the likes of numbnuts.bjy5 or moron.abt3.

the coding for the site was a whole separate matter. this site was to be one of our greatest tests in this department due to the size of the video files, the importance of a frictionless purchase flow and the vast quantity of users we expected to hit the site both at launch and on a daily basis. as louis put it,

“i want people in prison to be able to get this.”

the site presented technical challenges in two primary ways: ease and scale. given the size and dedication of louis’s both national and international audience we decided that paypal, for its ubiquity and security, would be a reasonable place to start for payment processing. for the scalability of the app we chose to use amazon web services, tapping thomas chippendale of verran in england to manage and load-test the amazon infrastructure. in general AWS worked out extremely well – although after the opening weekend they gave us a wonderfully delicate call to ask if we were aware of the bandwidth bill the site had chalked up.

for the development of the application itself we chose the open-source fuelPHP framework. the application was simple in essence: manage accounts, stream the show, make the show available for download, and secure the files for paying fans. though we knew from the outset that piracy was inevitable, we wanted the paid, legitimate experience to be as easy as stealing. to lead development we enlisted the exceptional skills of longtime collaborator and friend jules janssen, whose understanding of the complexity of heavy traffic loads made him an obvious choice.

using the site, you’ll notice that we deliberately avoided forcing users to check an email account to complete the purchase – this was something louis insisted upon due to his own frustrations with waiting for validation emails in the past. therefore the purchase flow moves from “enter email address” to “pay with paypal” to “download”. no intermediary stages, no need to wait for an email address: you buy it, it’s yours. the site is intended to offer “one true path” to purchase, with no option to make the wrong decision or lack of clarity about what you’re supposed to be doing.

furthermore, bearing in mind the broad range of technical know-how and preference among louis’ fans, we built in html5 and ogg theora fallbacks for content to better serve the array of devices and platforms they use, and also out of respect to the free software community.

understanding full-well that this was one of the more high-profile jobs we’d taken on and that no matter how refined a system we’d built, we’d be taking not just a heavy server hit but also criticism from a number of online factions, we did not farm out the tech support but rather handled it personally. this meant we could have an open discourse with users who had specific ideas regarding improvements to the site. one particular email from richard stallman, founder of the free software foundation, recommending offering an anonymous payment system, served as an excellent reminder of the impact louis’s approach to this project was having on people. during the weekend the site went live, if you had had any reason to email the tech support team, you will have received a reply from either giles or myself, sitting as we were in his living room sipping cups of tea and drafting replies.

from meeting louis to delivery of the site was a period of approximately one month: designing and specifying the application, provisioning the amazon web services, developing, testing, go-live. we’ve since continued to provide tech support and handle a number of last minute updates to the site on louis’s whim. his ceaseless ambition for the scope of the project combined with a regular flow of ideas back and forth between his team, ours and the users via tech support, has meant the site continues to evolve and streamline itself in subtle ways. a couple of times louis would think of a way he wanted to expand the site’s scope and then demand it to be ready by the end of the next day for an appearance he was making on a talk show. this way he could announce the change on the broadest level possible and ensure the site was moving as fast as his brain was. this is what mr. scott must have felt like as chief engineering officer under captain kirk on the starship enterprise - the greater good being the stakes, the fundamental physical limitations of being human, the only thing in the way.

the question of how we’d approach the setup any differently now that we’ve learnt so much from the experience is an important one. our understanding of large scale file-serving concerns, of open-source fan interests and of just how frank you can and should be with internet users to appease their interests is now well-developed. in short, working on this project was utterly refreshing. louis’s “fuck you” approach to a massive scale sales platform, which we all know can be such a tedious process of trying to be overly accommodating and polite, appealed to our own design ethics massively and therefore continued to make this project a joy to work on. practically speaking, it allowed us to be all the more frank with users through the tech support system and ultimately get to the heart of each of their concerns much faster. when you’re allowed to talk freely about the fact that they can and will steal your product but would be happy to pay if we just set things up right, it helps you put together a better system. so long as everyone is being honest and no one feels like they’re being fucked over, worthwhile compromises are reached much faster. the slew of emails we’ve received from people stating that they’d never heard of louis before, but were buying the special simply because of his approach to selling it and the price he was selling it for, was heartwarming to say the least.

