lessrain blog

Insanely Driven. Are you?

Vassilios — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:57:16 +0000

We are proud to present our latest production work
for Euro RSCG and Reckitt Benckiser:
www.rb.com/insanelydriven
www.insanelydriven.com

For more info, visit our press release page and our website

Full Credits

Live action production & shoot
Creative Direction: Vassilios Alexiou
Script: Alex Moggridge
Director: Joerg Tittel and Alex Helfrecht
Producer: Vassilios Alexiou, Kaija Vogel
Production manager: Rafael Mlodzianowski
Director of Photography: Ian Blummers
1st Assistant Director: Bailey Marks
Gaffer: Carolina Schmidtholstein
Art Direction: Malin Lindholm
Sound Recordist: Dave Pringle, Owen Peters
Assistant Cameraman: Chris Jackson
Art department: Stuart Mackay, Clare Wallis, Lizzie Young, Daniel Wharton
Costume design & wardrobe: Magdalena Glowacka
Makeup & hair: Shanay Hussein
Production assistant: Ilenia Cippolari
Runners: Camilla Cabras, Kateryna Chernolutska, Oliver Gardner, Maurizio Boatto, Steve Juniper
Additional line production: Joerg and Alex at Oiffy

Digital Production
Creative Director: Vassilios Alexiou
Producer: Owen Wallis, Dave Curtis, Davide de Santis
Development: James Hunt, Luis Martinez, Andre Anaya, Lucas Motta, Adrian Callaghan
Design: Angelo Wellens, Arnaldo Boico, Tina Borkowski
Editor: Matthew Killip
Music and sound design: Dave Pringle
Post production: Simon Terry
Grading: Post Factory
Testing: Zoonou
Production Assistant: Ilenia Cipollari

The Land of Me on the iPad

Vassilios — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:40:57 +0000

Storytime, from The Land of Me, is now available on the iPad 2 - for free! Here is a little interview by Tom Krcha. And here is the link to the iPad app

Less Rain Feature in .NET

Vassilios — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:35:30 +0000

.NET magazine’s Tom May asked us a few questions about Apps, working with agencies, awards and what sort of people work at less rain. Here is a full transcript of the interview, as well as as page one and two of the article.

Q: Can you tell us a little about the history of Less Rain?

Vassilios Alexiou: I met Lars Eberle in 1996, while we were both students in the Design for Interactive Media MA, at Middlesex University. We worked on the Cyderspace project together (www.lessrain.com/apple), won the 1997 Student D&AD award and then we set up Less Rain. We had seen how far we could take our “designer / programmer” synergy, and we decided to build on that. Then in 1999 we met Carsten Schneider and Thomas Meyer and we took it to the next level, grew the company, opened an office in Berlin and later on one in Tokyo. Nowadays my focus is with the London office, which has built a tremendous team, probably the most versatile Less Rain ever had. The best is ahead of us.

Q: In what ways do the London and Berlin offices work together?

Owen Wallis: We work as independent studios but we often collaborate on projects for common clients, like Red Bull.

Q: You spend a few days per month working on personal projects. What benefits have you seen from this?

Owen Wallis: The personal projects are often geared towards looking into upcoming technologies. It’s good for our team members to keep highly skilled, and often they will produce interesting tech demos that we can take along to client meetings. These can in turn lead to new directions for our work.

Q: What led you to develop Facebook apps and how do you find working in this space?

Owen Wallis: It seemed to be a natural progression for advertising agencies to move the microsite which contained sharing features to Facebook where social sharing is really easily integrated. However the Graph API lets you tap into a lot of the cool Facebook features on external websites so we are seeing a move back to creating immersive fullscreen experiences outside of Facebook.

Q: Do you prefer working with other agencies or having an exclusive relationship with clients?

