Concept and creative process
Opening titles for a late night chat show hosted by different guest presenters from the worlds of politics, the arts and the media. The animation was achieved with basically one background, a clear on black Kodalith of Roger Ferrin’s design for the night cityscape, lit from the back, coloured with different gels and filmed on a rostrum camera. The artwork was uncovered systematically north to south, until the cityscape filled the screen. It was similarly covered up again towards the end before the cut to the programme logo artwork. On another pass through the camera, other animated elements were sequentially superimposed on the cityscape: the bird, the programme logo on the side of a building, the train, the incoming planes, the walking man and the starbursts on the lights. The animated sign on top of the building was added separately with a diffusion filter to make it appear to glow. Finally the long programme name was uncovered and wiped on left to right one row at a time, while on a second pass the star filter effect was overlaid, using a rectangular slit panning in sync with the letters exposed on the first run, to make them appear to light up sequentially with a flash. It required a lot of pre-planning to achieve such an apparently simple result!