Aristocrats (1983)

Titles for 'Aristocrats', six films on the noble families of Europe. The brief was to reflect the nobility of the six families. A reference of each heraldic emblem was supplied. The idea was to use the six different emblems in some way and to finish the sequence on the emblem of the family highlighted that week. This meant devising a sequence with a generic main section that could have six separate endings added on. Props were bought and hired of various items to set-dress an aristocratic themed desk and shot on 35mm film using a hand artist as if he were an aristocrat undertaking the task of creating a wax seal. A cutaway model of a wax seal was also created, roughly 10 inches (25 cms) in diameter, an exact replica of the artwork drawn up for the main title for the programme's motif. This was shot separately using a stop frame technique. A standard hair dryer was used to heat the wax seal, and as it gradually melted each frame was grabbed until the seal had completely melted. For the final version of the sequence this section was inserted in reverse, so that it looked as if the seal was magically forming in real time. At the film optical stage, when the sequence was combined, the wax model seal and the drawn seal cross faded in perfect registration. The captions at the end, depicting the family emblems and their names, were created using a mixture of hand painted emblems and type printed onto cartridge paper, then lit with a shadow effect under the rostrum camera. The hand lettered title caption, main emblem design and artwork and the hand drawn family emblem artwork were all created by Fen Field.

Wax seal model - Alan Kemp.  

Hand artist - Brian Tolton.

Camera and Lighting - Doug Adamson, Stewart Hardy Films.

Concept, Director and Art Direction - Liz Friedman.

• BBC Programme Index/Genome