Framestore is the winner of BAFTA 2020 Awards in special, visual and graphic effects for His Dark Materials. Serving as a key creative collaborator and sole VFX studio on the show’s eight epic episodes, Framestore was key to bringing Bad Wolf’s ambitious, visually-sumptuous adaption of the Philip Pullman classic to life.
This latest BAFTA win marks a real flag in the sand for Framestore’s TV department, which brought world-class, film-quality VFX to every shot it touched. Key to the show’s story are a rich, nuanced, utterly convincing CG cast of photoreal creatures, from the dæmons that accompany every single member of the show’s superlative cast to the huge, imposing, armour-clad panserbjørne – the formidable polar bears that play such a significant role in the first season’s story. Beyond its signature character work, Framestore was also pivotal to crafting the world the characters inhabit, from the show’s waterways and alternate Oxford to the frozen, hostile environments of Bolvangar and the the Svalbard mountains.
Framestore’s previous BAFTA wins include Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), The Golden Compass (2008), Gravity (2014), SSGB (2018) and Blade Runner 2049 (2018), as well as numerous Academy Award and Emmy wins.
Framestore’s Global managing director, film, Fiona Walkinshaw, said: “We knew going into His Dark Materials that we’d have to take the level of care, craft and creativity audiences expect from TV to the next level. Lyra Belacqua’s world feels utterly alive and utterly immersive – that’s what Bad Wolf wanted, that’s what fans of Philip Pullman’s books wanted and that’s exactly what Framestore’s talented VFX artists and animators delivered.”
Series VFX supervisor, Russell Dodgson, said: “We wanted to make sure the characters we created and the world we built around them did justice to Philip Pullman’s original work – every detail had to be perfect, and it’s beyond heartening for our artists to have their hard work and craftsmanship recognised by the industry like this. We’re currently deep in post for the show’s second season, and this is a tremendous boost for every single one of us.”