Pet Shop Boys - Interactive Film

The whole piece was a protest about the erosion of civil liberties, especially the introduction of ID cards in the UK. Our concept was to mirror and enhance the pet shop boys use of bar codes in their live performance. We chose to use qr-codes, which are bar codes created to be read by camera phones, which contain links through to websites.

This approach allowed us to mix the indelible nature of film with the flexible qualities of the web. We subliminally integrated over one hundred of these links into the promo.

As it was a web only release we knew that viewers would be able to navigate the film frame by frame. The embedded links were to existing web content that informed about current issues surrounding civil liberties, as well as specific content created by the likes of No2ID and Mark Thomas where people could get involved in specific campaigns.

We made two versions of the video. The first is a low resolution black and white version based on the aesthetic of the qr code. This version was made for small screen environments. To create a more cinematic version we printed out the black and white video and then shot it stop frame in relevant locations.

Reach/Effectiveness of campaign

Over 1,000 0000 views. Mentioned in over 600 blogs/websites. Two page spread in The Sun UK with a distribution of 8,000 000 readers daily and featured in many other national newspapers and industry magazines. Front of Apple Quicktime for several weeks, receiving 6,000 unique users a day.

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