Britain from Above

WINNER 2009 MEDIA INNOVATION AWARD, NOMINATED 2008 RTS AWARD Unique time-lapse views of British life using real GPS data for major new BBC series presented by Andrew Marr

422 has created ground breaking CGI sequences revealing never seen before patterns of life in modern Britain. Starting with GPS data mapping the movements of London taxi cabs, commercial aircraft, Channel shipping, refuse trucks and schoolchildren, 422 MD and senior programmer Craig Howarth translated lists of raw numeric co-ordinates sampled at regular time intervals, into coherent animated paths. 422's VFX team, led by Art Director Dave Corfield and VFX supervisor Andy Howell visualised the resulting paths in Maya and composited them with satellite imagery of the UK using Shake. The result is simultaneously beautiful, surprising and informative.

The series is presented by Andrew Marr in three one-hour parts: The first called 24 Hour Britain looking at a day in the life of the country. The second programme Man Made Britain looks at the impact of humans on the environment, and the third Untamed Britain explores natural phenomena such as weather, animal movements and earthquakes.

422 also worked on two additional linked series for BBC: 3 x 30 mins episodes for BBC2 looking at the changes in Britain revealed by aerial photography since the end of World War 2, and an internet based series of short location-specific features called 'Rewind' .

author: adc
2009-01-01