Owen Wallis: We love working with startup companies to create products. Doing this gives us a wonderful shared sense of ownership. Of course working with agencies at the start of a job to share ideas on the creative and technological output of the project is always great fun too. Ultimately, we prefer working on exciting projects that push us forward, no matter how big or small our involvement is.

Q: What tools and technologies do you tend to prefer?

Vassilios Alexiou: We see ourselves as technology agnostic, however a lot of what we do often comes in the form of Flash and Adobe Air. We have brought this experience into building cross platform apps, which is very exciting. Creatively, we are moving more and more into digital storytelling, working with traditional media like books and film and pushing them to the digital age via interactive and social interfaces.

Q: What’s been your proudest moment?

Vassilios Alexiou: There have been a few – winning a BAFTA, releasing ‘The Land of Me’ and making Site of the Month in FWA with Being Henry.

Q: Your sites win a lot of awards: how has that happened ?

Owen Wallis: We are picky with the jobs that we take on, and we don’t take on too many at once. We have three or four projects on at a time, each lasting around two or three months in production. We like to put our all into the work we produce, we often find ourselves getting emotionally involved in the work. We aim to have a good amount of time at the end of projects to give our work that extra bit of polish at the end.

Q: What sort of people work at Less Rain ?  

Vassilios Alexiou: We like hiring people that have a need to push themselves creatively. Not by long hours but by being inquisitive, thinking laterally, always improving and learning new stuff. Everyone at Less Rain is focused, hardworking and most importantly supportive to each others needs; there is always someone to save you when you are in trouble. And definitely not rock stars, people that are in it only for the fame or money.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

Vassilios Alexiou: We are working on an interactive film, a multinational Facebook campaign, a couple of social games and an iOS children’s app.

Q: Do you have any plans to expand into other cities/countries?

Vassilios Alexiou: Not really, London is the most creative place in the planet.

Q: What’s the most bizarre request you’ve ever had from a client?

Vassilios Alexiou: There was one famous Japanese car manufacturer that asked us to build a game called ‘I make you come’. And another Japanese client that asked us to visit their offices to apologise for the project not running well in one of their low spec computers. And a Greek client that after a 6 month branding exercise drew the logo he wanted on the back on a napkin. All fun and games.

The British Council sends Less Rain to Ghana

Vassilios — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:44:09 +0000

I was recently invited by the British Council to deliver a workshop about digital production in Accra, Ghana. It has been a very interesting experience; i came back with a much clearer idea of the media landscape in this part of the world and met some wonderful people from design and advertising.

Radio and print seem to be the most widespread communication media and they are involved whatever you do in the digital space. In terms of communication technologies, mobile phones have the biggest penetration, but not smart phones. And desktops / laptops are probably never going to really catch on - surely the smartphone will eventually provide all the communication and entertainment one needs.

I found myself talking about WAP sites and how you can use the features of a regular phone to craft a campaign. And about clients - encouraging my audience in the belief that the client is NOT always right and it is in the client’s best interests for us creative folk to challenge all assumptions.

We made up three sample briefs (a website, a Facebook campaign and a mobile app), challenged them, expressed our vision for the problem solving, wrote a short functional and technical specification, talked about resourcing and day rates and budgeted production.

Ah, and took some pictures too.

The Art of FLIGHT

Carsten Schneider — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:40:05 +0000

Coinciding with the “The Art of FLIGHT” movie premiere on September 7 2011, we launched a new online game for Red Bull:

The Art of FLIGHT game powers you to enjoy an adrenalin-fuelled ride, based on snowboarder Travis Rice’s experience of riding several of the most extreme terrains across some of the most remote places on Earth.

Featuring three un-lockable levels with breathtaking landscapes set across the USA, Alaska and Patagonia, Argentina. The Art of FLIGHT game challenges you to use your dexterity and reaction speed to test your online snowboarding skills. Navigating across tricky terrains and performing neat tricks with a delicate balance of speed and accuracy, you too can grab a piece of the movie’s action.

