Worzel Gummidge
WORZEL GUMMIDGE
BBC One / Leopard Pictures / 2019
CGI, VFX supervision and compositing for Mackenzie Crook's reimagining of the classic BBC scarecrow story.
THE BRIEF
The BBC and Leopard Pictures commissioned Mackenzie Crook to write and direct a two-part reimagining of Worzel Gummidge for BBC One. The episodes — The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook and The Green Man — needed to feel grounded and real, not pantomime. That meant VFX that was invisible when it needed to be, and convincing when it couldn't be hidden. We were brought on to supervise from set through to delivery.
OUR APPROACH
We pitched on the tree first. Our instinct was something ancient and gnarled — a tree that looked like it predated everything around it. Mackenzie had a stranger, simpler idea: a tree that had simply appeared in an ordinary place, tangled in plastic bags, waiting. When The Green Man cleared it, something was unlocked. We called it the Tree of Tree.
That tension between the everyday and the magical ran through everything we did on this project.
The tree was built in SpeedTree — seriously render-heavy at the time, though a fraction of the cost today. On set, it was represented by a green cylinder in a Luton car park, not far from the principal photography locations near Tring and St Leonards.
For Winter George, the CGI robin, Mackenzie shared footage of a real robin from his own garden. Our animators studied it frame by frame — the head tilts, the stillness, the sudden movement. No shortcuts.
The rest of the work was the invisible kind: roto, paint and removal across hundreds of shots. The kind of VFX nobody notices when it's done right.
THE WORK
450+ shots across two episodes. Six weeks of on-set supervision. Three months in post. A team of between 7 and 10 people, all wrapped by the end of October 2019.
PROCESS
Green cylinder on set in Luton car park — the Tree of Trees stand-in
SpeedTree build — clean summer tree render
CGI trunk composite test — gnarled tree in car park setting
On-set monitor shots — Worzel in field locations
Green screen costume shots — interior location
CREDITS
Written and directed by — Mackenzie Crook
Commissioned by — BBC One and Leopard Pictures
VFX supervision and post — Pixels & People
Cast
Worzel Gummidge — Mackenzie Crook
The Green Man — Michael Palin
Susan — India Brown
John — Thierry Wickens
Mr. Braithwaite — Steve Pemberton
Mrs. Braithwaite — Rosie Cavaliero
THE OUTCOME
BAFTA nominated, VFX, 2020.
A note on the tools, six years on
We finished this project in October 2019. Looking back, the SpeedTree renders that cost us days would take hours now. Tools like CorridorKey — the AI chroma keyer released free by Corridor Crew in 2026 — would have taken weeks off the roto and paint workload alone. The craft doesn't change. The ceiling just keeps getting higher.