Michael Orwell

Arup Fellows: ‘Outside the Box’

Tall buildings engineer Goman Ho shakes a red ballon as he sits at a table with various items in front of him

After producing three successful series with Arup, I was asked to devise a format for short, snappy films with Arup’s Fellows.

The Arup fellowships are almost unique; a life-long title bestowed on the organisation’s world-leading experts, but who remain practitioners and centres of excellence within the company, inspiring and mentoring others within that discipline.

Previous films had been quite lengthy interview-based profiles of the new fellows. The challenge was to find a more concise and compelling format that could quickly communicate the Fellow’s ethos, way of thinking and career highlights in a fun and playful way.

Another challenge was the location of the fellows. In the first filming block alone, we had to work out how to create films with experts in China, Spain, UK & Canada. The films needed to feel part of a series but would be filmed by different teams, in different locations.

I approached the problems logically, one by one;

Making the films feel like a series.

In partnership with the marketing team at Arup, we considered several formats, including a conversation with an AI bot(!) but the simplest and most visual felt like the ‘magic box idea’.

Influenced by the landmark BBC radio series ‘The History of the World in 100 Objects’, we would encapsulate the fellow’s career, approach and famous projects with just three objects. This had the advantage of getting the fellows to talk off the cuff about their passions, without scripting or contrivance.

This approach would give a strong cohesive thread through all films, while being inexpensive and achievable by teams around the world. Using the shot footage in conjunction the Arup brand motion graphics pack; we could assemble films that felt like part of a whole, even though filmed by different people on different continents and about very different disciplines.

Empowering local teams to shoot.

I produced a mood board and detailed shot-list for production teams around the world so a ‘kit of parts’ could be shot. These included room, set-up, lighting, shot sizes, technical details and cutaway compositions.

I wrote nine bespoke questions for each Fellow which would be asked on camera. We used these responses to intercut with the discussion of the objects.

To properly prepare the questions, it was important for us to meet the Fellow and get to know them, their passions and find out more about their proudest work. We undertook further research to understand their contribution to the projects very carefully. I used this research to suggest objects, although the selection of representational items continued to be a two-way discussion with the fellows.

Delivering the films.

Delivery of the rushes was done online using data transfer tools such as Microsoft OneDrive, WeTransfer and Google Drive. The London-based shoots obviously remained on SSD drives, as we were able to shoot these ourselves.

We used Adobe’s Frame.IO as an online review and feedback system, allowing us to circulate multiple films to multiple relevant stakeholders, gathering important feedback and ultimately delivering great films.

For the Out of the Box series, we developed a low-cost, highly flexible production method to create a large number of high-quality, engaging films about Arup’s experts. We’d love to use this method to tell stories about more great minds!

Ephesus Experience Museum

From January to November 2023, I worked with Marshmallow Laser Feast as Lead Producer to deliver this multi-room, permanent digital museum located on the UNESCO site of Ephesus Ancient City, in the Izmir region of Turkey.

The experience, housed in a purpose-built building across three rooms, tells the story of the city from its prehistoric origins, the emergence of the Artemis cult, its glory days as a Roman gateway to Asia, before its Christian conversion and gradual decline.

Video courtesy of Atelier Bruckner/MLF/DEM; Directed by Rana Rmeily; Cinematography by Sandra Ciampone

Rooms 1 & 2 use wraparound projections screens over 8m tall requiring vast animated sequences to be played from multiple media players simultaneously. The creative intent detailed a ‘point-cloud’ layer to be generated over the Houdini created designs which interacted with the architecture and characters, dissolving them into particles as the viewpoint sweeps through the locations.

A woman walks in silhouette in front of projected colourful swirling particles.

Key moments in Room 1 are picked out on a hologauze, as characters ‘dissolve’ in and out, suspended in space in front of the richly designed environments. In room 2, characters are magnified onto the pillar structures, their projections carefully mapped to create ‘viewing prisms’.

In Room 3, we commune with a life-sized copy of the famous Artemis Goddess, with theatrical fog, abstract patterns on LED screens and atmospheric lighting.

A seated woman gazes at the statue of Artemis in silhouette as clouds of fog billow on the floor

My role in the project was to deliver all aspects of the content production, including managing the animation production by two teams of VFX artists located in Istanbul and across Turkey. I also managed the creation of the L-ISA spatialised-audio soundtrack, including novel-recorded compositions, actor’s voiceovers and music licensing. I was the key point of contact for the client throughout the production and liaised on technical fit-out, project management phasing, technical testing, marketing & promotional content.

I managed the post-production phase, conducted in Istanbul (compositing, grading, transcoding and tiling using Fusion & After Effects) and the onsite installation process. I also helped define the pulse rate for the overall experience, including transitions per room and was involved in the sequencing of audio to the wireless headphones, including the creation of multi-language localised versions.

Photos courtesy of DEM Museums & Marshmallow Laser Feast

Arup: Invest in Research

Back in 2020, we were asked to create a new format for telling the story of Arup’s world-changing research. The format needed to be short & snappy, informative, beautiful and bring out the personalities of the people who work for one of the world’s most-trusted design and engineering firms.

