Delia Smith's Winter Collection (1995)

Concept and creative process

Titles for a new series in which Delia Smith produced seasonal recipes. This was a beautifully conceived and designed sequence by Danielle Frick (Hanson) which involved a continuous panning shot over cooking ingredients with animation of individual set-ups occurring during the move. It was constructed from several set-ups, each shot with the same programmed motion control camera rig, so that the transition from one to the next would appear like part of one continuous shot. The first scene was shot live action, slightly over cranked to slow down the action of the wind-blown leaves and berries. The second scene involved the stop motion animation of the wave of coarse sea salt breaking over the mussels, animated in situ by Danielle Frick. The third scene was the rice blowing in real time over the mushrooms. The fourth was the liquid chocolate lines around the orange slices and cherries which was shot twice, once with the chocolate lines complete and once without i.e. a clean background containing only the other ingredients. In post-production the chocolate was painted in one frame at a time on the clean background to reveal the animation. The final scene was the title background pan onto the frosted cherries and a hold for the programme titles to animate on. The transitions from scene to scene and to the main titles were created organically using mattes derived from the movement of the blown ingredients, such as the rice or sea salt. All of the post-production was completed at Court TV Productions Ltd.