Red vision has brought Lord of the Rings-style battles to the small screen with the BBC's upcoming Battlefield Britain and intends to license the groundbreaking software that made it possible across the industry.
The Manchester-based computer graphics company's software, called Legion, allows

producers with television-size budgets to make epic battle scenes in the style of feature films such as Lord of the Rings and Troy.

On the documentary series Battlefield Britain, each episode was supplied with approximately 15 minutes of computer-generated images, predominantly using the Legion software, at a cost of around £120,000 per episode.

In 2002, the work that Red Vision did for the BBC's Charge of the Light Brigade received acclaim for breaking new ground in combining computer graphics with dramatic reconstruction. This led BBC producer Danielle Peck to have the company involved with Battlefield Britain from the outset.

Red Vision managing director Dave Mousley explained: 'We were there at the treatment and script stage and you could see there was no other way to stage battles of that size on the series' budget. The extras' bill alone would add another zero to the price we supplied Legion for.'

Where the Lord of the Rings battle software, Weta Digital's Massive, focused on combat for feature film, Red Vision's core development team - Pete Metelko, Pete Farrer, Steve Goldman, Antony Carysforth and Dave Fothergill - aimed Legion at a TV market.

Mousley said: 'Legion has been specifically designed for epic television productions and will be priced accordingly. The licence will cost a fraction of the $18,000 that Weta charges for Massive.'

Mousley said he believed that the UK has the ability to lead the CG industry but needs greater stability, citing the example of The Mill: 'The Mill CG department won an Oscar for its work on Gladiator but, despite the acclaim, couldn't sustain itself. The costs of assembly and disassembly between jobs can be crippling.' He said he hoped that licensing Legion would bring an expanded but constant stream of work to the UK.

He said: 'We're currently seeking a beta partner to test the software to make absolutely sure our support levels are sufficient.'

Red Vision hopes the software will be available by November this year. Natural history and human behaviour elements for the software are in development.

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