Right now, top scores can win one of 5 custom Lib Tech Art Of FLIGHT snowboards. More info on the competition here - and more prizes to come soon!

‘The Land of Me’ is now available on the Blackberry Playbook

rachel — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:10:24 +0000

The much-loved The Land of Me app is now available on the Blackberry Playbook.

We have released three applications to date, Shape, Size & Colour, Story Time and Songs & Rhymes - click on these links to download them. We have already received some great reviews of the app so far.

Winner of the 2010 BIMA (British Interactive Media Asscociation) award in the Entertainment category, the Land of Me is an enchanting Interactive Storybook of creativity and learning for children aged 2-6.

For analytic information on these apps, click here.

The Riffle Shuffle App is live!

rachel — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:12:12 +0000

Less Rain was approached by Giles & Cecilie Studio to develop an iPhone / iPad App that could assist teachers, parents, youth workers and pupils to create fast, fun and effective workshops for children.

The Riffle Shuffle App was created for Skinners Academy, a North London school that encourages it’s pupils to “have enquiring minds and to seek opportunities to become global citizens”.

The app assists you in making a selection of choices based on the categories of task, method, materials, tool and evaluation. The result is a fun and original workshop description that can be tackled individually or as a group. By using problem solving, co-construction of learning and reflecting on the learning, you can apply your own knowledge and skills to the workshops and tailor it to your needs.

You can buy the app from the Itunes store here.

Being Henry: the digital production ‘making of’

Vassilios — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:04:59 +0000

Computer Arts magazine, as part of their ‘behing the brief’ series, has just published a digital production ‘making of’ feature on Being Henry, the interactive film we recently produced for The Brooklyn Brothers and their client, Land Rover.

Make sure you buy a copy now - the rest of the magazine is superb, with features on The Partners, Mike Joyce and valuable insights on minimalism by Adrian Shaugnessy. In case its not easy to get this issue, here are some quick scans of the article, containing some exclusive images from the digital production process.

And here is a part of the interview in an extended, unedited format, outlining our production challenges:

CA: What is the idea of the project? Who is it aimed at?

LR: ‘Being Henry’ is an interactive film about choices. Each choice the user makes takes Henry on a different journey through a multiple strand story, and each choice also dictates a particular specification of Range Rover’s Evoque model – the results of which you find out when the film has played at the end. It is not aimed at anyone in particular; good content is viral across the board, especially one that packs action, comedy and drama scenes within a few minutes of interaction.

CA: What was it about this project that excited you so much and made you want to get involved?

LR: The most exciting thing was that while everyone agreed that ‘story is king’, the interactive side of the project seemed to be taken equally seriously by all the stakeholders. We were not going to go for tech gimmicks, but rather with a very ‘filmic’ interactive interface. That was exciting for us and we knew we could make a difference.

CA: Exactly what elements of the brief / project was Less Rain responsible for?

LR: We pitched together with Somesuch & Co, our live action-production partners. Nick Gordon, the director, had written an initial treatment that was diving deep into the characters and their relationships. We had a good idea of how the interactive parts would work as an interface so they would interfere with the storytelling process as little as possible. We sat together and worked out how to film the interactive parts and join them with the linear parts in such a way that the final experience felt like one thing.

Less Rain was responsible for technical direction, prototyping all the interactivity to get sign off from all the stakeholders and building the end product using Adobe Flash.

We were also responsible for the design, art direction, 2D and 3D animation of the interfaces surrounding the interactive film itself; loading screens, homepage, the video player as well as the end screens that reveal the car.

By being responsible for the delivery of the end product, we ended up doing a lot of quality control, working with all the post-production houses to ensure everything clicked into place.

CA: Can you talk through the main stages of production on the areas of the project you were responsible for - what was your pipeline from start to finish? Please outline the major challenges you faced on this project and tell us how you overcame them

LR: The first stage was really proof of concept for the main interactive interfaces, the so called ‘decision points’. Somesuch & Co shot a series of tests outside their offices that we then used to build a prototype to work out the interaction, as well as how the final footage should be shot so decision points can be easily and reliably assembled. It was utterly important to work closely with Somesuch and complete the tests before the shoot in L.A. started.

