Sixty40 Animates Sky Movies NZ Rebrand

Following Interbrand Australia's rebrand of SKY Movies in New Zealand to help position SKY to be as passionate about movies as their viewers, animation studio Sixty40 has written and produced a collection of idents for the network that is both charming and effective in its elegance and simplicity.

Heavy on research and craft, the suite of 18 spots, re-discovers and expands moments in cinema that are instantly recognisable and demonstrate the network’s fluency in the language, history and conventions of film. 

From laugh out loud moments to heart-string pulling, terrifying, charming, romantic and nail-bitingly-exciting, the scripts to cover the full range of genres and the corresponding narrative and emotional range for the six movie channels.

The central narrative builds on the power of screen duos (think: Thelma and Louise, Statler and Waldorf or Bonnie and Clyde).  Born of the greatest archetypes, these two heroes turn into enemies, brothers and sisters at arms, best friends and brave adventurers as they relive classic cinematic tropes.

Sixty40 creative director Mark Simpson said it was a great demonstration of the power of animation. “The character is just a monotone triangle yet it’s imbued with so much life,” he said. “It’s fantastic to see how much emotion and pathos we can squeeze out of a simple shape. This series is a great mix of story telling and animation working with the music and sound.” 

The audio was an essential component in the work with music and sound design in close collaboration. Sound can easily fall into massive crescendos and explosions in Hollywood style drama and become a wall of noise. According to Rumble studios the trick was to know when to hold back and leave room for the music to do the work.

Johnny Green from Rumble said that the challenge musically, had been to deliver something that was immediately audibly recognisable, without being clichéd. “It was important that music brought emotion to the animation and aided the story telling,” he said. “Each spot relied on a different musical genre. It involved being the Swiss army knife of composers, applying authenticity and researching what musical genres best lent itself to each trope. We worked hard at allowing each element to breathe resulting in an audible balance of exactly what we wanted the viewer to hear."

The animated rebrand for SKY Movies is an example of the finer points of animation and sound design.

“This is some of my favourite work to have come out of SIxty40,” Simpson said. “It’s minimal, elegant and effective and the spots carry real emotion and beauty.”

View the whole collection at: http://www.sixty40.com/skymoviesidents/

Credits

Agency: Interbrand

ECD - Mike Rigby

CD - Ben Miles

Senior Motion Designer - Mike Tosetto

Executive Client Director - David Storey

Senior Client Manager - Matt Hinchcliffe

Animation: Sixty40

Creative Director/Animation Director - Mark Simpson

Producer - Jayne da Costa

Scriptwriter - Mark Simpson

Senior Designer/Lead Animator - Giedre Domzaite

Animation - Giedre Domzaite/Steven Scott/Brad Pickford/Mark Ong

Sound: Rumble Studios

Music - Johnny Green

Sound design - Tone Aston

Producers - Karina Pitt / Charmaine Bingwa