The Planets

Moving Works Of Art Bring “The Planets” To Life

Earlier this year 422 South was given a highly unusual commission from BBC Wales Music. The network music department were making a stunning visualisation of Holst’s orchestral masterpiece, The Planets, for BBC TWO television.

422 South’s Chief Creative Andy Davies-Coward was approached to take on two of the Suite’s seven planet-based music segments – Mercury and Neptune, as stand alone animated or graphic pieces: Effectively two classical music promos for high profile network broadcast.

422 designers Luke Wilmott and Ben Collier-Marsh were given an open brief to interpret the two pieces of music in any way they wanted. Davies-Coward says ‘We’ve never had a brief quite as open as this before… it was a fantastic opportunity. I wanted to make two pieces that were distinct and individually authored. As a result, the two sequences are very different in approach and feel – but both absolutely right for the music that they accompany.

Mercury is a complex fast-moving and densely layered montage of live-action elements and graphic motifs using After Effects. Neptune was created by manipulating specially shot abstract footage of fluids and other natural materials in After Effects and Editbox.

The remaining five pieces were filmed in live-action in locations around the world including New Mexico, Arizona and Scandinavia.

author: CH
2003-11-12