Case Studies: BBC - Micro site featuring zoom technology for the six part drama "Desperate Romantics"

“It is a massive enhancement of content
for the audience, not just the opportunity
to scrutinise the paintings themselves but
also all the clever short "Arts" films about
Muses, modelling, drawing, poetry etc.”

NEWS - BBC Desperate Romatics site goes live - http://www.bbc.co.uk/desperateromantics/paintings/

The broadcast drama
Desperate Romantics is a six part BBC period drama focussing on an influential art movement called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. With a glossy look, and young vibrant cast, Desperate Romantics is a character-driven romp through the alleyways, studios, brothels and chop-houses of 19th century London.

The concept for an on-line experience
In addition to the conventional broadcast the BBC wanted to develop an innovative and distinctive way to present its online content around the drama in line with its mission for Future Media and Technology. They wanted to create a way to allow the user to interact with high resolution zoomable images of the paintings featured in the drama through a web browser.

Bringing it to reality
Cogent Design was commissioned to bring this concept to reality both technically and in line with the Desperate Romantics branding and look and feel . The brief was to provide a rich user experience incorporating video clips and expert commentary sound tracks but also to ensure ease of use for a wide audience.

Cogent’s approach
Cogent adopted a twin track approach, researching the latest zoom technologies and also exploring innovative and creative ideas for the user journey. These included options, later rejected, such as automated tours of the paintings with features “popping up” as the user zoomed in.

Technical and creative
As the project developed the BBC assigned their own technical and graphic supervisors to advise Cogent on technical standards and integration with the Desperate Romantics brand.

Technically we compared Microsoft Silverlight and a Flash based system developed by Paris based Zoomorama. Cogent recommended the French system because of better compatibility with other media, a more mature product and greater technical support. Cogent worked closely with Zoomorama to develop the interface and integrate the zoom to BBC requirements.

Creatively Cogent proposed several options producing simple working demos. These were refined until a final design was approved and fully integrated with the programming.

Photography and Video Content
A separate and key element of the project was the photography of the paintings in high resolution. This was supervised by our in house video producer Danny Whitfield who made 25 short films as extra online content - including: interviews with the cast and series writer, some factual films and some original drama starring the series’ lead Aidan Turner. Because many of the paintings were too large to photograph in one piece Cogent had to stitch several images together to make a complete painting.

Final Delivery
After an intense final development phase Cogent and Zoomorama delivered a fully tested bug free version to the BBC on time and within budget

Future developmant
Cogent are developing applications for Science and Technology, Travel and Leisure and Property