BBC — Winter Olympics

Unlike its summer counterpart, the Winter Olympics pit Man against Nature. Four years of grueling preparation can be ruined if the elements aren't in your favor. To dramatize this concept, we created a menacing persona for Nature.

Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winner director Tomek Baginski captured the chilling tone of our idea with a stunning blend of live-action and CG. And to bring the voice of Nature to life, we enlisted Charles Dance, aka Tywin Lannister, for a spine-tingling voiceover.

For the second part of the story, we made a Titles Sequence that was used to kick off every live broadcast.

We created bespoke idents for BBC2 and mobile assets for social media and even incorporated our ominous world into their reporters' segments.

We also made ads for Radio and Podcast.

The public reception of our work was overwhelmingly positive.

People on Reddit theorized about the real meaning of our spot. English students on online forums debated its literary roots. The official website of the Library of the US Congress even did a blog post analyzing the lyrical content. Perhaps most notably, schools in England adopted the poem as a tool to teach poetry to young kids. They’re still doing it years later – just google ‘The Dreadful Menace Poem’.

But recognition came for more than just the words. Our titles sequence ended up picking up a BAFTA for Best Graphic Identity.

I was flattered to learn that some enthusiastic interwebz folks even created parody versions of our spot, including one in Russian 🤯

Behind the scenes

We shot everything in Warsaw, Poland. One of the coolest productions I ever had a chance to be part of.

Here’s some of the astonishing concept art and VFX breakdown created by the visionaries at JUICE & PLATIGE.