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Aardman Celebrates Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' 40th Anniversary

BBC Radio 2 taps Aardman Animations to create Dark Side, a three minute film to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

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Bristol, UK -- BBC Radio 2 commissioned Aardman Animations to create a three minute film to accompany an original new radio play written by Sir Tom Stoppard celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s album, The& Dark Side Of The Moon.

Dark Side, which will air on August 26th, is a fantastical and psychedelic radio drama based on themes from the seminal album and stars a stellar cast which includes Bill Nighy, Rufus Sewell, and Adrian Scarborough. The lead roles will be played by Olivier Award-winning Iwan Rheon (Misfits) and stage actress Amaka Okafor (The Garbage King).

Aardman were given the opportunity to create two films to support the radio drama, a three-minute promotional film for the event and an extended film loop to compliment the audio experience online and on the red button.

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, says; “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& honor this with our contemporary digital (and analogue) slant on the style.”

Created using a collage of digital imaging, CGI, studio-based effects and hand crafted elements the films were produced with depth and richness that reflects the classic tone of Pink Floyd’s art.

Source: Aardman Animations

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.

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