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)
Yes, so we’ve been working on this thing a lot. It’s on the telly soon.
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.
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.
Here’s another thing.
I made that there globe in this trailer for the new BBC series Africa, coming your way soon.
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.
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?
Very proud to say I am a small part of the awesomeness that is the BDH graphics team on the BBC’s Prof. Brian Cox, doe-eyed-lens-flare-fest, “Wonders of the Universe”.
I made particular contributions to star surfaces and coronal loops.
Here is an edit of all the graphics we produced for the series, with a soundtrack by Timo Baker.
This comes with a caution, as face melting may occur.
EDIT: Looks like they had to take the edit down, but you can still see the trailer for the show here.
Paul Greer 