Case Studies: BBC

Micro site featuring zoom technology for the six part drama "Desperate Romantics"

“Cogent’s creative work excited our team and was true to the look and feel of the drama. They gave us a platter of initial designs that were thoughtful, different and opened up many possibilities and routes to go down.” Danny Whitfield, Online Producer, BBC

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 BBC Online Producer, Danny Whitfield who also 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.

Feedback from the BBC

"Cogent investigated and presented to us various technical options to enable the visitor to zoom into the paintings and recommended a robust and smooth system which was affordable, easy to implement and did not require 99% of users to download a plugin. These different options enabled us to make the right decision and Cogent gave us excellent advice. At the time this project broke new ground and absolutely fulfilled the BBC's requirement for this project in particular to educate, inform and entertain.

Cogent’s creative work excited our team and was true to the look and feel of the drama. They gave us a platter of initial designs that were thoughtful, different and opened up many possibilities and routes to go down - we didn't have any problems with integrating their designs into the overall BBC web guidelines.

Cogent’s team were always available when we needed to ask a question which was very important given our tight deadlines and they were able to schedule their works parallel to the BBC's technical web teams.

The job came in fully working and tested on time and on budget which was a great achievement given the novelty and logistics of the project, any technical or design issues were anticipated well in advance and worked around within the budget."

Danny Whitfield, Online Producer, BBC