Old Boys Network

special feature 6 2 big balls

Speedy broadband connections have ushered in a new era of exclusively online series. Even the technophobic are being lured to their dusty PCs by strong storylines.

Laura Swinton meets with the upstarts who saw it coming a long, long time ago...

old boys net work There was a time, believe it or not, back in the dawn of history when the internet came in 56k dial-up modems and Wikipedia was little more than a nugget of an idea in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah, we couldn’t quite believe it either, but we consulted the village elders, and it’s true. Big Balls can barely remember the days before t’internet, either. But they’ve left that era so far behind, it’s about as relevant to their work as the spinning jenny.

Big Balls are a directing collective and production company that are surfing

were picked up by Bullet, and later Partizan. But the pair decided to move away from Partizan because, thanks to growing rosters and shrinking budgets, the world of music videos wasn’t giving them the opportunity to get out and shoot as frequently as they would have liked. They joined forces with Taylor’s childhood friend Kelly, and Gordon, who had been working his

the surging wave of online branded content. Luke Taylor, Gavin Rowe, Neil

way up through the film industry since the age of 17.

Gordon and Chris Kelly got digital back in 2006 when they started making

Breaking off to form their own directing quartet was a risky move. “But it

video podcasts for artists such as Mark Ronson, Calvin Harris and Lupe Fiasco.

turned out well because of the explosion of digital media,” explains Rowe.

Now they’re leading the way in branded online drama, thanks to the success of

“Suddenly it was a lot easier to film, cameras were a lot better and you could

flagship Bebo drama Kate Modern and their new campaign for Nokia.

edit on your computer rather than having to hire an Avid suite. We went back

Taylor and Rowe met at university, and directed their first promo after drunkenly approaching a newly-reformed Dodgy at their summer ball. They

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to grass roots, redefining our voice, rediscovering what our style was.“ Even if the name Big Balls isn’t immediately familiar, chances are you’ve

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big balls 6 3 special feature

college. It was like you had to be the runner and the tea boy and the cameraman and the director and the production assistant. It was so hands on.”

The unforeseen success of Kate Modern has led to bigger projects as brands become more keen to attach themselves to quality online content.

For the last few weeks, the boys have been playing out their biggest job to date. Somebody Else’s Phone for Nokia was created through Wieden + Kennedy London in collaboration with production house Academy Films. It allows an audience to follow six weeks in the lives of three very different characters by going through videos, texts and photos on their phones. This involved a hefty 150 pages of script per character.

While Kate Modern was a local tale, Somebody Else’s Phone crosses three continents and has been translated into 10 different languages.

Working on a global campaign with a huge brand like Nokia gave Big Balls the chance to mature into the medium, balancing the line between engaging drama and toeing the corporate line.

“There were definitley some learning curves working on an international brand like Nokia,” says Rowe. “You have to adhere to company policy, for example. You’re writing a story about twentysomethings, you have nude photos, misogynistic LA men. But at the end of the day you can’t say fuck, cunt, shit, wank, bollocks. We had a big discussion about the word willy.”

In between shooting the Nokia job, Big Balls ended up landing a very different sort of brief heard of their work. The boys directed and helped develop Kate Modern, a blockbusting online drama for social networking site Bebo. A friend in LA put them in touch with Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, the brains behind pioneering YouTube drama Lonelygirl15, and they decided to collaborate on the project that would eventually put them on the map. The supernatural drama, shot from the points of view of the different characters, pulled in 1.5 million viewers every week, grabbed two BAFTA nominations and won a Webby award and a Broadcast Press Guild award.

from Jacob’s Creek and the Mail On Sunday. Katie & Co is a series that is updated every Sunday on the Mail’s website. During the week viewers can read Katie’s emails or read reviews supposedly written by the characters in the papers. While Nokia had the yoof market squarely in its sites, Katie & Co was aimed at an older generation that’s becoming decreasingly technophobic. “It’s the first of its kind – an internet drama that’s aimed at an older audience,” explains Gordon, before adding: “My mum is enjoying it.”

Next up for the team is I Love Chieftown, a MySpace project about a

“None of us really knew what was going on there,” says Rowe of the series’

fictitious band. And they’re eagerly watching as more production companies

success. “It was one of these little passion projects. You have a camera, you

and agencies start looking to use online content and branded entertainment.

go down and meet four or five actors and you get the script which has more

Taylor believes that their experience puts them in a strong position. “We’ve

or less been developed just that day. It was like going back to

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already made the mistakes and learned from them,” he says.

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