BBC Festival Theatre (1977)

Generic title sequence for a series of dramas under the strand 'BBC Festival Theatre'. The theatrical output was to be televised, hence the request by the production to emphasise this aspect. The concept attempted to unify and portray the idea of 'festival' with 'television'. The Jester 'magics on' a tv studio and the main title. Originally Wayne Sleep (a lead dancer at the Royal Ballet) was hoping to take on this role but unfortunately was not available on the filming date. However, an excellent dancer was found, who when shown the storyboard was immediately able to visualise the choreography for the sequence on the day of the shoot. The sequence was shot at Studio B in Floral Hall Covent Garden. The entire sequence was shot on a motorised Nikon camera (a series of stills at 30 frames per second). Mike Sanders BBC photographer sent off a test run to be processed at the lab so we could continue with confidence. It was essential that the Jester was clear and bright and the background was jet black. This was important due to the way the photographs were going to be shot later on a rostrum camera. The process used multi exposure in order to double expose the image in the black area at different levels, to give a feeling of the Jester leaving a trail of himself as he moved around the set. At the end he wipes on the logo, which was done by creating a series of hand painted mattes of his hand on clear cell and pegging these over the artwork of the logo and then double exposing his full colour hand back over the black matte of his hand. The same technique was used to allow him to walk in front and then behind the logo once it was formed. The entire sequence required the photos to be pegged artwork as in traditional animation. When shooting the stills of the Jester, a white cross of gaffer tape was placed on the black felt material background on either side of the set. These were used to line up the stills later when being pegged on an animation peg bar. In those days we used strips of old 35mm fim or negative punched with a three slot punch bar and then sellotaped to the bottom of the artwork. The sequence was shot on 35mm film by rostrum cameraman Colin Hancock in-house at the BBC.

Illustrations of lights, boom and camera - Freddy Shackel.

Photographer - Mike Sanders.

Concept, director and art direction - Liz Friedman.