WORK UPDATES

JOB dʒɒb (noun) 1. a paid position of regular employment. 2. a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.

Prizes, Prizes.

Aside | | Paul Greer

This week we received the official nomination certificates for the BAFTA for Digital Creativity.

Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the noise of this BAFTA nomination certificate. https://instagram.com/p/2tKYegHy_J/
Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the noise of this BAFTA nomination certificate. https://instagram.com/p/2tKYegHy_J/

This was for the War of Words VR app that was made by the team at BDH from the some of the animations we made for the War Of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme documentary I have talked about extensively here.

As far as I know the App is still available on iTunes and the Play store.

This also reminds me that we picked up two West of England RTS awards recently (during my “blog break”). One for Best Graphics for War of Words and the other for Best Short Animation for The Somme In Seven Poems.  It was quite an evening as I wasn’t really sure we’d win anything, let alone two, and beating such greats as Arthur Cox and Aardman Animations.

So I had to do two speeches, which was interesting for everyone I think. Hopefully I kept it short and mumbly, because I actually remember nothing about being on stage except a sea of expectant faces and the overwhelming urge to run.

Here’s some pictures of us collecting and yes that’s me at the mic:

 

Quite an evening. Felt very lucky and blessed that what we worked so hard on was recognised in such a way.

We totally won 2 @RTS_Bristol awards for #WarOfWords and #SevenPoems. Amazing times. Very humbled. (at Bristol Old Vic) https://instagram.com/p/z_BZNfHy3V/
We totally won 2 @RTS_Bristol awards for #WarOfWords and #SevenPoems. Amazing times. Very humbled. (at Bristol Old Vic) https://instagram.com/p/z_BZNfHy3V/

That’s the end of the trumpets.

In other news I have fired up the old Facebook page to stream sketches and the like, because, even though I am a grown up I still have a problem zapping art in front of people who have friended me there, so it’s a separate place for that. Please follow along if you like Facebook.

I’m also trying to restart the daily sketching project, now the dust has settled, but it’s less “daily” more “regular”, I’m still keeping the 365 count as I would like to have some closure on that. They go on Instagram then get sent everywhere else. So probably best not follow me in more than one place because you’ll get repeats and no-one deserves that.

Until next time.

War of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme – Broadcast Scrapbook

| Paul Greer

I wanted to write some stuff about this programme sooner, but the events previously documented in this blog (which all began on the afternoon of broadcast) meant it’s taken me some time to take stock and collect all the things that happened as a result of the show going out.

As I have mentioned before, “War of Words: The Soldier Poets of the Somme” was a 90 minute BBC Arts documentary, directed by Sebastian Barfield that sought to reconnect the history and the landscape of the notorious 1916 Battle of the Somme with the extraordinary poetry and literature that it inspired. At BDH we created content graphics to help illustrate the history and also animations (which I was involved with) to accompany the poetry. We had a great team on the job, and working on it was a moving and wonderful experience.

This post is partly a scrapbook for my purposes to collect some of the information, posts and reactions that went out on social media, in a Storify style, so I might be updating it as and when I come across more of them. Also be warned, this post is mostly embeds from Twitter, so if you are reading this on anything else that the actual webpage they might format weirdly.

You can see a clip from the show via the BBC here, this part concerns the removal of lice eggs from clothing and Isaac Rosenberg’s Louse Hunting.

There was a preview screening of the programme at the Watershed on the 5th November. Afterwards Peter Barton, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Sebastian Barfield, Jeremy Banning and Richard Van Emden discussed the programme, the poets and how they shaped the way people remember the Great War. That discussion is available to hear on Soundcloud here:(direct link).

Sebastien Barfield wrote some words on the BBC blog about the show.

This is a link to a discussion of the programme on Military History Online, quite fascinating in itself.

“The Somme In Seven Poems” was a short that BDH produced which anthologised just the poetry animations themselves. That went onto the iPlayer a week before the broadcast, and got some lovely responses from people, especially on Remembrance Day.

Here is a trailer BDH produced for the short.

Obviously in the modern age, people can watch the show at anytime once it goes on the iPlayer so these tweets are not really in chronological order. I just went through the hashtags and search options retrospectively and grabbed some of the most interesting ones.

https://twitter.com/FWWMiscellany/status/533763935141638145

https://twitter.com/ArcanePub/status/535732918468235264

The whole programme has been taken down from the iPlayer now but I have heard bits are on YouTube somewhere, you’ll have to search for that yourself, if you feel so inclined.

BDH have produce a VR app that contains the animation for The Kiss one of the poems featured on the show. This works on Google Cardboard and is available on Google Play and iTunes.

 

 

 

Revealing the Hidden Kingdoms.

Aside | | Paul Greer

At BDH we have been intensely working on the compositing and enhancement for the new BBC wildlife series Hidden Kingdoms, which starts tonight at 8pm on BBC 1.

This was a very much more “enhanced” version of Natural History, telling many stories that would go unexplored in more “traditional” forms, this has raised a certain amount of media debate already.