When you surf somewhere, whether the waves are good or bad, you connect with the ocean in a special way. You are immersed in it, harnessing its power, developing respect, sharing time and energy with it. Only then can you discover its secrets and stories, like getting to know a new friend.
– Director and Producer Renee Godfrey on making the final episode of Atlantic, which went out tonight. Now available on the iPlayer.
Last night was the BBC2 premier of the first episode of Atlantic. At BDH we had the honour of providing some graphics for this fantastic eye feast. Now available on the iPlayer I’m sure.
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/535732918468235264The 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.
You’ve got until Monday 12pm to catch “The Somme in Seven Poems” (12 mins), and 10 days from today to catch the full length documentary “War of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme”.
I’ll write a more comprehensive post about this project and how it went down at a later date, but due to recent events this is about as much as I can manage at the moment.
Take care.
Here is a short trailer for the animations we made for the forthcoming documentary War of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme. In remembrance of those lost.
There is a lot of us in this.
Will let you know when more is available.
Have a beautiful evening.
x
(T)
The “big animation project” we were working on earlier in the year is being previewed at the Watershed on the 5th November.
The programme explores the stories of the writer soldiers who were present at the Battle of the Somme and at BDH we produced 10 animations illustrating, with respect, the poetry the soldiers produced, which are embedded in the documentary.
The event is free, but you do have to register here.
Maybe see you there.
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.
Yes, so we’ve been working on this thing a lot. It’s on the telly soon.
Paul Greer 