Blue Peter
Concept, Design and Post Production
To come up with a look and title sequence that would move the programme forward. Blue Peter has been a part of the BBC for over 50 years and is the longest running children’s show in the world. However they wanted to move the brand of the show forward and become more relevant to their viewers, those aged 6 to 13. We also had to convey the topics of the show within the 20 seconds we had: Gadgets, Sport, Music, Games, Adventure, Animals.
Tech, apps, sport, instruments and gadgets were the things we wanted to show in our titles, as well as the presenters Barney and Helen. To keep it interesting we didn’t want them handling actual devices, we wanted to create them in a futuristic manner.
We came up with a pitch whereby the presenters would have to handle 3D objects that we would superimpose onto the shots. This was put to the BBC and they consulted focus groups of children. They identified with this idea which meant we had to come up with a technique to realise the idea.
Jonny successfully pitched for the new Blue Peter titles, and we liked the ideas behind the pitch and how he'd understood what we wanted. He proposed a very high-tech look, but he delivered everything on time, on budget, and, more importantly, it looked as glossy as he said it would. - Tim Levell: Editor Blue Peter
Once storyboarded and approved we put this to music prior to the shoot. This ensured the short time we had with Barney and Helen would be efficient and productive. It was then a case of shooting Barney and Helen on a green screen. We shot this in London, directed by Mighty Giant, which considering they had nothing to look at, hold, or catch wasn’t the most straight forward shoot.
Once this was complete we brought the footage back to our studio in Manchester and set about compositing the footage with the backgrounds and tracking the objects into the shots.