We created a flowchart diagram showing the progression through each storyline as well as the assets needed – this became the master document that guided the editors, post-production facilities as well as our own development team.

After numerous iterations, our prototype started evolving into the skeleton for the whole film; we used dummy assets to create the scaffold that would host 72 different linear videos, so that when the final graded footage would arrive we could deliver the end product within a couple of weeks. During the whole life cycle of the project, we often had to modify this framework overnight to demonstrate a new piece of functionality or get sign off on interactivity. By the end of the project we had reached version 40.

Then scriptwriting and storyboarding started in L.A. The scripts were regularly sent over to us in London to check that things would work interactively. We were present during pre-production and the shoot in L.A., working with the director to make sure all the interactive moments were set and shot in the most appropriate way. During decision points, Henry needed to walk backwards for a few steps, then stay still for half a minute and the walk forwards a few steps towards the other direction. His body needed to be filmed moving from one side of the screen to the other in slow speed, so the individual frames of his movement would not be blurry. Unfortunately after the 2nd day of shooting, Leo Fitzpatrick that played Henry hurt his ankle, which meant he could not walk backwards very well, especially in slow speed - that was a real challenge.

Shooting in L.A. was a very intense time, as there were only 7 days to shoot over half an hours of feature film quality footage. Even if you pin everything down in the storyboard, there are bound to be new things you discover on set; we had very little time to think through how they would affect interactivity and make a call on how to shoot them. Fortunately, the live-action production team was so tuned up that they were able to overcome for lost time and get on camera what was needed.

While the shoot was taking place and still using dummy assets, the London Less Rain team spent most of their time working out an intelligent way of preloading video assets so the user would not experience any stuttering or buffering between sections. We wanted great looking footage, and we wanted it to be available on demand, and those two demands aren’t necessarily compatible. We’d seen other high production interactive films and found delivery slow, so we were determined ours wouldn’t suffer that problem. We tested performance of the videos on content delivery networks, and worked out the best logic for buffering slices of the movie on demand. It was no small task when a decision point in the movie can have four or five potential paths forward and you are trying to ensure playback will begin instantly. We also worked on the video compression settings, making sure we had a good trade-off between quality and download speed. We worked on the ‘video player’ player module, implementing an XML based subtitling system as well as making sure we can switch between low / medium and high resolution without losing any video frames.

By the time we had ‘locked’ picture, our prototype had evolved into a fully blown framework, ready to receive all the proper visual assets. We set up a production pipeline between Primefocus (post production), Silversun (compression) and ourselves and started replacing our dummy content with real one, albeit not with the final sound and colour grading. The final sound was added later in with the help of Soundtree (music) and audio post by Pure Soho, Grand Central and Angeli Sound.

With the ‘real’ content in, it became apparent that we had to deal with a few additional challenges.

Being Henry uses a mixture of JPEG images and F4V videos to assemble a ‘decision point’; while you drag Henry on screen you see the content in JPEG form, but when you release your mouse we switch to F4Vs. We needed to make sure that the transition from one medium to the other was visually as seamless as possible. Furthermore, we needed to restrict the filesize of the JPEGs used in each decision point to under 8 MB to avoid waiting time (videos load much faster than JPEGs), which meant that some decision points needed to be shortened. So we found ourselves talking with Nick Gordon and The Brooklyn Brothers way after editing was finished to decide on the limitations that the ‘medium’ would impose on the ‘content’.

Despite all the preparation, there were a few moments where we had to come up with software techniques to complement what was initially shot. A decision point always starts with Henry being still on screen, waiting for your interaction. The agency felt that Henry was a bit too still during these moments, so we were called to artificially animate the footage to feel like it had been shot with a handheld camera. We loosely held a piece of paper in front of our webcam for a few minutes, recorded all the data and then used it to create a ‘handheld’ effect.