needless to say, if you haven’t yet watched louis CK – live at the beacon theater, you should. it’s very, very funny and largely because it’s honest, true and to the point – an approach that we believe has contributed hugely to every aspect of the success of this project. as of writing this article louis has made over 1 million dollars through the website and there’s an article in the new york times detailing his efforts in this regard. it’s important of course to not get carried away with the hype surrounding a project like this. louis was of course already well established and his success here is reflective of both that and the strong desire of internet users to support an attempt to reinvent the media business model. here’s something reggie watts said on the matter, soon after the site had gone live, that resonated with us in this regard -

“i’m so glad [the louis CK] experiment is working. however it is important to note that it is not a new concept nor that surprising that it is succeeding (thankfully). in fact it wasn’t even that big of a risk! the reason being common sense prevails. fans who love an artist want to see that artist succeed therefore if that artist invests energy, creates an experience and extends a generous hand directly to them, more often than not it will be met by an even greater positive return. this model has been pioneered by DIY, independent and some labeled artists of varying mediums over the last few decades to great success (recalling radiohead). i think what is most important about louis’ project is the nowness; it’s a much needed reminder for the entertainment industry and encouragement to other artists finding ways to navigate their crafts with creativity intact.”

we’ve certainly worked with companies like topspin for a while who’ve been making every effort they can to put the power of such a business model directly into the hands of artists. the main thing is to remember that you do now have the power to make the money you deserve yourself, so long as you have something people actually want, or rather, that is any good. the labels, publishers, film studios and television networks of the world used to be able to help you force-feed a turd into the mouths of fans whilst fanning your ego and quietly adjusting your image as best they could. these days you really have to make something outstanding because as we all know, it’s a “try now, pay later” market out there. so, when that masterpiece is finally ready, be excited that at the least you now have total control.

the website for the feature film PAVILION went live today, and along with it my second blog article for the IFP in which i discuss the process that went into making the site. we were also fortunate enough to be asked to handle the film’s posters and the credit sequences. the article discusses this and explains why our treatment on all fronts aimed to reflect the very minimal, atmospheric nature of the film.

here’s an excerpt -

my co-worker zach referred me once to a film (portrait of jason, 1967) where a man is sitting there smoking a cigarette for pretty much the entire film. that’s it. talking about this on the way to get lunch one day we agreed that in a film like that, where that’s all that happens, the small things turn into huge events. zach then stopped, scratched his head and thought for a moment, whispering to the air in front of him, “what was it that happened in that one…”. i stopped too, waited, and then finally he said “ah yes, he ran out of gas on his lighter. huge deal!” we both laughed and then stepped inside jimmy’s, our regular lunch joint.

so to reiterate, pavilion really is one of those exact films. it’s almost fair to say that if you blink or cough, you could miss the entire ‘reveal’ at the end of it. there are tiny fragmented shards of dialogue that tell you what’s happening whilst all the while you’re watching the most detached, beautiful and mesmerizing footage of kids feeling out the moments in those long, long, useless days of our youth. in fact what i said when i came back from the bathroom after tim had screened his movie for us was ‘congratulations’. congratulations for capturing that feeling of the abstract, aimless ennui of what it was to be young, with almost no sense of responsibility at all.

you can read the rest of the article here.

once again we could not be more grateful to topspin. they have put us in touch with an eclectic range of radical artists with whom we’ve had the most exciting and rewarding relationships. the gregory brothers, better known as the auto-tune the news guys, are no exception. a month or so ago they walked into our studio and told us they needed a new website. they then hit the road and we sent them our ideas as they criss-crossed the country on the youtube tour. the trick was to combine their already burgeoning aesthetic with a number of new levels of functionality. their old site had been pretty much built entirely by them using dreamweaver and they were understandably into something that would be a little easier to update. needless to say, but the process was a breeze and often funny too.

as the project went on we of course became more and more familiar with their work. aside from the classic auto-tune videos that we’ve all seen, it was very apparent that they were a talented 4 piece band in their own right. not only are they capable of making a hilarious youtube videos but they’ve got an album’s worth of solid, self-proclaimed folk ‘n’ roll jams. hit up the music store on the new site to check some of them out. they just got back from playing bonnaroo festival and i’m sure will be announcing more tour dates soon. seriously, go. they’re fantastic people and their show is seriously unique.

gregorybrothers.com

feels like an age since we made a new website. very happy that this is the one we make a small come-back with. frock is a new york-based women’s vintage clothing store. we built this site using wordpress and shopify. both truly excellent and affordable platforms for building easy to use websites for clients. shopify in particular is a new discovery for us and we’re all about it now. so thanks to whoever put it in front of us. we can’t remember who that was sadly. thanks also to lexi + evan who run frock and are awesome to work with.

the site itself was, believe it or not, inspired by the robert palmer video for addicted to love.

trivia – these guys just outfitted the cast of men in black 3.
fact – you should probably tell your girlfriend about this website.

we’ve just had it confirmed that the site we did for daft punk’s TRON: legacy score, tronsoundtrack.com, was javascript site of the month in the january issue of .net magazine. click here to read the full PDF including a short interview with us about the making of the site. huge thanks again to remy sharp, mr doob, topspin and disney for the hook-up!

