Editorial
Creative for Subscription Brochure
Creative for Subscription Brochure
Produced by WNO Digital
The design for Cosi needed to reflect the designer and director’s early idea of a seaside setting for Mozart’s opera. They were looking at the documentary photographs of Martin Parr for reference, as well as making field trips to Barry Island and Penarth Pier. We used these visual sources to inspire our take on an out-of-season, traditional British seaside setting.
Wozzeck
Shot on the set of WNO’s Wozzeck production this advert was trailed at independent cinemas in Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Warwick, Southampton and Poole.
The trailer was part of a wider marketing campaign that took as its visual motif the bar code and bean tins associated with Richard Jones’s award-winning production. The setting created on stage was of a de-humanised, industrialised world – including the stark interior of a baked beans factory. We worked with this approach, and also looked back to the period in which the composer was writing – 1920s Germany, and the impact of art & design movements such as Bauhaus – to create some of the special effects.
Directed and Produced by WNO Digital
Music by James Southall
The Queen of Spades
Artist John Macfarlane designed the original production, including two banraku puppets and a Spitting Image-style half-body puppet, which all featured in a scene played out on top of a large gaming table. We wanted to make a short film based on the opera and liked the idea of using the puppets, rather than members of the cast. A script was worked up from the libretto (and a close reading of Pushkin’s short story that inspired the original opera), and the rest was created with the help of Bristol-based Green Ginger.
Produced and Directed by WNO Digital
Narration by Tom Cullen
Puppets by Mandy Dymond
Puppeteers Green Ginger
Boxing Beats
Music and boxing are brought together in a lyrical film exploring a song-writing project, which took place in the Gelligaer Gym in the Valleys. The project was run in association with Academi, another of WNO’s neighbours at WMC. Two very different disciplines are juxtaposed in a free-flowing narrative that captures in startling imagery the beauty of the sung word and the other sport Wales excels at!
Directed by DJ Evans
Opera Express
In Autumn 2009, WNO worked in partnership with Valley of Hope to create a song cycle performed live on railway stations and on board a Valleys Line train. The songwriters were all former substance abusers, some of whom had also experienced homelessness. Valley Of Hope in Aberdare helps its members turn their lives round; the songs they wrote for performance by WNO artists gives a powerful insight into their troubled lives.
Directed by Davina Payne
Sweeney Todd
We were asked to make a short film to market Welsh National Youth Opera’s production of Sweeney Todd. Following sharpish on the heels of Tim Burton’s film version of the musical, we needed to come up with something strikingly different.
