It took us - me (right), Leo and Tom - nearly two weeks to come up with the idea for Web 2.0. This is what we thought: The First Post is a "real-world" magazine that happens to be on the web, so other "real-world" things must have their own computerised versions, and vice versa. For example, in the film coffee is downloaded from a website, but emails are delivered like letters.
To create the computer and music machine, we used an empty tower and some old machinery we found in a skip. We spent ages cutting apart the PC case to fit an espresso machine and letterbox inside.
We filmed in the spare room at Leo's house, blacking out the windows and using a garden floodlight and a theatrical spotlight, which meant it got really hot.
The stop motion process was fairly time-consuming, though. Instead of taking each shot frame-by-frame, Joe |
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The First Post offered a £10,000 prize for the best new viral. LEO BRIDLE and friends took home the prize |
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(who plays the main character) just acted everything out in super-slow motion. It took us about three days to complete the filming.
Afterwards, I created the computer screen graphics while Leo and Tom worked on the sound effects. All the icons and webpages were constructed out of cardboard and then physically moved around a tabletop. This footage was then superimposed onto the shots of Joe using the computer.
Apart from this there is actually very little digital stuff in the video, which I think has probably been part of its appeal. It's our hands playing the instruments on the music machine, and they are real cans of Spam in the "spam folder".
We had to edit pretty carefully to keep it under the 60-second limit, but fortunately everything came together about two days before the deadline. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 22, 2006 |
