BBC London’s Calling

In the UK, the BBC has just released a commercial to promote its coverage of the upcoming London Olympics. The 60 seconds animated video, which shows the United Kingdom landscape transformed into a giant sport arena, is generating quite a lot of buzz online. The choice of creating an animation instead of filming real athletes is very much under discussion by the public and quite a lot of people don’t like the stylized cartoonish approach.

I have contrasting feeling about the spot. I do agree that filming real athletes and post-producing them with the same creative approach would have been impossible and probably far more expensive. The production is definitely amazing, but I personally don’t quite connect, from an emotional point of view, with the Gorillaz style athletes nor with the fairy landscapes. The result is definitely epic, but not very human, and in the end if Olympics are still about emotions, pain and glory and not just about robot athletes and a lot of money, then the TVC isn’t probably doing its job in presenting the event of the year.
What do you think?

There is also a 240s version of the edit to check out, but the video has now been removed by the user. I’m trying to find another one around.

The creative agency is Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R, the animation was created by Passion Pictures and it was produced by Red Bee Media. Music is by contemporary band Elbow.