Written by Kianna Best on Nov 20, 2024. Posted in Production News

BBC gets back to craft with Things We Love campaign

With a roll out of heart warming and homely conversations between a range of animals, the BBC have enlisted the skilled craftsmanship of stop motion creators at Aardman Animations for their latest campaign. Titled Things We Love, the campaign features the voices of real life BBC audience members in a series of unscripted conversations about what they love to watch on the BBC. Directed by Rich Webber, the campaign consists of three 30 second films.

Whilst the talking animals pull away from reality, just a bit, there is something about the gathering of foxes camping out by the bins or the father son canine duo talking about their favourite BBC TV shows that feels oddly familiar. For the new campaign, 50 people ranging from the ages of seven to 80 were interviewed through the BBC’s audience engagement programme which interviews hundreds of people from across the UK every year. The familiarity does not end at the relatable conversations being had. Aardman animations, the creatives at the helm of creating the characters are most well known for their hand in the character creation for household favorites such as Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run and Morph.

“We have a long standing relationship with Aardman, and as ever their brilliantly distinctive creative flair is stamped all over these charming films," commented Charlotte Moore, BBC Chief Content Officer. "I think Aardman have perfectly captured the essence of the affection we know audiences across the UK feel for our programmes, and I hope they make everyone smile.”

“Aardman is very proud of our long-standing relationship with the BBC, so, we were delighted to revive our much-loved Creature Comforts’ format for its Things We Love campaign," added Sarah Cox, Chief Creative Director at Aardman. "The magic and joy of this type of animation is that all the dialogue is unscripted and selected from real conversations with members of the public from across the UK – and that’s where so much of the warmth and the humour and the storytelling comes from. The interviews inspire the Claymation animal character scenarios. We hope that viewers love these new creatures as much as we do.”

In a behind the scenes look, viewers were taking into the intricate work flow of the director Webber and the animators at hand, from the drawn concepts for scenes as well as matching the animal characters to their voices, all the way to selecting the correct mouth shape that would provide proper movement and expression. Each film took about 14 days to complete, with roughly two seconds of animation being produced each day. The creativity expands all throughout the scene. Although the characters possess a cartoon like demeanour, the worlds being crafted are formed to reflect the lives of the viewers.

In a world where technology is developing at a fast pace, craft has never held such a significant value than now. Whilst artificial intelligence based tools initially posed a threat to the integrity of hand crafted creative practices, it has in fact pushed many back to the roots of such, tapping into more manually driven skills. Hear more about the reawakening of the classic creative ways at FOCUS London 2024 during the Craft Masters In Brief session with Molinaire’s Zoe Freed and the Finch factor and Also Known As founder and co-founder Kerrie Finch. Register HERE for your complimentary delegate badge.

Images courtesy of BBC