Concept and creative process
Titles for a 1983 period drama based on the Jane Austen novel. A young girl from a loving but impoverished family is sent to live with her wealthy relatives. The sequence was shot as a multiplane animation, with the Park on the top level, the terrace with sculpture and urns on the second and finally the house itself as the background layer. As the artwork was panned under the rostrum camera, the change in parallax between the levels became noticeable at the end of the pan and even more so as the camera tracked in on the house, causing the upper levels to become soft focus. The opening frame with the ‘Mansfield Park’ title and the Jane Austen and the dramatist’s credits was shot separately with a matte to enable it to be combined with the animation as a film optical.