Birds Gone Wild: The Woody Woodpecker Story
In my third year at Primary School (or year 3, as it’s imaginatively called these days) I was put next to a kid called Michael Dix, in a bid to stop both of us from being naughty. (We can neither confirm nor deny whether it worked.) And I was jealous of him almost immediately, for two reasons:
1. He could do an incredible impression of Bart Simpson.
2. He could draw Woody Woodpecker perfectly.
WoodyWoodpecker was one of my favourite characters growing up. He brought more anarchy to the screen than Wile E Coyote and Marvin the Martian combined. And that laugh… as brilliantly annoying as flicking peas at my brother across the dinner table when nobody was watching.
So this project was a dream come true.
We were commissioned by NBC Universal to create a long-form documentary about the iconic cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker. The film and subsequent deeper-dive shorter films were designed to reward existing fans of Woody Woodpecker, as well as attract a wider audience who were familiar with the character but needed to be reintroduced to it via the new Woody Woodpecker YouTube channel.
We got to tell origin story not only of Woody as a character, but of Universal Animation studios itself. Using YouTube analytics allowed us to understand key topics of interest for Woody fans globally. The content was recut and subtitled intoBrazilian Portuguese specifically to serve one of the most engaged territories.
The film was critically acclaimed, won a number of awards and was selected for screening at the BFI and in film festivals globally.
And we got to hear that stupid, stupid laugh again. Brilliant.
Birds Gone Wild: The Woody Woodpecker Story
In my third year at Primary School (or year 3, as it’s imaginatively called these days) I was put next to a kid called Michael Dix, in a bid to stop both of us from being naughty. (We can neither confirm nor deny whether it worked.) And I was jealous of him almost immediately, for two reasons:
1. He could do an incredible impression of Bart Simpson.
2. He could draw Woody Woodpecker perfectly.
WoodyWoodpecker was one of my favourite characters growing up. He brought more anarchy to the screen than Wile E Coyote and Marvin the Martian combined. And that laugh… as brilliantly annoying as flicking peas at my brother across the dinner table when nobody was watching.
So this project was a dream come true.
We were commissioned by NBC Universal to create a long-form documentary about the iconic cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker. The film and subsequent deeper-dive shorter films were designed to reward existing fans of Woody Woodpecker, as well as attract a wider audience who were familiar with the character but needed to be reintroduced to it via the new Woody Woodpecker YouTube channel.
We got to tell origin story not only of Woody as a character, but of Universal Animation studios itself. Using YouTube analytics allowed us to understand key topics of interest for Woody fans globally. The content was recut and subtitled intoBrazilian Portuguese specifically to serve one of the most engaged territories.
The film was critically acclaimed, won a number of awards and was selected for screening at the BFI and in film festivals globally.
And we got to hear that stupid, stupid laugh again. Brilliant.
