Dougal Wilson

0:04[Applause]

0:12so yes my name is Dougal Nelson I'm a television commercial and occasional music video director yes I'm going to be telling you hopefully about a recent thing I've worked on the idents was a bit of country in the shows that telling you what channel you're watching obviously for channel 4 and I'm going to start by giving a bit of context about the one I worked on by giving you a very brief history of the channel for idents also to pad out my speech because it's quite a short piece of work.

0:47So yeah pretty hard for you most of you here to believe but one time in this country we only have three channels and this is probably before most of you aboard suddenly on the 12th November 1982 this happened ♪

1:15good afternoon it's a pleasure to be able to say to you welcome to Channel four ♪

1:41the gorge credibly exciting and it was groundbreaking stuff in the logo which was computer animated this was also great groundbreaking and it was created by this very famous designer Martin Lampinen heard of him. And it quickly became very iconic in fact it was actually parodied in a young Hamlet cigar ♪

2:29happiness is a cigar called Hamlet ♪

2:33the good old days really good advertise cigarettes on the television and they yeah they started getting pretty adventurous with it quite quickly as you can see from this variation from ♪

3:03stuff and they had lots of them very good people working on this they had other animations did stuff the Bolex brothers do stuff they had lots of fun it was you know kind of a golden age for experimentation.

3:15And then sometime in the early 2000 2005 I think they chance upon this very cool device of the logo coming into parallax with itself from I'll show you what doesn't want my favorite one from this series you'll notice these it was so detestable they ran for 15 years. That's helmet and they made loads of this is my favorite now and for double come dine and are over jeans really the food of the gods ♪

3:53annoyingly you know from now on all of us say oh it's not as good as those ones but ignore that so at this point I guess everyone was pretty used to this logo and where'd you go from there. So in 2015 they decided to ♪

4:30and they also did some really cool this brings us to mid 2017 and at this point the blocks land quite literally on my desk my guess nine pieces this is pretty much what Chaleff all gave me as the briefly said you go these Lots and you'll notice they're covered in a slightly unpleasant looking gray substance it's actually white tacked the white version of blue tack and I'll reveal why shortly so they they wanted me to try and think of some ideas that was basically the script was these blocks it's not really a script is it and they said we wanted to have some ideas that where we involved these blocks in Britain with real British people with real locations and they reflect their channels values of being provocative and celebrate the diversity and being entertaining so I started trying to fix this someone first ideas I thought that was quiet divisive disrupt soup.

5:48And I thought oh someone can open a door and they could all come to the door and that would be annoying and disruptive and then they wanted to talk about breaking down barriers you know no walls well what about the logo it's a wall breaks apart so didn't go back.

6:13So then they also wanted to talk about the positive fact that migration can have by bringing in diversity to the country so I thought you know we can literally have my groups on the blocks yeah well you laughs a book.

6:38So I'm still messing something was missing to hold all together these one-off ideas so while I was playing with the blocks on my desk I thought hang on has anyone ever. So that was where the blu-tac came in which is sin stop it but and I thought that's interesting because that's a character and maybe he could we could have little stories with him in it and also quite likely it felt interesting you know because I'd seen stuff like this which is a recent episode which is one of those Arctic Inuits sculptures felt like a little bit hey you know something.

7:27And I quite like the idea of that so what's other thing of all where could this figure be you know how big will you be and what are you gonna do so I sort of think photographs are wonderful model on my desk with my anger poison lamp doing the lighting and sticking here into scenarios so it's a man with a boat what's he thinking go down the road mysteriously having a fun slide moonstone and you know doing dangerous stuff when you know acrobatics on election one and for creative who are the in house and agency a teleport they seem to like a list but they said they're still very keen on expressing with the channels core values quite explicitly so I just had to write lots and lots of ideas and they went into these different categories like is it provocative does it reflect diversity is it entertaining does it bring people together so some of the ideas that I think came up with were a bit sort of on the nose like this one is basically a gay couple getting married and instead of getting driven away by a car they're on the top of the cello for man and he's got just married on his back alright. There was a bit like you know you're showing your agenda at busy will obviously maybe and I prefer the things that the more graphic and simple like you know the guy in running along with all these kids from an estate cycling around his legs and rising along I think what end up with that.

