Bristol has novel take on Christmas lights

Edited by the Marketingservicestalk editorial team Nov 27, 2007

Leading creatives have shipped in seven powerful projectors and are designing 400ft animations to be thrown across the city in a dazzling projection lightshow called 'Light Up Bristol'.

The organisers have also ordered two tonnes of artificial snow and several snow blizzard machines from Pinewood studios which are all set to bring part of the city to a complete standstill.

Light Up Bristol is being developed by Bristol Media, a networking and support organisation, which has enlisted a team of 14 of the city's leading creative companies including Aardman Animations and digital agency, E3 to stage a unique kind of 'Christmas lights' event.

Mike Bennett of Bristol Media, explained: "It's all about the leading creative brains coming together to work on a huge urban canvas, taking every day areas and parts of the city and blasting them with a whole host of colours and animations.

"We didn't want Bristol to look like just another city with20-year-old tacky Christmas lights which should have been binned years ago.

"We wanted to come together to stage something different, that we'd all enjoy working on and that would raise a smile on the odd passer-by on their way home from work".

Clare Reddington, Event Producer, added: "It's all set to be one of the most spectacular and jaw-dropping lightshows the UK has seen.

"Concepts are being developed by each agency, following an enchanted winter wonderland theme".

Dan Efergan, Digital Creative Director of Aardman Animations, said: "Designers tend to spend our lives working on a 19-inch monitor, so to be asked to produce 400ft animations and visuals that are going to be thrown all over the city, hell yes, we all jumped at the chance.

"The opportunity to use major Bristol landmarks such as the Council House and Cathedral as a massive canvas and bring the city to life with moving image, animation, colour and textures, well opportunities like that don't come around that often".

Bennett continued: "We staged a smaller event last year which was a huge success, so we plan to make this one much bigger by using the animations and projectors as the centrepiece to a week-long city winter festival.

"We've commissioned music and VJs to work alongside us and we've hired in several state of the art snow machines used at Pinewood Studios that will blitz the city on an hourly basis with a huge snow blizzard.

"They were used in the film 'The Day After Tomorrow' where New York disappeared under 300ft of snow and ice, so if we can get away with it, we want to do the same to Bristol.

It will be fun".

Light Up Bristol will run 17 to 21 December 2007 from 6pm - 10pm, where seven of the world's most high-powered projectors will throw 400ft animations and moving images across a one square mile area of Bristol City Centre.

Bristol Media is the networking and support organisation for individuals and companies involved in the city's creative industries, including animation, digital, marketing, design, film and television.

It has over 800 individual companies registered as members and over 1,000 individuals working across Bristol's media and creative sectors.

Who's involved? Beef, Play Nicely, Black Out Arts, Spike Design, Mcfaul, Green Lit Media, Thirteen, E3, Aardman Animations, Lobster Films, Mytton Williams, Oakwood DC, Omi Productions with freelancers Genevieve Browne and Nico Boritch and jonie Lemercier of Crustea.