In the Studio

The coldest, driest, windiest and most daunting continent on the planet is Antarctica. This is home to Gentoo Penguins. When the chicks fledge and head to the water’s edge for the very first time, they can have little idea of what lies ahead. Not only do they have to navigate huge blocks of glacial ice to reach the open water where they can feed, but patrolling the bay are leopard seals. These are powerful, fierce predators and an encounter can be fatal for the young birds.

After Blue Planet and Dynasties we go behind the scenes of the BBC’s latest Nature blockbuster Seven Worlds, One Planet and join wildlife cameraman John Aitchison on location to discover how the dramatic story of the challenges facing these young penguins is filmed. This hugely ambitious series narrated by David Attenborough transports viewers around the globe to tell the remarkable stories of how the landscape and conditions of each continent have shaped the unique animal life found there.

Major wildlife series are some of the most ambitious programmes on television. Each six to seven minute sequence can take a year or two to plan and several weeks to film and edit. They are made by highly specialised teams which combine technical expertise with an artist's eye, natural history knowledge and the hardiness of old-time Antarctic explorers.

On 15 June 2019 the Museum of Modern Art in New York closed its doors ahead of a four month refurbishment and the final stage of a $400 million overhaul. When it re-opens its doors in October, MoMA will not only have reconfigured its galleries but also rehung the entire collection on show.

In this special edition of In The Studio, Paul Kobrak follows Ramona Bronkar Bannayan, Senior Deputy Director of Exhibitions & Collections, and Lana Hum, Director of Exhibition Design & Production, as they oversee this epic feat of creativity and choreography.

This time, instead of moving to a temporary space as they did for MoMA's last renovation 15 years ago, they are deinstalling and reinstalling nearly 170,000 square feet of gallery space in just under 4 months. Roughly 10,000 art moves are being undertaken between conservation, storage, and the galleries; and around 2,000 individual works of art are going into the frame shop - with 1,550 new frames having to be constructed.

But it is not just the logistical nightmare that is keeping Ramona, Lana and the Museum’s curators and staff awake at night. With 40,000 square feet of additional space, as a result of expanding into a new residential skyscraper, they also aim to rethink the way the story of modern and contemporary art is presented to the public – balancing the presentation of Claude Monet’s crowd-pleasing Water Lilies and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, with lesser known works covering the full range of MoMA’s massive collection, including photography, sound works, performance, moving image and art forms not yet imagined.

With exclusive access over an eight month period, Paul Kobrak traces the team's progress as they prepare for the Museum’s closure and the subsequent re-opening on 21 October 2019. Presented by Paul Kobrak. Produced by Paul Kobrak , Ella-mai Robey and Emma Kingsley for the BBC World Service. North/south section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street.

World of Warcraft is one of the most popular computer games on the planet and it’s managed to sustain that popularity for 15 years, outlasting countless rivals. The game is produced by creative artists, designers and programmers who work together to create the mystical land of Azeroth.

Presenter and gamer Alex Humphreys spends time with the sound department, who play a critical role in the development of the game. The key to the success of World of Warcraft is maintaining the desire of players to come back for more, day after day. They have to be immersed in the game and feel like they’re playing in a real place.

Following the team as they prepare for their next content update, Alex talks to writers, producers and sound designers to find out how each of them play their part in creating Azeroth. From the meeting room, to the recording studio and the edit suite, each step along the way contributes to the player experience and the success of the game.

As Cuba’s capital city Havana celebrates its 500th birthday, one artist has been making it his mission to recreate the famous neon signs that used to adorn buildings and light up the streets and squares.

Kadir López has had his multimedia work exhibited worldwide, but over the past few years he has been driven by a passion for neon and the concept of connecting Havana’s present with its colourful past. He and his small team of skilled craftspeople remake the signs in a workshop in the centre of Havana, often in searing heat and soaring temperatures. There are specialist procedures needed for the bending of the neon and the colouring and design. Then the signs have to be carefully re-positioned on buildings, using scaffolding and cranes.

Julia Galiano-Rios watches Kadir as he brings the signs to life and hears how the use of neon can throw new light – both physical and spiritual – on a city.

He’s not a singer, writer or a musician but he’s earned a reputation as a Number 1 hitmaker across the globe with credits like “Bonkers” by Dizzee Rascal.

John Saunderson has been in the music business for over 40 years and has an uncanny knack of working with his team of songwriters and colleagues at Notting Hill Music to choose exactly the right song for the right artist. He’s had over 30 number 1 hits in 15 countries around the world and is always looking for the next big thing.

Anna Bailey follows John to find out what the different processes are in the life of a hitmaker. She watches as his team work on composing with the former Pussycat Doll singing star Melody Thornton and hears how a song is created, often in a very short space of time.

Anna also follows the initial steps of choosing a song for the South Korean pop phenomenon J.Fla who is looking for something to appeal to a Western audience. Her team have a very specific set of requirements, including wanting a “hook” or earworm that will be distinctive. Will John and the team be able to deliver?

Since 2009, the XYZ Show has been holding Kenyan politicians and other global figures to account, with a hilarious and cutting form of satire, starring... puppets! The brainchild of widely syndicated political cartoonist Gado, the XYZ Show aims to get people talking about issues through humour – in the tradition of famous satirical puppet shows like the UK’s Spitting Image and France’s Les Guignols. From President Uhuru Kenyatta to Donald Trump – a latex avatar is ready and waiting to spring into life.

