Piccadilly Lights - Sir David Attenborough's 100 Years on Planet Earth

We were incredibly honoured to have designed a takeover of Piccadilly Lights for Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday. The project had widespread media coverage and an overwhelming public reaction.

Its creation was the result of deep collaboration with BBC Studios and their wonderful in-house marketing and creative teams, with everyone involved caring so deeply about Sir David and the body of work he continues to make.

The concept was to take viewers to the four corners of our planet through thematic portals which celebrated different habitats of the natural world, and the wonders of Sir David's storytelling. We follow iconic moments of his career, reliving the magic of his broadcasting throughout the decades.

The making of Piccadilly Lights treatments requires a special consideration of the space, pace and viewing angle of a placement. For Sir David's birthday tribute we wanted to take advantage of the unique opportunity to hero natural history footage in the heart of London, featuring special moments of surprise and delight where Sir David and the natural world broke through the frame and into Piccadilly Circus. It was lovely seeing audiences react to this as it played live.

The experience was created by combining archive footage with 3D and 2D animation. This was continually tested to make sure everything would look and feel immersive, with the final video delivered as a distorted picture that can only be viewed correctly from the ground level at Piccadilly Circus. This created the 3D illusion effect of objects coming towards and facing the viewer, rather than looking flat on the side of the billboard.

Thank you to BBC Studios for having us on board for this special project, and thank you Sir David Attenborough.

Credits:

BBC Studios

Vice President, Title Marketing: Monica Hayes
Head of Marketing: Zak Rodgers
Executive Creative Director: Nick Meikle
Creative Director:Martin Duhovic
Head of Creative/Project Lead/Lead Editor: Laura Whittell
Senior Producer: Kate Bush
Production Manager: Grace Redman
Production Coordinator: Chelsey Devine
Picture Researcher: Elena Sollazzo.
Media Manager/Researcher: Farad Painchun

Copperworks Studio

Creative Direction/Design/Motion: Matt Coppolaro
Design/Motion: Savannah-Wells Wiegand
Editor: Francis Newall

Special thanks to the teams at Ocean Outdoor UK and Landsec for their support, filming and operational assistance. Massive thank you to David Tait for his input and advice.