The COVID pandemic made filming and interviewing our experts difficult, in addition to finding filming locations, just as the Delta wave hit London. We used a remote interview method where we sent lightweight Zoom H1N field recorders via post to our contributors and then conducted the interview over Microsoft Teams / Google Chat with the contributor’s responses captured in high-fidelity audio. The contributor returned the field recorder in the post using the supplied SAE, and we could begin to build the narrative.

We covered four research topics;

Communicating the uncertainty of sea-level rise
Flying Taxis: Simulating the sound of future cities
Regenerating Towns: The role of lighting
Population Activity Modeller: Simulating cities in lockdown

With each, we interviewed two contributors and created an audio commentary narrative. We then explored how best to illustrate the story by filming the contributors on location.

For the sea-levels film, we shot on location in Hull, where the prototype had been created. We worked with a local drone film production team to capture incredible long shots of the coastline and sweeping views of the sea defences. We commissioned a GFX artist to recreate 3D hexagons to show how the map relates to the physical geography. We also showcased Mike & Steven using the software tool on a laptop in a local café.

Investigating the future world of Flying Taxis was difficult as we had no access to the top secret Urban Mobility prototypes, just like our researchers at Arup. We documented their work simulating the likely sound of the flying vehicles, which is a key concern for implementing the infrastructure in cities.

We filmed on top of Arup’s new 80 Charlotte Street building with views across London, and in the basement using their state-of-the-art 3D immersive demonstration studio. Coupled with a script created from interviews with the contributors, we told the story of the collaboration with NASA and the important work aiming to make Urban Air Mobility a reality in our cities.

We capture our contributors using an immersive simulation in Arup’s ExperienceLab

Arup produced a comprehensive report on how lighting design can reduce deprivation in towns and cities and can stimulate the economy and increase equality. We picked two examples from the report to show the role of lighting in improving urban environments.

The brutalist concrete underpass at the front of Sheffield University had been transformed by lighting design, so we took contributor Richard Morris on location from the gloomy town centre district of Castlegate, to the illuminated university campus.

We also documented the effect of lighting festivals on night economies in winter months by showcasing Battersea Power Station, contrasting with local streets in London’s Nine Elms.

For the final film, we told the story of how a team of researchers used their mathematical modelling skills during lockdown to help London’s transport authorities to predict infection risk in the city.

We recorded interviews with Fred, the mastermind of the project, and Ella, the programme lead, then filmed them in isolation to recreate the lockdown period. We re-created a home office and used projections to immerse Fred in his simulations.

Fred gets ready for his close-up. ‘Hero’ shots introducing the contributors were a key format point

All four films were produced using low-cost methods of film production and remote interview techniques. While this approach was vital during the COVID pandemic, the methods can continue to be harnessed to capture stunning narratives at a fraction of the price of traditional methods.

‘Battle in Style’ T.R.A.P. live show

From June to December 2021, I developed, designed and produced an interactive, animated music concert for Unit9 & BBH China featuring the band T.R.A.P. from the popular ‘Free Fire’ franchise.

I defined the interaction method for the experience and recruited key talent for the production, including choreographer, motion capture facilities and animation house.

The animation was created in Unreal Engine and motion capture of the performers took place at Centroid, part of Pinewood Studios, over two days.

We worked with a music production studio in Los Angeles to create the songs for the concert and Fin Design, an animation studio based in Sydney and Shanghai. The character models were adapted from existing versions and key scenes from a recent Free Fire cinematic were re-used to place the band in some surreal and psychedelic locations.

We devised an interaction method for the YouTube viewers where they could type a number into the live chat to choose between two options. We created a bespoke scraping app that could accurately count instances of numbers within a specified time window. We then vision mixed between different, synchronised versions of the concert, allowing the audience to choose, in real-time, different outcomes for the characters during the concert.

The project was delivered on time and on budget, despite a tight delivery schedule and working across the USA, UK, Poland, China and Australia. The live interactive show was watched by tens of thousands of Free Fire fans and has been watched over half a million times on catch-up.

National Poetry Slam Live

On the 4th of July 2021, I produced a live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, capturing the National Poetry Slam finals, streamed to Facebook’s Live platform. We used the polling function to allow audience members from anywhere in the world to give scores to the performance poets and help decide the 2021 slam poetry champion.

The event was the Royal Albert Hall’s first live audience event in 15 months and was run under strict Covid protocols. The broadcast was an HD multi-camera shoot and the live show reached nearly 33,000 users.

I devised the online show format and ran the broadcast, including deploying ‘voting’ moments for each poet, in addition to delivering online scores to the event compere.

Read about the digital commission at The Space

Watch the final on Facebook (NB. the voting is now out of sync because the video was trimmed after the event – on the night it was perfect!)

Voting elements had to be carefully timed to account for upload latency

National Youth Orchestra

Stories of online collaboration.

Elastic Semantic was asked to create short films documenting how orchestral musicians came together over Christmas using Zoom; creating new musical works inspired by a new genre or compositional method.

