Curious Productions London

Author: Adam Butterworth

  • Paralympic games…The Breakdown

    Paralympic games…The Breakdown

    Ahead of the 2024 Paralympic Games, UK broadcaster, Channel 4, came to us with a mission: to change the narrative around disability and sport by taking aim at patronising language and position one truth as undeniable. Paralympians are elite, world class athletes.   

     Tasked with creating four OOH posters to accompany their award winning Considering What? campaign, we needed to draw attention to four paralympic disciplines and the world-class British athletes preforming at the top of their game.  

    The concept proved challenging, originally requiring multiple shoot locations. We proposed using CGI environments and a single, controllable shoot location and sourced a studio space perfect for the task.   

    Paralympians never shy away from a challenge, and neither do we. Come shoot day, we were met with the complexities inherent in shooting athletes with disabilities and rose to the challenge. 

    To accurately capture the grit and graft required for competing at their level, we needed the athletes to be genuinely competing. Meaning that the weightlifter is lifting real weights and the British wheelchair basketball team are pushing, tipping and careering their way around an invisible court (to be added later in post). Not only did we need to capture this from every angle using unique camera rigs set-ups, but we needed to record the action while keeping each athlete’s identity obscure – not yet knowing who would qualify and represent TeamGB.  

    After two days shooting in the studio, we had all the ingredients to create some medal worthy OOH, heading into post production to create realistic sporting surfaces in CGI.  

    We were proud to see the campaign win multiple awards, including a Bronze Shark in Photography for Print & Outdoor, Creative Excellence for Campaign’s In-House Agency Awards, Excellence awards in two categories for Marketing Week along with being shortlisted for Creative Review’s 2025 awards.  

    But our favourite part?The prop helmet we bought for the wheelchair racing shoot was kept by the athlete and used during her Olympic race. That’s worth more than gold to us.

  • Channel 4’s Dirty Business… The Breakdown

    Channel 4’s Dirty Business… The Breakdown

    In an idyllic Oxfordshire hamlet, the fish in the river keep dying. Why? David Thewlis and Jason Watkins lead Channel 4’s shocking real-life drama of victims, whistleblowers and England’s water companies.  

    The promotional campaign was a combined effort from several skilled partners and included a fountain installation in London’s South Bank between 23-25th February 2026. Bronze-like statues vomit murky brown water, made in the likeness of real people, believed to have been made ill by polluted waterways. Viewers are invited to scan a QR code and listen to the first-hand stories of those affected. Curious photographer, Max Parker, took in the full impact of the installation while shooting press photos for the campaign launch. 

    Meanwhile, over at Curious HQ, we mucked-in alongside 4Creative designer, Aimi Awang, to produce a series of OOH assets for use across digivans, Transvision and regional press cover wraps. Dirty, polluted macro water shots are overlayed with text that bleeds and distorts in response to the surrounding pollution. Each asset is designed to get up close and personal, with strategic placement and clever copy that directly challenges the water companies who play a role in the fact-based drama.  

    All-together, the campaign shines a grim, but effective light on the new Channel 4 series and the decade-long investigation it’s based on.  

    Read more here

    Watch the show here

    Credits 

    4Creative 
    Biscuit Filmworks 
    Glue Society 
    Machine Shop 
    Little Parrot  

  • Embracing AI

    Embracing AI

    Simon Percy, our Head of VFX, spoke with LBB about the quality improvements to production that have come from VFX embracing AI and how to counter the dreaded ‘work slop’. 

    “AI is a tool in the middle, not the decider at the end. Personally, the safeguard is simple: We do not accept outputs at face value. Everything gets interrogated for taste, story, continuity, and believability. If a result is ‘impressive’ but not purposeful, it is noise. The goal is not to generate more, it is to choose better.” 

    Read more on LBB here

  • DMA Awards… GOLD

    DMA Awards… GOLD

    Escape Key for British Airways wins Gold in the Travel & Leisure category at the 2025 DMA awards. Embedding first class media strategy and CRM into high impact OOH and social videos, alongside a witty and urgent tone – the campaign drove a significant uplift in CTR vs British Airways’ business-as usual-benchmarks. 

    With Uncommon Experience Studio supplying the model and Curious taking creative control over the nuanced animation and final render, the campaign had no chance of escaping a DMA Gold.  

    You can read more about the work here.

  • Colour with the seasons

    Colour with the seasons

    Dreaming of sunnier days, Curious Productions Head of Colour, Rob Lanario, sat down with Little Black Book to talk about the art of grading with climate in mind.

    “What keeps me fascinated is how instinctive our reactions are. We don’t reason with colour; we just respond to it. A good grade can transport us across seasons in a single cut, turning an image into a place we can almost physically inhabit. That’s the magic of colour.”

    Read more on LBB here