Advanced Television

Wallace & Gromit light up Battersea Power Station

December 2, 2024

By Nik Roseveare

This festive season, Wallace & Gromit have decorated London’s Battersea Power Station, home to Apple’s UK headquarters.

From 5pm t0 10:30pm throughout December, a pair of Christmas trees will light up the two wash towers on the landmark’s river-facing façade. Visitors will see the two characters decorate the giant trees in their own inimitable styles, despite the intervention of the villainous Feathers McGraw.

Aardman, the animation studio and creator of Wallace & Gromit, used iPhone 16 Pro Max to create a short animation that transforms the 101-metre-high chimneys that soar above the River Thames. iPhone 16 Pro Max was mounted on motorised heads on set to capture two angles of the Christmas trees, shooting a total of 6,000 frames. Eight iPhone 16 Pro Max devices used the 5x Telephoto camera to shoot super-high-resolution images in ProRAW, which were then assembled frame by frame to produce a 6K video.

“Wallace & Gromit are a much-loved and iconic duo, and we’re delighted that they will be lighting up Battersea Power Station for Londoners this year,” commented Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “It’s great to see the skill and ingenuity of Aardman, and how they’ve used the most advanced iPhone we’ve ever made to produce something so joyful.”

“This project has been a dream to direct — a cinematic fusion of tech and art,” added Gavin Strange, Aardman’s director and graphic design lead. “Shooting stop-motion animation on iPhone 16 Pro Max with the legendary Wallace & Gromit, to then be projected onto the iconic Battersea Power Station, makes this unique in so many ways. I hope that this Christmas, everyone feels inspired to start shooting their own stop-motion masterpieces with iPhone, and I’m excited and proud of what we’ve all created.”

A brand new Wallace & Gromit adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl, airs on the BBC this Christmas. Speaking earlier this year, Charlotte Moore, Chief Content Officer at the BBC, said: “This new feature-length Wallace and Gromit film will captivate audiences of all ages this Christmas on the BBC, as the longed-for return of Feathers McGraw and some ingenious inventions including a ‘smart gnome’ make for an unmissable adventure showcasing British creativity at its best.”

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