The show, which finished its Passover week run on Easter Sunday, was filmed on location in Morocco and edited in London, but its eye-catching online presence was entirely made in Manchester.

Despite keeping a relatively low profile within the regional digital industry, BBC Manchester has a ‘multiplatform’ team with huge strength in depth and a headcount of some 24 members of staff.

The team has so far been involved in creating the high profile websites for Dragons' Den, Brainbox Challenge, The Restaurant, Dance X (a RTS 2007 award winner), Last Man Standing, Street Doctor, Comedy Map of Britain, A Question of Sport and Mastermind.

They are now set to work on the online outings for The Last Tycoon, Choir Wars and Liverpool 08.

However, it is The Passion that has arguably been the team’s most challenging and distinctive brief to date – accompanying a major international TV ‘event’ and incorporating the first ever use of the BBC’s new Embedded Media Player, or EMP.

A spokesperson for the design team and a member of the religion and ethics (R&E) department took time out to answer How-Do’s questions on how they injected a new lease of online life into the age old story of Jesus Christ’s last week on our mortal coil.

Passion play: the first outing for EMP

“Six, including two religion web assistants.”

What were the particular challenges of working on this project and what were the opportunities it afforded you?

R&E: “The biggest challenge was the very tight production schedule. The site was commissioned only 6 weeks before the broadcast of the first episode.

“We had to create a design, write new content, commission articles, build the site and then populate it.

“But at the same time we had a great opportunity to use a number of new features that were still in BBC development at the time the project began and we gambled on them being ready by the time the site launched. Luckily all went according to plan.

“The Passion microsite was the first to use the BBC's embedded media player (EMP) and one of the first sites to use the new page layouts.

“The site also made use of a new commenting system that allows users to post their reviews or comments on content pages.

“We also used an opensource interactive timeline (using mainly JavaScript rather than Flash) that required quite a lot development work to make it look part of the site and to link it in with a BBC database.

“For the R&E content team it was the biggest project we have done yet and the first one working with a Manchester based technical team.

“Until now, all our projects have been done with London based technical resources, which makes the process much harder. Having one team in the same building enabled us to create very effective results and in a short time.

“We interviewed many of the actors but it was the interviews with the producer, Nigel Stafford-Clark and writer Frank Deasy that gave us a great opportunity to create valuable video content.

BBC Manchester leading the way

Content and design team: “The Passion website posed quite a few challenges.

“It is one of the very first sites to use the BBC's new page layout infrastructure and guidelines.

“The BBC is slowly updating and moving its sites to comply with what has been coined the ‘Visual Language’ (VL) for .co.uk websites, which is essentially a grid-system with associated visual guidelines for content.

“The challenge for the designer was to design something that was visually stunning but adhered to the VL Guidelines.

“The challenge for the CSD was to build that design ensuring accuracy to the VL in all the major supported browsers, whilst being accessible and whilst also adhering to the other BBC standards and guidelines for a .co.uk website.

“As for opportunities there were quite a few: the new VL gave the designer a bigger canvas to create something with more impact, the new page infrastructure (known as Barlesque) gave the CSD more freedom to build the design more accurately using more up-to-date web patterns and techniques.

“It also meant that the content producers were less restricted by some of the technical limitations of the old BBC sites.

“There were lots of new technologies and we were able to use as part of this site to set it apart from the rest.

“It's both exciting and terrifying to have the opportunity to work on something that's so important to so many people.

“We wanted to be contemporary, and had interesting discussions about trying to ditch those tired religious website clichés to engage a broader audience.”

An old story brought to life online

Content and design team: “The main thing that set this site apart from anything else we have produced is that The Passion is a drama.

“We haven't done many drama sites before, which meant things like the photography we were given was excellent. This made the design process easier.

“The amount of video content of the site also added to the depth of the online content.

“We were also working with an excellent team of content producers who had a clear idea of what direction the site design and build needed to go in and placed a lot of trust in the designers and csd's to produce something we all were happy with.

“There's a really tight integration with the TV programme, yet they both stand on their own as independent resources about the subject.

“We know a lot went into the production of the show, and we wanted the site to reflect that investment in quality.

“It really brings it to life, and empowers our service users to choose how and when they want to access the production.

"I'm confident we've produced a great resource that will live on long after the series has finished.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thepassion/

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