British indie-pop icon, Jarvis Cocker, has come to life in stop motion–not to get people on their feet, but instead to help lull them to sleep. In the BBC’s dreamy promo for The Sleeping Forecast, the Pulp frontman and lifelong fan of the Shipping Forecast, has been delightfully reimagined in puppet form for a new BBC short film promoting The Sleeping Forecast podcast.
In the spot, Cocker takes center stage as a serene storyteller, reflecting on the calming rhythm of the Shipping Forecast, that quintessentially British broadcast that has lulled generations into sleep. The short merges nostalgia and craftsmanship, blending the quiet poetry of maritime weather reports with the charm and artistry of award-winning animator Joseph Wallace.
The result is pure BBC magic: a meditative little spot that feels both timeless and tender. It’s already struck a chord online, amassing more than a million views on the BBC’s Instagram and reminding us why Cocker’s voice still has the power to captivate a nation.
We caught up with Wallace about the making-of. “Having made work for the BBC a few times over the last couple of years on adverts for their podcast The Sleeping Forecast (the UK’s Shipping Forecast set to ambient music), an opportunity came up to bring in Pulp frontman and Brit Pop icon; Jarvis Cocker,” he said.
“Jarvis is a long-time fan of the Shipping Forecast and he was invited to put out a special episode of the Sleeping Forecast where he’d curate a program of sleepy relaxing music. We were asked to create a film to promote the episode. Cocker recorded a load of lines talking about the Sleeping Forecast and we edited that onto our previous film and then added bookends with Jarvis in stop motion form.”
Of course it’s not the first time Cocker has shown up in stop motion; he plays Petey in 2009’s Fantastic Mr Fox and in The House (2022) he plays a paranoid property developer (who happens to be a mouse). “In this film, I wanted the viewer to instantly recognize Jarvis,” he went on, “so, in designing the puppet, I really tuned into his stand-out features, the kind of clothes he wears, his gestures and mannerisms. The excellent puppet was Adeena Grubb who’s made the puppets for the last few adverts we’ve done.
“Producer Yoav Segal and I were drawing on Martin Parr as inspiration for these new bookend shots with Jarvis and the seafront is based on Hastings where I live. That set is wonderfully crafted in miniature by the model maker Eve Bannister who’s again someone I’ve worked with a lot and really understands how I like things to be wonky and jaunty, with the sets feeling like a loose line drawing.
“The film was shot at the legendary London commercial studio Clapham Road Studios and photographed by the brilliant Cinematographer Malcolm Hadley, this being the fourth time we’ve worked together. The lighting in this film; the intimate vignettes, the theatrical approach–opposing day and night,is so subtle and gorgeous, giving a few sheets of paper so much depth and sense of location.”
To bring Jarvis to life Wallace considered himself lucky to finally work with the renowned stop motion animator Kim Keukeleire. Kim’s credits include Fantastic Mr Fox, Frankenweenie, Ma Vie de Courgette, Isle of Dogs and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.
“Kim was a dream to work with and took Jarvis’s characteristics, along with my gestural live action video references, and did some amazingly beautiful animation in a short space of time.”
It sounds like the team had a tight turnaround to get it all shot and made before the episode went out. “The puppet and set were made in around ten days, we set up and lit in one day, shot in two days, did the post in two days and then delivered the film and it went live the day after!
“We were also shooting in a very small studio space so to do an exterior shot, with various layers of landscape–seafront promenade, sand, sea, sky etc–is really tough when you’re tight on space. I always want the viewer to feel like the world of the film carries on beyond the edges of the frame and to give a sense of depth to these tiny miniature worlds,” which this piece and its seaside horizons certainly does!
“For me it’s incredibly satisfying creating work that is impressionistic and relies on illusion and suspension of disbelief. Stop motion is just the most fun medium to work in.”
For more on the production, check out the BTS stills below:
