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Aardman aim to honour Pink Floyd for BBC's Darkside

Written by Matt

Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Next Monday's Darkside drama on BBC Radio 2, written by Sir Tom Stoppard and featuring Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, includes some very atmospheric and intriguing footage. Seen so far is the promo video (see elsewhere on our news pages) and this is to be followed by an extended film loop to compliment the audio experience online and on the "red button" service on UK digital TV.

Responsible for the footage is Bristol based Aardman Animation, best known for things such as Wallace and Gromit. Aardman director, Darren Dubicki saw the piece working as a film trailer and the team spent time absorbing the rich detail from both Pink Floyd’s music and Sir Tom Stoppard’s play. In doing so they developed a striking visual concept where images juxtapose with carefully considered lyrics and dialogue from the play encompassing the underlying themes of greed, conflict, consumption, humanity and the descent into madness…

Dubicki, who was delighted to be given the opportunity to direct the film, said: “What was fundamentally important to us was that we retained a consistent visual tone that echoed the imagery created over the years for the band. The intensely surreal and powerful artwork created by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis has always had a strong distortion on reality. Their sense of space and twisted context make for some uncomfortably beautiful art. This tone has been consistent for decades and we wanted to honour this with our contemporary digital (and analogue) slant on the style.”

The films were created using a collage of digital imaging, CGI, studio-based effects and hand crafted elements, and will be available to view online during the broadcast, and subsequently via the BBC's iPlayer on demand service.