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Body Talk Video with XL
TV Director Mike Christie – whose previous hits include the popular ‘Jump London’ - approached XL Video to supply projection and screens for Channel Four’s recent, highly acclaimed, ‘Body Talk’ documentary.
The initial two-part series was written and presented by psychologist Peter Collett, and revealed the subconscious power of ‘tells’ – the secret language and actions that reveal what people are really thinking! (The term ‘tells’ was originally appropriated by the gambling community.)
Both parts of the series – ‘Power’ and ‘Sex’ – illustrated how an understanding of these tell-tale signs of everyday life and historical events can make things appear very differently. It’s the first time that anyone has applied an interpretation of tells to history.
Christie has a penchant for visual innovation. Body Talk required a way of putting Collett and the archive footage being analysed – including politicians like Bush, Clinton, Blair, Brown and famous couples like Princess Diana Charles – together in the same shots. He didn’t want to go the traditional ‘talking heads’ route, and instead came up with the idea of using a series of giant projection screens with Collett walking around a studio floor and interacting with the footage being shown.
XL supplied five Barco G5 projectors, Betacam SP playback with matrix routing to send any source to any destination and several different sized soft screens. These sections of the programme were shot over three days on location – two days at Millennium Studios in Elstree, and one day at Three Mills Studios in East London. The screens were all rear-projected, and the playback synched to run in time with Collett’s narrative.
A total of 35 sequences were shot with Collett and the screens, which was edited and used highly effectively to “Bolt the programme together” explains Christie.
Body Talk was co produced by Mike Smith and Mike Christie for Channel Four, and was a great success, so more programmes are being planned. It sees the continuance of XL Video’s TV work which also includes The Brit Awards, Robot Wars, Big Brother, Fashion Rocks and many others.
Christie and XL’s Malcolm Mellows first worked together with seminal art-house Britpop band Suede in the early 1990s. They originally met when Christie and the late filmmaker Derek Jarman were producing a Suede show at Clapham Grand. Mellows as lighting designer and Christie as visuals producer went on to work together on Suede’s ‘Dog Man Star’ World Tour.
9th June 2004
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