Most of the interaction on Being Henry has to do with clicking and dragging. One of the challenges we had was to prepare the user for it, but without any detailed instructions on screen. To this end, we created an initial language selection interface where user would pick their country of residence by clicking a dragging a horizontal row of country names; this experience was the best introduction on how to use the site.

Another challenge was to keep the user engaged while we were pre-loading the first video of the film. We created a loading scene that disguised itself as narrative content – showing a still frame of Henry sleeping and going from night to day as the clock ticked between 0.00 and 10.00 am. The duration of the loading scene depends on how fast you load the first video of the film; a good connection will take you though the loading scene very fast, with the clock going from 0.00 to 10.00 am in a few seconds.

Once the site had launched we then set about converting the website to be used on a touch screen as part of a global Range Rover Evoque Experience tour, which is produced by Imagination and which takes place across 45 cities worldwide. We needed to redesign the very minimal interface to work on the larger screen and with touch rather than click. Old assumptions for the website had to be rethought and the homepage needed to be much more animated; in an ‘exhibition’ environment the content has to compete much harder for the visitors’ attention. Finally, we built in a custom analytics software so we could track which paths through the film people in different cities took.

Red Bull Flight Lab 2 has lift off

Carsten Schneider — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:40:40 +0000

Now with added hoops! The Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab just got a new game mode. Steer your self-made plane through a series of hoops at increasing speeds, and see how far you can get. Classic mode is still available, if free-flight experimentation is your thing.

Previously:
Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab
Developing Flight Lab

Less Walls at Less Rain

rachel — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:39:24 +0000

Less Rain has been busy doing an In-House project with Artist & Illustrator Renee Melo from Milan, to brighten up our very white studio walls.

Using the Less Rain colour palette of blue’s and yellow as a main colour theme, Renee and our Art Director Arnaldo have come up with a vibrant set of weather-related designs. Here’s a sneak peek so far!

The Land of Me on PlayBook

Luis — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:24:39 +0000

Read the review here.

Less Rain at Propaganda Factory

Vassilios — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:45:37 +0000

Last Friday, Vassilios Alexiou of Less Rain gave a presentation about the importance of synergy between storytelling and interactivity when it comes to good digital content. We used The Land of Me and Being Henry as case studies of pushing a more traditional medium into the digital space. The presentation was part of this year’s Proaganda Factory and featured a stellar cast of speakers, including AKQA’s James Hilton, LBI’s Chris Clarke, Ben Fennel from BBH, Russ Lidstone of EURO RSCG LONDON, Sara Tate of MOTHER and Dean Baker of JWT Entertainment.

The Land Of Me.

Luis — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:10:42 +0000

The Land of Me is on the FWA awards public shortlist here http://www.thefwa.com/submissions/the-land-of-me VOTE for us if you like the project!

The Land of Me - Trailer from The Land of Me on Vimeo.

The Land of Me - Learn with Me from The Land of Me on Vimeo.

Less Rain on FWAWebTV

Vassilios — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:46:02 +0000

Just finished our broadcast on FWAwebTV, where we were answering questions about our work submitted via twitter @lessrainlondon. Was good fun and had a great response - and just before the end we had a mini concert by our art director!

How to be a Puma Social Champion on Facebook

Vassilios — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:25:44 +0000

pumasocialchampion.com

We have just completed a Facebook video competition for our friends at Zenith Optimedia, related to Droga 5’s ‘Puma Social’ campaign.

The competition has launched in 30 countries around the world and is available in 20 languages.

Less Rain has been responsible for adapting the design from the original campaign and developing this Facebook content in Ruby on Rails using Heroku, a cloud ruby platform. We delivered to Zenith a full moderation system for video uploads and a customised analytics system that tracks pretty much everything!

