Gorillaz "design" BBC Olympic broadcasts (video)

The Summer Olympics will start in Beijing in a few days. While sportsmen are getting ready for competitions, world broadcasting companies that will cover the event are finishing their preparation for the battle for viewers.

Every broadcasting company will try to surprise the audience in some way during Olympic programmes and in the breaks. A British company BBC has created one of the most interesting projects – it has asked a famous “virtual” band Gorillaz (Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett) to create a graphic and musical arrangement for its future broadcasts. The series of animated clips created in the style of their previous cooperative work is the opera “Monkey: Journey To The West” based on a Chinese classic novel of the same name.

The main 2-minutes clip of the series where music from the opera can be heard presents the summary of its plot with “Olympic changes”. The Journey to the West has turned into a Journey to the East, to Beijing. The monkey and his friends fight vampires and demons on their way to the Olympics using both magic and Olympic sports skills for it.

By the way, fans of Gorillaz should not be embarrassed by the word “opera”: the band’s technique is easily recognizable despite a number of Chinese motives present in the clip.