65daysofstatic.com is one of those sites where the work on it is continuous and so we’re never sure when to stop for a second and make a record of our progress. fans of the band will know that major redevelopments began back with the release of their last full length studio album, and that it’s taken on 2-3 guises since then.

based primarily around the original wordpress foundations that the band laid themselves back with the release of one time for all time (their second studio album), the open-ended nature of that fantastic (and free) platform has meant we can keep reskinning, redesigning and evolving the site whilst keeping the core database.

the latest version of the 65 site is more of a hub that incorporates not only their blog, tour dates and forum, but also their twitter, flickr, soundcloud and vimeo feeds. the design is of course based around their new album’s rather fotografik aesthetic and was intended to allow the band a freedom from making multiple updates across their various outlets, and give fans a one stop shop for all information about the band.

in other news, with the japanese heavy sky EP tour on the horizon and a special edition of the EP in the works, we got talking to the band about a possible variation on the established cover design. after some deliberation we agreed that a design that felt more in sync with the japanese release of their single weak4 would be appropriate. keen to explore that release’s more geometric artwork styling, we set about developing a design that echoed the original EP photography whilst exploring the implications of the EP’s title further. the resulting cover (above) was inspired in part by a series of early drawings and paintings by the artist thomas newbolt.

well, where to even start? it was 20 years ago when my friends and i first saw the original TRON film. my parents rented it on VHS for my birthday party back home in england. the TV sat at one end of the table and about 8 kids sat around the other end, which was otherwise covered in food, streamers and wrapping paper.

we all adored it, but more importantly a seed had been sewn and over the years i found myself playing TRON games on all manner of gaming systems. the first time was on my best friend’s ZX spectrum 48k+ back in the late 80s (seen above) and the latest, years later, when we stumbled across an original TRON arcade machine living out the end of its days at barcade in brooklyn.

now as for daft punk … it was about 4 years ago that we finally sat down to watch the interstellar 5555 animated film in its entirety. i was taken-a-back at the quite brilliant and moving concept behind it. consequently i swiftly purchased their second film electroma, and it was even better. ordinary house DJs these guys were not. requiring further validation for my new found obsession i called my friends the protomen (with whom i shared a great love of concept-based music) and consulted them on the matter. pretty soon my entire line of thinking on what daft punk was about had done a massive U-turn. then, as if waiting for my undivided attention, it was announced that they were going to score the new TRON film.

…

tronsoundtrack.com

so there it is. a small testament to years of love for that great old movie, and to the incredible potential of the new one and its soundtrack.

all the site does right now, formerly speaking, is register your interest in the forthcoming soundtrack release. however in order to satisfy the fans out there of the original film, daft punk or both, we packed it with as many tricks and secrets as we could.  we also made it work on ipads and ipods as well as it would on any desktop. this involved giving a suitable nod to the generation of internet users that would have grown up with the original film. i.e. we threw ASCII art imagery in the source code, built out all the site animations using .gifs, and included another element … but since no one has worked that out yet we’re not about to spoil the fun here.

the look and feel is of course taken from both the dusty desktop computer in the second TRON LEGACY trailer and the sites some of you will have seen when playing the flynn lives ARG. that is of course with the exception of the boom / ripple animation, which was adapted from a piece of code that mr. doob (of arcade fire video / harmony fame) wrote. all we did beyond that was build it all out using HTML5 and javascript rather than video or flash. we did this so that you can move the windows on the site with your fingertip on a touchscreen, as well as with a mouse. a touch that again we felt true to the world of TRON.

what’s to come after this? well even we don’t know right now. such is the mystery of these things. in the meantime we wish to extend our thanks of course to topspin and disney for helping us be a part of all this, and hope that we’ve done enough for now to satisfy even the most rabid fans out there.

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