Less Rain Berlin - Flash Developer

Torsten — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:22:22 +0000

We are looking for a versatile Flash developer for full-time employment in our Berlin office with a solid background in object oriented web development and experience in AS3. We are seeking a motivated and confident problem solver with an eye for interaction design and a passion for web technologies.

You will be working in an international team of experienced developers in Berlin and London. Your role involves working closely with our front-end designers and the developer team to implement projects ranging from mini-sites and virals to large scale consumer & corporate websites. You will be working on projects such as:

Requirements

2+ years experience in Flash development
Solid AS3 Skills (OOP)
Experience with Flash integration technologies (Dynamic content, XML, Webservices)
Bandwidth and performance-friendly coding
A feel for good interaction design and usability.
Experience in related technologies and APIs is an advantage (i.e. 3D- and Physics Engines, Facebook API, Java, Ruby on Rails, PHP)
English speakers are welcome

Salary is negotiable dependant on experience.

We’re looking forward to your informative application via e-mail, including a CV and links to recent projects you developed.

Please send your application to bewerbung@lessrain.com

‘Being Henry’ is live!

Vassilios — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:00:30 +0000

www.helloevoque.com/beinghenry

A collaboration between The Brooklyn Brothers, Somesuch & Co and Less Rain, ‘Being Henry’ is an interactive film about choices. Planned from the ground up as an interactive experience, it merges storytelling and interactivity in a seamless and intuitive way.

Less Rain has worked together with director Nick Gordon and Somesuch & Co to prototype all interactivity and have proof of concept before the shoot started. Since then we have been putting ‘Being Henry’ together shot by shot, making sure pre-loading is seamless, fine-tuning all decision points and doing quality control in all deliverables to make sure everyone’s work clicks into place. Watch this space for behind the scenes and more details on interaction design and software development.

Less Rain Credits

Creative Director: Vassilios Alexiou
Head of Production: Owen Wallis
Development Team: Danilo Figueiredo, James Hunt, Luis Martinez, Derek Michael, Marcus Pauli
Art Director: Arnaldo Boico
Production Manager: Rachel Holland

Full Credits

Ad Agency: The Brooklyn Brothers
Client: Range Rover
Director: Nick Gordon
Live Action Production: Somesuch & Co
Digital Production: Somesuch & Co
Music: Soundtree
Post production: Prime Focus
Compression: Silver Sun Audio Post: Pure Soho
Audio Post: Grand Central
Audio Post: Angell Sound

Shooting an interactive story for Range Rover

Vassilios — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:09:50 +0000

Just got back from LA, where The Brooklyn Brothers were shooting an interactive story for Range Rover. The story is produced by Somesuch & Co and directed by Nick Gordon.

Hired by The Brooklyn Brothers, Less Rain is responsible for design, coding and putting the final piece together as an interactive experience.

Snow Interactive Installation

Luis — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:00:49 +0000

Inspired by the RSA Animate video, we decided to have a R&D day where our team could experiment with different technologies. We loved playing with the Xbox Kinect so, as a personal project, just in time for our Christmas Party our developers created an interactive installation called ‘Snow’.

Snow is an immersive and fun experience where snowclouds follow you around on screen and softly drop snowflakes onto your body.

The project was developed in openFrameworks (c++) using addons such as ofxOpenCV for image processing, ofxBox2d for the clouds behaviour, ofxKinect and the libfreenect driver for body tracking. Many thanks to Microsoft for bringing this technology to market, and thanks to the openframeworks and openkinect communities for their support.

The Land of Me wins a BIMA

Vassilios — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:36:18 +0000

It has been a full year of solid development work, so last night’s BIMA in the Media & Entertainment category couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Media & Entertainment category was a tough one, including massive and very successful games like AKQA’s 221B.sh. Big ups to our friends at Made in Me that created such wonderful content - now you can get the whole lot as a wonderfully packaged DVD-Rom !

Visit The Land of Me