About“There is no greater duty for any nation than protecting our people and our planet,” - UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at the 2020 COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.
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In 2020, the UK exported 688,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste; that’s an equivalent of 1.8 million kilograms a day. This plastic waste is dumped onto third world and developing countries, exacerbating the global health and environmental crisis.
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We wanted to create a film that would raise awareness of the issue in a way that would spark serious discussion around the actionable change needed. Wasteminster is a uniquely original depiction of the plastic waste crisis the UK is fuelling every single day.

MADNESSWe wanted to create something that would grab attention immediately without losing the gravity of our message. How could we create something that made people go “WTF”, hold their attention throughout the video and convey as accurately as possible the true scale of the issue at hand? We knew we had to do something different.
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Our inspiration was rooted in spotlighting the stark contrast between the environment’s reality and politicians’ often empty political promises, through a satirical approach that made the irony unmissable.
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We spent hundreds of hours analyzing the politicians’ speeches, individual items of plastic waste and details of Downing Street. We built an exact replica of Downing Street based on satellite imagery; every single detail including marks on the Downing Street front door, was taken into consideration in CG. While there was a ton of research that went into the process, we also had a lot of fun along the way.
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When doing CG work, artists' and director's creativity - that human touch - can often get lost in the process. At Method & Madness, we use technology (the methodology) to make every part of the process seamless which enables us to retain the creative soul and artistry of film (the madness) by bridging the film and CG world together as one.

METHODTo realise the most realistic camerawork possible, we built a custom virtual reality camera rig that allowed an Oculus Rift VR headset to be mounted to a professional camera mount so the directors could physically hand-operate a "real" camera in a virtual reality representation of the scenes. Our directors ran around Downing Street in virtual reality; he could duck behind CG pieces of furniture and react as the trash storm came by, giving us the depth of field and the ability to create something as physically close to reality as possible.

This hand-held feel to the camerawork transports the viewer into the action and lets them experience the kinetic energy on the spot as if they were being swept along with Boris Johnson. The greatest challenge were simulations which had to look natural but were directed scene by scene almost like a talent. The data set which created the dynamic flow of 1.8 million kilograms of plastic equated to terabytes of data which we created a bespoke mesh network to allow us to scale quickly for rendering.

We believe in incorporating cinematic qualities in our work to give viewers an immersive experience. To do this, we dove into intricate detail during the texturing and shading process while also paying attention to composting stages to imbue imperfections of film and camera lenses for a more human touch.

We researched the most common items that make up plastic waste, which resulted in 150 different pieces of plastic trash. This ranged from plastic shopping bags to pieces of styrofoam, Coca Cola bottles, detergent bottles, take-away food containers, coffee cups, etc. We 3D modeled and textured each item, including the mannequins of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. For every plastic bottle, bag and milk or yoghurt container, various crushed or damaged versions were made to add to the realism and visual variety. This resulted in turning 67.7 million plastic waste items into CG simulation beauty - the dynamic and powerful avalanche of trash that came crashing down on Boris Johnson.
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To define the actual size of the daily pile of plastic waste, we first combined 1,000 plastic items into a single, large ball and dropped 67.7 thousand of those balls onto our digital Downing Street set, giving us a realistic representation of the actual daily volume.
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To create the avalanche of plastic engulfing Boris and Downing Street, a special software called ‘Tyflow’ was used. This application is able to calculate millions of items interacting with each other in a physically accurate manner. Hundreds of gigabytes of data were exchanged between artists working on the project in different locations across the world due to the pandemic.

In total, the two minute film required roughly 14,600 hours of render time, or 20 months, to create the final shots. The CO2 emitted by our render farm was compensated for.
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Coupling filmic artistry with cutting edge CG technology, Method & Madness was able to convey the true scale of the plastic problem.

ImpactWithin the first five days of the film’s release, Wasteminster went viral with 6 million views. It’s currently garnered over 7.5 million views The film has also been shared by high-profile personalities such as Thom Yorke from Radiohead.
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It has been picked up by global news and trade media titles including The Guardian, The Independent, Campaign, The Drum, among others. The work has also been awarded Staff Pick by Vimeo, featured on Campaign and Ad of the Week by shots.
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Finally, the Greenpeace investigation spurred Turkey — where Great Britain sends 40% of its plastic waste export —  to announce its ban on UK plastic waste imports.
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We believe that the film’s success and vitality lay in its ability to convey a simple message, in a powerful way. It was through the production methodology that world-class CG technology provided, coupled with the creative soul and artistry of our team that enabled this Method & Madness work of art.