Making a website in the real world

Oct 3 2011

Whilst on a shoot in Guildford last weekend I was contacted by With Associates asking if I was available for a collaboration. I’ve been following their work for a while after seeing it via my friend Graham who used to work with one of the partners. With Associates are a digital agency and are very much at the top of their game. For 2011 they have been redesigning their site from scratch once a month. The idea of this being that it acts as a test bed for new ideas, as well as representing the pace at which things move at in the digital world. Amazing! So where do I come in… well they wanted to re-create their website in the real world as a way of describing that everything they do is grounded here.

The idea was to use a kind of reverse Trompe-l’œil effect to play with perspective to create this months website in 3D space but represented as a flat element to be displayed online. I was instantly intrigued by the idea and went along to be briefed by Mathew & Lawrence. We discussed lots of ideas and even ways of making it more complex and adding “Easter Eggs” for people who spent time on the page. They had also collected a series of images which formed the inspiration for the site.

We all came back on Sat with an empty studio to start at 9am. Lighting had arrived and I brought all my camera kit including laptop for the event. Additional cameras were on hand for recording the process and maybe even a kind of timelapse film. Starting to set it up we soon realised the staggering enormity of the task ahead. We started playing with lighting agreeing views and then scoping out how we were going to fix it. We started off by doing a number of shots then overlaying them into the mock-up that they had made in Photoshop.

Once we had the view set we then started working out the perspective and where the main board would go. We then began taping out in masking tape on the floor the edges of the frame, then adding more for the box at the bottom which would become the area for credits. It was kind of mind bending to see the lines fanning out on the floor which became entirely vertical in the frame.

Gradually the hung elements started to go in one by one after setting height and depth in the image as well as lining up the edges. We had to allow for adjustment later.

This continued for sometime. Unfortunately the idea of using the beautiful light of the studio was missed as it was starting to get dark. We had a huge Arri studio light so continued working to see what we would get. The main pieces all went in and it finally started coming together.

It was a strange sense of seeing it all work at last. The last things to go on were the red buttons which would form the ‘modals’ (a term that’s new to me). A user would click on the red buttons to then see the information about that client or project represented. We made all of the red badges / buttons from scratch then positioned them accurately from the fishing wire.

Final thing was the shot! Two horizontal shots with a shift lens which were then stitched together in Photoshop after some basic post in Lightroom. It worked! Unbelievable. A much longer day than expected but entirely rewarding. Lots of challenges, dead ends, improvisation and problem solving between the three of us. Also some amazing music on the studio Spotify station. That is probably the most work I’ve ever put into a single shot.

So here it is. Have a look and click on the buttons! withassociates.com/october

The little video below describes just how deep the image is in 3D.