After a break of over a year, the XYZ Show is back on air for its 13th season, and the BBC’s Anthony Irungu has gained exclusive access to go behind the scenes. Follow him as he meets the puppet masters and makers, scriptwriters, directors, producers and voice artists that create each carefully crafted episode from scratch in just 10 days – and asks why puppets are so effective in satire.

Music and dance are so tied together, it might be hard to imagine how a profoundly deaf dancer can become an international star in the contemporary dance world - but South African Andile Vellem has done it. Vellem lost his hearing at the age of five, but that hasn’t stopped him from dancing, or becoming the Artistic Director of one of South Africa's leading integrated dance companies, Unmute.

Andile grew up in a house full of dance. His parents were famous ballroom dancers - one of the few professional dance genres open to non-whites - and as a small child he remembers his sister holding his hand to a speaker so he could feel the vibrations created by the music. As he grew older, inspired first by Michael Jackson, and later by the rich musical history of the Cape, he learned to sense music through vibration - creating his own style of dance, including sign dance.

Our presenter, British singer and musician Nathaniel Mann, travels to Cape Town for a close encounter with the talented dancer, as he embarks on a new production called Trapped Man, in which he and another dancer are bound tightly together, struggling for release.

Nathaniel follows Andile through the work’s creation, from the inspiration for the choreography, through rehearsals and the composition of its unique soundtrack – inspired by a century of South African music – as he builds towards the all-important public performance.

Nick Duncalf follows Tina Landau and Tarell Alvin McCraney of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company as they rehearse their revolutionary new stage show, Ms Blakk for President.

In Chicago, Illinois, two of the ensemble’s key creatives, Tina Landau and Tarell Alvin McCraney, are bringing a theatrically daring and politically charged new show to life. Ms Blakk for President tells the extraordinary true story of an African-American drag queen who ran for president of the United States in 1992, at the height of the Aids crisis. Tarell is a critically acclaimed playwright who won an Oscar for his screenplay for the film Moonlight, based on his own childhood growing up in Miami, Florida. Not only has this show been created from scratch at breakneck speed, but Tarell is playing the lead role, after a 15-year absence from the stage. Inspired and supported by the company’s history and success, Tarell, Tina, and Steppenwolf’s artistic director, Anna D. Shapiro, are determined that this cultural institution must be theatrically and politically revolutionary in order to not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century.

Founded 45 years ago in a leafy suburb of Chicago, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company has forged a reputation as one of the world’s foremost producers of electrifying, actor-led theatre, from their breakthrough productions of Balm in Gilead and Sam Shepard’s True West, to the Pullitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, written by one of their own ensemble members, actor-turned-playwright Tracy Letts. The ensemble, expanding over the years to include 50 members, has won Tonys, Emmys, Pullitzers and multiple Oscar nominations, and includes John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise, Joan Allen, Bruce Norris, and many more.

The acclaimed Ghanaian photographer Nii Obodai is renowned for his distinctive black and white hazy silhouettes of distant landscapes and his stark compassionate portraits. As a youngster he spent time in England and now he’s back as artist-in-residence in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where he’s working on a new exhibition on environmental themes.

Nii is spending time in the marshes and woodland of the nearby nature reserve, photographing wildlife and the people who tend the landscape. But he’s not using the latest digital camera to take his pictures – instead he’s interweaving the techniques of the past by learning to photograph with an old-fashioned large format Deardorff camera, shooting in black and white and making prints. The work is based on techniques used by one of the founding fathers of British photography, William Henry Fox Talbot.

Felicity Finch joins Nii as he explores the marshlands and prepares to take his pictures which will be displayed in the Beverley Art Gallery. She follows him through the process – which can take hours – of waiting for the birds to come into shot, pressing the shutter and reloading the films. She also watches as he takes portraits of the workers at the reservoir.

Later in the seaside town of Scarborough we hear how Nii develops the films in the total darkness of an ad hoc darkroom and uses the traditional method of salt printing to create images in a variety of monochrome tones of rich earthy browns. It’s a learning process for Nii and while most of the images turn out the way he wants, others are less successful. We hear how he begins to make his final selections and how he is influenced by the potency of memory and landscape.

Grammy nominated Jamaican reggae star Protoje gives us an exclusive insight into his creative and thought process as he begins to produce his fifth studio album. Following on the heels of the Grammy nominated A Matter of Time album, we visit Jamaica to catch up with the man who is being heralded as spearheading a new movement in the Caribbean with a new wave of young, energetic and passionate artists. Protoje has helped the likes of Chronixx, Lila Ike and Koffee by giving them a platform to develop their talents and present the emerging sound of Jamaica to a global audience.

We delve into the success of his previous album, his approach to the new set, why he felt having his own studio would aid his creativity as well as visiting the new space. We focus on his lyrical ability, and the importance he places on being lyrically astute and rhythmically different from what would be expected from a Jamaican artist. Presented by award winning BBC reggae DJ Seani B, this is a rarely seen insight into a highly anticipated piece of work from Protoje.