Merlin Entertainment | Light trail animation

Brief

To produce this animation, we worked closely with T3 Creative Agency to deliver a short film for their client Merlin Entertainments in relation to Warwick Castle’s Christmas Lights trail. The trail opened at the end of November, with the brief being received 5-6 weeks prior to that. Obviously that was a challenge, but one we welcomed. The brief was simple in its form, but allowed creative freedom from us, which was perfect. The brief was: short animated film including lights and a Christmas song. Something like what sound waves does with a song. And that was it. Off we went…

Our
solution

In all honestly, this brief was something we’ve always wanted to do. Create an emotive film with music as the base. The animation part was going to tell the story, all without dialogue or people. Fantastic! An opportunity for us to display a piece of work with Merlin Entertainment and Warwick Castle as well. We couldn’t do this alone, so we involved our animation team from the beginning. Together we chose a story, characters within it, the music, a start, middle and end, colours, how all these elements would work together visually and how we’d present it to T3 Creative Agency. Our solution was a 2 minute film, but not with sound waves. We designed and created the elements from scratch and brought in 2 characters to tell our story.

A still image of the Merlin Entertainment light trail animation

Outcome

The final outcome was outstanding. The reaction it got from everyone that watched it was amazing. The emotion was felt, the interpretation of the story was understood, but also taken each individual way and the feedback from Warwick Castle and it’s visitors was extremely positive. In fact a “sniffle station” was even added due to tears falling when watching our video.

We were so proud to be produce this high quality animation and for the opportunity to do so. Having it displayed and playing at Warwick Castle was a wonderful moment for us as a local company.