9:12But it was that kind of thing but meanwhile of course technically how are we going to do this.

9:18So I worked quite a lot with on company called MVC than Moving Picture Company and they started doing some test animations for me.

9:26So this is one the first little things they tried out they gave them a Tom would photograph above yeah there you go job done so we're testing out what it would feel like moving and testing out what the camera could be doing but then of course what was he actually gonna look like you know what's gonna be made off because of that riddle of Greenlandic statue thing I thought well maybe something heavy and stony like concrete but then it just looked a bit weird so then we tried all sorts of things like paints have been painting that's been a bit weathered then we thought what color should be you know to be like white should be see through the color of below the Bertie Bassett giant you know we've seen things in culture villainous like The Iron Giant or big robots maybe she'd just be weathered metal so we tested that at NBC and it looked pretty nice some of the tests we did just a shepherd metal surface so then meanwhile we're still getting the strip sorted out and they were still on stretching all these ideas you know kept saying no it's not reflecting our values and this was one of the ideas which everyone seemed to like including made which was just the giant playing football with some kids in a street up in the north of England somewhere.

11:17So I know it's not exactly a script but if it summarizes what we want to happen so then with the migration theme they were really quite human so that developed into this kind of weird narrative where thing rises at the sea with lots of people on his head and then deposits them on the south coast of England and I was like you sure because I think that's yeah channel 4 they they like to provoke and get discussions going and then they also want to evolve disability because they've got a strong link with disability rights and disabled people in the diverse group of people made champion.

12:08So we have this pretty weird idea where he was gonna be lying across a motorway blocking the traffic and allowing her a wheelchair to go across so which we didn't end up with we had ended up with another disabled thing which was a bit more simple but it's just I guess what I'm doing is showing you the journey we went through to come up with these four pretty short pretty simple I - we did if you really gonna think about it quite a lot. And we also thought he should serenade a town with a voice what's his voice and one of the one well California youth have this sonic logo ♪

12:48which is funny enough actually only three notes because one was repeated so we thought if he's on top of a hill and he's speaking to a town what would his voice sound my role you know if he's gonna make that noise and giant metal giant make the same ♪

13:25so by this point we're getting on with my the locations they were really wanted a cigar side London and go out to the regions so we went to the Peak District mrs. I'm a storyboard I did for the one where he honked so I yeah it's not much drawing it makes it me take a photographs on the locations and then taking photographs of my model I'm blocking him in and telling the story that way.

13:47So I've been there's a few drawings where I can't do that you can obviously tell the ones that are drawn and then. I was also filming little test with my 5d in my iphone and give him a MPC and they're just trying the animation onto it.

14:03So this is the sort of thing with just to see the feeling of it. That's a man holding a reference with the size of him.

14:12And then when the football one I really wanted it to feel like one shot so we use a pre-visualization an MPC just to plan this out and worked out where my hit and cuts would be because it was getting pretty clear that we were going to do is one shot to stay probably you know there'd be a mistake someone would drop a ball or something plus how are we gonna get the kids have put the arms in one shot alright.

14:35So this is a pretty good showing just into the timing of the locations the locations you projected onto this pre-visualization again we could have just run this a before. And this is the same thing from above just to show where the camera move would be so it's all helped but at the same time obviously had to find the actual people to be in it.

15:04So we did a lot of casting and Liverpool for this one some very good kids and I did this fella it's not an animatic it's a chromatic of the of the football just it's so rough it's embarrassing but I'll show you. Anyway. So yeah just it's just in case [Applause]

15:51so at this point I've been going for sentiment I'm gonna show you how to show you the notes because okay ♪

16:49[Applause]

17:44So this is the next one almost finished is what the migration one came out it's a bit with different fealty of us. And it really was channel for wanting to raise this issue and champion diversity caused by migration. And so I'll show you it just on the big screen if you want to see it again with some interesting comments go to the Breitbart website ♪

18:53[Applause]

19:07Nigel Farraj likes that one but all those people think they're all genuine UK citizens and they they will be living here with others doctors and scientists and firemen and that's what so the genuine people. So it does have a good point and this is my favorite the last one ♪