We focused on four workshops that used folk music, jazz, loop-based composition and a collaboration with National Youth Dance Company. Each workshop was curated by an expert tutor and lasted three days, culminating in a sharing session for their newly composed work. Our brief was to showcase the musicians’ creativity, resilience and enthusiasm against the backdrop of the oppressive pandemic.

Footage of the Zoom workshops was complemented by self-filmed, remotely-directed interviews with key participants, and snippets from the final performances.

Using NYO brand values, typography and carefully selected footage, we created informative, funny and emotional mini-documentaries, detailing the young musicians’ creative journeys.

Over 160 hours of Zoom footage were scoured to create a ‘paper edit’ for each story, before the video editing began – to distill three days of work for each group into a six minute film.

Watch the films here

Arup Adventures

In April 2020, I was approached by Arup to produce a short-film series. The numerous experts in the organisation wanted to give something back to the kids locked-out of school. They wanted to provide some entertaining, inspiring and fun videos, that might introduce children, 7-12 years old, to concepts of design and engineering in the built environment.

I created a series of formats and helped develop film ideas with the contributors, offering shooting advice and script editing. I put together a post-production team, budget and remote-working process to turn iPhone clips into a professional branded web-series.

We developed a brand look using stop-motion animation of free-hand drawings, complemented by motion-graphics with a high-energy anarchic feel. Together, the team produced eleven films between April and August 2020 which have been watched by thousands of children.

You can watch the films here

Bubble by Kieran Hurley

Working with Theatre Uncut, I developed and produced this experimental and explosive play, working with self-filming actors from the UK, Denmark, Spain and Portugal. I directed the three-week edit, devising the look and managing the post-production of the film. I also edited the trailer and designed an interactive opinion poll element which ran throughout the film’s premiere on Facebook.

Read the review by The Guardian

A Short Ride In An Intelligent Machine

I collaborated with the Charisma.ai platform to create a reflective interactive experience set in 2035. By assessing each participant’s global values, we tuned a conversation with a driverless car to reflect an ideal future for each individual. The experience not only experimented with voice recognition and intelligent dynamic narratives, but demonstrated how personal data can shape your experiences and futures.

“Tell Me Your Secrets”

I conceived, pitched, wrote and produced ‘Tell Me Your Secrets’, an interactive, branching narrative graphic novel, telling a little-known, but crucial story from World War Two, about scientist Sir Henry Tizard. I assembled the production team, which included a videogames music composer, graphic artist, and videogame studio to produce an experience which has been used over 300,000 times. The BBC Taster binaural version was showcased at Sheffield Documentary Festival in 2017, and was translated into Spanish to tour South American immersive galleries.

Arup: The Future of Cities

I produced and directed this series for Arup on the Future of Transport, Water, Workplaces and Energy. Each topic was painstakingly researched and interviews were conducted with over twenty Arup colleagues to construct narratives about the futuristic solutions which are beginning to change the world.

How can I see the Northern Lights in the UK?

‘How can I see the Northern Lights in the UK?’ were a series of short-films, I produced and directed, following the BBC’s Carol Kirkwood as she attempted to track down the aurora borealis in Scotland. The films were watched over half a million times and were also showcased on BBC Breakfast.

Watch on bbc.co.uk

“How did so many Soldiers survive the Trenches?”

‘How did so many soldiers survive the trenches?’ was the launch content for the BBC’s WW1 Centenary digital campaign. I wrote, produced and directed Dan Snow travelling back in time to analyse life in the trenches. The short-films were the most successful of the BBC’s digital campaign.

Starting off on the steps of the Imperial War Museum, clasping a real-life Tommy’s letter home to his parents, Dan tells the story of British soldier , Percy Boswell who did not survive the war in the trenches.

From here, we choose to change the received narrative and explain how almost certain death in trench warfare is a misconception. Most soldiers who fought in the trenches were rarely exposed to deadly violence.

To do this, we took Dan ‘back in time’ using a filming technique of ‘match-framing’ as he approached the camera, jumping from modern-day Lambeth, Percy’s home, to Belgium in the early 20th century, and eventually, the British Trench on the frontline of The Somme.

Farmer’s fields in Suffolk stood in for Belgium and a meticulously-constructed replica trench stood in for the site of Percy’s last stand. We also projected archival footage onto the hay bails of a barn to recreate the atmosphere of the back-trench billets.

The whole shoot took place over a single day, as we travelled from Lambeth, London to near Ipswich. We shot across five locations in London (including the now defunct Elephant & Castle tunnels) and four locations in Ipswich. We used a highly-mobile filming team, using three cameras, with a dedicated camera on legs for the ‘walking match frame’ sequence.

Combined with meticulous archival research and assets from the Imperial War Museum, including Percy Boswell’s letters, plus official statistics; we were able to kick-start the campaign with a myth-busting, surprising tale that set the scene for viewing WWI with brand-new perspectives.

How British video games become a billion-pound industry

I wrote, produced and directed these short films with video games legend, Ian Livingstone, creating a comprehensive history of British video games, and the creation of a massive industry.

View page on bbc.co.uk