Concept and creative process
Titles for a documentary series ‘Taking Shape’ which followed the donation of a piece of public sculpture to the City of Sheffield and the people involved in the creation and decision making. The idea for the titles revolved around close-up shots of live action showing the making of the sculpture, cut together and projected onto the process of creating the programme’s logo. The logo was formed out of a solid block of polystyrene with the words TAKING SHAPE being cut out using a hot wire method. This allowed the letters to be perfectly formed and they therefore fitted back exactly into the spaces cut out. The model was placed on a turntable against black and the pre-shot live action was projected onto the model. The model shoot itself was complicated and time-consuming as it was shot single frame. The zoom out was done in single frame, as was the projection of the pre-shot live action. Likewise, the turntable revolved one frame at a time and each section of the spaces between the letters was carefully removed one frame at a time. This took a very long day to shoot on 35mm film. The live action used to project onto the logo had been shot in advance and edited to length. It consisted of various set-ups performed by Steve Drewett from BBC Visual Effects Department.
Cameraman - Douglas Adamson, Stewart Hardy Films.
Live Action Direction and Creative Direction - Liz Friedman.