The Light Princess (1978)

Concept and creative process

Titles for a fantasy drama, adapted from George Macdonald's fairy tale by Ian Keill, about a princess who finds it impossible to keep both feet firmly on the ground. The production was made in a blue screen studio with the actors playing their parts in an entirely drawn environment, keyed in live from cameras shooting the artwork on music stands and composited via the production gallery on the master tape. There were animated sequences and characters also, either played in live on cue from telecine or composited in the edit. The illustrations were all the work of Errol Le Cain, formerly background artist at the Richard Williams animation studio and an illustrator of children’s books. The designer Michael Graham-Smith’s principal task was to storyboard the whole show, so that the cast and crew were able to see at any moment exactly what the director Andrew Gosling was trying to achieve in each scene. 

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