Giggle’s return to the World Economic Forum

Saudi Aramco's graphics at the World Economic Forum
Event

2020 started with an extremely busy couple of weeks in the studio as we worked on content for the World Economic Forum in Davos. For the second year in a row Giggle worked alongside our friends at the fab agency Brandfuel to create content for Saudi Aramco. 

https://vimeo.com/386989314

Brandfuel were tasked with creating the experience at Davos and knew they could rely on Giggle to help create the animated content for the event. So the brief was sent over just after Christmas. The main aim of the content was to promote the Ithra building, a site of huge cultural significance in Saudi Arabia. The Ithra building is on the site of the first oilfield found in Saudi, so it is hugely symbolic for Saudi Aramco. The Center incorporates a museum, children’s’ museum, library, cinema, theatre, and exhibition halls. 

The Ithra building has 3 key themes; knowledge, creativity and diversity, so it was important to Saudi Aramco that these themes were present in the content. To encapsulate the past, present and future of the three key themes we decided to focus on 7 elements that were important to Saudi Aramco: The Ithra buildings library, The Ithra building gallery; people; the oil wells; technology; pebbles and tubes. Each element was created to reflect the cultural wealth of Saudi Arabia. 

It was important to be able to tie all of these 7 elements together to create a succinct film. To do this we used the motif of a contemporary dancer. The dancer not only acted as a transition wipe depicted imagery of energy and momentum. The importance of this alongside the fact that the content was going to be shown on a 19m screen meant we needed incredible high-quality slow-motion footage. To do this we used a Phantom Flex to shoot the content. The Phantom is often used to film wildlife documentaries because of its ability to film at an incredible 2,500 frames per second. We only(!) needed to shoot at 300 frames per second but it was great to use something so powerful. We also choose to shoot in a black studio in order to light the content beautifully.

Digital Artist Ed Vosper and Creative Director Steve Garratt, went to beautiful Davos in Switzerland for the event, to help with the technical set up, and provide on-site assistance in case of last-minute changes. It was also crucial to be able to see our content on the 19m screen before the event started so that we could check that there weren’t any glitches or issues that we hadn’t been able to spot on our computer screens. 

The event was a huge success, thanks to all of Brandfuel’s hard work. For us, it was a great way to kick off the year and we’re now raring and ready to see what other extraordinary content that we can create.  

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