Yes, so we’ve been working on this thing a lot. It’s on the telly soon.
WORK UPDATES
JOB dʒɒb (noun) 1. a paid position of regular employment. 2. a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.
Guess what I’m up to.
Lisiecki: From Every Angle
This week saw the very first Bristol Proms get underway and on Monday night BDH collaborated with the Bristol Old Vic, the Watershed and a fantastic team of technicians to showcase the extraordinary Jan Lisieki playing Chopin’s Etudes.
Lisieki performed on the stage of the Old Vic surrounded by cameras and scanning equipment, whilst a team of film makers technicians and artists weaved a live visual interpretation of the event, including CGI (by me), scanned versions of Jan and multiple camera angles, which was beamed over to the Watershed as a unique live experience to be enjoyed by a clapping and cheering crowd.
It was a great experience working on a live event with such a great crew, many lessons were learned and hopefully we can do more in the future, there is so much to explore with the live generation of 3D animation and it’s interaction with a real time event.
Here’s some grabs from the days leading up to the concert:
An edited and finessed version of the Watershed feed will be shown on Saturday night on More4 as part of their Piano Night.
Rise Of The Continents
Rise Of The Continents, which we did extensive work for at BDH, is currently airing at 9pm on BBC2 on Sundays. If you are in the UK you can catch up with the whole series here on the iPlayer.
There is also some words on the process on the BBC website:
“The first stop was to understand and interpret the geological data. The production team at the BBC approached Professor Christopher Scotese, a leading expert in paleogeology from the University of Texas and creator of the Paleomap Project. This virtual reconstruction is a thirty year undertaking which aims to map the changing distribution of land and sea. By combining data from various fields of earth science, he mapped the movement and formation of our continents over the last billion years.
With Professor Scotese acting as a scientific advisor to the programme, the graphics team were able to use the geological data relating to land and plate tectonics to build the graphics. By subsequently playing with colour, size and special lens effects, the team created bold CGI sequences that would help clearly explain how the Earth works.”
Read more here.
Rise Of The Continents (Preview)
Those of you who aren’t Bots and actually pay attention to me on here might already know that for my actual job I make CGI for Television at BDH in Bristol.
Recently we worked on a landmark series for the BBC called Rise Of the Contintents, this involved visualising the unimaginable changes that have taken place on the Earth over hundreds of millions of years based data generated by paleogeologists and satellite scanning.
This is a preview of show featuring the presenter Iain Stewart (Professor of Geoscience Communication at Plymouth University), leaping, fully clothed, into the top of the Victoria Falls, free as a lamb in springtime. This sequence contains no, I repeat no, CGI.
The series has already aired in the States and here is a link a trailer for that version, which does contain some of the work we did.
The series begins in the UK at 9pm, Sunday 9th June. (ie tomorrow).
As you were.
Africa
Here’s another thing.
I made that there globe in this trailer for the new BBC series Africa, coming your way soon.
Wonders Of Life
At BDH we made the graphics for this new series from Prof Brian Cox. It features a specially updated version of the Galaxy Song by Eric Idle, pretty much outlining the 4 billion year history of life in three and a half minutes.
via MovieBarcode
reblogging moviebarcode:
Some of my globes in there somewhere.
See that very dark lower third about half way through. That’s one.
BAFTA nomination for #WondersOfTheUniverse
OK, I’ve had a cup of tea and a slice of cake so I’m slightly calmer now, I’ll explain a bit more fully:
I work at BDH making CGI for television, which can involve making all sorts of things, from visualizing thought to animating bouncing sex toys.
Last year we were lucky enough to work on a miraculous programme called “Wonders of the Universe“, hosted by Professor Brian Cox, and produced by the BBC.
For someone who grew up on Carl Sagan, Star Trek and Doctor Who it was a very special experience for me personally.
I was largely responsible for star surfaces, coronal loops and solar flares.
So now the work we did has been nominated for a Visual Effects award at the Television Craft BAFTAs, alongside Great Expectations, Inside the Human Body, and… DOCTOR WHO.
So today couldn’t really get more awesome.
(There is 15 minute edit of just the work we did here, with music by Timo Baker (full screen, head phones on please)):
and a lovely playlist of clips from the actual series here:
in case you are unfamiliar with it’s magic.
Did I mention I just had cake?
Paul Greer 