Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror season two trailer

The British prime minister having sex with a pig live on television: it's one of the more memorable moments from recent TV history. Charlie Brooker was the man behind it. The show was Black Mirror. And the mini-series is set to return for a second season, with MPC and 4Creative behind the accompanying promotional material. 

Their trailer (seen below) gives us a glimpse into the Orwellian vision of the future Brooker drew so well in series one – alluding to everything from the London riots to 9/11, all with tyrannical, technological overtones. MPC and 4Creative worked closely with the show's director Neil Gorringe and producer Shananne Lane, and were pivotal in moulding the overall feel of the films. 

“One of my favourite parts was the dream sequence," says VFX supervisor Michael Gregory. "This is the scene where a woman’s face breaks up into puzzle-like glyphs – an important symbol used subtly throughout the program. The MPC FX Studio designed the motion graphics and the film was then completed in 2D."

Another particularly impressive sequence shows a huge dust cloud engulf a city street and everyone on it: “This was created in CG," says Gregory, "and it was the most complex and time-consuming part of the VFX. We shot this footage before Christmas so that we had maximum time to work on this scene.

"The crowd replication was composited and we then worked on the reflections and shadows of the cloud. The team made use of technology developed for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, worked on by MPC Film.” 

You can check a gallery of stills from the trailer, including behind-the-scenes shots, below: