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The Little Black Book for the Advertising Community
0 Feb. 27, 2013, 5:57 p.m. by Bigballs Films
Laura Swinton catches up with a production company with digital cojones
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> More News Email Back in 2006, sensing that the days of hundred-grand music video shoots with fleets of helicopters on standby were going the way of the gold-plated pension, a group of directors got together to do something a bit different. MySpace was cresting, launching the first wave of online popstars, like Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys. There was this thing called ‘Youtube’ which had been around for a year, and seemed kind of interesting. Meanwhile MTV was drifting further from its anarchic, promo-loving roots – devoting increasing stretches of airtime to these really, really bad not-quite-documentaries which claimed to be a slice of reality. In this crucible of possibility and uncertainty, Bigballs was formed. A couple of years later I met the boys: Luke Taylor, Gavin Rowe, Neil Gordon and Chris Kelly were operating out of a tiny two-desk office in London’s Soho. Crowded and messy, we decided to ditch the office and decamp to their ‘meeting room’ – the pub over the road. I had come to talk to them about the success of their pioneering online drama Kate Modern, which had won them awards, unprecedented column inches in the mainstream press and upwards of 1.5 million viewers a week. They were just starting to work with brands like Nokia on cross platform storytelling – already light years ahead of the humble viral. Anyway, that was then. They were interesting. A little niche perhaps, but I wished them well. Fast forward to Autumn 2012 and the next time I traipse over to visit them and the transformation renders the company almost unrecognisable. They’re bigger, yes. And ballsier, certainly. They’re also bursting at the seams with 108 employees spread across two offices in Farringdon (which has grown to three by my next visit in early 2013). There’s a spin-off sister company called We R Interactive. They’re working with YouTube to curate custom channels. In the place of experimental webisodic drama, they’re creating AppStore-topping games and Gold Lion-winning platforms. Impressive though the growth spurt has been, it hasn’t been without its challenges. A bunch of mates who like making stuff is one thing, but managing two sister companies of over 100 employees at three different locations is quite another. However, the inevitable teething issues have been ameliorated by having a very clear idea of the make-up of an ideal Bigballer. The original foursome were bonded together by a love of surfing and a ‘why not?’ outlook – and that alchemical combination of being disarmingly laidback and intensely inquisitive permeates the company. “Growing so astronomically in the space of three years comes with its difficulties. However, it's made all the easier by having and taking on people that share the same pioneering and innovating philosophy that we do," explains Executive Producer Ross Whittow-Williams, who started working with Bigballs just after I converted by Web2PDFConvert.com
met the crew in 2008. He was joined two years later by CEO Tom Thirwall. "Change is in our DNA and is what drives us on. Once you say you are ahead of the curve - you have to stay there.” What happened? While other production companies treated the web as a paddling pool for baby directors to cut their teeth on cheap virals or an expansive canvas for the grown-ups to create something bigger than the same old 60-second spots, Bigballs saw things otherwise. Crafting content – solid, engaging content – was, of course, important. But they also understood that the Internet was more than simply a dumping ground for films. To have any kind of longevity, they’d have to invest time in truly understanding these channels.
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“Digital to us is different,” explains Whittow-Williams. “It's not just creating a service; it's being responsive to an ever changing media landscape. If we see a new platform we dive straight in and explore it - Buying Back the Bombs [a Kickstarter-funded documentary] is a great example of this.”
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And that knowledge and roll-yer-sleeves-up mentality has given the team the confidence to create and control their own online platforms. I Am Playr, for example, is the football-mad social game that scored a Gold at Cannes. Though the award was given for the way in which the Nike brand was woven into the game experience, the project was not created for Nike. We R Interactive own the game, and brands, such as Alfa Romeo and Red Bull, can work with the team to integrate themselves into the experience. “With I Am Playr, there are infinite possibilities. It’s built around the premise that we tell stories,” explains Whittow-Williams. Similarly Bigballs are working with YouTube to create content for and manage bespoke channels – YouTube Originals. The highlight of the collaboration so far has been Copa90, Europe’s biggest YouTube commission.
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But while the Bigballs and We R team have been undeniably busy, much like Jeff Bridges in Tron, they’ve been immersed in the online environment. It’s only recently, since they’ve established themselves as credible partners to the likes of Google and YouTube, that they’ve turned their attention to the more traditional concerns of your standard production company. Over the past few months they’ve put together a roster of commercials directors, driven partly by the requirements of their one-stop studio model, but also a desire to plug back into the advertising mainframe. That's not to say that Gav, Luke and the rest of their directors haven't been building up a reel of lovingly shot work - it's just that they've just got round to shouting about it now. There’s a well-worn path that has seen production companies establish a roster of advertising and music video directors before turning to online content creation (with varying degrees of success) and, if lucky, perhaps eventually dipping toes into app development, web design and gaming. Bigballs’ journey has been just the opposite. But every step has been part of a carefully thought out strategy. “We knew from our beginnings that production was an already mature industry,” explains WhittowWilliams. “We set out to establish a point of difference. We now have that point of difference and our commercial roster was a reaction to two things. We found that we were in increasing demand for agencies to work on their commercial projects, so it made sense to offer it as a service. It also helped us open the doors for new talent to work with us.” With the launch of the commercial roster and the success of their most recent game, Lyroke (which was the most popular free music game on the AppStore and featured in the recent Brit Awards), 2013 has been pretty packed. The year ahead looks set to be just as busy as the team concentrates on establishing that ‘studio’ model, as well expanding their network of channels and working on a yet to be announced big coproduction with a major film producer. Contemplating the hefty workload ahead of them and the clear-eyed combination of ambition and insight, you remember just how far the team has come in a few short years. And that, inevitably, gets me thinking about the joyfully silly name that has stuck with them the whole way. When I first wrote about them, they were a punchy collective working on ground-breaking, successful projects in what was then a pretty niche area. Bigballs reflected who they were. Now they’re all grown up and collaborating with the major players of the digital arena. Has that name been a help or a hindrance? “Firstly, people do tend to remember it,” muses Whittow-Williams. “However, more importantly it drives us on. You can't call yourself Bigballs and do things half-heartedly. We feel like we constantly have to earn the right to use a name like that and it is motivation in itself.”
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